In UVa visit, Democrats call deficit reckless
The Daily Progress/Andrew Shurtleff
Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer speak with University of Virginia students during a visit to the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.
U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer visited the University of Virginia on Monday to draw attention to the federal deficit of more than $1 trillion that today’s college students will inherit one day.
“We’ve left you with an extraordinary amount of debt,” Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, told a classroom filled with 25 students enrolled in the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s College Leaders Program. “Fiscally, we have been irresponsible and pursued, in my opinion, policies that are morally bankrupt.”
Former President George W. Bush, Hoyer said, left the current administration with a $1.3 trillion deficit. President Barack Obama and the Democratic-led Congress have since added to the overall national debt — most notably via the two-year, $787 billion economic stimulus package.
Hoyer and Perriello, however, say they want to enact new policies to require greater fiscal responsibility on the part of Congress.
Hoyer introduced a bill last week at the behest of Obama that would reinstate a “pay-as-you-go” or “PAYGO” law, meaning essentially that Congress would have to find savings that fully offset any reduced revenue or spending increase associated with expanded entitlements. The ballooning deficit, Hoyer said, has been brought about primarily by the rising cost of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
A similar “pay-as-you-go” system was in place between 1990 and 2002. Hoyer said it was a key reason why the federal government operated with a surplus for four years under former President Bill Clinton.
Hoyer’s bill was introduced with some 158 original co-sponsors, including Perriello.
“One of the reasons I’ve always admired Mr. Hoyer is because he cared about the deficit before it was cool to care about the deficit,” said Perriello, a Democrat from Albemarle County.
Without a requirement for Congress to find revenue to pay for spending increases, Perriello said, there is too great of an incentive for lawmakers to keep running up the national debt.
“If you want to do this right, you have to make the tough decisions,” he said. “We’re getting back to making those tough decisions. It’d be much easier for me to vote for health care if we didn’t have to pay for it. But that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”
Perriello said fiscal responsibility is a “signature issue” for him and other newly elected Democrats. Perriello voted against Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget because he thought it did not go far enough in slashing the federal debt.
Republicans have questioned the sincerity of the Democrats’ goal to cut the deficit.
“We’ve amassed more debt over the last five months than this country has amassed in the last 200 years,” House Republican Whip Eric I. Cantor of Henrico County said in a statement earlier this month. “This Congress rammed through a $3.6 trillion budget. So for us to sit here and listen to the White House say that ‘we ought to be responsible, we ought to pay for what we’re doing’ I think lacks just a little bit of credibility.”
Hoyer’s bill has been referred to the House Committee on the Budget.
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Reader Reactions
One need look no further than the idiots who are consulted on these matters. Exhibit 1 is Robert Reich, who believes our friends in government need to spend even more as a “spender of last resort”. As for the foolish taxpayer, given some of our tax money back, we’d just save it and pay down debt—tsk, tsk. So, clearly Uncle Sam doesn’t have a problem with gluttony, avarice, or greed—just an overwhelming case of mercy.
There is not a whit of difference now between Barrack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They will do or say anything to curry favor with the most vulernable, close their eyes and ears to any thought or action contrary to expanding their “benevolent” influence over citizens’ daily lives, are incapable of self-criticism, humility, or basic honesty, and depend on irrational populist fervor to excuse their grip on power and smashing of fundamental individual rights (as enumerated in our Bill of Rights). A whole new set of “rights”, assumed by the State, is fabricated out of whole cloth and rhetoric.
As for Congress, they have not been “in control” for years, having sold out long ago—to every concievable special interest.
Periello is a budding dissapointment, as he seems prone not to buck the system.
Hoyer, I agree, is clueless.
Would be a good idea if anyone running for office had to 1) take and pass college level courses in macro and micr economics 2) take and pass a HS level course on civices and our constitution and 3) accept a cap on salary (say, no higher than 1.5x the median income of their district), benefits on par with the average Medicare recipient, and pension benefits tied to Social Security.
Well at least Hoyer is clear.
All spending bills must originate with the President, and Congress has no advise or consent ability with these bills; so Congress had no means by which to even slow down Pres. Bush; even with a Democratic Majority on both House and Senate they had no power over spending bills.
Just look at the Constitution, all laws are written by the President, Congress just sits around on their thumbs all day.
At least that seems to be Hoyer’s position… why exactly are we paying him again? He clearly doesn’t write bills, or vote on them, or have any concept of the consequences of his actions… does he serve a purpose?
Tom Perriello has been in lock step w/OB since he took office. He gave his blessing to OB’s so-called stimulus package w/out even reading it. He can’t even answer a question put to him about how OB is going to pay for his so-called universal health care. When I asked him why we are to believe that the government who is already in the health care business w/ Medicare and Medicaid (both of which are on the verge of bankruptcy) can take on this new health care entitlement and think it will be better. He said M&M are not related to this new plan and the new plan will be the best of both worlds and we are learning from our mistakes w/ M&M. What a joke. The long and the short is TP will vote the party line no matter what. He won’t read this health care bill or the upcoming CAP and TRADE tax bill either.
Dems complaining that too much money has been spent? I do believe that the Dems controlled the legislature for the last few years, and spend they did! Now Obama wants to spend more and more. In fact, everyday he comes up with a new way to spend! Bailing out the banks, Wall Street, auto industry, the stimulus, yesterday it was the new volunteer initiative, and the new consumer credit committee, and now we need another trillion, give or take a few million, for the healthcare plan. And you folks say BUSH is at fault?
a democrat wanting to control spending ??....lol
Both Dems and Republicans have been reckless. I remember my dec’d father saying years ago when the gov’t goes in the red its like saying “things are so bad this year we have to go in the red this year, but they don’t know how bad things can get”. Now that things are bad, when going in the red is justified the govn’t didn’t save during the good or fair times. Now our industrial base is largely gutted (compared to 1950s), our Social security surplus consists of IOUs and has been spent by other branches of the gov’t. We exist on borrowed money from Chinese etc. What is happening in California is a warning for the whole country.
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