I share your concerns on our national debt.  We currently owe over $22 trillion, a record amount.  As others have pointed out, I share the view that our country does not have a revenue problem (the Treasury currently collects $2.5 trillion in taxes), but we have a serious spending problem.  At the current pace, our national debt will exceed the size of our economy in less than two years.  In 2010, our country paid over $1 billion per day in interest on our debt for a total of $414 billion.  We spend more on interest on our debt than some of our most important government departments—second only to what we spend on national defense. 

The national debt threatens our economic security and because it threatens our economy, it threatens our national defense.  Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated that the national debt is the biggest threat to our national security.  I was sent to Washington to change the direction of this country— not to take empty votes that accomplish nothing.  I was not sent to DC to increase taxes and have consistently voted against any legislation that includes a tax increase. Our debt and spending crisis are like a super tanker.  In order to bring a super tanker to a stop, you cut engines many miles from port. In order to change direction even slightly, the captain has to start the maneuver miles ahead of time.  As each spending fight has occurred over the last couple years, my conservative colleagues and I continue to veer our tanker away from its current course.  America did not create this debt and spending crisis overnight. We cannot fix it overnight.  But we can take steps today to change direction. We must act today incrementally to fix our problems.  We cannot wait until these programs are all insolvent and the IMF imposes austerity measures on us.

The American people have overwhelmingly demanded that Congress takes action to put our country back on a fiscally sustainable path by reducing our egregious national debt and budget deficit. The House of Representatives has the power of the purse and must break through the status quo of allowing our nation to spend money we simply do not have.  In the fiscal year 2015 appropriations process, I had more success than any other member of Congress, passing 21 of 27 amendments and positively affecting almost one billion dollars in federal spending.  My amendments accounted for more than 10% of the total amendments passed by the House during the appropriations season.  I have been relentless in such pursuits and have sought to restore fiscal responsibility as well as commonsense to a bloated federal government that has lost its way. I will continue to cut wasteful federal spending wherever I can. The American people and taxpayers deserve nothing less.