This week in Washington I continued my fight to protect our children and grandchildren from the sea of red ink engulfing the federal budget by participating in another meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

A number of good ideas about how to harmonize spending and revenues have been proposed at the Commission meetings, but we must never underestimate the creativity of the elected official to get around statutes that they have helped write.  It really all comes down to one thing; stop the spending.

I do believe, though, that it’s important to recognize that there are many technical reforms we could pass that would help change the culture of spending in Washington; biennial budgeting and performance-based budgeting for example.  Right now all Washington does is measure the inputs to a program, and we don’t measure the outputs.  So, if you want to show that you care about the veteran, if you want to show that you care about the elderly, you add money to programs serving these groups regardless of what the performance of the program has been.  This has to change if we are ever to stem the tide of federal red ink washing over America.

At this month’s Fiscal Commission meeting I also put in a plea for a less partisan approach to budget oversight.  The only time that we get any kind of oversight is when we have bifurcated government; when we have one party in charge of Congress, and the other party is in charge of the White House, and of course it often ends-up being political.  Budget oversight should not be used as a political tool.  It ought to be institutionalized, and regardless of who occupies the administration, Congress has to do the oversight if we want to get a grip on our budget.

Budget reform is the kind of nitty-gritty work that Congress should do, but often doesn’t because there is little public pressure and news media interest.  I am hopeful that the political environment this year will change that.  Millions of Americans are now paying attention like never before to what their government spends.  I am optimistic that this public attention will translate into support for my efforts to stop out of control federal spending and actually reduce the size of our government.