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OUR GOVERNMENT'S SPENDING PROBLEM posted by Paul Gosar
October 20, 2010 , 7:15 AM
Imagine for a minute that you decided to start buying whatever you wanted. New cars, fancy vacations, expensive meals, the works. Put it all on the credit card and forget about it. Chances are you will enjoy this lifestyle for a while, but sooner or later the bill will come due. Now imagine that instead of coming to the realization that you can't afford this lifestyle, you keep on spending. And spending. And spending. Eventually those who gave you money will realize this can't go on. The scenario above may seem like fantasy, but in Washington it's a reality. In fact, it's everyday business-as-usual in Washington. While you may not be surprised to learn Washington has a spending problem, the amount of spending and the cost of our continued borrowing will absolutely shock you. Recently the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the 2009 federal budget deficit totaled $1.3 trillion dollars. Since 2008, federal spending has jumped an outrageous 21.4 percent. Perhaps even more astonishing is a recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation which found that the federal government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends. Yes you read that correctly. Nearly fifty percent of every dollar the government spends is borrowed. Over the last few months I've spent a great deal of time traveling in Arizona talking to those impacted by the economic downturn. With 9.7 percent unemployment, families are clearly hurting; when I ask people how they are coping, the answer is universal: they are taking a hard look at their budgets and cutting back on the things they can do without. Even though they hadn't planned on doing this kind of belt-tightening, they know it's necessary to make ends meet. Which brings us back to the issue of federal spending: if families across Arizona can cut back on unnecessary spending, why can't the federal government do the same thing? President Obama is fond of saying that a Republican Congress would drive the car into the ditch, but what he hasn't noticed is that he, along with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, have already gone far off the road. In response to the greatest economic crisis of our lifetimes, Democrats ignored the need to create jobs and decided it was better to spend, spend, spend. A trillion dollars on the failed stimulus, a trillion dollars on health care, and a national energy tax that threatens to drastically raise the cost of every-day products. Not surprisingly, all this spending has a very real cost for Arizona tax payers. In 2008 federal spending per household was $28,000. In just two years that number has jumped to $31,000 and if President Obama has his way, it will be $36,000 by 2020. If we don't get control of this problem now, we will pass on an insurmountable debt to the next generation. If American families can make tough choices about spending, so can the government, and I'm ready to go to Washington to make sure this happens. Our future depends on it.
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