RSC Sends Letter to House Republican Leadership
Heritage Action,
May 20, 2011 -
The Republican Study Committee (RSC) will be sending House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) a letter further urging them not to give in to a “clean” debt ceiling increase.
“Given the condition of the country’s finances, it is imperative to the future of the country that we fight for an immediate shift toward fiscal responsibility.”
The letter asks that House Republicans honor their promise to the American people to cut spending and lower our deficit by attaching cuts to a debt ceiling increase, something Speaker Boehner pledged in his speech to the New York Economic Club. They include facts relating to the current state of the economy:
● The debt held by the public has more than doubled in the past 5 years.
● The interest paid on the debt is currently projected to more than triple over the next 10 years and may alone consume all of our tax revenues by the middle of this century.
● In April, for the first time since 1941, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) revised its outlook on the United States credit rating from stable to negative, citing the fear that Congress will fail to address the nation’s medium-and long-term budgetary challenges.
● As China considers ceasing its purchase of U.S. debt securities, the International Monetary Fund has forecasted that the size of China’s economy will surpass that of the Untied States in 2016, effectively ending the “Age of America.”
It’s a frightening picture when all the facts are laid out. This is why we need conservatives in the House to stand firm and fight President Obama and big-government liberals every step of the way until we get meaningful cuts included in any vote to raise the debt ceiling. The RSC provides commonsense solutions to our debt problem:
● Implement discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year;
● Execute statutory, enforceable total-spending caps to reduce federal spending to 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached;
● Attach a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and including a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA)
This is a simple, straight forward approach. There may be other approaches that work, but this one can go a long way towards reducing our debt and ensuring that the America we leave for our children and grandchildren is not an America beholden to debt. We need to restore fiscal responsibility to Congress and we need to do it now. Every Member of Congress who is concerned about the future of our country should sign on to this letter.
Online: Heritage Action
