Chairman Arrington Delivers Opening Remarks at 3% Deficit-to-GDP Framework Hearing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) delivered the following remarks at the “The Best Metric to Reverse the Curse: A 3% Deficit-to-GDP Path to Fiscal Sustainability” hearing.
Remarks as Delivered:
We need to change our long-term budget framework as it relates to budget resolutions for the following reasons. We need to live in reality, for one. We need the most meaningful measure of the fiscal health of our country. And I think debt and deficit to GDP, by most expert accounts, is a better way to do that than just nominal savings over any time period.
The recent tradition, at least for Republicans, has been to establish a goal of balancing the budget in 10 years. When I was a freshman member, Mr. Bernstein, in 2017 on this committee, the savings required to balance was about $6 trillion or close to $6 trillion. Today it's $16 trillion.
So, while I'm all for ambitious goals, I think aspirational goals that are just politically impractical to achieve don't help anybody. In fact, in every endeavor I've undertaken, when you set goals beyond stretch and into impractical and unachievable, you give people an excuse to do nothing.
So why not do a few things? Let's get a more meaningful measure of fiscal health. Let's establish an achievable goal. And let's do something that is rare in this institution and novel to this committee—not since we took over, Brendan—but let's agree together, as Republicans and Democrats, as proud lawmakers of the greatest country in the world, on this framework.
Then we can debate the strategies and the inputs and what dials should move in what ways. If we could do that, I think we would do much better to move this country onto a more fiscal, sustainable fiscal trajectory.
This 3% over 10-year goal has been endorsed by financial experts like Ray Dalio and Warren Buffett. I noticed it was also endorsed by President Obama.
It's embraced by experts, economists, business leaders on both sides of the aisle—center right, center left—advocacy groups and think tanks like the ones represented today.
I think people understood when the rating agencies downgraded us. I think it was probably—they were a lot more patient than they should have been—but when they did, their commentary included that they were looking for a plan, a long-term plan, and a commitment from both parties to that plan.
When people elect Republicans in these two chambers, I think the strategies on how to achieve that should reflect that philosophy and the values of those voters. And when it shifts to Democrats, I would expect that it would reflect more of the Democrat strategies on how to achieve it.
But what we should agree on is that we're off the rails, and we're in dangerous territory, and a debt-related crisis of any kind—including a sovereign debt crisis—and undermining our reserve currency would be potentially irreparable and unacceptable for everybody on this committee.
I believe that most, if not every, member here is concerned about it. It's just how we go about addressing it.
So that's the debate today. Hopefully we'll have a hearing where we can mark it up and change the paradigm altogether so that we can, again, actually make real progress.
That progress, by the way, of getting to the 3%—Scott Bessent, our Secretary of Treasury, mentioned it in his Senate confirmation hearing—getting there would get us to lower than the average 50-year average on annual deficits. It would create the fiscal space to absorb some of the shocks, like the conflict with Iran or some other exigent circumstance that we can't predict, like another COVID.
We're not particularly ready for that, in my opinion, and that's a problem.
So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to my ranking member for as much time as you need to make your opening statement.
