NOTICIAS

Support is steadily growing for Senator Rubio’s Returned Exclusively For Unpaid National Debt (REFUND) Act, which would allow states to identify and return unwanted federal funds to the federal Treasury in order to help pay down the national debt. Twenty-six other senators have now signed on as co-sponsors, along with two governors and the National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste.

This legislation puts an end to the age old “use-it-or-lose-it” mentality that encourages states to accept money from a deeply-indebted federal government for projects that—whatever their merits—are simply cost prohibitive. It helps empower state legislatures, many of which are already returning federal funds due to fine print government mandates, to do their part to confront the debt crisis in a real, tangible way.

The REFUND Act is an important first step in fundamentally reforming the way our government spends money. This process must also include entitlement reform, spending and debt caps and a balanced budget amendment. But it also includes legislation like this one that seeks to end the practice of forcing states to spend federal money that is borrowed and increasing our debt.