The debt is growing.
The costs are already here.
We pay over a trillion dollars in interest on the national debt every year. That money isn't building roads or securing retirements — it's gone. Getting our fiscal house in order requires collecting adequate revenue, controlling spending, and reforming the laws that make government less effective than it should be.
A debt problem that has moved from abstract to concrete.
Experts disagree on exactly how much national debt is too much, but wherever that line is, we've crossed it. The United States now pays over a trillion dollars in interest on the debt each year — not on programs, not on services, but on the cost of having borrowed too much for too long.
The consequences are no longer theoretical. As debt grows relative to the size of the economy, investors demand higher interest rates to compensate for greater fiscal risk. That dynamic has been underscored by credit downgrades from the top three rating agencies. Higher Treasury rates feed directly into higher borrowing costs for households and businesses — pushing up mortgage rates, auto loans, student debt, and business financing. The national debt is not an abstract bookkeeping issue. It is a concrete driver of the affordability pressures families feel every day.
My approach to beginning to manage the national debt is threefold: collect adequate revenue by reforming the tax code, reduce expenditures by reforming and right-sizing what we ask the federal government to do, and lower the cost of government by streamlining and reforming the laws and policies that drive more burden than value — doing less, more efficiently, with a leaner federal workforce. The proposals that follow are an important start. They are not a complete solution — the debt did not accumulate in one Congress and will not be resolved in one — but they are a serious contribution to a problem that neither party has been willing to address squarely.
Fiscal stewardship is not about bigger or smaller government. It is about government that is funded, focused, and functional — one that collects what it needs, spends what it commits to, and stops when the job is done.
Neither party has been willing to do all of what's required.
Republicans have repeatedly chosen tax cuts over fiscal discipline, betting that growth will cover the gap. It hasn't. Democrats have been reluctant to reform government programs even when those programs have become outdated or ineffective. Neither approach produces the result we need.
The result is a debt that grows through both expansions and recessions, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Closing the gap requires doing several things at once: raising more revenue, reducing wasteful and unauthorized spending, and reforming the laws that make government more expensive and less effective than it has to be. The drivers below explain why no single-lever approach will work.
A century of evidence shows that changes in individual and corporate tax rates have had very small effects on economic growth — often barely measurable. What tax cuts do reliably produce is reduced revenue and a faster-growing debt.
Both parties have allowed the executive branch to spend money in ways Congress never sanctioned — from unilateral student loan cancellation to unauthorized military operations to extravagant procurement. Congress must reassert its constitutional role over the purse.
In the last 50 years, Congress has met its own deadline for passing all twelve appropriations bills only four times. The resulting cycle of continuing resolutions, shutdown threats, and emergency spending drives real administrative costs, forces agencies into perpetual contingency planning, and makes disciplined long-term fiscal management nearly impossible.
We have a long history of adding laws and regulations to address the problems of the day, but little history of revisiting what isn't working. Administering ineffective laws makes government bigger and more costly without making it better.
Even if the United States owed nothing on the national debt, we would still be running a deficit. The federal government spends more than it takes in through taxes and fees before interest costs enter the picture at all. That gap — called the primary deficit — means the debt grows not just because of past borrowing, but because we are still adding to it every year. Getting the debt under control requires significantly reducing that gap, not just managing the interest on top of it.
By mid-2025, the top 20 percent of households by income held just over 70 percent of individual wealth in the United States, per Federal Reserve data. Raising taxes on the highest earners is not about punishment — it is about asking those best positioned to contribute to do so.
Three pillars of a serious start.
Getting the debt under control requires acting on all three fronts simultaneously — revenue, spending discipline, and government reform. No single pillar is sufficient, and this plan does not claim otherwise. What it offers is a defensible, actionable contribution to a long-term project that will require sustained effort across multiple Congresses. Click any pillar to expand the policy details.
The goal is not to balance the budget. The goal is to stop the debt from growing faster than the economy — a more achievable target that still requires closing a large share of the annual deficit. If every proposal here is enacted, we get roughly 35 to 40 percent of the way there. That's a meaningful start. The remaining gap is real, and closing it will be the work of multiple Congresses — but the commitment to finding and implementing further reductions doesn't end here.
- Raise the Corporate Tax Rate The Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the impacts of raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 22 and to 28 percent. I favor increasing it to 28 percent, with further analysis of the impacts of 30 and 35 percent. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut the corporate rate sharply on the promise of investment and growth — but the primary documented effect has been debt growth, not economic expansion.
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Raise Rates on the Highest Earners — Leave All Lower Rates Alone
I support raising the top individual income tax rates, targeting earners above roughly the 95th percentile. The proposed structure: a rate of 39.6% for income above approximately $320,000 (single filers) and $640,000 (married filing jointly); and a rate of 42% for income above approximately $500,000 (single filers) and $1,000,000 (married filing jointly). These figures are notional — they will be calibrated at enactment and indexed to reflect income growth.
