Now that the Senate has voted to do nothing to address the overspending crisis, conservatives must keep the liberals’ feet to the fire and not let them put off yet again finding a solution to federal overspending and overborrowing. Congress should not raise the debt limit without getting spending under control.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, to get federal spending under control and balance the budget. That legislation passed with 234 votes in the House. The House is a legislative body, and it has legislated. The House has done its job.
In contrast, the Senate is a legislative body that has failed to do its job. So far, the Senate has come up with lots of bad plans, but no votes. The Senate plans that have cropped up in the last week — the McConnell-Reid “Just Borrow More” Plan, the Coburn Plan with its tax hikes, and the Gang-of-Six Plan with its tax hikes — have among them exactly zero votes, because the Senate has not voted on any of them.
Today, the Senate voted 51 to 46 to not even consider the House-passed Cut, Cap and Balance bill, even though two-thirds of Americans, according to the CNN Poll dated July 21, support such legislation. The Obama Administration chimed in that, even if the Senate passed the bill, the President would veto it anyway. Therefore, if, ten days from now, America fails temporarily to meet its obligations because the Treasury lacks sufficient money to pay them when due, the responsibility for that failure falls squarely upon President Obama and the Senate liberals, who let it happen because they wanted to raise taxes. Conservatives have commendably pursued legislation to ensure that the government pays its most important obligations first when the Treasury has a shortage of money to pay all its bills, but even on that liberals have been no help.
President Obama and the Senate liberals may represent well that ever-shrinking tax-spend-and-borrow crowd of liberal special interests, but most of the American people want to cut government spending, cut the size and scope of government, and cut up and throw away the national credit card.
So far, only the House conservatives have acted responsibly.
A week is still plenty of time to pass legislation to get the spending-cut job done. The time to put America on the path to driving down federal spending and borrowing, while preserving our ability to protect America, and without raising taxes, is now.
Related blogs:
McConnell-Reid “Just Borrow More” Plan Fails to Cut Spending and Degrades America’s Creditworthiness
What Moody’s Really Told Boehner and Obama about the Debt Ceiling
