The House of Representatives is likely to vote on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling on Tuesday of this week, right after the Memorial Day break. Republican leaders plan to oppose this increase, but they need all the support they can get and as many votes as possible on board for fiscal responsibility.

You can help send a message on this vitally important issue by reminding your representative that the voters are looking towards 2012 and fiscal responsibility and keeping our national debt under control are your top priorities.

The idea that we would consider increasing our national debt beyond the current $14.3 trillion is irresponsible and downright frightening. We need to learn to control spending and we need to start now. No more blank checks for bureaucrats and pork projects. Let’s draw a line in the sand and tell them we’ve had enough.

Right now we owe $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. That’s completely unsustainable. Let’s end the War on Drugs and end the War on Terror and make some serious cuts in discretionary spending. The first step to doing that is just to stop the spending. Then Sen. Rand Paul (RLC-KY) and Sen. Pat Toomey (RLC-PA) have both offered superior plans for balancing the budget and we should move forward with their ideas.

For details on this issue see our previous statement on the issue and our board resolution opposing a debt ceiling increase. The bill which will be voted on is HR1954.

We urge you to write or call your Representative (Democrat or Republican) on Tuesday morning and demand that they vote against raising the debt ceiling. You can use the convenient form below to find out how best to contact them.

Please help support our work to bring our government under control and restore our liberties by donating using the PayPal link below. You can also join the RLC to become part of our network of member-activists. To make a recurring monthly donation try this link: Enter the maximum amount to pay each month: $ USD Sign up for

I hope you can take time to call and email your Representatives on Tuesday morning. Tell them to hold out and resist raising the debt ceiling and look for ways to cut spending and pay down the debt instead. We can’t afford to wait for decades or even years to get this situation under control.

Just click on this link to find contact information for your representatives.

For Immediate Release: May 17th, 2011
Contact: Dave Nalle, National Chair: (512) 656-8011 or chairman@rlc.org

REPUBLICAN LIBERTY CAUCUS CALLS ON CONGRESS TO HOLD THE LINE ON DEBT
Congress Should Cut Spending Now, Balance the Budget and Not Raise the Debt Ceiling

AUSTIN, TX – Ironically, on Friday the 13th, the government ran out of money.  Some numbers were juggled to buy a few months of time, but this means that this week the House of Representatives has to decide what to do about the chronic problem of spending which exceeds government income.  The easy “solution” promoted by government bureaucrats and many special interests is to raise the debt ceiling yet again, despite the fact that it already stands at $14.3 trillion. The Republican Liberty Caucus believes that the fear mongering about the debt ceiling is not justified and that we should not be bullied into taking on more debt when there are other responsible solutions that don’t merely kick the can further down the road.

Last week, the Republican Liberty Caucus board unanimously passed a resolution opposing any increase in the debt ceiling, and endorsing immediate spending reductions as a sensible solution to this crisis.  The resolution demands that Congress “shut down non-essential government programs and limit operational expenses to incoming revenue until a balanced budget can be passed.”

The resolution is accompanied by explanations of the situation for our members, and clear proposals explaining how to implement immediate spending reductions without causing a default or major crisis.  By paying debt service first and then prioritizing other spending, essential government services can be maintained.  Cutting funding to some low priority programs will buy time to implement the reductions necessary to balance spending with incoming revenue on a month to month basis until the Congress can put together a balanced budget.

“Congress hasn’t been doing its job to produce a balanced budget.   Hitting the debt ceiling ought to be a wake-up call for them,” said RLC board member Bill Westmiller.  “This may be a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity to apply immediate solutions that will bring spending under control right now and stop putting it off and making the situation worse. It’s like they’re waiting for some magical pixie to fix our budget crisis and plan to just keep spending at an ever increasing level until that magic moment comes.”

“We’re putting on a full-press to make Congress aware of our concerns. The RLC is tirelessly promoting a message of fiscal responsibility and encouraging supporters to contact their representatives. It’s time we demand that they stop mortgaging the prosperity of future generations to pay for past political deals,” said RLC Executive Secretary Corie Whalen.

“We may not win this battle, but the war to restore liberty and fiscal responsibility will go on,” said RLC National Chairman Dave Nalle.  “The entire House is up for reelection next year  and how they perform in this situation and what they do about balancing the budget in the next year will tell us who to support and who to oppose.  A lot of seats changed hands in 2010.  Based on the lack of fiscal responsibility shown by  congressional leaders in this situation, 2010 may have just been a preview of 2012.”

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See the full text of the resolution at http://www.rlc.org/2011/05/17/resolution-in-opposition-to-raising-the-debt-ceiling/

Further information on this campaign can be found at http://www.rlc.org/2011/05/15/tell-congress-to-hold-the-line-on-debt/

To contact a local or national spokesperson call 512-656-8011

The Republican Liberty Caucus is a 527 political organization founded in 1991, committed to protecting the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise that once defined the Republican Party. The Caucus recruits and endorses candidates who support our agenda, works to elect limited-government Republicans to political office, and seeks to change the direction of the Republican Party to reflect members’ vision of liberty, peace and prosperity.  The RLC currently has local affiliates in more than 40 states and hundreds of endorsed office holders nationwide, including in the US House and Senate.

