Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Joe Donnelly introduced the Forecast for the Future Act of 2010 with the support of 21 colleagues, which would require every federal budget moving forward to include a 75 year net present value projection of our obligations to mandatory entitlement programs. In 2009, the Department of the Treasury projected entitlement spending at approximately $62 trillion in current dollars over the next 75 years. Currently, the budgeting process does not require Congress or the Administration to acknowledge these commitments, and Donnelly’s bill would require these long-term obligations to be transparent in the federal budgeting process.
“This common-sense reform is one piece of my larger effort to get our fiscal house back in order,” said Donnelly. “In order to get a fuller picture of our fiscal future, we need to acknowledge our long-term commitments to entitlement programs. This isn’t a radical idea; the Financial Report of the United States from the Department of the Treasury reports these numbers each year. What’s important is that we include these numbers in the annual budget so that we all have a fuller understanding of how the budgets we vote on today affect our grandchildren tomorrow.”
Donnelly is a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, and his bill is part of the Blue Dog Coalition’s Blueprint for Fiscal Reform, designed to get us back to the days of budget surpluses. Rep. Donnelly has supported many bills within the blueprint, including the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, H.J.Res. 45, signed into law in February, which requires Congress to offset any new spending or tax cut with savings elsewhere. He also supports the Balanced Budget Amendment, H.J.Res. 78, which calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring Congress to balance the budget each year. He supports the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2009, H.R.3393, which would cut wasteful spending from government agencies. Last week, Congressman Donnelly supported the introduction of caps on federal spending, also a part of the Blue Dog blueprint. These caps would cut non-security spending by nearly 6%, saving American taxpayers $400 billion over 10 years. Congressman Donnelly has been a consistent voice to keep government spending in check, voting against hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending since coming to Congress.
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