The Party of Contradiction

The idea of freezing federal spending isn’t new. Conservatives have long called for reducing spending to bring our fiscal house into order. But over the past year, Speaker Pelosi and her liberal Congress have advocated policies that expand government’s control of the economy and increase taxes, creating uncertainty for small businesses, restriction of credit on Main Street and higher costs for consumers. Due largely to higher spending the past year, the deficit grew from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion for 2009.

Last night, the White House announced that President Obama would propose a freeze in the pot of domestic spending that Congress allocates among government agencies and programs every year in his the 2011 federal budget request he is sending to Congress next week. While I welcome President Obama moving in the right direction, this proposal seems a little a too late after he and Congressional leaders increased spending by hundreds of billions of dollars that we didn’t have in 2009. Today’s projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that the 2010 deficit will be $1.3 billion, and that the deficit will remain near $1 trillion in 2011 if current policies are continued. While a freeze on any portion of the federal budget is a good idea, Congress will need to do far more than President Obama has proposed if we are going to make any progress on reducing the deficit and lowering the amount of debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay off.

I have never met a spending freeze I didn’t like, so if the President is sincere, I welcome the attempt at a spending freeze. However, he’s only talking about freezing around 15 percent of all federal spending. We need to do much more and we need to ensure that “emergency” spending is counted in any such freeze. It’s time for Congress to make the choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline and hold federal spending at pre-recession levels. Like the rest of the nation, rather than bigger government and more spending, the people of the 19th District want Congress to focus on common sense solutions to foster job creation.