Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) during Senate Financial Services Committee hearing Tuesday asks “Is it really such a good idea to be so indebted to countries like Saudi Arabia, the home of the 9/11 terrorists?” (0:19)
John DuBois – University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service
Speaking before the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) called for the creation of a bipartisan, 16-member panel to examine federal spending. The “Securing America’s Future Economy” (SAFE) Commission would make recommendations to Congress regarding ways to limit overspending and would force lawmakers to vote on them.
According to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) the nation’s deficit exceeded $1.4 trillion during the last fiscal year. Lieberman and other Democrats including Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) are in support of Wolf’s proposal, making it a truly bipartisan bill.
Said Conrad, “We must also address the demographic challenge we face in Social Security and the revenue challenge we face from an outdated and inefficient revenue system.”
The SAFE Commission mirrors legislation proposed by Wolf and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) in 2006. That bill, called the “Securing America’s Future Economy Commission Act,” aimed to reform U.S. tax policy and entitlement benefit programs.
Lieberman argued that implementing Wolf’s proposal will effectively help the country get back on the right fiscal track.
“The only way we will be able to make the difficult decisions needed to reduce our national debt is to create a special commission whose sole focus is to develop solutions to the long-term fiscal problems that our country faces,” said Lieberman.
Added Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), “The federal government is the worst credit card abuser in the world and we’re putting everything on the tab of our children and grandchildren.”
“We can continue down the same path, which means that in just 15 years every penny of the federal budget will go toward entitlement spending and retiring our debt, or we can start making the hard choices now,” said Wolf.
Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said, “The president is proposing to increase our national debt more than all prior 43 presidents combined,” adding $2.3 trillion more “to the national debt in higher deficits” than his own budget office stated.
Ryan said the budget increases taxes and spending. “But what’s so galling about this – we read today the Chinese are talking about a new currency, the Russians are talking about a new currency. We are debasing the value of the American dollar by borrowing way beyond our means,” he said.
“We are consigning our next generation to an inferior standard of living,” Ryan said.
He estimates the national debt will double in six years and triple in ten.
Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, said, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, because … we have trillions and trillions of unfunded liability for entitlement programs, … tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities in the future. We are in effect on a path to become the next Argentina.”
That other countries would consider a reserve currency other than the dollar is, he says, “a referendum that we are on the wrong track.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility Task Force of the Republican Study Committee, said that one of the elements of greatness is the willingness of one generation to sacrifice for the next. The next generation, he said, will never be able to repay this debt.
He quoted Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) as saying this budget would bankrupt the country.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said “One of my constituents said it best, ‘I am tired of Congress spending money I haven’t made yet for things I don’t want.’ When you look at the push for nationalizing healthcare, when you look at the cap-and-tax scheme (Cap-and-Trade), this is what people are afraid is going to pile on more and more debt.”
“I look at this as being economic abuse of (her grandchildren’s) future,” she said.
Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) said, ”When you find out you’ve dug yourself a hole, you should quit digging, but we’ve brought in heavy machinery, and we’re making the hole so deep that we’re not going to be able to get out of it.”
“We tell our children we can’t afford to get everything,” he said, and now the children, the public, are telling the parents, the legislators, “We don’t really have to have that.”
Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) discusses how the national debt has skyrocketed since he took office in 1999 (0:20).
Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA) supporting Democratic budget measures says that new development can’t happen if the United States continues to borrow money from China. (0:38)
