Changing Washington, Reducing Spending

Once again, Congress was faced with a debt limit increase last week that did not contain a single measure to help get our spending under control. That's simply the wrong prescription when it comes to ensuring a strong economic future. After the last five years of big-government ideas from the White House and the Senate, it is clearer than ever that simply spending money is not going to fix our problems.

We have begun to change the conversation in Washington, and have made progress on the debt and deficit. Since becoming the majority in the House, Republicans have cut $165 billion in spending. But that's not nearly enough.

We need further meaningful and serious changes to the spending status quo. Washington must start asking the question: is this program important enough to continue borrowing from China and other nations and loading debt on future generations?

We need to get a handle on our spending problem and we ought to be working to set the table for economic growth. Simply passing debt increase after debt increase with no meaningful cuts to spending is not the answer.

Instead, to restore confidence in our economy, we must confront our debt head on, and reverse the pattern of deficit spending. We can no longer continue to kick trillion dollar deficits down the road.

We did not get $17 trillion in debt overnight and we will not solve the problem with one vote. But it must start somewhere.