Spending and the Economy

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SPENDING AND THE ECONOMY

There are lots of problems with our economy today, but they all stem from one basic fact: Congress spends too much!

We can blame Barack Obama—and we should—for asking for too much spending. But Barack can’t spend a nickel Congress doesn’t give him. And every nickel spent by Congress is spent by an appropriations bill. And every appropriations bill comes through the Appropriations Committee, a committee on which Robert Bennett, Republican from Utah, sits.

Since his arrival in the U.S. Senate in 1993, Bob Bennett has voted 133 times on appropriations bills. He has voted against exactly one! And even in that case, his no vote seems to have been because of a pro-abortion rider, rather than because the bill was too expensive.

Are you concerned about the deficit? The deficit is created when Congressional spending exceeds tax revenue.

Concerned about taxes? Taxes have to be raised because Congress spends too much.

Worried about inflation? You should be, because Congress has spent so much more than it has taken in that there will be tremendous pressure to “monetize” the debt—pay it off by printing more money. That seems to be happening already.

The housing market is in the tank. Is that because Congress spends too much? You bet it is! Congress encouraged—nay demanded—that the banks lend to people unlikely to be able to make their mortgage payments. They promised the banks that if defaults skyrocketed—as they would—Congress would bail them out through Fannie and Freddie, using OPM (Other People’s Money). The Other People, in this case, are the taxpayers—you. Your money is spent by Congress to make good on its regulatory folly.

Worried about the strength of the dollar? The dollar is weak because the unprecedented deficit spending is already leading to very strong growth in the money supply, threatening future inflation.

Concerned about the future of your children and grandchildren? There is only one way to save their future, and that is to stop spending. Voting for every appropriations bill that comes down the pike isn’t going to do it.

The standing of the United States in the world is precarious. Not because we are militarily weak (though we are certainly weaker than we should be in this dangerous age). Not because we are so apologetic about our past “sins” (though the sight of our president kow-towing to foreign despots didn’t do us any good). No, our standing is in decline because foreign governments enough of our debt that they can “suggest” what our foreign policy should be. They own that debt because Congress spends too much.

Unemployment is high and persistent. When Congress spends more than it takes in, it has to borrow to make up the difference. That borrowing crowds out the private borrowing that finances the business expansion that creates jobs. The Obama Administration is proposing dozens of new taxes in an attempt to counter the effects of the spending it is asking for—and that Congress is delivering. Those new taxes are targeted at those who take risks to create new businesses that generate jobs. The money Congress is spending is killing the American job-creating machine.

Don’t like earmarks? That’s government spending. Bob Bennett excuses earmarks on the grounds that they amount to only 0.56 percent of federal spending. That’s already too much, but the fact is that when an appropriations (spending) bill has your earmarks in it, you can’t vote against it, no matter how much that bill busts the budget. Earmarks are the oil that keeps the Congressional spending machine running smoothly. Of those 132 appropriations bill Bob Bennett voted for, how many of them contained his earmarks?

Big Government: that’s a government that spends too much, because it has a Congress that spends too much, because it has Appropriations Committees that can’t say no to spending requests, because the members of the Appropriations Committee vote in lock-step to loot the taxpayers to pay for favors for each other, using their power as appropriators to bribe the ordinary members of Congress to go along.

I cannot promise that, as a Senator, I will vote against every appropriations bill that comes before me. It costs money to run the Defense Department, the Judiciary, the State Department, and those few other agencies performing the constitutional duties of the federal government. Those spending obligations need to be looked at microscopically before being approved as legitimate, but they are constitutional.

But I can promise that I will not ask for earmarks, that I will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, that I will oppose any tax increase to pay for profligate spending, and above all, that when I have cast 133 votes on appropriations bills, most of them will have been NO votes.