In The News

Huizenga on budget: ‘I don’t think we’re heading for a shutdown’
Ludington Daily News - Steve Begnoche - Managing Editor - August 12, 2013

Michigan 2nd District Congressman Bill Huizenga expects next year’s federal budget will come in at, or near, the current sequester level, meaning cuts instituted earlier this year when Congress and the Admini stration couldn’t agree on a different way to reduce federal spending, will continue.

In the coming weeks after Congress returns from summer break, the Zeeland Republican expects the budget, a continuing resolution to fund government until a budget is in place, and another debt ceiling change will busy the Republican- controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate. “I don’t think we’re heading for shutdown,” Huizenga said. There are only a few members of Congress willing to do that because the public hasn’t been supportive of that. “We’re going to have to battle through it,” he said of the measures to be deliberated.

He said he continues to advocate spending at the level brought about by the sequester. “It’s the new reality,” he said late last week in a stop at the Ludington Daily News office. “We’ve been dealing with this in our (Congressional office) budget.”

His staff size has been reduced, he’s restructured his in-district offices so there are only two instead of three and he’s spending $250,000 less to run his district offices than did his predecessor, Pete Hoekstra whom he once worked for.

Every detail, from airplane ticket prices for the commute between Michigan and Washington, D.C., to mailings “has all been pulled back. That’s the reality.” He said the private sector tells him they’ve did all that, too.

While some critics of the sequester cuts that shrunk the federal government by an estimated $85 billion a year contend that will slow the pace of the U.S. economy, Huizenga isn’t buying that.

He said he doesn’t believe the effect significant, and, ultimately, it just reduces spending borrowed money, and he supports reducing federal borrowing which continues to grow, despite the sequester.

Huizenga said important sectors of the economy affected by the sequester, such as the defense industry, still are strong.

Rather, he said, regulations such as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act are what are slowing the economy.

He claims those regulations could cause mortgate rates to increase by 3 or 4 percent. If that were to happen, it would drag down the economy.

As he travels the district, he said what he hears most from business is complaints about regulations from the National Labor Relations Board to the Environmental Protection Agency and other “alphabet soup” agencies.

He said he met Thursday morning with Oceana Farm Bureau and representatives of asparagus growers.

They understand that immigration policy is a work problem, he said. The nation needs a policy, such as it once had, that creates an effective guest worker program to allow workers the ability to cross into the U.S., and back out again freely while working here. Time limits and a mechanism to have some idea where a migrant is need to be in place. Current policy traps in the U.S. those who illegally enter to work. It would be better if they had freer access to come and leave the U.S., he said.