Don’t Kill The Recovery, Mr. President - Stop The Spending!

Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families: The president got some much-needed good news this morning. The unemployment rate has dropped – it’s now just 10%, down from 10.2%. This is an early and hopeful sign of recovery, and that’s a great Christmas present for many Americans. But this good news is happening in spite of the policies coming out of the White House and Congress, and because of the institutions and individuals the president frequently criticizes – businesses and entrepreneurs.

We reported yesterday that the White House hosted a jobs summit. No critics were invited, and no one who was there was willing to tell the president how jobs are created. We looked around and to the best of our knowledge, no on had the audacity to stand up to the president and tell him how he could help create jobs without spending a dime. No one stood up and said:

“Mr. President, take cap and trade off the table. Take healthcare ‘reform’ off the table. Take card check off the table. All of these big government programs will make it necessary to raise taxes down the road, which creates tremendous uncertainty for small business owners and entrepreneurs.”

Unfortunately, no one at the White House is willing to sacrifice their leftwing ideology in order to get Americans back to work. In fact, it’s worse than that. By the end of the day, the administration and its allies in Congress were advocating a new tax on stock transactions and voting to permanently reinstate the death tax at a whopping 45%.

So, once again, they’ve fallen into the socialist trap that higher taxes and more government create wealth and prosperity, when in reality Big Government and high taxes consume wealth and destroy prosperity. The U.S. economy is very resilient, and it is doing its best to move forward one step at a time in spite of all the uncertainty. But the major tax hikes and massive spending that Obama, Reid and Pelosi are planning for the years ahead will kill the recovery.


Stop The Spending! America is going broke. The national debt now exceeds $12 trillion and is growing at rates unmatched since WWII. We’ve amassed massive unfunded promises to guarantee future entitlement benefits, which, added to liabilities like debt, total nearly $57 trillion. If Congress does not address this issue, it won’t be long before every penny of the federal budget will be used just to pay for interest on the debt and entitlement spending.

There would be no money for critical priorities like national defense, homeland security and medical research. The dollar would lose its status as the primary international reserve currency, meaning that everything that is traded internationally, such as food and oil, would increase in price. Deficits choke the investment needed to create jobs. And our biggest bankers – countries like China and Saudi Arabia – are hardly friends.

Leaders of both political parties have been reluctant to acknowledge the severity of this issue and to take the necessary action to curtail spending. Congress’ paralysis comes at great cost to our children and grandchildren. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has an idea to address our growing fiscal crisis that deserves consideration.

The Securing America’s Future Economy Commission Act (SAFE – H.R. 1557) would establish a bipartisan commission to look at all federal spending -- constitutionally mandated expenditures, entitlement programs, tax policy, and more. The Commission, modeled after the federal base closing process, would hold public meetings across the country to hear from the American people and then develop a series of recommendations to improve the nation’s financial health. Then Congress would be required to vote up or down on the panel’s proposals.

Congress has shown itself to be incapable of tackling overspending, and it will take a mechanism with teeth to ensure action. SAFE has more than 100 co-sponsors, yet the congressional leadership has failed to bring this critical measure to the floor for a vote. Click here to see if your representative is co-sponsoring the SAFE Act. Then call Congress at 202-224-3121 and urge the leadership to act in the best interest of the country.

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