America’s Financial Bleeding Has to Stop
Published: November 15, 2009
Rep. Frank Wolf, a Northern Virginia Republican congressman who represents the 10th District in the House of Representatives, is not a politician who’s prone to hyperbole.
He’s not a far right-winger who believes Barack Obama isn’t a natural-born U.S. citizen, ineligible to be president. He isn’t a Republican who believes that any and all government is bad or the root of all evil in the world.
All of which makes his comments in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last week all the more urgent.
Testifying before the panel Tuesday, he put his concerns succinctly and bluntly: “I have never been more concerned about the future of our country. America is going broke.”
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The total federal debt is pushing close to $12 trillion and is growing at a pace unseen since World War II. The annual deficit is projected to continue at record levels for up to a decade, if current spending projections hold up. And if the Democratic Congress passes its laundry list of future entitlements, Wolf estimates that every American man, woman and child could wind up owing $184,000.
That’s a lot of change, folks.
And Wolf is well aware that his own party is as responsible for the drunken orgy of spending as anyone else in Washington.
Unlike many denizens of Washington, however, Wolf is trying to do something about the problem.
For each of the past three years, he introduced legislation to form a financial commission to examine all federal spending and recommend ways to trim it.
The legislation has gone nowhere, unfortunately.
This year, he’s partnered with Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee, to coauthor a bill to create the Securing America’s Future Economy Commission.
The SAFE Commission would be comprised of 16 members whose primary job would be to scour the entitirety of the federal budget, hunting for ways to save money, cut spending, and consolidate delivery of services.
Everything, according to Wolf, from tax policy to entitlement spending, would be on the table.
Its recommendations to Congress would only receive an up-or-down vote.
Wolf and Cooper modeled the SAFE Commission after the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, created in 1990 to oversee closure of military bases across the nation. BRAC’s list of bases to be closed were submitted to Congress as a single package that could only be OK’d or shot down.
The SAFE Commission, like BRAC before it, saves the politicians of Washington from the job they hate the most: making difficult decisions that might impair their chances for re-election.
It’s a drastic step, no doubt about it, but the scope of the federal government’s fiscal problems are beyond drastic. Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done in a hurry.
Our nation’s future is literally in the balance.
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http://lynchburgteaparty.blogspot.com/
Knipp,
Thats what us “teabaggers” are out there protesting! We are tired of the out of control spending and we don’t care if your republican or democrat! We don’t like some of the policies set forth that would increase that spending tremendously! If you are also concerned, Welcome to the TeaBagger Society 
I applaud Congressman Wolf’s attempts to help the nation find fiscal restraint. I am appalled that this is the first I have ever heard of his efforts, and hope that somehow this horn gets blown loud enough that the country reacts! I think, in fact, that this is truly the major concern of the independents that are forming the Tea Party, and I will eagerly join them in that effort!
naturelover -
You’d smell racism anywhere. No one’s mentioned Obama, this thread has nothing to do with him. No one’s mentioned race, or even alluded to it. But we’ve talked about poor people, so I suppose your “Racist” alarm went on, since you imagine that only blacks are poor, in your own racist view of the world.
The racism whiff goes along with the “victimhood” of blaming “Big Business” and “Big Money” for “getting rich” off the rest of us.
You ever gotten a job from a poor man? I haven’t. Only prosperous businesses hire people and pay them good salaries. Only prosperous businesses have good stock prices and pay good dividends into the 401K plans of the majority of Americans that own them.
All Terrain Vehicles (ATVS) prove it to me. When I was a boy, it would be absolutely inconceivable that a family would give a month’s pay ($5000 now) for a toy to beat up in the woods and stump jump with. Not 30 people out of the 12,000 in our rural county could have owned one of those, and those 30 would be the doctors and lawyers and a few old-money families.
Today, almost every family up and down our road has one. Kids ride them everywhere, all the time, as I can tell by listening out of my door any time of day or night. They’re parked in the yards of every double-wide and trailer and starter home on this road, next to Dad’s 4WD pickup.
Don’t tell ME that “Big Business” has got all the money. The “Little Man” has got more material crap, and more money to spend on it, than at any time in our history, or than any other country in the world has ..... and yet we continue to cry Poverty and claim to be victims of Wall Street. Give it a rest.
naturelover,
You are EXACTLY right. The opposition to Obama is ALL race based. When Clinton was trying to get his healthcare passed, it was poised to sail through. Once the state run news media announced that he was “the first black president”, it was stopped in its tracks!
LOL!!!!!!!thanks. I needed that laugh.
It just doesn’t seem that individuals are getting the benefit. I don’t see it. Big business and big money are getting paid but I don’t see much getting done for people. I smell a little racism here, but that’s nothing new most of the opposition to Obama is race based.
Part of the problem with electing statesmen rather than tin-horn politicians is our huge and growing government entitlement system.
As someone says “Half the electorate works for a living; the other half votes for a living”.
As long as a significant number of people are voting for whichever Sugar Daddy will promise to give them the most money for their vote, we’ll never get there.
Someone tell me the last time a statesman ran for president? It does not happen. The person we need would never aspire to the job and the system’s strengths are also it’s weaknesses. The present process of government is one of money and influence. It always has been but now the lobbyists are even writing the speeches of congressmen.
Everyone remember Newt’s revolution in ‘94? It was mostly smoke and mirrors but he had some good ideas and they rang with the public. Term limits was one great idea, just ask Bob Goodlatte. He went in on the Contract With America wave and then the money power got to him and he became a born again “experience is more important than ethics” republican. And the beat goes on. Everyone wants a change but where are the new ideas. Throw the bums out did not seem to work just a year ago now did it. I’m waiting for new ideas from someone who can get it done. Just electing republicans next year just does not seem to be the solution as just three years ago they were the problem of big spending and zero ethics.
I agree with almost every single sentiment in this thread so far; very unusual for me, I must say.
Note the conclusion that several have come to:
It’s NOT THE GUMMINT’S FAULT!
It’s NOT THE SYSTEMS FAULT!
It’s OUR fault, the people of the United States, for not electing statesmen instead of whatever politician raises the most campaign money.
It’s OUR fault, for buying only the cheapest of foreign goods, and supporting with our pocketbooks EXACTLY the kind of corporate behavior we purport to despise.
WE THE PEOPLE could fix this problem, with our votes and our wallets. Why don’t we?
We all say this, but few of us practice what it will require. We treat federal funds as if they were free money. Examples: (1) A turnabout is approved for Fifth Street because federal funds are available; (2) a poorly conceived hotel in a decaying warehouse district is funded because “free” federal dollars are available; (3) we ask the federal government to take over the operation of a poorly conceived monument in Bedford—perhaps a good idea if it had been placed in Washington, DC where more than a trickle of tourists could visit it; (4) we welcome $17 million stimulus dollars in Lynchburg for sewer overflow problems; (5) we shop primarily at Walmart and other retailers who almost completely stock their shelves with foreign made merchandise taking away American jobs and reducing income taxes.
Just as charity begins at home, so must financial stewardship.
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