With all of the talk about the impending “fiscal cliff”, it’s a good time to step back from the trees and take a good look at the forest and how we got here to begin with.

For the last sixty years or so, Congress has been on an ever growing spending binge, guided by a political philosophy that government should play an ever growing role in our everyday lives – a role which requires more of our substance.  In fact, it increasingly requires more than we can spare in any given year and maintain a healthy economy.  So we borrow the rest, year after year.

This year’s federal deficit is 1.2 trillion, last year’s was 1.2 trillion and next year’s is projected to be over one trillion as well.  Our national debt, the sum total of our annual deficits, is well over 16 trillion.  And all of that is on top of the tens of trillions of dollars in “off-the-books” future obligations to entitlement programs.

When you are in a hole, stop digging, or so the advice goes.  But what do you do when voters keep electing politicians who won’t put down the shovel, but hold to the insane notion that we can somehow dig our way out?  read more »

- By Senator Jim Demint

Democrats on the so-called “Super Committee” have demonstrated why their party is disqualifying itself from any rational discussion when it comes to cutting spending.

The deficit committee was tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, but Democrats refused to make any kind of deal unless it included more than a trillion dollars of tax increases. One of their proposals, that remember is supposed to cut spending, contained billions of dollars in new stimulus spending! Despite the overwhelming evidence that the stimulus didn’t work, they are committed to funding more boondoggles big and small, like Solyndra and research for exotic ants and monkeys.

It is stunning. To meet their meager target, the Super Committee didn’t even need to cut a single penny from the budget, but only slow the rate of increase in spending by a fraction. Rather than letting the country rack up $23.4 trillion of debt by 2021, the Super Committee only needed to to keep it rising to $21.3 trillion. Still Democrats refused. $6 trillion in new deficit spending wasn’t enough for them. To Democrats, the answer of when to cut spending is simple: never.

The federal government is now $15 trillion in debt, the country is mired in recession, unemployment is at record highs, but Democrats believe taxpayers must sacrifice more so Washington doesn’t have to. Even on the brink of fiscal collapse, Democrats want to take more from American families and businesses so the government can spend more, not less. That, in a nutshell, is why the Super Committee failed and why Washington is incapable of making any of the necessary reforms to get the economy moving again.  read more »

Military strategy dictates that if you decide “where” a fight will take place, then you will be able to choose the ground that is most favorable to you.  The same holds true in politics.

As debate in Washington rages over the deficit, the debt and the debt limit, Republicans in Congress need to keep in mind that the table for the 2012 election is being set – and a fight over big, expensive government offers the GOP the perfect opportunity to choose their own ground.

The 2010 midterm elections offer some instruction on this point.  According to a Gallup poll, that election set a modern day record for the highest percentage of people who claimed that they were “more enthusiastic” about voting just prior to election day, (53%).  Further, it represented the largest “enthusiasm” gap between self-identified Republicans vs. Democrats – with 63% of Republicans saying they were more enthusiastic, vs. 44% of Democrats.

This begs the question, what were they excited about (or not)?  Of course the answer is government – the new Obama brand of bigger, more intrusive and expensive government, to be specific.  Republicans couldn’t wait to kick it in the teeth, and far fewer Democrats were interested in defending the policies of the man they so enthusiastically put in office just two years earlier.

In other words, the party whose voters are more enthusiastic is likely to win, which is all the more reason to stay focused on the conservative issues that excite our base.  read more »

Shocking, amazing, the Federal Government accumulates an additional $43,759.51 of debt every second, every second. This is what the average American earns per year before taxes.

I encourage everyone to check out the Federal debt at www.usdebtclock.org and watch it for one minute. After watching for one minute, ask yourself two questions: Does the United States Federal Government have a spending problem? Should Congress vote to raise the debt ceiling?

I cannot imagine anyone would not want, better yet, demand the drastic cuts that are needed to slow the clock, and raising the debt ceiling to allow even more borrowing is going to make the debt clock go faster.

Democrats and our Campaigner-in-Chief are hell bent on using scare tactics and baseless rhetoric to achieve their goal, raise taxes.

In yesterdays speech on Facebook, the President calls “their” plan “radical” and not “particularly courageous”. It's a sad state of affairs that every time the President speaks that I am finding myself going to www.factcheck.org to find out what is the truth and what is yet another scare tactic or complete untruth. It's ridiculous and sad that there is not enough faith in what our country’s leader says because he has not kept the promises he made to the American people.  read more »