Policy Platform

A Comprehensive Plan to Restore American Fiscal Solvency

and Substantially Reduce the National Debt

The United States faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions. Our national debt has surpassed $34 trillion and continues to grow at an unsustainable rate. Interest payments alone now consume a larger share of the federal budget than defense spending. If left unaddressed, this trajectory will crowd out investment in critical priorities, weaken our national security, and burden future generations with obligations they did not incur.

This plan presents a serious, comprehensive, and politically honest roadmap to restore fiscal solvency. It does not rely on gimmicks, accounting tricks, or the false promise that growth alone will solve the problem. It requires shared responsibility, disciplined prioritization, and the political courage to make difficult decisions.

Establish a Binding Fiscal Framework

Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment

Pursue a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that requires Congress to pass a balanced budget each fiscal year, with exceptions only for declared wars or national emergencies requiring a supermajority vote. This creates a permanent structural constraint on deficit spending.

Statutory Debt Ceiling Reform

Replace the current debt ceiling mechanism — which has become a political hostage rather than a fiscal guardrail — with a binding statutory cap on the debt-to-GDP ratio, set at 90% and declining by 2% per year until reaching 60%, a level consistent with long-term fiscal sustainability.

Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Enforcement

Reinstate and strengthen PAYGO rules requiring that any new mandatory spending or tax cuts be fully offset. Eliminate carve-outs and waivers that have rendered existing PAYGO rules ineffective.

Comprehensive Spending Reform

Discretionary Spending Caps

Impose hard annual caps on discretionary spending, limiting growth to no more than 1% above the prior year's inflation rate. Agencies that cannot demonstrate measurable outcomes will face automatic reductions.

Zero-Based Budgeting

Require all federal agencies to justify their entire budget from zero each five-year cycle rather than simply defending incremental increases. Programs that cannot demonstrate clear value, efficiency, and alignment with constitutional authority will be eliminated or consolidated.

Elimination of Duplicative and Wasteful Programs

The Government Accountability Office has identified hundreds of duplicative federal programs costing taxpayers tens of billions annually. A dedicated commission with binding authority — not advisory recommendations — will eliminate or consolidate these programs within 18 months of enactment.

Federal Workforce Efficiency

Implement a federal hiring freeze with limited exceptions for national security and public safety. Reduce the non-defense civilian federal workforce by 10% over five years through attrition, not mass layoffs. Reform federal compensation to align more closely with private-sector equivalents for comparable roles.

Foreign Aid Accountability

Conduct a comprehensive review of all foreign assistance programs. Eliminate aid to nations that consistently vote against U.S. interests at the United Nations or that have demonstrated corruption, misuse of funds, or hostility to American values. Redirect savings to domestic priorities.

III

Entitlement Reform — Preserving Promises, Ensuring Sustainability

Social Security

Social Security faces a projected shortfall within the next decade. To preserve benefits for current and near-retirees while ensuring the program's long-term viability: gradually raise the full retirement age for workers currently under 50 to reflect increased life expectancy; apply means-testing to cost-of-living adjustments for high-income beneficiaries; and allow younger workers the option to direct a portion of payroll taxes into individually owned, government-supervised investment accounts.

Medicare

Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund faces insolvency within years. Reform proposals include: transitioning to a premium support model that gives beneficiaries fixed contributions to choose among competing private plans or traditional Medicare; empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers; and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse — estimated at $60–$100 billion annually — through enhanced auditing and provider accountability.

Medicaid

Convert Medicaid to a block grant or per-capita cap program, giving states greater flexibility to design efficient, locally appropriate programs while ending the open-ended federal matching structure that incentivizes spending growth. Require work, job training, or community service for able-bodied adults without dependents.

Tax Reform for Growth and Fiscal Responsibility

Broaden the Tax Base

Eliminate or phase out the majority of tax expenditures — deductions, credits, and exclusions that collectively cost over $1.5 trillion annually — in exchange for significantly lower marginal rates. A simpler, broader tax base raises more revenue at lower rates, reduces economic distortion, and eliminates the lobbying-driven complexity that favors the well-connected.

