Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced a bill Friday that seeks to cut the 2016 budget deficit in half.
The Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2015 aims to slice $207 billion in cuts for the year, while protecting Medicare, Social Security, military pay and veterans benefits from losing any funds. It’s all a part of an effort to address what Paul has called “business as usual in Washington — too much spending and too much debt.”
By 2021, Paul hopes the bill, which caps spending to 18 percent of the gross domestic product, will balance the U.S. budget.
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“Bold action is needed to address our nation’s debt crisis — our national debt currently stands at $18.4 trillion,” Paul said in a press release. “We cannot keep piling debt on top of debt forever.”
The legislation is a follow-up to the Cut, Cap, Balance Act of 2011, which Paul also helped to introduce. The House passed the bill, but it was rejected by the Senate.
At the time, Ron Paul, Rand’s father and then a congressman from Texas and a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, chose not to support the bill. He said the legislation did not go far enough, criticizing it for only cutting $111 billion from the year’s budget and allowing a rise in the federal debt in the short term.
Paul, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, plans to introduce his bill next week along with another piece of legislation: the Default Prevention Act. The bill would protect the United States from going into default should the debt ceiling be reached.
The country is currently under threat of a debt default.
In a letter to Congress, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that it must raise the debt ceiling by Nov. 3 or else the country won’t be able to pay its bills.
Several conservative members of Congress have indicated they are unwilling to raise the debt ceiling without any sort of deal to cut government spending.
The last time the debt ceiling battle in Congress led to a government shutdown in 2013 and a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating.
Federal Debt over Time InsideGov
