PAYING FOR BORROWED MONEY WITH BORROWED MONEY 

In a little less than five months, President Obama and the liberal leadership in Congress have spent more than $1.6 trillion. Their policies have created the highest spending levels since World War II and exploded our national debt to $11 trillion. Today President Obama’s director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated his projections and is now anticipating a $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, up from $1.2 trillion earlier this year. The CBO director also noted that the U.S. government is now borrowing 50 cents for every dollar it spends.

I voted against these wasteful spending programs, just as I did under the Bush administration, because common sense tells us that you don’t pay for borrowed money with borrowed money. We are a nation in debt and cannot continue writing checks when our bank account is overdrawn. American families do not budget this way and neither should the federal government.

As a fiscal conservative, I strenuously opposed these epic and unprecedented spending increases. The best way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes and spending drastically. It is time to start trusting and empowering individual Americans instead of the federal government. It is time to let Americans keep more of what they earn and for the government to spend less. I believe that by taking these steps, our economy will experience the growth and prosperity that have defined America for generations.