Former Vice President Mike Pence is leading a new effort to convince federal lawmakers to address the rising national debt.
Debt passed the $35 trillion mark at the end of July, less than eight months after hitting the $34 trillion mark. The upward trend isn’t stopping anytime soon: The Congressional Budget Office projects debt will hit $56 trillion by 2034, when debt will reach 122% of the size of the U.S. economy.
As the country enters uncharted and dangerous territory, Pence’s new nonprofit group Advancing American Freedom (AAF) is asking lawmakers to turn to calmer fiscal waters.
“The consequences of decades of neglecting the importance of profligate federal spending are finally starting to catch up with us,” the nonprofit said in an eight-page document that outlines some basic strategies to get the debt under control. . “The United States faces a bleak future as interest payments crowd out spending on essential government functions, our economy stagnates under the weight of unsustainable burdens, and we are at a strategic disadvantage internationally.”
To get the debt under control, AAF noted, lawmakers cannot simply focus on the discretionary portion of the federal budget—which accounts for less than 30 percent of all federal spending. At the same time, so-called “forced expenditures” account for more than 60% (the remainder is debt interest payments).
Most of the mandatory spending categories consist of Social Security and Medicare, but several other programs are also running automatically, including food stamps, federal workers’ retirement benefits, Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies and veterans’ benefits.
The AAF’s debt report states that “mandatory spending is the largest driver of the national debt because there are no limits on the unrestricted growth of these programs.”
Among proposals to rein in mandatory spending, the group advocates making future Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) means-tested for individuals making more than $1 million a year, blocking President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plan and ending Obama’s Medicare subsidizes wealthy Americans and creates congressional committees to propose spending cuts.
The group also calls for an end to so-called “tax spending,” which are forms of spending hidden in the tax code, such as corporate green energy subsidies in the form of renewable tax credits.
The new document picks up where Pence left off from his failed Republican primary campaign last year. On the campaign trail, Pence spoke of the importance of sound fiscal policy and denounced his former boss, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, for ignoring the threats posed by runaway borrowing and unsustainable entitlement programs.
Of course, Pence’s campaign never made any meaningful progress. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had more success, but apparently not many voters were seriously discussing the debt.
Still, it’s important to try. In an article published reason Last year, Pence urged conservatives to “resist the temptation to put popularity over wisdom.” In this context, he criticized the ongoing trend among prominent Republicans to abandon free-market principles and embrace will-to-power politics as the solution to America’s problems. But he might also have been talking about debt. Much of this $35 trillion in borrowing is because leaders prioritize what is popular (government spending) over what is smart (only spend what you are willing to raise taxes on).
Of course, Pence is not completely blameless in this regard. He appears to have little influence on the Trump administration. Still, he has been a key figure in a presidential administration that has added more than $8 trillion in debt in just four years — a record that Biden is now trying to equal. Pence, who served in the House of Representatives for more than a decade starting in 2001, arrived in Washington as the federal budget was close to being balanced. He supported two costly foreign wars (although he opposed the costly Medicare expansion during the George W. Bush administration).
It would be easy to dismiss this as meaningless, given that Pence is a pariah within his own party and may have even less influence on the Democratic Party. He holds no elected office and has no reason to believe that will change anytime soon.
but no one have The political powers that be appear willing to engage in solving the national debt problem—at least not openly or publicly. Pence has nothing to lose, which means he’s free to say things others wouldn’t. I hope he continues.
