Democrats and Republicans Are Driving America off the Fiscal Cliff

Watching congressional Democrats and Republicans wrestle over the budget is a little like watching Thelma and Louise. Democrats want to stomp on the gas pedal and race to the edge of the cliff at top speed, while Republicans want merely to set the cruise control. Neither approach addresses the fiscal realities of the situation.

America has a debt of $17 trillion. That’s more than $54,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. It is unsustainable and has to stop. Failure to do so will leave generations of Americans strapped with a crushing load of debt that jeopardizes their prosperity and that of the nation.

Congress doesn’t need a twelve-step program to cure its addiction to overspending; Tea Party Patriots has a one-step proposal that can prevent the nation from careening off this mountain of debt. By shaving one penny from every dollar spent by Congress, we can balance the federal budget in about five years and, in the process, restore fiscal sanity to congressional spending. Failure to take this action now brings us perilously closer to a tipping point that would have cataclysmic effects on our nation.

Those who are addicted to this mounting federal debt will try to confuse and confound taxpayers by trumpeting efforts to reduce the deficit, hoping that enough people don’t know the difference between an annual budget deficit and the total accumulated debt. In truth, Congress is digging America’s financial grave, and the solution is not to dig slower but to stop digging – period.

To his credit, Rep. Paul Ryan has at least submitted a budget, something Democrats tend to avoid, preferring instead to attack Republicans for fulfilling their constitutional responsibility. But when the national debt is growing at such an alarming rate, cutting the rate of growth in spending simply isn’t enough.

We understand the role of federal spending in the larger context of the national economy and recognize the need to write a budget smartly. That’s why Tea Party Patriots proposes that we cut the budget with a scalpel and not a meat axe. By spending one penny less next year out of every dollar the government spends, we set the nation on the right course with a realistic, reasonable, and measured approach to fiscal policy.

The current argument in Congress represents a long-standing status quo in how Washington conducts budget affairs. What we’re looking for is lawmakers with the courage to take a look at this status quo and say, “There’s a better way.” The Tea Party Patriots proposal is a better way.