$15 Trillion and Counting

The Treasury Department makes it official, the United States of America has eclipsed $15 trillion in debt. It's been over 930 days since the Senate has passed a budget, yet that hasn't kept the government from spending at record levels and shifting the financial burden to the next generation. Democrats, not willing to take accountability for the reckless Keynesian spending of this administration, continue to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the wealthy. Using rhetoric that most would mistaken for radicals camping out in Zuccotti Park, the establishment left is failing the American people by engaging in dangerous class warfare. Since when are we a nation of two distinct and separate populations, one wealthy and one struggling to make ends meet, that are in a never-ending conflict for the heart and soul of this country? Since when are the prospects of prosperity for business owners and the middle class mutually exclusive? While President Obama and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would like you to believe this is the case, the simple truth is quite the opposite. America became a nation of hope because of the American Dream. The inextinguishable idea of universal socioeconomic mobility, that in the United States, we have provided more avenues out of poverty, more opportunities for the middle class to become the wealthy 1%, than any other society in human history. This does not occur by taxing the rich to give to the poor, this does not occur by demonizing and over-regulating businesses and job creators, causing profits to erode and hiring to freeze. Put simply, the middle class is the group harmed the most by waging war on the engine of the American economy. This week, the House of Representatives will debate and vote on a clean Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. The measure will force government to live under the same societal rules as everyday Americans. Just as middle class families must make adjustments to assure that money spent does not exceed annual income, the federal government must learn to live within its means. The passage and ratification of a Balanced Budget Amendment is the first step on the road to nationwide, financial recovery. A Balanced Budget Amendment is not a Republican or a Democratic partisan idea, it's a common sense solution to a nonpartisan problem. We cannot continue down this path of fiscal irresponsibility, it is definition of insolvency and a clear example of generational theft. We are witnessing the greatest transfer of wealth in our country's history, not from the middle class the top percent of earners, but from the next generation of Americans, to the current one. The more we live above our means today, the more we will be forced to live below our means in the future. While the situation we are encountering is dire and requires an urgent solutions-based answer, the masts of the ship can be righted with the appropriate response. This debate is a fight for our nation's fiscal future, inaction in this time of crisis, is downright dangerous. 74% of Americans support a Balanced Budget Amendment, it's time to incorporate this simplistic idea of paying our debts forever into the supreme law of this land.