CARLA SANDS: Want To Solve The Debt Crisis? Here’s Where To Start

CARLA SANDS: Want To Solve The Debt Crisis? Here’s Where To Start

Carla Sands on May 16, 2023

House Republicans fired a strong opening salvo in the debt ceiling debate with the passage of the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which partners a necessary debt limit increase with a critical push for fiscal responsibility and economic growth.

The Biden administration has countered with a determined push for a “clean” debt limit increase without any of the “preconditions” that would set our nation on a more sustainable fiscal path. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s insistence on maintaining current spending levels is marching the country off a fiscal cliff by design, particularly with the war on American energy.

As discussions continue, economic policies that embrace American energy production as the foundation of strong, sustainable growth will be critical to putting the nation back on track.

Americans are bearing the burden of inflation and high energy prices while the federal government sprints toward bankruptcy. Inflation is still running at 5% year-over-year, with prices cumulatively up by a whopping 16% since January 2021.

Meanwhile, annualized GDP growth is flirting with recession territory at just over 1%. The debt-to-GDP ratio will exceed 100% next year. Interest payments on the national debt alone are now set to surpass $1 trillion by 2028. With massive government spending fueling inflation, the Fed’s resulting aggressive interest rate hikes make debt servicing even more expensive.

Furthermore, with a faltering economy, individual tax revenues are down $95 billion year-to-date.

Out-of-control government spending is outpacing and limiting our nation’s private sector growth. To address the debt crisis, our government must spend less and implement pro-growth policies.

The Biden administration’s “clean” debt limit increase would do the exact opposite by spending our nation into stagnation.

The Biden administration’s war on traditional energy production expands the regulatory state and “clean” energy subsidies that distort markets and raise consumer costs. These anti-energy, anti-free market policies take our country from energy abundance to austerity, raising costs across the economy, stifling competition and innovation and strangling economic growth.

By design, this massive government expansion fuels deficit spending in order to reduce economic growth.

Proponents argue that Green New Deal policies lead to prosperity, but current approaches are rooted in the “degrowth” agenda of radical climate activists touted at elite organizations like the World Economic Forum. In pursuit of climate goals, degrowth openly embraces stagnation and decline as an economic strategy.

Accordingly, it is no surprise that the war on energy has been far more successful at hindering traditional energy production than producing promised alternatives. This policy approach limits environmental progress by stifling the economic prosperity that drives it.

It makes the United States more dependent on foreign energy sources, from begging OPEC to increase oil production to increasing reliance on China for critical minerals. Further, this backward approach leads to skyrocketing costs for American businesses and families.

Degrowth means that faltering promises of a green utopia are quickly met by calls for deindustrialization, sacrificing our Nation’s energy and economic security. Thus, as the Biden administration proposes EPA regulations to force electric vehicle adoption, it also includes telling recommendations to simply not travel at all in its transportation decarbonization plans.

In contrast, the House’s Limit, Save, Grow Act takes on the destructive Green New Deal agenda by both limiting government spending and growing the economy. The bill reduces spending by $4.8 trillion, capping future spending at 1% growth a year for the next decade. Critically, it is a pro-energy bill.

The House’s bill repeals Inflation Reduction Act “green” tax credits estimated to cost taxpayers upwards of $1 trillion and distort energy markets. It also includes the entirety of the House’s Lower Energy Costs Act, which alone is estimated to grow the GDP by $379 billion per year by unleashing American energy and reforming the broken permitting process. Importantly, the bill’s commonsense permitting reforms embrace a free-market approach to building American energy production on a level playing field regardless of source.

This approach starkly contrasts the Left’s “permitting reform” proposals, which sacrifice economic growth and energy security with poison pills that expand federal authority to achieve radical climate goals.

The House bill also includes the REINS Act, which would limit regulatory overreach by requiring congressional approval for major actions. The Biden Administration’s regulatory fervor focuses heavily on climate change. The Administration has already added regulatory burdens that are more than 70% higher than President Obama’s at this point in office and exceed President Trump’s by nearly 6000%.

We must not allow central planning to dictate America’s energy future through Green New Deal subsidies and excessive regulation. Misguided spending leads to economic stagnation and fuels the debt crisis. The House has set a positive pathway for real progress to rein in spending and strengthen the economy. It’s time for President Biden and the Senate to follow the House’s lead. We must unleash American energy.

Carla Sands is the former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. She is the Vice-Chair of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.