Spend, Spend, Spend

Every Member of the House has a voting card that we use to cast our vote on legislation. It is a card that I carry with honor and a great sense of responsibility. However, in the last few years, we have seen Speaker Pelosi and her liberal Congress take that voting card and turn it into a credit card.

The leadership in Congress doesn’t get it. Just this week, at a time when the national debt has increased more than a trillion dollars already this year, they rushed through a package of annual government funding bills that increase spending 12.5 percent more than last year and 24 percent more than what was spent the year before that.

Spending at these rates, using borrowed money, means that Congress has reached the national borrowing limit for the fifth time in the past two years after already increasing the debt limit by nearly $3 trillion in that time period.

Knowing well just how much they have spent and plan to keep on spending, the Democrats in Congress are looking to increase the federal debt limit by up to $1.8 trillion. To reduce accountability for these spending decisions, the leadership plans to attach this debt limit increase to the Department of Defense funding bill that provides the resources our troops depend on daily.

The vote on the debt limit should be a separate vote. It is pure politics to use a must-pass bill for Defense funding as a vehicle for raising the debt limit. Our soldiers are fighting for our inherent freedoms, not our debt. That’s why I introduced H. Res. 949 last week, which changes the rules in the House so we have to take a stand-alone vote on debt limit increases and pass such an increase with a 2/3rds vote.

The American people sent us to Washington to use their money wisely. Yes, both Republicans and Democrats are to blame for not taking a stronger stand on spending. However, now is the time to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing. Congress must put down the credit card, and pick up responsible spending and deficit reduction.