Corporate Tax Competitiveness

Maintain a competitive corporate tax rate that keeps American businesses from relocating abroad, while closing loopholes that allow profitable corporations to pay near-zero effective rates. A flat, loophole-free corporate rate of 20% applied consistently is preferable to a higher nominal rate riddled with exceptions.

No New Taxes on the Middle Class

Any revenue measures must be structured to ensure that the burden falls on high earners and corporations, not working families. Oppose any value-added tax or national sales tax that would disproportionately burden lower- and middle-income Americans.

Crack Down on Tax Evasion

Increase IRS enforcement capacity targeted specifically at high-income non-filers and offshore tax evasion — not small businesses or wage earners. The tax gap (the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid) is estimated at over $600 billion annually; closing even a fraction of it generates substantial revenue without raising rates.

Economic Growth as a Complement to Fiscal Discipline

Regulatory Reform

Excessive regulation acts as a hidden tax on economic activity. Require that for every new major regulation issued, two existing regulations of equal or greater cost must be repealed. Conduct a comprehensive review of regulations that impede domestic energy production, manufacturing, housing construction, and small business formation.

Energy Independence and Production

Unleash American energy production — oil, natural gas, nuclear, and next-generation technologies — to lower energy costs for families and businesses, generate federal royalty revenue, and reduce the trade deficit. Energy abundance is both an economic and a national security imperative.

Trade Policy

Pursue trade agreements that open foreign markets to American goods and services while protecting American workers from unfair competition. Address currency manipulation and intellectual property theft by trading partners that undermine American competitiveness.

Infrastructure Investment

Target infrastructure investment toward projects with demonstrated economic returns — ports, roads, bridges, broadband — using public-private partnerships where feasible to leverage private capital and reduce federal outlays. Oppose infrastructure spending that is primarily a vehicle for political patronage.

Defense Spending — Strength Without Waste

Full Audit of the Pentagon

The Department of Defense has never passed a full financial audit. Require a complete, independent audit and implement the findings. Eliminate redundant programs, outdated weapons systems, and administrative overhead that does not contribute to combat readiness.

Prioritize Readiness and Modernization

Maintain robust funding for military readiness, modernization, and the care of service members and veterans. A strong military is not optional — but it must be efficiently managed. Waste in defense is not patriotism; it is a failure of stewardship.

NATO and Allied Burden-Sharing

Insist that NATO allies meet their 2% of GDP defense spending commitments. American taxpayers should not subsidize the defense of wealthy nations that choose to underfund their own militaries.

VII

Debt Management and Interest Cost Reduction

Extend Debt Maturity

Work with the Treasury to extend the average maturity of the national debt, locking in lower long-term rates where possible and reducing rollover risk. Short-term financing of long-term obligations is a structural vulnerability.

Reduce Reliance on Foreign Creditors

Reduce the share of U.S. debt held by foreign governments — particularly adversaries — by increasing domestic savings rates and making U.S. debt less attractive to foreign central banks through fiscal credibility rather than financial repression.

Transparent Debt Reporting

Require the federal government to publish an annual fiscal report — modeled on corporate financial reporting — that presents the full picture of federal obligations, including unfunded entitlement liabilities, in plain language accessible to every American.

VIII

Implementation and Accountability

Independent Fiscal Council

Establish an independent, nonpartisan Fiscal Council with statutory authority to score legislation, publish annual fiscal sustainability reports, and trigger automatic spending sequestration if Congress fails to meet deficit reduction targets.

10-Year Budget Window

All fiscal projections and legislative scoring must use a full 10-year budget window with realistic economic assumptions — not rosy scenarios designed to make the numbers work on paper.

Sunset Provisions

All new spending programs must include sunset provisions requiring reauthorization every five years. Programs that cannot demonstrate effectiveness will expire automatically.

Conclusion

Restoring American fiscal solvency is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue — it is an American issue. The choices we make in the next decade will determine whether the United States remains the world's leading economic and military power, or whether we cede that position to rivals who are watching our self-inflicted decline with great interest.

This plan is serious. It will require difficult choices. It will require political leaders willing to tell the truth rather than promise everything to everyone. And it will require an informed, engaged citizenry willing to hold their representatives accountable.

Samuel Shepherd is committed to that standard of leadership. South Carolina — and America — deserves nothing less.

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