The House of Representatives has passed the Cut, Cap and Balance plan in a 234-190 vote. Cut, Cap and Balance includes deep spending cuts to government programs and a balanced budget amendment in return for an increase in the debt ceiling. The legislation will now move over to the Senate where it is unlikely to pass and President Obama said yesterday he would veto the bill if it came to his desk. From Roll Call:
“The president has said now for once he wants a balanced approach. Well, guess what: In Cut, Cap and Balance, he does get a balanced approach,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference earlier in the day. “He gets his increase in the debt limit of $2.4 trillion. What we get are real cuts in spending, and real reforms in place that will make sure that this problem never, ever happens again.”
Cut, Cap and Balance was passed with bipartisan support as Democrats Boren, Cooper, Matheson, McIntyre and Shuler voted in favor. Nine Republicans voted against the plan, including Rep. Michele Bachmann because of her pledge not to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. Bachmann has released a statement:
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion before us. While I embrace the principles of Cut, Cap and Balance, the motion does not go far enough in fundamentally restructuring the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars. The principles found in this bill are a step in the right direction toward the fundamental restructuring we need in the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars.
Along with cutting spending, putting in place enforceable spending caps that put us on a path to balance and passing a balanced budget amendment, we must also repeal and defund ObamaCare.
We must remember that ObamaCare is the largest spending and entitlement program in our nation’s history. That means, at a time when we can least afford it, President Obama added to our spending problem by the trillions. Without its repeal, we cannot have real economic reform.
At a time of trillion-and-a-half-dollar deficits and 9.2 percent unemployment—it was jaw-dropping to hear the President say this past Friday that we need only "modest adjustments" to fix our economy, and to suggest that 80% of the American people want a balanced approach, meaning tax increases, to solve our debt problems.
He also said that, “We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs.” But we have the problems we do because Washington hasn’t been doing its job. And a Balanced Budget Amendment would have kept President Obama from adding more than 4 trillion to our national debt.
The current negotiations over the debt ceiling illustrate exactly what is wrong with Washington.
We should not continue to spend and borrow trillions that we don’t have just because that’s always the way politicians have done things in the past. Those days are over.
The American people have had enough.
The President needs to stop scaring our military and stop threatening default. Last Wednesday, I co-authored a bill that would remove default as an option and guarantee that our military was paid first. We can meet our obligations, keep our bond rating and keep our promises, but we have to make the tough choices now to turn our economy around and put Americans back to work.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member