A Quote by Fred Upton
While the Left seems obsessed with increasing taxes and spending even more money, conservatives have focused more heavily on the need for spending restraint and entitlement reform - primarily to preserve and protect the future of the Medicare program. Overlooked in all of this is the future of Medicaid.
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In fact, entitlement spending on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up 54% of federal spending, and spending is projected to double within the next decade. Medicare is growing by 9% annually, and Medicaid by 8% annually.
Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come.
Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending. Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other people's money.
You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'
The most important area for spending restraint is entitlement reform.
Conservatives in general, and even so called Tea Party conservatives, are not against transportation spending. Indeed, interstate commerce is one purpose of interstate highways and byways, and is one of the things the federal government is actually supposed to spend our tax dollars on. What conservatives are opposed to is needless and excessive spending, pork-barrel spending, deficit spending, spending to pick winners and losers among American individuals and corporations, and spending to promote the social and economic whims of the Washington few.
Obama has demonstrated no desire to make tough choices. Americans demand a more efficient, effective government, but his budget calls for more taxes and more spending. It employs deceptive accounting gimmicks but does nothing to tackle long-term entitlement problems, nothing to save Medicare or fix Social Security.
I'm not advocating spending less on the elderly, but I am strongly advocating spending more on kids while also putting the country on a sound, long-term fiscal trajectory. To do that, we have to reduce the rate of growth of entitlement-related expenditures and add more revenues.
The Medicaid program has been on the books for more than 50 years. The Graham-Cassidy bill proposes a dramatic, sweeping change in the way that program would be allocated and administered. And a program which does need reform, but we need careful reform. And I don't think this bill does that.
Our spending priorities are clearly in question when we are increasing bond indebtedness on pet projects such as museums while our infrastructure is allegedly failing. Mississippians are spending more on basic needs than ever. They don’t need their state government making that worse.
Obama and his Democrats need to be placed on the defensive. They are the primary drivers of this spending; they are the obstructers of entitlement reform and the national debt continues to burn while they fiddle.
The central question is whether Medicare and Medicaid should remain entitlement programs guaranteeing a certain amount of care, as Democrats believe, or become defined contribution programs in which federal spending is capped, as Republicans suggest.
Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.
You can tax the rich to pay for current spending. You can even tax them very heavily. But when the rich look forward for decades and see nothing but increasing taxes, debts, and government control of their businesses and assets - they will leave.
The Congressional Budget Office tells us that Medicare spending has increased fivefold in the past 42 years, dramatically more than all other categories of federal spending.
Republicans' focus on defunding or scaling back Obamacare - an unpopular entitlement program - rather than entitlements generally, namely Social Security and Medicare, has raised questions about their true objective. But critics forget that spending is fungible.
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