According to a recent Gallup poll, the budget ranks in the top-10 issues Americans care about.
The deficit will reach $21 trillion by 2019, according to estimates from the White House.
Candidates for U.S. ?Representative of Indiana’s second district consider the federal deficit to be a primary platform issue in their campaigns. Both candidates primarily favor spending cuts to certain departments to lower ?the debt.
Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-District 2), who serves on the House budget committee, has not specified where she would like to see spending cuts.
Walorski voted against the House resolution that ended the government shutdown last fall.
“However, without any spending cuts or budget reforms aimed at getting our fiscal house in order, I could not support this plan,” Walorski said in a statement Oct. 17, 2013, following the vote.
Walorski’s first sponsored bill was a proposal to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It has not gone past committee.
Democratic challenger Joe Bock has stated on his website that possible ways to lower the deficit include eliminating tax loopholes and allowing the federal government to set prices for Medicaid ?users’ drugs.
Bock has criticized Walorski for her vote against the resolution that ended the government shutdown, as well as for taking pay during the shutdown.
“The people of northern Indiana deserve better,” Bock said in a release on his website Oct. 1.
The midterm election is Nov. 4.
This story is part of a weekly series profiling members of the U.S. Congress and their opposing candidates for the midterm election Nov. 4.
Candidates from each Indiana district will be interviewed on a rolling basis.
