News

Nation Approaching a Fiscal Train Wreck

Jacksonville Daily News

December 10, 2009 9:39 AM

To the editor:

This fall, the Government Accountability Office — an investigative arm of the U.S. government — released its latest report on America’s fiscal outlook. The report confirmed the grim reality that Eastern North Carolinians understand but Washington, D.C., continues to ignore: Unprecedented government spending is driving this country to the brink of economic disaster.

Washington spent much of this decade running up massive deficits, and the current administration and congressional leadership have taken that fiscal profligacy to new heights. Whether it be a massive highway bill funding “bridges to nowhere;” the Medicare prescription drug bill, which was the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson; ever-expanding annual foreign aid bills; Wall Street bailouts; automaker bailouts; or a trillion dollar “stimulus package” — all of which I strongly opposed and voted against — Washington, D.C., just can’t spend taxpayers’ money fast enough.

In fiscal year 2009 alone, the federal government ran a $1.42 trillion deficit, 212 percent higher than last year and the worst on record since World War II. To accommodate this spending, Congress raised the public debt limit eight times in the past seven years, nearly doubling the limit from $6 trillion to over $12 trillion. Over a quarter of this debt is held by foreign nations, the largest of which is China. The GAO states that because of these “escalating levels of debt . . . the long-term fiscal outlook remains unsustainable.”

The first rule of holes is that if you’re in one, stop digging! Unfortunately, that message doesn’t seem to have reached Capitol Hill, where the current majority appears poised to make the problem worse by dramatically increasing the cost of government with its “cap and trade” and health care reform legislation.

As the GAO states, “the longer action to deal with the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook is delayed, the larger the changes will need to be, increasing the likelihood that they will be disruptive and destabilizing.”

Congress and the president can avoid this scenario by buckling down and reversing their big spending ways. But if disaster is to be avoided, that action must start now. Time is not on our side! 

U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones

Washington, D.C.