U.S. Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday announced his conservative alternative to the Biden-McCarthy debt deal. This alternative will be offered as an amendment to the Fiscal Responsibility Act deal and would replace existing language with what he calls responsible reforms and necessary cuts. In his alternative plan, Paul replaces the blanket 2-year suspension on the debt ceiling with a $500 billion hike forcing Congress to come back to the table to figure out a solution, and replaces the caps on discretionary spending with caps on total spending (the sum of discretionary and mandatory spending) that cuts five percent spent each year. Paul says if the government adhered to these caps for five years, by FY28 the federal government would have the first balanced budget since 2001.
