House Republicans will try to balance the federal budget in less than 10 years, the top House GOP lawmaker on budget issues said Monday.
“We will lay out a budget this year that will come to balance within what’s called the window, within a 10-year period of time. I hope it’s shorter than that,” said Rep. Tom Price.
Price, a medical doctor representing Georgia, became the chairman of the House Budget Committee this year, succeeded Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
In an appearance at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Price said he hoped to balance the budget sooner than Ryan did in the budgets he wrote and to work with the newly Republican-run Senate to put legislation in front of the president.
“The Budget Committee is where we begin to get our fiscal house in order,” Price said. Identifying the federal debt as the top threat to the U.S. economy, he said his goal as chairman will be “laying out the vision for how we would grow our economy in a very positive way.”
Ryan’s budget last year had the budget balancing in the 10th year. Alternative GOP proposals have tried to equate taxes and spending earlier, but making the math add up will be more difficult this year, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects deficits to rise in the 2020s.
But Price said he hoped that the addition of new GOP members on the committee would allow him to submit a plan for a balanced budget before 10 years.
Ryan’s tenure at the committee was a success, Price acknowledged, but overall policy was a “muddled mess” because of Democratic control of the Senate. With a GOP majority in the Senate now, he hopes to send legislation to the president, even if it’s vetoed.
“If we can get anything to the president’s desk, we win,” Price told the audience at Heritage Action’s conservative policy summit. Even if it’s vetoed, “the president’s going to be laid bare, and the emperor wears no clothes.”
