John Kasich and Timothy Penny: Balanced Budgets Don't Need to Be a Thing of the Past

John Kasich and Timothy Penny are former Members of Congress and a board member and a co-chair, respectively, of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They recently wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek, an excerpt of which is below.

Thirty years ago, one of us was the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, the other chaired the Democratic Budget Group, a coalition of fiscally conservative legislators. At the time, we were alarmed by a $310 billion budget deficit and a national debt that was just over half the size of the entire economy. But those fiscal challenges look like mere puddles when compared to today's ocean of deficits and debt.

We came together back then, as a Democrat and a Republican, to set partisanship aside and put everything on the table. Our plan, the Penny-Kasich Deficit Reduction Amendment, proposed bold steps to rein in federal spending. The Penny-Kasich plan made tough choices about capping defense and nondefense spending while also proposing savings in Medicare—which was just as much of a political third rail in 1993 as it is now. While our plan fell four votes short of passing, it was able to garner notable support from both parties of Congress.

Read the entire piece here.

Published works by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget do not necessarily reflect the views of all members or staff of the Committee.