National Debt

www.vanforussenate.com

Issues

National Debt

No legislation may be passed that is proven not to be in line with the Enumerated Powers Act, requiring Congress to prove it’s in line with the Constitution or it can’t be passed or even brought to the floor for a vote, but must be killed in committee … read more

Issues > National Debt > Read More

We must adhere to the constitution with all legislation. Every piece of legislation must have the constitution article and section cited before it leaves committee and is brought to the floor.

Our Financial Security is at the brink of disaster. Our elected officials for generations have put us all on a path to destruction.  We have a responsibility as Americans to put an end to this type of fiscal irresponsibility.

Our foreign debt of over 30% is held by foreign governments, many of which are our enemies – if we can remember what that means. The interest we pay them funds many of the projects for their citizens, while we borrow from them to keep our streets safe and fires out at a rate of .42 of every dollar we spend. This is a recipe for bankruptcy, if not criminal, and certainly anti-American.

D.C. spends our money without any type of plan or responsible foresight, as we continue down the road to total financial collapse, similar to that of our so-called European allies – and they’re broke and headed for default. Then we will be expected clean up the mess as we have done twice before in the 20th century.

Our Enemy,China, is one of the biggest holders of our debt – over $1.2 trillion of our foolish debt.

We also owe over $900 billion to our allyJapan.Englandholds $300 billion of our debt.  We pay close to $560 million a week toChina. Just think what we could do with that amount of money to improve schools, roads etc. At the rate we’re continuing to borrow and spend we’ll never be able to pay this money back to any of them, so we’ll default.

The interest we pay on our debt today is more than our past years’ entire Federal Budgets. So tell me we’re not out of control and we the people need to put a stop to this now.

We must vote in a Balanced Budget Amendment with no more than 18% of GDP. The only exception would be a real national emergency such as a war/ floods or other such emergencies, and given only when asked for by the states.

In Addition, we need to do what many successful businesses do, which is simply Zero Base Budgeting, rather than continue with the Base Line Budgeting we now use. Base Line budgeting automatically allows all government to grow from the previous year whether effective or not, rather than starting from zero each fiscal year.

We must not only stop borrowing but also stop all the spending we do in the form of subsidies to all types of projects whether to farmers not to grow food, oil companies, museums, Public TV, and all Foreign Aid, just to name a few.

We must downsize our government now, by putting a 5 year freeze on all hiring and a 2 year freeze on all salaries and bonuses of any type. This will bring a reduction of 10% just from attrition with people retiring and leaving for other jobs.

We must also begin to downsize by another 2% per year for 5 years, thereby bringing the government’s size down by another 10% over a 5 year period. With the aforementioned hiring freeze, we get a total reduction of 20% over 5 years.

We also need to close the Department of Education and return the operation of our schools back to the states.

We must close the Department of Energy, which was started during the failed Carter administration to make us energy self-sufficient when we were importing only 30% of our energy. Now we import over 70%. Therefore the Department of Energy has failed and must be terminated.

We must return federal-owned lands back to the states as well.

The EPA must be eliminated because their regulations have no basis in law and are creating havoc on the economy.

Employees who lose jobs due to departments being eliminated will be allowed to transfer to another department within the Federal Government, IF an opening exists and IF they are qualified for the job to which they transfer.

The excess money we realize must be used to pay down the debt and not for any additional spending.

The Departments that need closing, I might add, are also UNCONSTITUTIONAL and therefore have no merit in the first place, so this shouldn’t present a problem for aConstitutionalRepublic.