“The President says it’s time to ‘eat our peas.’ I agree with another President – President Ronald Reagan – who said it’s time to starve the beast, and the beast is Washington.”
Click here to watch the speech.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate in support of the Balanced Budget Amendment cosponsored by every Republican Senator.
Excerpts of his remarks are below:
“In Wyoming, our families live within their means and Wyoming is a state where our state lives within its means. Indeed, our very Constitution requires our state to live within its means.
“Washington’s total debt is $14 trillion and continues to climb every day. Wyoming’s total debt is zero. How did Washington fail where Wyoming succeeded?
“In Washington, this city overspends and there is nothing really to stop it. It is time for Washington to take a lesson from Wyoming and the other states that balance their budgets every year.
“The President says that ‘all of us agree that we should use this opportunity to do something meaningful on debt and deficits.’ Passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is possibly the most meaningful thing that we could do.
“This city’s finances are in disarray. Our nation’s finances are in disarray. It has been over 800 days since this body has passed a budget resolution. Since the last time a full budget was passed, our country has spent over $7 trillion. $3.2 trillion of that was money we do not have.
“Our total debt is now over $14 trillion. People say, ‘How much money is that? The number is astoundingly large.’ Well, let’s try to put it into perspective:
“Every day, Washington borrows 4.1 billion dollars more. 4.1 billion dollars yesterday, 4.1 billion dollars today, and if someone will lend us the money, we will borrow 4.1 billion dollars tomorrow. That’s over $2 million a minute – every minute.
“It’s clear that the policies of this administration have taken a tough problem and they have made it worse. On this President’s inauguration day, the unemployment rate was just under 8 percent. Now it’s 9.2 percent. Every American child is born today owing $45,000. Let’s compare that to when President Obama was inaugurated – they owed only $35,000. So in those few short years, our children’s debt has gone from $35,000 to $45,000. These disturbing economic results are the direct result of the past two years’ policies.
“This week, the President showed what that really means:
“He said, ‘Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years.’
“In other words, this isn’t really about waiting until the recovery comes. It’s about waiting until 2013, until after the President’s reelection campaign.
“More troublingly still, the President has already signaled that he wants to spend more in the future. Our problem is not that we’re taxed too little, it’s that we spend too much, and yet the President wants to spend more.
“The first step towards solving those problems should be to pass an amendment to our Constitution requiring Washington to balance its budget. Such an amendment would force Washington to live within its means, like many states do and like the families across the country do.
“The President says it’s time to ‘eat our peas.’ I agree with another President – President Ronald Reagan – who said it’s time to starve the beast, and the beast is Washington, and the Washington wasteful spending that the American people are seeing every day.”
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