After speaking of the dysfunction and brokenness of Washington, freshman Senator Ron Johnson (WI) laid out in the clearest of terms how the federal government could learn a common sense solution from American families who budget everyday and make it work:
"A budget is a number. We should first pick one number, and then a set of numbers that won't let America go bankrupt. So let me start the process by throwing out a number: $2.6 trillion. This is $800 billion more than we spent just 10 years ago. The $2.6 trillion, that is the amount that President Obama in his budget said the federal government would receive in revenue next year. If we only spent that amount of money, we would be living within our means. What a concept, huh?" He continued by detailing a process for those who wish to request additional spending beyond his proposed budget, "If we want to spend more than $2.6 trillion, members of Congress, members of this Administration, should go before congressional committees and openly justify what they want to spend, how much they want to borrow, and how much debt they're willing to pile on the backs of our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren. They should explain just how much of our children's future they are willing to mortgage. The American People deserve to be told the truth."
How sensible. Of course, statists can't comprehend in these terms, because they spend not just next year's revenues, but into the next 5 and 10 years' revenues, perhaps beyond, those revenues they spend NOW, which is the sole reason they want to raise them NOW! In other words, it's not to pay towards any significant debt reduction, although that's what they hope we believe they're attempting to do, it's because they've overspent so badly that they need to pay for what they've already passed (i.e., bailouts, stimulus, Obamacare, etc.). This is the same debt that they'll continue to accrue, because too many in Washington – primarily Democrats at this time, but both parties had this problem throughout the last decade – have no intention of decreasing the Keynesian spending. And where they don't have it to spend, they've borrowed it. Then it snowballs into borrowing to pay back borrowing. Nope, not a functional family plan at all, which is why listening to the common sense of Ron Johnson would do wonders for Washington.
