America’s Debt: Our enemy

On Jan. 5, I swore to support and defend the Constitution against “all enemies both foreign and domestic.”

As such, it is my responsibility to ensure that the people of the 3rd District and the great state of Louisiana understand the most significant threat to our nation and its security is our debt. Both Admiral Mullen (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agree with this assessment.

The CBO calls our fiscal trajectory “unsustainable” and projects our $14.3 trillion national debt will eclipse the U.S. economy this year. To simply put it: if our national debt were divided among every man, woman, and child in America, we would each owe $45,000 to our nation’s creditors, mostly to China.

We didn’t get here overnight; we reached this cliff due to decades of Washington’s desire to grow our federal government, regardless of the amount of borrowing required. For decades, House rules allowed congressmen to raise the debt limit without directly voting on it. Using these sorts of political tricks, Washington increased the debt ceiling 74 times since 1962.

Continuing to kick this can down the road is unacceptable. Doing so would only guarantee that our next generation will be unable to live the American Dream.

Now that Washington has maxed out our nation’s credit card and, according to Treasury Secretary Geithner, will run out of money on Aug. 2nd, we must decide: do we simply raise the debt ceiling for the 75th time or do we enact the fundamental reforms that would allow us to dig out of this hole.

I believe in the latter. In fact, I refuse to increase the debt ceiling unless four fundamental conditions are met.

First, for every dollar the debt ceiling increases, Congress must cut $2 in spending. We must cut from all parts of government, reforming entitlements, making common-sense cuts to defense, and slashing all other non-discretionary spending.

Second, Congress must pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Our road to fiscal responsibility is long, and we must ensure that future officials are prohibited from making similar mistakes again.

Third, Congress must enact a hard cap on future spending, ensuring that if the first two conditions are broken by future politicians, our debt does not increase. This cap would prevent government spending from surpassing 18 percent of the size of our economy; and if it does, then government spending is automatically cut to its rightful level.

Fourth, Congress must not support any debt ceiling increase that raises taxes. Our federal government does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. We cannot tax, spend, borrow, and bailout our way to prosperity.

Thomas Jefferson once correctly said, “It is incumbent upon each generation to pay its way as it goes.” We must enact real solutions now to tackle our problems head-on not shift the burden onto future generations.

America cannot afford more of the same in Washington. The American people demanded real leadership last November, and they deserve to have it!