Thursday, December 6, 2012

Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) Letter to President Obama urging him not to call for automatic increases to Debt Ceiling

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, plans to send a letter to President Barack Obama Wednesday urging the White House to reconsider reforms to the procedure involved in raising the debt ceiling. 
The former Office of Management and Budget head is currently circulating the letter among his colleagues to garner more support against a proposal offered last week in closed-door meetings by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to Republican leaders of Congress. 
“For Congress to surrender its control over the debt limit would be to permanently surrender what has long provided the best opportunity to enact bipartisan deficit reduction legislation,” Portman wrote in a draft of the letter obtained by Roll Call. “We also believe that Congress’s power over borrowing, like the power of the purse, is firmly rooted in our constitutional tradition.”
Read the rest of the article HERE and read the letter below:
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest
Washington, DC 20500 
Dear Mr. President, 
The Congress is ready to work with you as equal partners in addressing the coming fiscal cliff. Beyond averting the recession that the fiscal cliff would likely precipitate, Congress also seeks to address the projected long-term budget deficits that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are driven almost entirely by unsustainable increases in entitlement spending. 
You have said that substantial increases in the national debt are “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic,” and you once pledged to cut the budget deficit in half. We agree that Washington must rein in the debt, which is one reason we strongly oppose your proposal to eliminate Congress’s role in establishing a federal debt limit. 
Far from a simple procedural vote, the debt limit has provided Congress with an opportunity to rein in the expanding national debt. The 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which helped reduce the deficit, was attached to a debt limit bill. The three largest deficit reductions bills in the 1990s – in 1990, 1993, and 1997 – were each linked to debt limit legislation, as was the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. Finally, the debt limit was the impetus for the 2011 Budget Control Act, estimated to save $2.1 trillion over the decade. 
In short, nearly every significant deficit reduction law of the past 27 years has been linked to a debt limit debate. For Congress to surrender its control over the debt limit would be to permanently surrender what has long provided the best opportunity to enact bipartisan deficit reduction legislation.
Read the rest of the letter HERE.

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