U.S. Rep. Blake Moore has regularly banged the drum about trimming the ballooning U.S. deficit as he’s traveled the district and met with constituents.

He’s singled it out as a key priority, as have many lawmakers and others.

Now, working with a coalition of business leaders and other experts from Northern Utah — his Debt and Deficit Task Force — he’s crafted a report meant to help chip away at the problem, described in dire terms in the document.

“Without correction, our nation will be ill-equipped to confront the next domestic challenge or foreign conflict, it will be less likely to pay back its debt and its risk of default is significantly higher, jeopardizing the (U.S. dollar’s) global reserve status. It is not just our fiscal health at risk, but the stability of our nation,” reads the report, released Friday.

The report touts a conservative, business-friendly approach in proposing ways of addressing the deficit issue, but also calls for lawmakers across the spectrum to come together on the matter. The gross national debt, the report notes, surpassed $30 trillion in early 2022, up from $15.2 trillion in 2011.

“I am deeply concerned about our country’s debt and deficit crisis and want to use my role in Congress to improve our national fiscal outlook for the next generation,” Moore said in a statement. Those on the task force include reps from the University of Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox’s administration, the health and business sectors and more.

The impact the report has remains to be seen. But Moore — campaigning for a second term in the 1st District U.S. House post — said he’ll share the recommendations in it with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., “as we seek to reverse America’s debt culture.”

SOME OF THE FIXES

Among other things, the report calls for higher labor force participation to spur economic growth and tax code reform to encourage small business development. It warns against President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better initiative.

“We must ensure we are incentivizing individuals to join or rejoin the workforce by avoiding flawed unemployment benefits and unnecessary subsidies. Support must be narrowed and targeted to truly assist those in need,” it reads.

It calls for a bigger emphasis on workforce development programs and promoting job growth in trades.

The report also espouses “energy independence” and scaling back of federal restrictions on energy production to spur economic growth via the energy sector.

It touts a measure, the POWER Act, “which would block the executive branch from barring energy production on federal lands and propose other efforts to streamline approval processes.” It also endorses Moore’s proposal, the Promoting Energy Independence and Transparency Act, meant to minimize delays in approving federal applications to drill for oil.

Government spending is another area of focus of the report, particularly mandatory federal spending on programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, projected to account for 65% of the federal budget this year. “These programs are heading toward a cliff,” the report warns.

The report proposes a move away from a “fee for service” payment system in Medicare, arguing that it encourages health officials to focus their efforts on medical procedures. “We ought to pay providers for having patients who are healthy and give providers the freedom to work with patients to effectively achieve that,” the report reads.

The Social Security system, meantime, should be reimagined as demands on it increase, all with the aim of lowering costs of running it, according to the report.

“Merely increasing already high Social Security taxes will exacerbate uncertainty and intergenerational redistribution without increasing growth or giving workers more say over their own long-term savings,” it reads. “Instead, we could strengthen the program by envisioning it as an anti-poverty benefit, adjusting the eligibility age and tying cost of living adjustments to chained (consumer price indexes) or other indexes of inflation.”

More generally, federal officials need to move away from a tendency to spend without focusing on where money comes from.

“(W)e must act to change Washington’s debt culture. For example, we ought to claw back whatever COVID-19 relief dollars (are) not yet spent or obligated and save these funds rather than repurposing them for additional spending,” reads the report.

Spending, it goes on, should be tied “to our nation’s economic health.” Balancing the budget “is a very tall task, but enacting simple reforms will put us on the right path.”

The task force will keep meeting on the issue. The group’s members include John Boyer, president of J.E. Boyer Co.; Gordon Larsen, a member of the Cox administration; economist Natalie Gochnour; Goldenwest Credit Union President Kerry Whalen; and Chip Nelson, a retired developer. Others are Pat Condon, a retired U.S. Air Force major general; David Schmitz, a doctor; Greg Poulsen, chief strategy officer for Intermountain Healthcare; Blake Wade, an attorney; and Richard Hendrickson, head of Lifetime Products.

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