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Lincoln Chafee on Budget & Economy
Former Republican Senator (RI, 1999-2007)
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Reinstitute pay-as-you-go: match tax cuts & spending cuts
Q: Do tax cuts stimulate the economy?WHITEHOUSE: The Bush administration tax cuts have run up our budget deficit to the highest levels ever. We now owe nearly a trillion dollars to the Chinese government, much of which went to finance tax cuts for
the very richest Americans. If you are a middle-income Rhode Islander, and you got $1 of tax relief under the Bush tax cut, somebody making more than $200,000 got $111. That has not been good policy. We need to repeal the Bush tax cuts.
CHAFEE: I�m all
for tax cuts as long as we can cut our spending. The difficulty has been that we cut the taxes but we don�t cut our spending. We�ve had some tremendous unforeseen costs -- with 9/11, the war in Iraq & Afghanistan, and Katrina. I think we should prepare
for those, and I don�t believe tax cuts, as long as we�re not cutting our spending, is a wise course to take. During the 1990s, we had something called �pay as you go.� We would not enact any spending programs that we couldn�t pay for with revenue.
Source: 2006 RI Senate debate, by RIBA and WPRI-12 (Xref Whitehouse)
Sep 13, 2006
Pork barrel accounts for 1% of the budget, and is requested
LAFFEY: I think of the $27 billion of pork barrel spending that goes on in this country every year and I think of how we could buy textbooks with it, how we could use the money for other more important purposes. Rhode Island does not benefit it because
while $150 million of pork barrel projects coming back to Rhode Island in the next four for five years, we had to spend $223 million to get the bridge to nowhere up in Alaska for 50 people. It�s a wrong policy.CHAFEE: $27 billion in a $2.5 trillion
budget, that�s 1% of the budget. If you�re saying I�m going down to reform all our financial problems, it�s in 1% of the budget. Every year I send a letter to every city and town, the town manager, the mayor, the president of the city council and ask
how can I help you in your neighborhoods? They write back, I then submit those requests to the subcommittee. That goes to the Senate full committee, then to the House. It gets signed by the President. Then it becomes law. So it�s a long process.
Source: 2006 R.I. Republican Senate Primary debate (x-ref Laffey)
Aug 24, 2006
Voted NO on $40B in reduced federal overall spending.
Vote to pass a bill that reduces federal spending by $40 billion over five years by decreasing the amount of funds spent on Medicaid, Medicare, agriculture, employee pensions, conservation, and student loans. The bill also provides a down-payment toward hurricane recovery and reconstruction costs.
Reference: Work, Marriage, and Family Promotion Reconciliation Act;
Bill S. 1932
; vote number 2005-363
on Dec 21, 2005
Voted NO on prioritizing national debt reduction below tax cuts.
Vote to table [kill] an amendment that would increase the amount of the budget that would be used to reduce the national debt by $75 billion over 5 year. The debt reduction would be offset by reducing the tax cut in the budget framework from $150 billion
Reference:
Bill S Con Res 101
; vote number 2000-55
on Apr 5, 2000
Maintain & enforce existing spending caps in the future.
Chafee adopted the Republican Main Street Partnership issue stance:
What we offer today are not the precise spending decisions of a given year's budget; rather, we call upon the Congress and the nation to adopt the following guidelines for our fiscal policy over the next decade. This long-term blueprint is essential for maintaining both the immediate public-sector goal of balancing the budget and the private-sector goal of a healthy economy. This can be achieved through the following steps:
- A commitment to maintaining and enforcing existing spending caps in the future, when such discipline becomes more difficult to achieve;
- A careful and considerate re-definition of the federal role in society (what should be the legitimate and proper role of the federal government in the twenty-first century, and how do we prioritize competing demands?); and
- An evaluation of implementing tax cuts based on their social fairness.
Source: Republican Main St. Partnership Issue Paper: Fiscal Policy 98-RMSP5 on Sep 9, 1998
Page last updated: Nov 22, 2009