Fiscal Responsibility

Kenny Huolshof has voted for every dollar of the Bush Administration's trillions in new debt. The Bush Administration's fiscal mismanagement of our economy is staggering. They have taken the U.S. from the largest surpluses in its history to its largest debts in five years. The national debt is now rapidly approaching $9 trillion. And unlike the deficit spending of the 1980s, much of this debt is borrowed from foreign banks, including those in Communist China. We are leaving our children indebted to China, making it far harder for them to talk to the CHinese about wage fairness, fair trade and human rights (because they will be our banker).

According to Bloomberg.com in February, 2006 (hardly a bastion of liberal thought) the costs of President Bush's tax cuts (if made permanent) and his Medicare prescription drug benefit will be more than $400 billion in 2011 alone. Include the extra cost of higher interest payments due to an increased deficit, and the costs exceed $550 billion in 2011 and each year after.

The Republicans may try to tell you that some supply-side miracle will make up for the $400-billion cost of their tax cuts each and every year in the next decade, but the simple and inescapable truth is that the greatest sustained surge in revenue came with the fiscal discipline of the 1990s, not the fiscal recklessness of the 1980s or 2000s. No credible analysis shows otherwise.

The Republicans refuse to consider touching any of the tax cuts that will go to those with incomes of more than $200,000 or to repeal the giveaways to providers and drug companies in their prescription-drug bill. They simultaneously short change the investments our nation needs most, and nothing will change until they are replaced by leaders who will face the very difficult realities of this financial mess with pragmatism and a willingness to establish justice, insure doestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty ... and to meet those responsibilities while balancing the budget at the same time.

Perhaps the ultimate irony regarding fiscal responsibility is this; it was the Republicans who once gained fame by noting that government was too big, that it spent too much, and that it was too much a part of our lives. Yet today it is Congressman Hulshof and his fellow Republicans who are leading the largest, the most expensive, the most expansive and the most intrusive government of our lives. THE ERA OF "BORROW AND SPEND" ECONOMICS MUST END!