Weekly Review
July 16, 2016

July 14: 

Sanford Introduces Penny Plan: Last week, I introduced a bill called the Penny Plan - officially known as the One Percent Spending Reduction Act of 2016 - with Senator Mike Enzi. And it’s as simple as it sounds: it would cut one penny from every dollar of federal spending until a balanced budget is reached. Remarkably, this would only take 5 years given it takes advantage of the power of compounding, not in growing something, but in this case cutting something! At that point, spending would be capped at 18 percent of GDP.

I’ve spoken and written often about the unsustainable government spending problem. Federal debt continues to grow, as is evident in this week’s Congressional Budget Office report. Indeed, the report states that “federal debt as a share of GDP would reach unprecedented levels if current laws generally remain unchanged. Such high and rising debt would have serious consequences for the nation’s budget and economy.”

That’s why I introduced the Penny Plan...because we have to take action now. And this plan does that. It’s simple. It’s fair. It forces action.

I could go on - because I deeply believe that we need to make a change, but I’ll let you read my op-ed that was just published in The Hill, if you’d like to delve a bit deeper.

July 13:

Privacy Still Matters: Privacy and the Fourth Amendment still matter. Big time. Accordingly, I write on three votes that occurred in the House on Monday night: the Anti-Terrorism Information Sharing is Strength Act (H.R. 5606), the Enhancing Treasury’s Anti-Terror Tools Act (H.R. 5607) and finally H.R. 5602, which would expand the Treasury Department’s ability to closely examine private financial records. In simplest terms, all three bills expanded the powers granted to law enforcement by the PATRIOT Act. I voted no on all three, and in that vein, I’d like to write a little bit on why I voted as I did.

July 12:

Opioid Abuse Reduction Act Awaits President's Signature: Last week, the House voted on S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016. This bill would spend $324 million over 10 years to provide grants to combat drug addiction at the state and local level. While very well intended in its purpose, it was simply the conference report of a bill the House had already voted on. It passed 407 to 5, and I was once again one of five to vote against it. If the bill had changed radically in negotiations with the Senate, I would have considered voting differently, but given it did not, I have attached below my reasoning on this bill when it came up back in May.

The biggest difference in the bill was that spending went up more than threefold after negotiations with the Senate. As to my rationale, here is what I wrote in May, which still applies....