Sen. Jim DeMint is making the banksters pull their hair out with this op-ed demanding that we get a federal balanced budget amendment in return for a hike in the debt ceiling. Pretty shrewd if you ask me.
If End Times will come if we do not raise the ceiling — according to Wall St. and the spendocrats in both parties — then surely anything is better than that — including a mechanism to force a reduction in federal spending to something remotely sustainable.
And because Gannett’s Greenville News has DeMint’s op-ed behind a leaky paywall and on a Java-ridden crapstorm of a site, here is DeMint’s argument in its entirety:
There are only two choices when it comes to our nation’s debt crisis. Fight the debt, or surrender to it.
Some are already giving up.
Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, $3.6 trillion has been added to the debt and if the country continues on the path he has laid, the debt will nearly double in the next 10 years to $26 trillion. Yet many Democrats are insisting that it’s more important to increase the debt limit than it is to seek spending reforms to prevent our nation from going into bankruptcy.
Borrowing more money without any plan to cut spending is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It won’t improve the nation’s financial standing; it will only endanger it.
Debt increase advocates are misleading the public when they say fiscal catastrophe will result from a failure to increase the debt ceiling. They are using scare tactics to keep up their big-borrowing and spending sprees, just like they did to justify their Wall Street and mortgage bailouts. The Chicken Little claims that a debt ceiling lapse would mean the nation’s creditors will not be paid are simply not true.
Next year, tax revenues are projected to cover 70 percent of federal expenditures. Only 7 percent of all projected federal government expenditures will be used to pay interest on the debt. While Washington would need to engage in significant cost-cutting measures, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has confirmed that default would happen only if Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner chooses to let it. He has the authority to prioritize payments to ensure that default does not occur by using the available money to pay the nation’s creditors and cover essential services like Social Security payments without interruption.
The true threat to our economic future comes from continual increases to the debt limit with no credible plans to ever pay it off.
Trouble is already on the horizon.
Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded their outlook of the U.S.’s long–term credit rating from “stable” to “negative.” The International Monetary Fund is considering replacements for the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen has also warned, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” The loss of confidence in America’s economy isn’t because we’re not raising the debt limit fast enough: it’s because we have no credible plan to ever stop raising it.
Everyone agrees that the debt is dangerous. Refusing to confront it makes it more so. Granting the government another blank check in the form of a no-strings attached, borrowing increase is akin to waiving a white flag of surrender to the debt.
American families cannot afford our ever-expanding government. Over the last few decades federal spending has grown much faster than American earning power. Middle-income Americans’ earnings have increased by 29 percent since 1970 but government spending has risen by a whopping 242 percent. A nation that owes more than it can ever produce is destined for bankruptcy.
That is why this moment must be leveraged to force deep, long-term structural reforms to the way the government spends money. The nation must balance its budget, or it will go bust. Republicans should oppose the increase unless Congress first passes a balanced-budget amendment that requires a two-thirds majority to raise taxes. Every state except Vermont is required by law to balance its budget.
The reason the country is in such a predicament is because the government does many things it should not do, it cannot do effectively and can’t afford to do. More of the same will make things worse than ever.
We must have a balanced budget amendment that requires Congress by law to make the hard decisions it has been avoiding for decades.
Cutting spending is part of the answer, but isn’t all of it. In addition to finding ways to save money, members of Congress must work together to reform broken federal programs, restructure government and devolve more activity to the states. Instead of inventing new things the federal government should do, Washington must find ways to let go control and let states take over.
If politicians in Washington aren’t forced to do this now, they never will. It’s foolish to believe that if we let the government borrow more, somehow, politicians will choose to draft a budget to put an end to reckless spending later.
History proves otherwise. Congress has raised the debt limit 10 times in the last 10 years, cast hundreds of votes to pass new spending programs and held no votes on a balanced-budget amendment. If politicians are not obligated to balance the budget, it is certain they will continue adding to the deficit by creating new entitlements, like Obamacare, instead of fixing broken programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Endless spending and borrowing is not the answer. It is the enemy. If we choose to surrender to the debt, instead of fighting it, it will surely lead to our demise.
Should be very interesting in DC this week.
