As any individual who’s ever had a credit card knows, when you max out your credit limit, your financial institution is not going to blindly bail you out with a higher credit limit. They’ll insist you make some changes in your behavior or you don’t get more credit. That’s because just adding more ability to borrow without changing a person’s habits doesn’t fix the problem; it only makes it worse. And that’s exactly the situation our nation faces today as we get closer to hitting the debt ceiling – the limit on the total amount of money the government can borrow. This week, House Republicans acted to ensure we start addressing our nation’s record levels of debt.
Thanks to their reckless $10 trillion spending spree, President Joe Biden and Washington Democrats have maxed out the federal government’s credit card at a historic pace. In December 2021, the debt ceiling was raised by a record $2.5 trillion, and incredibly just 13 months later, we hit the debt ceiling once again. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our nation’s fiscal problems are accelerating, but President Biden and Washington Democrats insist that the only solution to this crisis of their own making is to avoid any discussion of spending reforms and to simply keep the spending spigots flowing. Southern Missourians know that dog won’t hunt.
The American people expect Congress to use every opportunity – including the debt ceiling – to put a check on Washington’s spending habits. It was the Democrats’ trillion-dollar wasteful spending spree which created the most painful cost-of-living crisis in over 40 years. It is beyond reckless that President Biden is taking a “my way or the highway approach” by refusing to work with Congress to reach an agreement that would raise the debt ceiling while also imposing commonsense restraints on spending to save taxpayer dollars – just as Congress, and even Biden – has done before.
The last 11 significant spending reduction reforms enacted by Congress were bipartisan and attached to legislation that raised the debt ceiling. As a senator, Biden voted for such reforms in ‘85, ‘87, ‘93, and ‘97, and helped negotiate spending constraints in ‘09 and ‘11, when he was vice president.
Instead of attacking his political opponents, Biden should be answering calls – including from members of his own party – to sit down and meet with Congress to address the debt ceiling in a way that begins to restore fiscal sanity in Washington. While the president pushes our nation closer and closer to another painful economic crisis, Republicans are proposing a plan that will limit federal spending, save taxpayers trillions of dollars, and grow our economy: the Limit, Save, Grow Act.
Our plan will save $4.8 trillion while also avoiding a government default. The bill will help lift more Americans out of poverty and restore America’s workforce through commonsense work requirements. In addition, it will end an agenda of welfare for the wealthy and big corporations and take the target off the backs of low- and middle-income taxpayers under threat from an army of 87,000 new IRS agents. This bill is the right thing for America.
President Biden and Washington Democrats need to get to work and join Republicans on a solution that will rein in reckless spending, save taxpayer dollars, grow the economy, and ensure our nation does not default on its debt.
