Matthew Berry for Congress in Virginia’s 8th District

It is imperative that we restore fiscal responsibility to Washington. The current explosion of government spending and debt is not sustainable and imperils our nation’s future. This year alone, the federal budget deficit reached over $1.4 trillion (the prior record was less than $500 billion). Indeed, the federal government this year is spending more than $1.50 for every dollar that it is taking in. Unfortunately, the long-term fiscal outlook is similarly bleak. Over the next ten years, the Obama Administration projects that the national debt held by the public will increase by over $9 trillion (or more than $900 billion per year), nearly twice as much public debt as was accumulated from the beginning of our nation through 2008. In short, if we continue on our current course, the federal government is headed for insolvency.

The magnitude of the problem will require our nation’s leaders to make difficult choices. While waste, fraud, and abuse does exist within the federal government and we must do everything that we can to root it out, that alone will not solve the problem because the fiscal hole that we have dug for ourselves is too deep. Among other things, we must also confront the single most important factor contributing to our nation’s bleak fiscal outlook: the growing cost of entitlement programs, which now accounts for the majority of federal spending. For example, as study after study has shown, the current trajectory of the Social Security and Medicare programs is unsustainable in light of the aging of America’s population. Unless action is taken, both will go bankrupt.

Here are my proposals for reducing the deficit and setting our nation’s finances on a sustainable path:

1. Set Social Security on a sustainable path through progressive indexing – For new retirees who are not low-income, we should tie the growth of initial Social Security benefits to the annual increase in consumer prices rather than the annual increase in wages. This proposal (commonly referred to as “progressive indexing”) has several advantages. First, it places Social Security on a fiscally sustainable path, eliminating the shortfall of trillions of dollars that imperils the program’s future. Second, it has no impact on current retirees. Third, it preserves the current purchasing power of Social Security benefits for all future retirees. And fourth, it provides special protection for low-income workers who are most dependent on Social Security for their retirement income.

2. Tie Medicare eligibility to the Social Security retirement age – While the retirement age for Social Security is gradually increasing from 65 to 67, the retirement age for purposes of Medicare eligibility is scheduled to remain at 65. But given the dramatic increase in life expectancies since the adoption of the Medicare program, the current structure of the program is not fiscally sustainable just as it was not fiscally sustainable to leave the Social Security retirement age at 65. As a result, we should tie Medicare eligibility to the Social Security retirement age, thereby establishing a unified retirement age. This will improve Medicare’s long-term fiscal outlook and reduce the deficit, but will not harm current retirees.

3. Require all money repaid by companies into the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to be applied to deficit reduction – When bailed-out banks and other companies repay their TARP money to the Treasury, it should be immediately applied to deficit reduction rather than being recycled and used by the Treasury Department for more spending and bailouts. The TARP program was designed to be a short-term measure to prevent the collapse of our nation’s financial system, not an ongoing $700 billion slush fund at the disposal of the Treasury Department.

4. Reject $500 billion increase in non-defense, discretionary spending proposed by the Obama Administration – The Obama Administration has proposed increasing non-defense discretionary spending by approximately $500 billion in the next ten years above and beyond what was provided for in the stimulus and what would be spent allowing for the natural growth of those programs. Given our current fiscal situation and the fact that non-defense, discretionary spending has increased significantly in recent years, we simply can’t afford this $500 billion in new spending.

5. Eliminate all earmarks – It is very disappointing that President Obama has failed to live up to his promise to end earmarks. In addition to wasting billions of dollars a year on pork-barrel projects, earmarks contribute to a culture of corruption. Lobbyists provide members of Congress with campaign donations in exchange for earmarks for their clients. This behavior undermines Americans’ faith in the government and has led to criminal prosecutions. It has also led to the scandal involving the PMA Group and Jim Moran. Lobbyists from the PMA Group as well as their clients gave Jim Moran almost $1 million in campaign contributions. And, Jim Moran just happened to secure millions of dollars in earmarks for the PMA Group’s clients. It is time to safeguard taxpayers’ money as well as the integrity of our government by eliminating earmarks from the budget.

6. End the payment of farm subsidies to farmers with annual sales over $500,000 and cap subsidies at $250,000 per farm – While farm subsidies are often defended as supporting the family farm, most subsidies end up in the hands of corporate agribusiness and large farmers. We should therefore take reasonable steps to target agricultural subsidies to small farmers and end wasteful payments to those who do not need them.

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