Coons: "Save As You Go" The Way To Go

Delaware Senator Chris Coons writes at Politico:

Under our current budget process, the path of least political resistance is to keep revenues low while offering a high level of services. Balanced budgets are fundamentally against the short-term interests of politicians from both parties.

Our growing national debt is neither a Republican nor a Democratic problem but, rather, a shared, structural problem.

My experience in the private sector and after six years of tough budget balancing as a county executive taught me how difficult — and important — it is to have responsible budget processes in place.

To achieve long-term debt stabilization, we must enact a mechanism that would force Congress into a fiscal straitjacket and require savings each year. “Save As You Go,” or SAVEGO, is just that mechanism.

This approach to budgeting soberly acknowledges the gravity of our situation and uses automatic, annual processes to force difficult but necessary policy change