Next to Sarah Palin, This is the Most Feared Woman by the Left in Washington

Bachmann: “So Much for Fiscal Responsibility…”

Last Thursday (Feb. 4), members of the U.S. House of Representatives had a no-brainer in front of them that would have proved once and for all that they really cared about fiscal responsibility - they should have voted “NO” to raise our debt limit as a nation by $1.9 trillion to a whopping $14 trillion. Instead of looking at ways to restrain their spending – like most Americans are doing right now – Congress has decided to saddle more federal debt to the backs of American workers. Minnesota families are strapped enough as it is and that’s why I voted no on this irresponsible measure. A vote to raise the national debt limit without significantly reigning in spending is Washington at its worst. 

More Spending on the Way

Last week, President Obama released a budget that will boost the deficit to a record $1.6 trillion next year alone. That’s an astonishing 10.6% of GDP, the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II. Worse yet, the budget doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it by fiscal year 2019.

We simply cannot expect the path of spending bills, stimulus packages and useless commissions to recover our weakened economy.  If President Obama were listening to the American people, he would take the budgeting of our bloated government seriously and look for options beyond more spending financed by taxes on businesses and hard working Americans.

For his part, the President is at least acknowledging that we need to get our spending under control, but he’s not backing up his words with substantive action. He wants to freeze non-security discretionary funding, but doing that will merely freeze spending at the highest funding levels we’ve ever seen. After all, announcing a freeze after first increasing your budget is like touting one’s fiscal restraint when they have cut up maxed out credit cards.

This “freeze” only applies to 12% of the budget, disregards massive new spending programs enacted in the last year and ignores mandatory funding, which is where most of the changes need to be made.

The President has spent more money in his first year in office than any other president in history, and simply stopping now does absolutely nothing to lower the amount of debt that gets passed to you and me, our children and our grandchildren in the form of increased and new taxes.

We’ve maxed out our debt limit, scared off our creditors and burdened future generations with unnecessary debt. The bottom line is that we cannot borrow, spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.