GOP Leadership Let America Down

I wasn’t surprised when I saw that my opponent, Congresswoman Cheri Bustos (D-Illinois), voted to increase the debt limit with no spending cuts, spiraling us further down a path of unsustainable debt. She is a liberal, and liberals love to spend taxpayer money without worrying about the consequences. So while I’m obviously disappointed in her vote, I’m not shocked. This is who she is. This is what she does. She is a tax and spend liberal, pure and simple.

But when I found out that Republican leadership brought a clean debt ceiling increase to the House floor with no spending cuts tied to it? I couldn’t believe it.

What are we doing? Why are the leaders of our party–the party that is supposed to stand for balanced budgets and fiscal sanity–giving up on the fight? Why did our party’s leadership essentially caucus with the Democrats in order to work against us?

In one fell swoop, Republican leadership killed both the “Hastert Rule” and the “Boehner Rule.” The Hastert Rule required Republican speakers to need a majority of the caucus to support any bill introduced to the House floor. The Boehner Rule required that any debt ceiling increase be accompanied by an equal amount of spending cuts.

Both of these defining “rules” of this Republican-led House of Representatives just got thrown out the window.

Republican leadership seems to think it’s time to pack our bags and go home. But that’s not an option. We have a responsibility. This great nation is facing more than $17 trillion in debt, while dealing with a historically high debt-to-GDP ratio.

We’re in deep trouble, folks.

We have a responsibility to our kids and our grandkids to solve this debt crisis and start paying our bills. If we don’t solve the problem now, the next generation of Americans will face dramatically higher taxes, fewer government services, and bankrupted versions of Social Security and Medicare. This is a future we cannot allow.

We owe it to future Americans to pass on the same American dream that was passed on to us.

We’re already starting to see some of the negative side effects of our government’s spending problem. Cost of living continues to increase, wages continue to go nowhere, and middle class families are left feeling the squeeze.

And it will inevitably get worse. If we choose to do nothing, which is exactly what Congress chose to do this week, we will eventually face an economic collapse unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It time for Washington to get serious and get to work before it’s too late.

This debt ceiling vote was a lost opportunity, and we’re running out of opportunities. Republican leadership failed, and that can’t happen again. Future generations of Americans are counting on us.