WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and his colleagues introduced two bills this week to address balancing the federal budget and the impending insolvency of federal trust funds like Social Security and Medicare. The senator joined bipartisan legislation led by Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) called the Time to Rescue United States’ Trusts (TRUST) Act, which would form bipartisan committees tasked with proposing legislation to address each federal trust fund’s solvency.
“If programs like Medicare and Social Security are not reformed, they will continue down a path toward insolvency, and the benefits our seniors rely on will become unavailable to them,” said Senator Cramer. “The TRUST Act would form bipartisan committees tasked with crafting solutions aimed at fixing these vital programs and ensuring current and future recipients receive the benefits they have earned. We cannot continue to pretend doing nothing is acceptable and that this problem will magically go away on its own. Congress needs to act.”
The bipartisan, bicameral TRUST Act would form three bipartisan committee “rescue teams,” each assigned to a trust fund and tasked with proposing legislation to provide for each fund’s solvency. Committee members would come equally from both parties and from both the House and Senate, and the committees would have until the end of the Congress to report out their proposed solutions.
Senators Cramer and Romney are joined on the bill by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Todd Young (R-IN), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Angus King (I-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mark Warner (D-VA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Ed Case (D-HI), Scott Peters (D-CA), Jodey Arrington (R-TX), and Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA) have introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
Senator Cramer also joined Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) in introducing the Sustainable Budget Act of 2021, a bill to create an 18-member bipartisan national commission to find and recommend ways to balance the federal budget over 10 years.
“In response to the pandemic last year, Congress rushed to the aid of the American people, authorizing trillions in new spending to assist those in need. While that spending was necessary at the time, it added to our increasingly serious problem of a rising deficit and near-insurmountable debt, and it’s our job to address it,” said Senator Cramer. “The Sustainable Budget Act bill would help us consider bipartisan ways to put the federal government on a path to a sustainable fiscal future.”
The commission would consist of 18 members chosen by the President, the Speaker of the House, the House minority leader, and Senate majority and minority leaders. They would be tasked with creating a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit and balance the federal budget within 10 years.
Senators Cramer and Lummis are joined on the bill by Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Mike Rounds (R-SD).