I wrote an op-ed to discuss America's outrageous debt that will saddle our future generations. I wanted to share it with each of you:
As a father, a grandfather, a former small business owner, and a taxpayer, I—like many of you—worry about a future that feels less secure than it should. For far too long, Washington has held America's fiscal future hostage by saddling our future generation with outrageous debt—now, an eye-popping 31 trillion dollars. That is larger than the entire American economy. To pay off our debt immediately without incurring another dime of interest would cost every single American man, woman, and child more than $94,000.
In four years, congressional Democrats increased annual discretionary spending by 400 billion dollars. America's debt is currently higher than at any time in history, while revenue to the federal treasury is the highest it's ever been. This simply underscores—especially for my Democrat friends who never met a tax hike they didn’t like—the fact that we are not suffering from a shortage of taxes, we are burdened by an addiction to spending.
Since President Biden took office, he and House Democrats have increased our 10-year spending trajectory by $10 trillion. They have maxed out America's credit card for golf courses, ski slopes, luxury hotels, and woke programs that hurt everyday Americans. Such spending is not sustainable. Our government must stop treating the American taxpayer like a limitless ATM.
The Republican majority has a plan to address this looming crisis in a commonsense fashion, without cutting Medicare and Social Security and instead moving forward with a responsible debt limit increase that eliminates wasteful Washington spending and puts us on a path toward a balanced budget. Despite the fearmongering from President Biden and the Left, designed to paralyze all lawmakers into inaction, we Republicans remain focused on a responsible, reasonable, and sensible budget that will not hamstring our children's and grandchildren's—and, yes, at this rate, even our great-grandchildren’s—future.
Joe Biden must stop his baseless attacks, put his money where his mouth is, and reverse his irresponsible stance of refusing to negotiate with Republicans. He has a moral obligation as the nation’s leader to come to the table for the sake of our fiscal future. For our part, Republicans will continue to honor the Constitution by ensuring that we never default on our obligations. By the same token, only the most delusional among us believe that we can remain on this unstainable path of spending trillions more each year than the government takes in. Therefore, any increase in the debt limit must come with serious efforts to return us to fiscal sanity.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And quite frankly, that is how we’re going to have to tackle the Democrats’ elephantine budget.
