WASHINGTON —House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, issued the following statement Wednesday after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, named Upton, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., and Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, to serve on the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a bipartisan, bicameral panel tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.
“The Budget Control Act made a modest down payment on our debt in the short term and called on Congress — through a Joint Select Committee — to build on those savings with meaningful spending controls and program reforms that will continue the process of putting our fiscal house in order over the long term. I am humbled by the trust Speaker Boehner and our leadership team have placed in us, and I stand ready to serve on the Joint Select Committee alongside Chairman Camp and Chairman Hensarling on behalf of all House Republicans.
“Being from Michigan, where families have endured 31 consecutive months of double-digit unemployment, I know how important it is to get our economy back on track and get Americans back to work. As someone who worked on the federal budget for President Reagan, I saw firsthand that sound economic policy is the bedrock of job creation and fiscal responsibility. And as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I know the exploding cost of health care is at the root of our long-term fiscal challenges; it’s why our committee has already produced legislation to save taxpayers $90 billion, and that was just the beginning.
“Much more needs to be done to bring down health care costs, promote economic growth and begin to tame runaway government. No one believes this is going to be easy, but working with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress, we will work to address our fiscal challenges and get America back to work.”

‘Not another dime
from the middle class’

Tom McMahon, executive director of progressive-issue advocacy organization Americans United for Change, issued the following statement in response to the reported appointments of U.S. Reps. Dave Camp (R-MI-4) and Fred Upton (R-MI-6) to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked under Budget Control Act to find $1.5 trillion in additional budget savings over 10 years:
“Poll after poll after poll shows that the American people agree the time is now for millionaire CEOs, Wall Street and Big Oil to finally share in the sacrifice to get our economy back on track. Hard-working Americans are tired of seeing money taken out of their pockets while millionaires and billionaires and corporate America have gotten off scot-free.  That is why Reps. Dave Camp and Fred Upton, in their powerful new roles as Super Committee members, should not even think about taking more money from our grandparents on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid; they should not even think about taking more money from our children’s schools and health care; they should not even think about making more job-killing cuts to wipe out teachers and firefighters and cops and nurses’ jobs. Politicians in Washington need to return to the real world: we need good American jobs at good American wages right here and right now, not more tax breaks for millionaire CEOs. The best way to cut the deficit is to get everyone back to work, not to pick the pockets of the middle class and low-income families by slashing necessary services or Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid benefits. If millionaires and billionaires paid the same rates they did under Ronald Reagan, we’d have plenty of money to get millions of people back to work and to make big cuts in the deficit.”