Rep. Flood at the Norfolk Daily News: Setting a Path to Fiscal Sanity

While partisans can debate the finer points about how America got here and who is to blame, debates do nothing to change what seems to be an unavoidable truth: If the federal government maintains the status quo, the financial future of our country is in real jeopardy.

While estimates vary, it’s clear that as America’s debt outpaces the GDP, it will weigh on the economy and make it difficult to grow.

It’s no secret that change is hard in Washington, but there’s reason to hope that our financial picture will improve. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have made great strides toward reining in the out-of-control spending from the Biden years, but it’s going to take every tool to make progress. Here’s an overview of how we’ve been working to restore fiscal sanity in the first months of the Trump administration and what more can be done.

The Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, quickly dove into federal spending to look for opportunities to roll back waste, fraud and abuse. While these efforts should be lauded for their work to clean up inefficient and wasteful spending that has gone unchecked for decades, there’s more to be done before savings can be realized. Congress must act, and we’re doing that right now.

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration sent over a rescissions package. Rescissions are a legislative tool that provides for the cancellation of previous spending authority. I voted in favor of this recissions package, which claws back roughly $9 billion in previously appropriated, but unused funding. While $9 billion doesn’t sound significant when compared to our $37 trillion debt, it’s important to keep in mind that our national debt won’t be resolved in one singular action.

The next tool that is helping to address aspects of federal spending is the reconciliation process. Reconciliation only addresses mandatory spending. By now, you have probably heard of the One Big Beautiful Bill,” which I supported and voted for. It cuts taxes and rolls back $1.4 trillion in spending over 10 years. In addition to cutting federal spending, the bill makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, increases the child tax credit and delivers new tax cuts, including no taxes on tipped wages or overtime.

The House also is working on budget bills for the upcoming fiscal year. The new fiscal year starts on Wednesday, Oct. 1, and these bills present another opportunity to constrain federal spending. The House has passed two of the 12 appropriations bills, and I look forward to working on the others ahead of the end of the fiscal year.

On top of these tools, there are individual bills that also provide opportunities to change the fiscal course of our country. I’ll give you a couple of examples that I’ve introduced that would provide additional savings.

The Ending Green Giveaways Act was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill. This measure helps rein in unused funding sitting in accounts of the Environmental Protection Agency that were earmarked for Green New Deal priorities that congressional Democrats passed in 2022 as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, this will recoup the unused portions of the $3 billion allocated for environmental and climate justice block grants.

I also introduced the No More D.C Waste Act. This legislation is another commonsense proposal that would seek to bring back nearly $80 million in unused funding by the D.C. local government, as part of the congressionally appropriated and taxpayer funded D.C. tuition assistance grant program.

For the past decade, this program has received $40 million annually to provide financial educational grants to D.C. residents who are attempting to obtain their bachelor’s degree from universities across the country. Unfortunately, this program has failed to use these funds in full for a decade, which has led to the surplus.

These measures are steps toward addressing America’s $37 trillion national debt and the country’s $2 trillion annual budget deficit. Now and in the future, I look forward to continuing my work in Congress to ensure that your hard-earned taxpayer dollars are used wisely.