(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Representative Martha Roby appeared on Fox Business News today discussing her legislation, the Honest Budget Act, H.R. 3844. Roby talked about her legislation that addresses nine commonly used budget gimmicks and accounting tricks Washington relies on to conceal or enable deficit spending.
Excerpts from Roby’s interview are provided below:
“My bill is the Honest Budget Act and basically what it does is looks at the nine most commonly used budget gimmicks. Look, these are institutionalized gimmicks that have been used over time by both Republicans and Democrats. It’s a very narrow technical bill and it certainly doesn’t solve our fiscal problems in this country, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
“These gimmicks that we address in this bill look at ways that both Republicans and Democrats have shuffled money back and forth and accounted for savings that aren’t in fact there. Money that would have never been spent is accounted as a savings, and turned around, and used for deficit spending.”
“The president has given us a budget that is over a trillion dollars in deficit spending for the fourth year in a row. We cannot sustain this path and, again, this bill is an attempt to address these issues very specifically so that we can start restoring some sort of fiscal sanity.”
The Honest Budget Act is companion legislation to a bill introduced by Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions. Recently, nearly 30 Senate and House colleagues stood in support as Rep. Roby and Sen. Sessions led a bi-cameral press conference to introduce the Honest Budget Act.
