As part of his commitment to making sure that our government lives within its means, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) has signed onto a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to submit a budget resolution that will start the budget process, and open the door to cracking down on out-of-control spending that has the government borrowing 42 percent of the money we spend this year.

 

“While we may disagree on a number of issues, one issue we can all agree on is that our nation’s long-term fiscal outlook is unsustainable.  The gap between revenues and expenditures, already large by historical standards, is only going to become larger over time,” said the letter to Pelosi signed by Luetkemeyer and other Members. “The longer Congress waits to deal with this fiscal imbalance, the more difficult the choices become to solve this problem.  The time to start making decisions about our long-term deficit is not some time in the distant future, but now.”

       Luetkemeyer said while Pelosi has pledged to move ahead with the budget, he remains concerned about a recent report in Politico that the majority in Congress might not pass a budget resolution this year as a way to “avoid the political unpleasantness of voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year.” If a resolution is not passed, it would mark the first time since the passage of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 that the House would fail to craft a budget. 

“There are tough choices that have to be made to rein in out-of-control spending of hard-earned taxpayer dollars by the federal government, and we have to make those choices now rather than avoid the issue for political purposes,” Luetkemeyer said. “We must act, and we must act now. Failure to do so will continue to damage hard-working American families.”