House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Thursday said she had stressed Congress' commitment to better fiscal discipline in recent meetings with Chinese officials.
Pelosi, who traveled to China as head of a bipartisan Congressional delegation last week, said she emphasized the need to bring the federal budget back in line and to lower the size of the budget deficit.
China presently holds more than $11 trillion of U.S. debt, and recently some in the U.S. have expressed concern that the growing Asian power might be unwilling to continue buying U.S. treasuries in the face of prospects of continuing federal budget deficits.
Among the key components Pelosi said she stressed was to enact as law a budget measure to ensure that future spending increases or tax cuts were offset by other cuts or revenue generating measures, known on Capitol Hill as PAYGO.
"Fiscal discipline is one of the key components of how we go forward," Pelosi said. "It was part of our conversation in China to impress upon the Chinese that we're very, very serious about passing legislation, PAYGO, making it statutory, reducing spending, reducing the deficit, not heaping mountains of debt on to future generations."
Pelosi said she had a strong commitment to statutory PAYGO, a measure that also has strong support from the fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Enacting a law requiring the pay-as-you-go accounting is generally popular in the House, and most House-passed budgets and appropriations measures have followed the practice, but there is reluctance to make the procedure a legal requirement in the Senate.
Pelosi said she also emphasized to Chinese officials the efforts of House committees to cut wasteful spending from the areas of the federal budget under their jurisdiction.
"Earlier this year, I sent letters to our chairmen asking them to have hearings on how we can cut waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, obsolescence out of any initiatives under the jurisdiction of their committees," she said. "They had the hearings. … We've gotten a great deal back this week from our members."
The House's efforts to enact a law regulating greenhouse gas emissions using a cap and trade system were also a subject of great interest in China, Pelosi said.
"Frankly, it was a game changer for us in our discussions in China that the U.S. was ready to do something very substantial and that therefore it was important for China to do so as well," she said. "We'll wait to see what their initiatives are, but we were very impressed with what we saw in their energy initiatives in China."
However the House bill, which originated in the Energy and Commerce Committee, has recently hit something of a legislative snag with the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and the Agriculture committee asserting jurisdiction over the measure and insisting on the right to modify the closely negotiated initiative.
But Pelosi said she was not concerned with the potential delay, noting that committees generally deal with such matters in just a few weeks.
"We'll bring the bill to the floor when the bill is ready, and not one day sooner," Pelosi said. "If they are making progress and they need more time, I think that will not be a problem. However, we are going to go forward and we want to go forward as soon as possible."
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