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Washington has thrown in the towel
When traveling around the 3rd district of Kansas visiting with constituents, I’m often asked what is most surprising to me as a new member of Congress. With a palate of options from which to choose, the answers vary from the hyper-partisanship clogging up the halls of Congress to the local driving skills in bad weather clogging up the streets of Washington. Whether it’s a gridlock or a snowflake, Washington is stuck.
This would all be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Every day we pile a new layer of debt on our next generation. This isn’t your garden variety run of the mill debt. This is serious, crushing suffocation of the next generation. Spend an afternoon watching the debt clock tick closer and closer to bankruptcy and you wonder how it ever could have become this bad.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Our forefathers warned of the perils of an out of control national debt. James Madison called national debt a “public curse.” Alexander Hamilton predicted woefully that by not paying our debts we “overthrow all public morality.” Thomas Jefferson stated even more strongly that public debt is a departure from principle and what follows is “wretchedness and oppression.”
What is outrage and anger all across America appears to be denial -- or worse, acceptance -- in our nation’s capital. The culture in Washington, while concerned about the fiscal prognosis of our nation’s health, has come to determine that we can live with this public curse.
Ask any family living on tight finances what they do to get by, and they will tell you they survive through a family budget, allocating certain portions to rent, utilities, clothing and food and other categories. Families pinch pennies by watching every single one of them.
Through careful planning, debt gets paid off, children are put through college and retirement funds are prepared. When times get tough, they tighten their belts, do more with less. Reality sets in. You can’t spend more than you have forever: it will catch up with you.
Yet, these simple and basic lessons of life appear to have been completely lost in a town adrift in a sea of red ink. As a freshman member of Congress, what surprises me the most about Washington is that Washington has thrown in the towel when it comes to our national debt.
This will never be so evident over the next few months when for the third year in a row the president and the Senate will refuse to do something even so basic: pass a budget.
Yes, this week, the president will again issue a late budget. As in previous years, it will most likely not be taken seriously. Last year, the president’s budget failed 97-0 in the Senate. For the fourth year in a row, without agreed-to budget constraints, our national appropriations will again run a deficit of over $1 trillion and our national debt will head north of $16 trillion.
What’s so desperately lacking in this debt crisis? Leadership. Americans are hungry for it –- they can see the handwriting on the wall before Washington can. They want leaders who are honest about our budget challenges and clear about the direction we need to take to fix them.
This week, we wait for the president to chart our fiscal course. Will we see real reductions in spending? Serious changes to the way the federal bureaucracy operates? Entitlement reform? The tools to save our nation from fiscal peril are right in front of us.
My fear is that lip service will once again trump real action. A budget with no pathway to balance is no budget at all. More years without real budgets are more years with record breaking deficits. And that’s exactly where we are headed.
The sad reality is this is all predictable and avoidable. No one believes that we can continue down this pathway. Yet, when it comes to the most fundamental task charged to our nation’s leaders, it’s as if Washington has thrown in the towel.
Rep. Yoder (R-Kan.) is a member of the House Committee on Appropriations.
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