Economy & Budget

I fully support the intentions expressed by President Bush to eliminate the federal budget deficit by 2012 and I believe through fiscal restraint and a streamlined, but comprehensive spending plan, it might be possible.  However, any plan that is going to get us out of the red, must be realistic.  We must balance our responsibility to stabilize Iraq and the Middle East while at the same time funding important and pressing domestic priorities at home, including education and health care -- all in a fiscally responsible manner.

Additionally, if we are to implement pay-as-you-go rules, they must be for BOTH spending and tax relief.  A one-sided equation does not get us back into the black.  Savings can and should be found throughout the entire budget.  This will force us to prioritize what we spend and realize the importance of fiscal discipline.

As a former Governor who balanced eight straight budgets, I know this is not an easy task, but that does not mean we shouldn't tackle it head on.

I am pleased to support President Bush’s call to balance the budget by 2012. For the sake of our nation’s future prosperity, it is our responsibility to meet this goal. Working families across Minnesota make tough choices to live within their budgets and the federal government should be no different. Since coming to Washington, I have upheld the promise I made to the people of Minnesota to be fiscally responsible by voting against $4.636 trillion in Democratic proposed spending, voting for the Deficit Reduction Act and supporting line-item veto authority for the President. As we seek to meet the President’s goal, we should make permanent the successful pro-growth tax policies that have resulted in record revenues, 7 million new jobs since August of 2003 and higher incomes for Minnesota’s hardworking families.  I look forward to working with Senate colleagues on meeting the President’s goal.

With a national debt of $8.6 trillion dollars, $2.8 trillion of which has been added in just the past six years, we should all welcome the President's commitment to fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. I hope this commitment is reflected in the budget he submits to Congress next month, and that the President is truly committed to working on a bipartisan basis to address the long-term fiscal challenges that our country faces.

We welcome the President’s newfound commitment to a balanced budget, but his comments make us wary. They suggest that his budget will still embody the policies that led to the largest deficits in history. Under these policies, a ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion became a ten-year deficit of $3 trillion. The President claims that his next budget will break out of that pattern and move to balance by 2012. But it is essential to know what his budget does and does not include. Read more...

During this holiday season, we relied on the Postal Service for mailing and receiving packages and holiday cards to friends and loved ones, yet many of us take for granted what a pillar this institution is to the American economy.

The U.S. Postal Service is the lynchpin of a $900 billion mailing industry, providing nine million jobs nationwide.  These jobs are in diverse fields ranging from direct mailing, printing, and catalog companies such as L.L. Bean - in my home state of Maine - to paper manufacturing, and financial services.

In addition to the huge number of jobs that depend on a financially strong Postal Service, individuals and families living in rural communities throughout the nation rely on its universal service.  Families living in our small, rural communities should have the same access to the postal services as those living in our cities. If the Postal Service were no longer able to provide service to every customer, the affordable communications link upon which many Americans rely would be jeopardized. And most commercial businesses would find it uneconomical, if not impossible, to deliver mail and packages at affordable rates to every address.

But under its current business model, which has not been updated in three decades, the financial future of the Postal Service was not viable. There are many reasons why modernizing the Postal Service is so critical to the health of this institution.  The Government Accountability Office has described the current financial situation of the Postal Service as a “death spiral. Read more...

In the 110th, obviously we have to deal with challenge of Iraq. We have got to move in a new direction there. We also have to restore fiscal responsibility and get back on a more sustainable course. The debt is skyrocketing before the baby boomers retire, which is something that cannot be permitted to continue. So we have to begin to change the long-term outlook.

American and Panamanian trade negotiators reached a deal on sugar access in a Panama-U.S. trade agreement late on Monday night.

The deal allows for 7,000 metric tons of additional duty free access to the U.S. sugar market and grants duty free access for U.S. sugar shipments into Panama—a market that has historically been closed.

Even though the U.S. sugar market is already oversupplied with unneeded imports, initial reaction within the U.S. sugar industry to this trade deal has been positive.

That’s because U.S. trade negotiators worked hard to turn unreasonable Panamanian requests into a fair sugar agreement.  7,000 tons is a manageable amount and will not send shockwaves through our market like the lopsided deals with Mexico and Central America in the past. Read more...

I am honored to chair the Budget Committee, but realistic. This will be a daunting task, a huge challenge. The unified deficit was $248 billion last year. Our objective is to balance the budget within a reasonable time; but with spending for Iraq and Afghanistan running well over $100 billion this fiscal year, it will not be easy.

I was one of four budget principals in Congress who worked out the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which put the budget in the black for the first time in thirty years. In the year 2000, just before President Bush took office, the budget ran a surplus of $236 billion. That surplus was gone, wiped out, within two years, and the budget has been stuck in deficit ever since.

My aim is to put the budget on track, and back to balance within a reasonable time, but also to balance priorities within the budget. In the Balanced Budget Act, we protected Medicare and Medicaid, expanded student aid, and created the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In the next Congress, we will work to wipe out the deficit; but while we will have to cut some spending, we will carry forward our fight for the good programs that millions of Americans depend on.

With the baby boomers’ retirement fast approaching, these past several years would have been a good time for federal policymakers to put the government’s fiscal house in order by reducing the national debt.  Instead, they expanded it.
At the end of fiscal year 2006, the national debt stood at roughly $4.8 trillion.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that $2.3 trillion, or nearly half of the debt, was the result of tax cuts and spending increases approved by Congress and the Administration since January 2001.

Sad to say, but the nation would be in much better shape today if Congress had left the budget on automatic pilot for the past six years.

Where did that $2.3 trillion go?  A bit over half of it went to tax cuts, and another third went to increased spending for defense, homeland security, and international affairs (primarily the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), according to CBO data.  Only 6 percent of the $2.3 trillion represents increases in domestic discretionary programs, the part of the budget some have mistakenly claimed is “exploding.

The Commerce Department announced that the U.S. trade deficit fell sharply in October. I normally would welcome this as good news – but a closer look reveals a different story.

The main reason for the apparent drop in the U.S. trade deficit is that our imports from OPEC were significantly less expensive in October – and one can hardly expect that to be a long-term trend. Meanwhile, our trade deficit with both China and Japan reached new records in that month. The China deficit alone reached $24.3 billion in just one month – and the Chinese shipped us six times as much merchandise as they purchased from us. Our merchandise trade deficit for the year is set to reach a new record, well above $800 billion.

These are the key deficit numbers – the ones that translate into lost U.S. jobs and a declining standard of living, as our manufacturing base continues to be hollowed out. Read more...