Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC-5) speaks for many Americans not just those in the House district that he represents. He is one of the 15 Republican House members who are trying to restore some sanity to the process of our government in Washington. He is one of the few House members who actually stands up and says “No!” to appropriations that do not have a funding mechanism that isn’t some pie in the sky projection put out by the Congressional Budget Office.
Rep. Norman is currently taking aim at so-called bi-partisan funding schemes.
I was speaking with a reporter yesterday about additional funding President Biden now wants for Ukraine, disaster relief, and some other things. She started off one of her questions in an interesting way…
She said, paraphrasing, that disaster relief had historically been a bipartisan effort in Congress. In other words, it wasn’t something Congress questioned the need for or argued about; it was just something we did.
That may be true to an extent, but it’s not just with disaster aid. It’s been that way with COUNTLESS endeavors. Billions for this, billions for that. All of it new spending. Everything is pitched as a noble effort. Everything is said to be one of the “most important issues of our time.”
Yet nowhere in the conversation does anyone ask, “How are we going to pay for this? Whose taxes are going to be increased for this? Or what spending are we going to cut elsewhere to cover this new thing?”
Let’s think about what Ralph Norman is saying. This should be the basic process that all expenditures of our government undergo.
We all have family budgets. If we are going to do something new that will affect the family budget, decisions have to be made about how to re-allocate the family funds to cover this new expenditure. In other words, we decide how we will pay for the new item. It’s basic economics.
However, today, our government does not do this and no one really questions them not doing this. No one holds their feet to the fire.
Norman goes on.
And because the federal government isn’t required to balance the budget, for decades we just keep borrowing money for a lot of this new spending. We’re at the point now where we’re spending over $1 TRILLION more every year than we can possibly take in through taxes.
If we were to increase taxes to the point where it covered all this insane spending, that level of taxation would destroy our economy and send this nation (and world) into a deep, deep recession. And for my Democrat friends, you could literally confiscate 100% of everything the so-called rich have & earn, and it still won’t cover a fraction of this spending.
Furthermore, it’s not like any of us will be alive to pay all this back. Instead, we’re heaping this mountain of debt onto our children and grandchildren. It’s outrageous, and it is immoral. And I’m done with it!
Whether it’s foreign aid, disaster relief, infrastructure, education, the environment, clean energy, etc. – you name it – whatever people are claiming is the most important issue of our time, I’m telling you there’s a bigger, more important issue that overrides every one of those, which is our crippling debt and runaway spending. It is going to ruin this nation.
As I have said repeatedly, absent a national crisis, I’m simply not going to support new spending without offsets to pay for it. Show me where the money will come from, and it better not be off the backs of our children and grandchildren.
Thank you, Rep. Norman for attempting to bring some fiscal sanity to the insane asylum that is Washington DC. Thank you for speaking the truth.