The National Debt is the Number One Domestic Threat to the US

That’s the message Reps. Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence wanted to get across during today’s blogger conference call. They believe the national debt is a huge threat to our freedom, our security, and our future. They believe they have a moral obligation to do something about it.

Yesterday I told you about their Spending Limit Amendment proposal.

Historically, federal spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product has averaged about 20%. If things go on as projected, by the year 2081 federal spending will rise to a whopping 70% of GDP! Obviously, that’s unsustainable. The current level of spending is higher than it’s been since WWII.

This chart pretty much says it all. (These projections do not factor in ObamaCare.)

You may want to print it out and hang it on your fridge. Make copies and pass them out to your friends, and ask them what kind of future their kids or grand kids are going to have with that red line level of federal spending?

It’s insane. Hensarling and Pence don’t hold any illusions – they know how difficult it is to amend the Constitution. But it’s a debate we must have, and we need to have it now. If not, this will be the first time in history that Americans have left the next generation less free, less prosperous and less secure.

They made the point that we built this great republic without the average federal budget exceeding 20% of GDP. A spending limit amendment would be different than a balanced budget rule, because under a balanced budget rule Congress could spend as much as they want. All they’d have to do is raise taxes to balance the budget.

To find out more about the Spending Limit Amendment visit the website. They told us that after twenty four hours they had already picked up some co-sponsors. They’re all Republicans, but they’re hoping to garner some bipartisan support. They’re well aware of the failings in the past of Republicans when it comes to spending. But come on, the Democrats are like the Republicans on steroids. It’s time to say “enough is enough.”

Erick Erickson calls the SLA “a real Tea Party worthy amendment.”

Investors Business Daily endorsed the plan.

Tea Partyers will no doubt be impressed by the fact that the idea comes from no less than Thomas Jefferson. In 1798, the Declaration’s author wrote: “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government.”

There really is no credible argument against the idea. In common-sense fashion, the constraint would be suspended during a declared war, and any other real emergency would surely be recognized as such by two-thirds of lawmakers.

Other attempts to save Americans from the drunken sailors they send to Washington have failed. The automatic cuts of the Gramm-Rudman “sequester” of the 1980s worked, but the Supreme Court judged much of the law to be an unconstitutional restriction on presidential powers, and Congress defanged it. Gramm-Rudman’s successor, Paygo, didn’t use fixed targets, and expired in 2002. The line-item veto was famously ruled unconstitutional by the high court.

The Hensarling-Pence-Campbell Spending Limit Amendment is actually preferable to the line-item veto because it doesn’t discriminate between big-spending Congresses and profligate presidents. It snaps the public purse closed on every Washington politician’s fingers.

The SLA couldn’t come at a more opportune time. The president and Congress want to add to our current $12 trillion in national debt a $2-trillion-plus big government health overhaul. Medicare, in the meantime, is less than a decade from bankruptcy, Social Security less than three decades away. As the plan points out, “if the SLA is not adopted, all of these programs are doomed on their current auto-pilot glide path as these three entitlement programs alone — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — are set to consume the entirety of the federal budget by 2036.” …

Our elected representatives are like young children. They know no limits. And like little kids, they need limits or they’ll push us all to the brink. In fact, I think we’re already there.

Video of House Republicans announcing the Spending Limit Amendment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.