As the Republican primary for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District approaches, Rep. Blake Moore said he is focused on getting the U.S. back on the path to fiscal responsibility.
Moore has served as a U.S. representative since 2021 and currently sits on several committees, including the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which is the primary force behind tax policy in Washington, D.C.
He is also the fifth-highest ranking House Republican, serving as vice chair of the Republican Conference. This position, to which he was appointed by the GOP caucus, gives him a say in committee placements and legislation.
At the Utah Republican convention at the end of April, Moore lost the party’s nomination to state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Syracuse. Lisonbee criticized the incumbent lawmaker for his support of a redistricting initiative, which eventually led to the creation of a heavily Democratic-leaning district.
Despite losing at convention, Moore gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot in the newly drawn 2nd District, which includes most of the Northern Utah counties in his current district.
In a meeting with the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards on Monday, Moore described his proudest accomplishments in the House so far and where he hopes to focus his efforts if reelected.
Moore’s legislation to help the debt crisis
The U.S. national debt surpassed $39 trillion in March; it is expected to reach $40 trillion by the fall.
While the Republican conference has cut some spending, and the deficit was lower in 2025 than 2024, Moore said they still have a lot of work to do.
Moore listed making the 2017 tax cuts permanent through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as his proudest accomplishment of the past year. The tax cuts led to economic growth, bringing with them higher tax revenue, he said.
On the flip side, he described the exponentially increasing debt as a crisis. “The numbers don’t work anymore, and we’ve got to be able to fix it,” he said.
The reason the U.S. is in so deep, Moore believes, is because a high percentage of federal funding for government programs is never voted on by Congress.
“We’re not solving the debt unless we deal with mandatory spending,” he said.
Moore referenced two bills he’s sponsored to try to rein in federal spending — the Fiscal Commission Act and the Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act.
“We never vote on at least 75% of the expenditures, so the Fiscal Commission Act would give us a chance to vote and reform some of these programs that are continually growing so rapidly,” Moore said.
The bill would convene a bipartisan fiscal commission to draw up policies to stabilize spending and reduce the national debt, including by looking at Social Security and other entitlement programs. The package of recommendations made by the commission would be delivered to the House and Senate for a required up-or-down vote.
The act passed in committee last year, then never made it out of the House, Moore said, adding he believes it has a better chance in 2026.
Meanwhile, Moore’s Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act would make it so Congress would have to vote on all federal expenditures every single year.
In the meantime, the House continues to try to cut spending where they can in order to try to bring down the deficit, Moore said.
When asked what he thought about President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion budget request for the Defense Department for 2027, Moore said, “It’s going to be tough to get to that number.”
‘My kids should not expect the same Social Security,’ Moore says
Last spring, Moore proposed child investment accounts to the Ways and Means Committee, dubbed the “MAGA Act.” His legislation passed through committee and was folded into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law last Fourth of July.
“My kids should not expect the same Social Security that my father is experiencing now,” Moore told the Deseret News. “That’s why I introduced the Trump Accounts.”
He continued, “We can start hedging for the next generation, because it’s going to be a different program. It has to be a different program. The numbers don’t work anymore, and we’ve got to be able to fix it.”
Last December, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation committed a $6.25 billion investment to seed Trump Accounts for 25 million American children.
Moore discusses experience as DOGE co-chair
As Trump reentered office in 2025, the president enlisted DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a newly-created White House advisory body with no direct policymaking authority, to root out waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government.
The effort was initially headed by billionaire Elon Musk, who at one point promised to find $2 trillion that could be cut from the federal government.
“All of us on committees knew that was not the case,” Moore told the Deseret News. Moore served as co-chair of the congressional DOGE caucus.
While DOGE “definitely shined a light on a lot of issues,” Moore believed the advisory body should have focused its energy differently.
“They focused too much on the workforce, like, ‘Let’s go cut X% from an agency,’ almost haphazardly,” Moore said.
If the federal government wanted to “get at the real issues,” they would focus on hospice fraud in California and Florida, and Medicaid fraud in Minnesota, he said.
Does Moore believe the Iran war is justified?
When asked if he supports the administration’s goals of a nuclear-free Iran and whether that goal was adequate justification for the war, Moore said, “Absolutely. We have to have a nuclear-free Iran.”
A nuclear-free Iran is “better for every single person in the region,” Moore said. “It’s better for the Iranian people, it’s obviously better for Israel, and it’s better for the Arab states as well.”
“I would be very supportive of an AUMF (authorization for use of military force) drafted in the right way,” Moore said. He pointed to an AUMF drawn up by Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan as something he’d support.
He also said he was very supportive of the current ceasefire, adding he hopes it will lead to an agreement.
If Iran agreed to nuclear restraints, Moore said he believes the U.S. would be willing to ease sanctions on the country.
Moore also described the Abraham Accords — agreements made between Israel and other Middle Eastern nations — as one of Trump’s biggest successes in his first term.
Moore discusses Utah’s new congressional districts
In 2018, prior to joining the House of Representatives, Moore was one of four co-chairs for the anti-gerrymandering group Better Boundaries, which led the campaign for the state’s Proposition 4.
When asked if he had regrets about the proposition, Moore said, “It’s tough to do principled things in this job, but they’re still worth doing.”
He described the gerrymandering battles across the U.S. as a “race to the bottom” and added, “I want to be a part of it not existing.”
When asked for a solution to gerrymandering, Moore said he believes all 50 governors should convene in 2030 and agree to basic standards on how to draw districts in their states.
Moore will face Lisonbee in the Republican primary for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District on June 23.