Today in his weekly radio address, President Obama said PAYGO is a “common sense rule.”
PAYGO, or Pay-as-you-go, requires Congress to pay for its spending, by cutting elsewhere in the budget or raising taxes. The President, who signed the bill yesterday, said PAYGO “helped lead to balanced budgets in the 1990s, by making clear that we could not increase entitlement spending or cut taxes simply by borrowing more money.”
Republicans have long opposed PAYGO because they say it enables lawmakers to increase taxes to fund more programs. A spokesman for Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) tells Fox that the Congressman believes PAYGO means “You pay, the Democrats go on spending.”