Sunday, November 22, 2009 — The national debt now stands at more than $12 trillion. Our escalating national debt is one of the most important issues our nation faces.

As our country continues to try and recover from one of the worst economic crises in our history, Congress must ensure its solutions to aid our struggling economy do not continue to inflate the already outrageous national debt. Instead, Congress should seek ways to reduce the debt and place constraints on itself, and the rest of Government, to control spending.

Earlier this year, Congress enacted the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go legislation. I cosponsored this bill which requires Congress to have a means to pay for legislation before it becomes law. It is a great place to start, but PAYGO only reduces future accumulations of debt. It does nothing to address $12 trillion in debt already incurred.

We still need to find common-sense, reality-based solutions to reduce the national debt. Recently, we’ve seen the tide change in Washington and are hearing more and more that folks are finally ready to address this critical issue. I recommend that we begin using the remaining $210 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds toward debt reduction.

In a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, it was noted that more than $70 billion in dividend profits have been made off the government’s ownership of preferred stock in many of the banks that received TARP money.

I have adamantly voiced my opposition to the TARP program. While I was not in Congress when the original legislation was voted on, I voted not to release the second part of the funds. But since the American people have already shelled out their hard earned tax dollars to bail out these corporate giants, the very least we can do as a Congress is use the proceeds from this program to reduce our national indebtedness.

I have gone to great lengths to ensure the original funds are quickly repaid, along with any profits that may result. We all know if this money is just paid back into the government as general revenue, it will be spent somewhere else. This is unacceptable.

In June, I introduced H.R. 3020, the Repaying the American Taxpayer Act, which would amend the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to require revenue from the sale of TARP-related assets to be directly paid toward the national debt while simultaneously reducing the debt ceiling for every dollar of TARP money returning to the Treasury. Only by lowering the debt ceiling as we pay it down can Congress truly prevent the Treasury Department from turning around and immediately borrowing more money. The Repaying the American Taxpayer Act would also insure that dividend payments received from preferred stock the government owns in public companies be treated under the same rules.

While it still might be necessary to raise the debt ceiling to make sure core government programs like homeland security, national defense and public education receive necessary funding, we must do everything in our power to make sure we are eliminating unnecessary spending like bailing out big banks and corporations.

Therefore, the $70 billion (and counting) the government receives in dividends cannot be treated as general revenue for the Treasury. Every dime of it that comes in must be used to pay down our debt, and lower our debt ceiling, by that same amount. The Repaying the American Taxpayer Act has gained increased attention in the past two weeks. The number of cosponsors has doubled with members on both sides of the aisle signing on to what I feel is important legislation to address our national indebtedness, and lace some constraints and discipline on government spending.

There are no quick fixes to this escalating problem, but we must work together to reduce our national debt and ensure a solid economic future for the next generation.