Putting Our Fiscal House in Order for the Next Generation
Michael believes Washington needs to work together to put our nation’s fiscal house in order. Since his first days in the Senate in 2009, he has led the fight for comprehensive, bipartisan solutions to our nation’s growing debt burden and long-term deficits.
Michael has pushed for a balanced approach that reduces the deficit while investing in working families and the middle class—just as our parents and grandparents did for us. That is why he voted against the eleventh-hour “fiscal cliff” package, which passed on New Year’s Eve of 2013, and why he fought so hard against the irresponsible tax package in 2017 that will add over $4 trillion to the federal debt over a decade if extended in 2025. The 2017 tax bill and the Bush administration’s tax cuts have added $10 trillion to our national debt since enacted.
As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, Michael has worked across the aisle on responsible, commonsense legislation to help secure our country’s fiscal future and ensure future generations are not saddled with debt. He has pushed for policies that would make our tax code simpler and fairer while raising the revenues necessary to finance our long-term obligations. In 2017, Michael introduced a bill to eliminate the threat of default by ending Congress’s ability to weaponize the debt limit for extreme partisan ends. In both 2018 and 2019, Michael voted against two budget agreements that made little to no effort to offset large increases in spending. Michael was the only senator to receive the nonpartisan organization Fix the Debt’s “fiscal hero” award for voting against both the 2017 Republican tax law and the 2018 budget agreement.