Fiscal Responsibility

The United States now carries more than $39 trillion in national debt^{11Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "Gross National Debt Reaches $39 Trillion" (press release, March 18, 2026), citing U.S. Treasury data — the gross national debt of the United States crossed $39 trillion on March 17, 2026, havi…} and will spend more than $1 trillion this fiscal year on interest payments alone — more than the federal government spends on national defense.^{22Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036 (January 2026), and Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Interest Costs on the National Debt (April 2026) — CBO projects net interest payments of approximately $1.0 tril…} That trajectory is not abstract. It is a tax on every paycheck through inflation, a drag on every interest rate, and a transfer of wealth from younger Americans to bondholders and entitlement structures that no one in Washington has been willing to honestly reform. The 2026 Kinder Houston Area Survey found that 79 percent of Houston households earning less than $25,000 cannot cover an unexpected $400 expense — and that even among households earning $150,000 or more, the share saying they are "just getting by" or "finding it difficult to get by" doubled in a single year.^{33Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University, The 45th Kinder Houston Area Survey: The Economy, the Environment, and the Importance of Social Connections (April 27, 2026), Daniel Potter et al. — survey of approximately 8,800 resi…} Washington's spending addiction is not a moral or theoretical issue. It is the central reason the cost of living is breaking American families. Alexander will treat fiscal responsibility as the precondition for everything else.

The first job is to be honest with voters about the math. The Government Accountability Office estimates federal agencies made approximately $162 billion in improper payments in FY 2024 and $186 billion in FY 2025^{44U.S. Government Accountability Office, Improper Payments: Information on Agencies' Fiscal Year 2024 Estimates, GAO-25-107753 (March 11, 2025), reporting $162 billion in improper payments across 68 programs and 16 federal agencies in FY 2…} — duplicative programs, fraud, ghost payroll, and waste that modern audit tools could surface in months if Congress demanded it. Alexander supports a DOGE-style deployment of auditing across federal agencies,^{55The White House, "Establishing and Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency'" (Executive Order, January 20, 2025), and subsequent executive actions of February 26, 2025, directing federal agencies to review contr…} paired with a Texas Sunset Commission-style rolling re-authorization requirement: every federal agency and program should have to justify its existence on a defined cycle or be automatically wound down.^{66Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, established by the Texas Sunset Act of 1977 — reviews state agencies on a recurring 12-year cycle, with each agency required to justify its continued existence or be automatically abolished unless the Le…} This is not ideological. It is basic management. No properly-run public or private company would operate without quarterly cost-per-output reporting and periodic program review. The federal government should not get a pass on the discipline every other well-run organization in the country lives by.

On taxes and regulation, the path is clearer. Keep marginal rates low, the standard deduction high, and the small-business pass-through provision intact. Cut the regulatory cost of doing business. Lower taxes and lighter regulation are not gifts to the wealthy. They are how middle-class families keep more of what they earn and how the economy grows fast enough to outrun the debt.

Finally, Alexander will push back on continuing resolutions that lock in bloated baselines. The pattern in Washington — pass a CR at the eleventh hour, lock in last year's spending plus inflation, repeat indefinitely — is a polite way of saying Congress has stopped doing its job.^{77Congressional Research Service, Continuing Resolutions: Overview of Components and Recent Practices, R42647 — Congress has relied on continuing resolutions to fund some or all federal operations at the start of every fiscal year since FY…} The appropriations process exists for a reason. Members are supposed to read the bills, debate the priorities, and vote on the line items. Alexander will be a vote for regular order, for honest budgeting, and for the difficult conversations Washington has been avoiding for years. The debt our generation inherits is not someone else's problem. It is the central economic question of our time — and TX-07 deserves a representative willing to treat it that way.