A new Forbes column from Peter Ferrara offers praise to the Republicans who run the U.S. House of Representatives.
House Republicans are proving effective in restraining the runaway federal spending desired by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. That does not remotely mean that the House Republican majority has solved Washington’s spending, deficit and debt problems. But while they looked helpless at the turn of the year when Obama and the Democrats rolled over them in enacting Obama/Democrat tax increases on capital investment, official federal government budget numbers show that the House Republican majority has restrained the spending increases that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been seeking.
Even more importantly, Congressional Republicans appear to have learned how to exercise their power to keep doing this in the future. But for big spending reductions, entitlement reform is necessary. House Republicans have proposed entitlement reforms that would at least reduce federal spending as a percent of GDP. Those reforms would actually critically benefit seniors and the poor. But to achieve that, the American people need President Obama and Congressional Democrats to drop their Breshnev doctrine on entitlement spending, and open their minds to fundamental structural reforms of these hopelessly outdated programs, which would benefit everyone, seniors and the poor included.
