As Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) pushes the debt ceiling debate back another month, Americans remain skeptical about how such legislation can really help solve the current financial crisis.
And while much ado has been made regarding the vote, it is really beside the main point of our economic distress. When considering the nation’s $14 trillion debt and bankrupting out-of-control entitlement spending, it is ridiculous to focus on how much more to spend rather than how much to save.
This year’s debt ceiling vote is only the beginning, as America attempts to climb out of the debt-filled hole we’ve dug.
Heritage’s Stuart Butler appeared this week on ABC’s Topline to speak about the debt limit vote and what it means moving forward:
We have such a surge of spending now and over the next several decades that unless we have to have a permanent fix to the spending side of the equation – particularly entitlements — we are going to see these kinds of debt ceilings practically every year for the future.
So while liberals pontificate about the perils of a no vote on raising the debt limit, the reality is that this vote is just one of many to come. Where does the spending end? Answering that question means dealing with entitlements head on – something those same liberals refuse to do.
The only lawmaker who has offered a real plan to address America’s entitlement crisis is GOP Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Without tangible and deliberate moves to fix the system, Butler says America’s creditors will “start to get nervous if they think there isn’t a determination to fix the problem in a long term way.”
Social security, Medicare and Medicaid eat up nearly 2/3rds of the federal budget every year – and the numbers are only increasing as baby boomers get older. There is a finite amount of money for these programs and the only choice we have is to fix them.
As Butler said:
In addition to the very few people like Congressman Ryan, who have put forward a serious proposal voted on by the House, those who have different visions have actually got to come up to the plate and put those forward…You can’t have a negotiation where essentially only one side is showing its cards and the other side is not.
We’ve been waiting two years for the Democrats to come up with a budget. They can complain all they want about the Ryan budget but actions speak louder than words.
