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Mail
Magazine 24...
A
Glimmer
of Hope for the American Dream
by Mike
Brownfield
May 20,2012
On
Wednesday in the Senate, America bore witness to the glaringly obvious
division
in Washington, as stark as the contrast between high noon in the desert
and
midnight in the mountains. On the one hand is Majority Leader Harry
Reid’s
(D-NV) failure to pass a budget over the past three years. And on the
other
hand is leadership from conservative senators and representatives who
have put
forward serious proposals to rescue America from its debt and spending
crises.
That
division was laid bare inside the Capitol yesterday afternoon as the
U.S.
Senate voted 99-0 against President Barack Obama’s budget — a plan that
spends
more, taxes more, and slashes our military, all without making any
attempt to
reform America’s entitlement mess.
Compare the
President’s proposal — and Reid’s total lack of a proposal — with the
four
plans offered by conservatives in Congress, chief among them being
Senator Mike
Lee’s (R-UT) budget, which mirrors the bold and thorough reforms The
Heritage
Foundation first proposed in its Saving the American Dream plan. That
includes
limiting the size of the federal government, reforming entitlement
programs,
and simplifying the federal tax code in an effort to restore our
nation’s
economic prosperity and ensure that future generations are not saddled
with
today’s debt.
Also
important are plans proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul
Ryan
(R-WI), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), all of
which
acknowledge that America is facing a fiscal crisis that cannot be
wished away,
taxed away, or passed on to future generations. Though the Senate did
not pass
any of those plans yesterday, each of them garnered significantly more
support
than the President’s “alternative,” which did not even win one vote
from his
own party.
The liberal
leadership in the Senate is utterly bereft of ideas, and they’re also
determined to prevent ideas from being offered. In a speech yesterday,
Senator
Ron Johnson (R-WI) explained, “Republicans are proving that we are
willing to
be held accountable to the American people by putting a plan on the
table and
showing the American people what we would do to try and get our fiscal
house in
order.”
There are
certain things the American people should expect when they send
representatives
to Washington. Standing on the sidelines while the nation swirls into a
fiscal
disaster is not one of them. Speaking from the Senate floor yesterday,
Senator
Lee expressed it best:
Doing
nothing is no longer an option! Although this President and this
Congress have
attempted, by not having a budget, to convince the American people that
doing
nothing is the only option.
Ignoring
our broken entitlement programs, maintaining our complex tax code, and
pretending we don’t have a spending problem ensures that our economy
will never
truly recover and the American dream will not be restored.
Thanks to
Senator Lee, Representative Ryan, Senator Toomey and others like them,
there
are proposals, ideas, and plans to cut spending, fix entitlements,
reform the
tax code, and make sure that America is properly defended. Lee is
right, doing
nothing is not an option. But with the efforts of conservatives in
Congress,
there are plenty of good options on the table. If only their colleagues
would
join them in taking action.
Source:
blog.heritage.org
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