Cole: Solution to debt is "cut, cap and balance"

By U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Moore
Posted: July 18, 2011

The ongoing debt ceiling debate highlights, once again, the fundamental differences in each party's approach to dealing with the deficit. Republicans want to cut spending; Democrats want to raise taxes.

The American people understand that Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Taxpayers should not be forced to pay the bill for the federal government spending spree that has occurred under President Obama and congressional Democrats. The national debt has increased by $3.7 trillion since President Obama took office in January 2009. That figure seems even more outrageous when one considers that it took the United States from 1776 to 1992 to accumulate the same amount of debt that President Obama racked up in just two and a half years.

President Obama is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion -- a sum that coincides closely to the amounts spent on his unpopular policies of the past two years. The failed stimulus, which Republicans opposed, cost taxpayers almost $1 trillion, while his health care overhaul -- opposed by Republicans and a majority of the American people -- will cost taxpayers $2 trillion. Voters resoundingly rejected these big spending, big government policies in the 2010 elections, yet the president and Democratic leaders still oppose the major spending cuts that are clearly necessary to begin rolling back our $14.3 trillion national debt.
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