To resolve the debt ceiling, President Biden should take a look at his own Senate voting record

Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., is chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Ways & Means, which has primary responsibility for writing latest tax laws.

With the best way cable news talking heads describe debt ceiling negotiations, one might think America is headed for an extinction-level event.

Left-wing pundits argue that anything but a “clean raise” within the debt ceiling – extending America’s bank card limit with no conditions – will bring about an economic apocalypse. Much more misleading, Democrats in Congress try to scuttle the very notion of bipartisan negotiations by drumming up fake threats to Medicare and Social Security.

Because the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over the debt ceiling, Social Security, and Medicare, no debt ceiling laws that passes through my committee will include cuts to those vital programs. Period.

Meanwhile, it’s President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats whose ongoing inflation crisis, fueled by reckless spending, has already pushed Social Security further towards insolvency and is threatening greater than $500 billion in potential cuts to Medicare over the subsequent decade under existing law. In the event that they were serious about protecting these programs, they’d take an extended look within the mirror first. 

Debt ceiling negotiations are something Democrats – and even then-Senator Biden – have agreed to multiple times in our nation’s history. Deficit reduction policies have often been tied to debt limit negotiations. In actual fact, the last 11 spending reduction reforms enacted by Congress were bipartisan and attached to laws that raised the debt ceiling. As a senator, Biden voted for such reforms in 1985, 1987, 1993, and 1997, and helped negotiate spending constraints in 2009 and 2011, when he was vice chairman. 

Opponents of such negotiations prefer to point to the 2011 U.S. credit downgrade by rating agency Standard & Poor (S&P) as the explanation negotiations are dangerous. Yet, that rating downgrade occurred because, in line with S&P, “political brinksmanship” prevented Congress and the White House from providing a reputable plan to resolve the nation’s long-term debt problem. In other words, it was not a discussion of fiscal responsibility, but a scarcity of fiscal responsibility that led to a credit downgrade.  

Congress has one other opportunity to guard taxpayers – but lifting the debt ceiling to avoid default have to be paired with cuts to Washington spending to assist tame today’s inflation crisis and strengthen America’s long-term economic and financial health. Simply raising our credit limit without examining ways to cut back inflationary deficit spending means we are only scheduling America’s next debt crisis.

Americans are effectively paying twice for Washington’s spending addiction. Not only are they paying higher prices, however the Federal Reserve is more likely to proceed to lift rates of interest on the fastest pace in 40 years to combat the rise in consumer prices. Meaning interest payments on the debt have increased 29% this 12 months. America is spending more on our debt than we spend on housing and veterans’ advantages.

By 2033, the annual interest payments alone will cost $1.4 trillion – greater than we spend on our entire national defense or Medicaid advantages. If we proceed on our current trajectory, interest payments on the debt will crowd out critical national security and public health priorities. That moment is coming sooner fairly than later precisely because since taking office, President Biden has launched into a $10 trillion spending spree. He has increased spending greater than another president by this point of their administration. 

Democrats deflect from their wasteful spending by pointing to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – which led to the bottom employment in 50 years and better pay for the bottom earners – as a strawman for the nation’s ballooning debt. The facts point in the precise other way. Under the laws, federal revenues reached the very best level in American history last 12 months: $4.9 trillion. That was $1 trillion greater than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected for 2022 when the bill passed, and $1.6 trillion higher than revenues were when the Republican tax cuts became law.

Tax revenues today are the very best share of the economy since 1945, the last time America was fighting a world war. Even with more cash flowing to Washington than any time in history, the federal government is projected to run trillion-dollar deficits so far as the attention can see. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. 

There is barely one viable solution: reform spending in Washington and protect the promise we have made to current and future retirees.

The moment to act is now, and Democrats’ failure to have interaction in meaningful dialogue about our unsustainable spending endangers the federal programs tens of millions of America’s seniors depend on now and advantages they expect in the long run. For Washington Democrats to have interaction in politics as usual is manifesting the very crisis they claim they wish to avoid. House Republicans are able to negotiate in good faith. President Biden would do well to recollect his past and do as he has done before: discover a bipartisan, common sense solution to raise the debt ceiling and address Washington’s spending habit.