That's $19 Trillion, with a "T" -- Does the White House Care?

There was an interesting under-the-radar story that floated past us last week, as the national debt -- the amount our federal government still owes because it spends more than it takes in -- passed $19 trillion.

The story appeared in the Fiscal Times, and I give it to you here in case you have a few minutes and need to get ticked off about something.  In essence, while the White House's budget director usually testifies before Congress when the president submits his annual budget request, the Budget Committee chairmen of both the Senate and House combined on a statement, announcing that Obama's budget director, Shaun Donovan, was not welcome to testify and would not be invited to do so.

Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), the Senate committee chairman, wrote that “It appears the President’s final budget will continue to focus on new spending proposals instead of confronting our government’s massive overspending and debt.  It is clear that this President will not put forth the budget effort that our times and our country require.”

Ladies and gentlemen, somebody has to do something.  I imagine that despite the ineffectual leadership by the Republicans in Congress, and their utter failure to do collectively as the public clearly asked them to do in the 2014 election, at least some senators and House members have had it up to here with profligate spending.  Certainly Sen. Enzi and his House counterpart, Tom Price (R-GA) appear to have.

Well, Sen. Enzi and Rep. Price, I want you to know that I've had it too.  I have had it up to here with struggling to pay my own bills, doing so with no debt (save my mortgages), and watching the Federal government blithely run up $19 trillion in debt.  More importantly, I have had it with the Federal government doing so with no apparent regard for the impact this has on the USA.

I never tire of reminding people of Mitt Romney's line in the first 2012 presidential debate, where he promised to go over every line of the Federal budget and use the evaluation criterion "Is this important enough that it is worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?"  That's China, whose leaders and henchmen serially hack into our networks, play manipulative games with their currency, let their satellite North Korea launch satellites, and subjugate their people.  That China.

If you have an ounce of fiscal responsibility and a shred of ethics, you would have heard that and it would have changed your approach to budget development.  But no, Barack Obama whistles in the breeze and puts forth a budget that is even larger than before (not smaller), borrows even more from our enemies (not less), and adds spending for innumerable items that are completely out of the constitutionally-mandated scope of the Federal government.

So Sen. Enzi and Rep. Price, today I salute you for having the brass cogliones to make a public statement against unchecked spending.  I salute you two for telling Obama to keep his budget and to go back to the well and try again.  I salute you two for bringing the absurd heights of the national debt to the public despite the previous capitulation of your party's leadership.

Now it is up to the press.  The Fiscal Times has written the story.  Will the rest of the press pick up on it and, at the very least, take the position that two Republicans are actually right?

As I write my monthly bills against our family's balanced budget, I can't wait to see

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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