Coordination note: My Social Security reform proposal raises the taxable earnings ceiling, increasing payroll contributions for earners in roughly the $184,500–$310,000 range. The income tax thresholds above will be calibrated in light of whatever Social Security ceiling reform is enacted, so that no single income band faces an undue compounding of both changes at once. - Restore Estate and Gift Taxes I support restoring estate and gift taxes to the levels that would have applied upon expiration of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, had the One Big Beautiful Bill Act not replaced them. Wealth passed between generations should be subject to a fair level of taxation.
- Increase Capital Gains Taxes for Higher-Earning Households The preferential tax treatment of capital gains disproportionately benefits the highest-earning households, for whom investment income makes up a large share of total income. I support raising capital gains taxes for households at the upper end of the income distribution.
- Fully Staff the IRS and Pursue Tax Evasion Years of IRS budget cuts have reduced the agency's ability to audit high-income returns and pursue sophisticated tax evasion schemes. Every dollar invested in IRS enforcement capacity returns significantly more in recovered revenue. A fully staffed IRS focused on high-income and corporate tax evasion is one of the most cost-effective fiscal tools available.
- Restore and Enforce the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax was designed to ensure that profitable corporations pay at least a baseline level of tax regardless of deductions and credits. It should be fully restored and enforced so that profitable companies cannot use accounting strategies to eliminate their federal tax liability entirely.
- Close Tax Loopholes Used to Avoid Taxes High-income individuals and large corporations have access to a range of strategies — pass-through structuring, offshore arrangements, and others — that allow them to legally reduce their tax burden far below the statutory rate. I support a systematic effort to identify and close these loopholes.
- What I Oppose: Wealth Taxes and Taxes on Unrealized Gains I oppose annual wealth taxes (other than estate and gift taxes) and taxes on unrealized capital gains. These approaches raise significant practical and constitutional concerns, and could drive asset liquidations that harm the markets and the broader economy. Our goal is adequate revenue, not the most aggressive conceivable tax structure.
- Reassert Congressional Authority Over Spending The Constitution is explicit: Congress writes the laws and controls the purse. The executive branch executes those laws. When the executive spends money in ways Congress never authorized — whether canceling hundreds of billions in student debt by fiat, conducting military operations without legal authority, or refurbishing aircraft for discretionary use — it is not just a constitutional violation. It drives real costs to taxpayers that Congress never approved.
- Reform and Recharge the U.S. Digital Service Under the GAO The U.S. Digital Service was established in the mid-2010s to modernize the information systems of federal agencies. I propose we subordinate a revitalized USDS under the GAO with a new mandate: to recommend changes to law, policy, and institutional structures that are more complex than they need to be. The remarkable productivity gains the private sector has achieved over the last century came primarily from technology applied to streamlined processes; the federal government should be no different. Laws and processes that are simpler to execute require fewer people to administer and impose less burden on the individuals and businesses that must comply with them. The organization would be time-limited by design so that it completes its work and does not become another permanent fixture of the bureaucracy it is meant to streamline and improve.
The following are among the first places to look — nominated areas for review, not a confirmed or complete reform agenda. Some may prove not to require reform; others not listed here may. A reformed USDS or GAO would help produce that assessment rigorously.
- Modernize the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 The APA governs how federal agencies create rules and regulations. Modernizing it can lower compliance costs for regulated entities, reduce unpredictable judicial burdens, and streamline comment processes — while maintaining the core protections the law was crafted to preserve. The goal is not deregulation for its own sake; it is regulation that is faster, more legible, and less costly to administer.
- Reform the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 In the last 50 years, Congress has met the goal of passing all twelve appropriations bills before the start of the fiscal year only four times. The dysfunction that results — continuing resolutions, shutdown threats, and redundant planning cycles — forces agencies to spend real money on contingency budgets and repeated preparations. A reformed budget process is not just good governance; it is a cost reduction.
- Replace Financial Statement Audits with Performance Audits The CFO Act of 1990 requires financial statement audits of federal agencies — a structure better suited to businesses than to government entities. Most experts agree that government is better served by performance audits, which assess whether public resources are actually achieving their intended outcomes, rather than simply confirming that accounting records are accurate. I support transitioning to a performance audit model that follows the flow of resources and asks whether the spending is justified by results.
- Simplify the Internal Revenue Code The tax code has grown very complex, driving administrative burden to the IRS and to taxpayers alike. A simpler code — one with fewer carve-outs and special treatments — reduces compliance costs, narrows the opportunities for avoidance, and is easier for the IRS to enforce.
- Streamline Federal Permitting Reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act and the federal permitting process could cut out years of delay and reduce duplicative environmental analysis without weakening substantive environmental standards. Streamlined timelines and better-coordinated reviews serve both project proponents and the public.
- Refocus the Federal Criminal Code Federal criminal law has expanded far beyond uniquely federal offenses. I support refocusing it on conduct that genuinely requires a federal response and returning primary responsibility for other crimes to the states, which are better positioned to handle them efficiently.
We fund what we commit to. We limit what we start. And we stop when the job is done. That is not an ideological position — it is the basic discipline that makes everything else possible.