The United States of America is $31.4 trillion in debt. By the time you read this, it’ll be even higher. For context, $31.4 trillion is more than the value of the economies of China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. It amounts to $236,000 of debt per household or $93,000 in debt for each person in America. If every family in America set aside $1,000 a month to pay off our national debt, it would take us 19 years to pay it off. This is ridiculous, and we can’t keep this up much longer.
One of the key things House Republicans campaigned on last fall was reining in reckless spending and beginning to balance our budget. We’ve been spending WAY beyond our means for many years, and we can’t keep writing checks with money we don’t have. If we keep this up, we will be leaving our children and our grandchildren with a problem that can no longer be solved.
House Republicans are working hard to find a reasonable and responsible solution to this problem, and we are hopeful President Biden will do the right thing and work with us instead of against us. While there is no quick, easy, or painless solution to get us out of the mess we’re in, I do believe it is possible and necessary if we want to put America on a better path.
When they had control, Democrats rammed through so much spending after the last debt limit increase and quickly maxed out the Federal Government’s credit card yet again. Simply put: Federal spending increased by $10 trillion over the last two years, which is a record for a new President. Thankfully, there is a path forward if we work together to solve this issue. We are urging Democrats to work with us on a plan to protect taxpayers and get our spending under control.
Raising the debt limit without cutting spending does nothing more than kick the can down the road and create an even bigger financial crisis to deal with later. Interest payments on our nation’s debt are expected to triple over the next decade, and eventually cost us $1.2 trillion a year.
Make no mistake, House Republicans are focused on bringing our budget on a path toward balance. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to rein in federal spending and finally get our checkbook balanced. The stakes are simply too high for us to sit back and not get this crisis under control.