Members of Congress are filing back into Washington next week, rested from their August recess and ready to confront the nation’s mounting fiscal challenges. Their return comes as the national debt surged past $37 trillion — a troubling milestone that underscores the urgency of making debt reform a central focus before the problem grows even harder to solve.

With that record debt, taxpayers deserve a government that treats every dollar of spending with seriousness. Years of inaction compounded the debt, shrinking the nation’s fiscal flexibility and ensuring harsher future adjustments. We are currently running deficits of $2 trillion a year, and the debt has doubled in the last six years. The consequences are not theoretical. The debt bubble is the primary reason inflation surged during the Biden years, a hidden tax that steadily erodes every paycheck.

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At 120% of GDP, our debt leaves little room to respond to recessions, wars, or natural disasters without risking economic instability. There’s no quick and easy solution to right the fiscal ship, but Congress must begin to act now before the debt hurricane approaches. With that in mind, there are some timely ideas that Congress should consider over the next several weeks:

Let the enhanced premium tax credit expire. There are growing concerns that a bipartisan deal may be reached in September to extend these bloated tax credits that subsidize Obamacare. By artificially lowering premiums for millions of people, the enhanced premium tax credit distorts the insurance market, inflates premiums for those not receiving subsidies, and creates unpredictable budget pressures for Congress.

Twice, former President Joe Biden expanded and enhanced the enhanced premium tax credit, and that expansion will expire at the end of this year. Extending the boosted credit would be a major policy failure due to its high costs and subsidization of Obamacare, so Congress should end the enhancement and save about $30 billion annually.

Pursue a deficit-reduction reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills are among the few tools available to bypass the Senate filibuster, requiring only a simple majority. That makes them uniquely suited for tough fiscal reforms, such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Congressional Republicans must try another reconciliation bill solely focused on reducing spending and cutting bureaucracy. 

This effort should include reforms to strengthen our social safety system by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Hundreds of billions of dollars can be saved through reasonable reforms to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage programs that were ignored during the One Big Beautiful Bill Act negotiations. Surely waste can be found at the departments of Education, Defense, Energy, Agriculture, and State.

Cut spending through appropriations. Right now, lawmakers are negotiating spending over the next fiscal year that runs through September 2026. At the very minimum, Congress must reduce discretionary spending to a level below that of the current year. They could go even further and return to pre-COVID-19 spending levels, which would save as much as $400 billion. That would make a sizable dent in our $2 trillion budget deficit and buy time to address entitlements.

If lawmakers are unable to reach a bipartisan consensus before the end of September, there will be a government shutdown. These short-term closures are terribly inefficient and waste taxpayer dollars, so a better solution would be a short-term stopgap continuing resolution that does not increase spending levels.

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Build on the Department of Government Efficiency clawbacks. Congress made history in July by enacting a rescissions bill that eliminated over $9 billion in wasteful spending, specifically for foreign aid and government-sponsored media. President Donald Trump should continue this momentum by advancing more rescission packages. His strong leadership on the deficit and focus on government bloat will force members of Congress to go on record about whether they support cutting waste. While these clawbacks won’t solve the budget deficit, they are a vital tool in the toolbox.

None of these recommendations will deliver a balanced budget without addressing America’s bloated entitlement system, which is on autopilot. However, they will lower the debt curve and buy more time to analyze and advance thoughtful solutions that get to the heart of the problem. With the clock ticking toward default, there’s no time to waste.

Thomas Aiello is senior director of government affairs at National Taxpayers Union.