Rounds: TRUST Act ‘Important Step Toward Addressing Debt Crisis’
Legislation Receives Endorsement from Deficit-Reduction Leaders Simpson and Bowles
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D) announced today that he is cosponsor of the Time to Rescue United States’ Trusts (TRUST) Act, which would create congressional committees specifically tasked to develop legislation to restore and strengthen endangered federal trust funds. Without legislative action, the government’s trust funds – Highway, Medicare Hospital Insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, and Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance – will be exhausted in the next thirteen years.
The TRUST Act was endorsed this week by former Senator Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, leaders in debt-reduction efforts and former co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan Presidential Commission on deficit reduction.
“I’ve said countless times that we must take bold action to get our debt under control,” said Rounds. “Our legislation takes an important step toward putting our federal trust programs on a sustainable path and addresses our debt crisis, allowing Congress to actively manage federal trust funds. Congress must check the growth of mandatory payments, which make up around 70 percent of all federal spending and include important trust funds, if we are ever to begin reducing our debt. The debt crisis is preventable and these trust funds are savable – but we must begin to act now.”
How the TRUST Act works:
- Treasury would have 45 days upon passage of the legislation to deliver to Congress a report of the government’s major, endangered federal trust funds.
- Congressional leaders would appoint members to serve on “Rescue Committees”—one per trust fund—with the mandate to draft legislation that restores solvency and otherwise improves each trust fund program.
- Rescue Committees would make sure there is bipartisan consensus by requiring at least two members of each party to report legislation.
- If a Rescue Committee reports a qualifying bill, it would receive expedited consideration in both chambers. While 60 votes would be required to invoke cloture for final passage in the Senate, only a simple majority would be needed for the motion to proceed, which would be privileged.
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Mike, you are the cause of that debt when you swore allegiance to Trump, the POTUS that has increased the deficit and debt more than any other POTUS in history. Oh, I forgot Trump is not a Republican, he runs the new Trump party of union members and uneducated far right extremists.
US Debt per President in 1st 3 years of office.
Obama
FY 2012 – $1.276 trillion.
FY 2011 – $1.229 trillion.
FY 2010 – $1.652 trillion.
Total – $4.157 trillion
Trump
FY 2020 – $1.281 trillion.
FY 2019 – $1.314 trillion.
FY 2018 – $1.217 trillion.
Total – $2.595 trillion
NOTE:
The president doesn’t have much control over the debt added during his first year in office. Its budget was already set by the previous president.
For example, President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. He submitted his first budget in May. It covered Fiscal Year 2018, which didn’t begin until October 1. For the first nine months of his new term, Trump operated under President Barack Obama’s last budget. That was for FY 2017, which continued until September 30, 2017.
This timing difference explains why no new president is accountable for the budget deficit in his first year in office.
Actually, William, I think those figures are the annual deficits. I also think you need to check your math on the total of the 1st 3 years under this current occupant of the White House. I get $3.812 trillion, but that’s with FFY 2020 less than half done. The figures for President Obama I assume are actual figures though I don’t know your source.
According to NPR (https://www.npr.org/2019/02/13/694199256/u-s-national-debt-hits-22-trillion-a-new-record-thats-predicted-to-fall) the US national debt grew from $10.6 trillion to $19.9 trillion in President Obama’s 8 years. In this White House occupant’s first 3 years it’s grown to more than $22 trillion, the highest it’s ever been.
In October CBS News (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-promised-to-eliminate-the-national-debt-it-has-risen-by-3-trillion/) reported that, although he promised to eliminate the US national debt, it had actually grown to $22.9 trillion under this White House occupant.
So in 8 years under President Obama, the national debt grow $9.3 trillion, but we were just getting out of the worst recession since The Great Depression. Tax revenues had decreased during that recession, and Obama managed to get Congress to pump a lot of money into the economy.
Now after about 3 years of T, the national debt has grown by about a third of what it did during the previous 8 years. This from a guy who once said on Twitter (2015) “When you have $18-$19 trillion in debt, they need someone like me to straighten it out.”