Last week the Republican Liberty Caucus national board voted unanimously to pass a resolution in opposition to raising the debt ceiling. You can find more information on this issue in a series of other articles on this site. The press release is part of a full campaign on this issue, including an email and phone campaign to Congress and promotion of the issue in the national press.

The text of the resolution reads:

Resolution:

WHEREAS government should tax citizens only at the minimal level necessary to fund the essential functions of government; and

WHEREAS the funding of unnecessary government spending from direct taxation and excessive debt is an assault on the natural property rights of all taxpayers and on the future liberty of our children; and

WHEREAS the national debt has tripled in the last decade and is expected to exceed 100% of Gross Domestic Product by the end of the year; and

WHEREAS Congress has raised the debt ceiling three times in the last two years; and

WHEREAS Congress has continued to raise the debt ceiling time and time again, showing no capacity for fiscal discipline or deficit reduction;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Republican Liberty Caucus believes:

Congress should not raise the debt ceiling in 2011. Instead, Congress should shut down non-essential government programs and limit operational expenses to incoming revenue until a balanced budget can be passed.

As a consumer you know that you can’t spend money without any limit and take on endless credit without eventually getting in over your head. Congress doesn’t seem to understand this. They’re getting ready to raise the Debt Ceiling and write themselves another blank check. The problem is that when they run up debt we pay the price and it gets passed on with interest to our kids and their kids.

As a nation we’re in well over our heads and this is not the time to take on more debt. We don’t have to raise the debt ceiling and despite the fearmongering holding the line on debt will not lead to default or disaster or other negative consequences. All we have to do is make the cuts our government can easily afford as we go. Government revenue will keep coming in at more than 85% of what they want to spend and all they have to do is limit their spending to that level, paying interest on the debt first so we don’t hurt our credit rating. It just takes a little leadership with some backbone.

We urge you to write or call your Senators and Representatives to encourage them to vote against raising the debt ceiling. You can copy and paste the text below and send that to them, or modify it or replace it with your own thoughts. Use the link at the end to find the addresses to email or to get the phone number for their offices.

Dear Senator/Representative X:

I want our government to live within its means the same way that I have to. It doesn’t make any sense to spend more than it takes in through tax and other revenues. Just adding on more debt isn’t the answer and will lead to a ballooning debt which will become harder and harder to pay back. Government needs to tighten its belt the same way that citizens are with fewer jobs and higher prices.

Please. Instead of raising the debt ceiling, take the lead among your colleagues in calling for immediate ongoing spending reductions to keep spending within the limits of available revenue. Pay the service on the debt first, then necessary entitlements like medicare and social security and then prioritize the rest of the spending based on real need. There are so many things which government does which we can live without or do ourselves or through our state governments, it shouldn’t be hard to find places to save. You might start by looking at our current overseas wars, agricultural subsidies and the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security and Commerce.

The days of irresponsible government in this country have to be over. The people want less government, not more, and we are no longer willing to pay such a high price for services we never asked for. We want a return to Thomas Jefferson’s idea of “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

I hope I can count on you to justify my past and future support by taking the lead in holding the line on debt and putting our government back on the right track.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

Just click on this link to find contact info for your representatives.

There has been a lot of scaremongering about what might happen if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, which would allow the government to borrow even more money to pay for its inability to spend within its means. While there are many aspects of our budget crisis which should make you scared, the consequences of freezing the debt ceiling is not one of them.

The debt ceiling is a legislatively-set limit on how much money the government is willing to borrow to add to the deficit. Right now it is capped at $14.1 trillion and we are right up against that limit. Each month we add about $40 billion to the total defici. That means we spent $41 billion more in the month than the government took in as revenue during that month. That overage is about 13% of total spending for the month.

So when we reach that $14.1 billion cap, only the 13% of total government spending which is paid with borrowed money would be in jeopardy. Eighty seven percent (87%) of what the government does would not be impacted at all. The president and the Treasury Department would then have to decide where to cut spending to cover that 13% over incoming revenue.

The scare tactic here is the claim that the response to this would be to default on our debts, thereby destroying the nation’s credit and leading to a plunge in all of our financial markets. The fallacy is that capping spending doesn’t mean there isn’t still money to spend. The government would still have plenty of incoming revenue and the ability to prioritize how it spends that money.

Interest on the debt is about half as much right now per month as the amount of deficit per month. To keep from defaulting, the government would just need to make sure that the 6.5% of the budget which goes to interest is part of the 87% which is paid rather than the 13% which needs to be cut.

We would only default on the debt if the president and his staff at the Treasury Department deliberately chose to pay other bills and not pay the interest. They’re unlikely to do that and provoke the crisis it would create and would reluctantly cut elsewhere instead. In fact, just to be safe, RLC-endorsed Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) has introduced the Full Faith and Credit Act, which would require that debt service be paid first before other spending just to guarantee that we would not default. So if we chose to not raise the debt ceiling, defaulting on the debt would not be one of the outcomes.

Other scare tactics include claiming that Medicaid or Medicare or pensions or veterans programs or other vital services would be cut. But, again, that would be at the discretion of the executive branch. It would not be at all difficult to cut the necessary money without touching those programs, especially in the short term. You just need to find about $40 billion a month to cut — that’s less than 1.5% of the total budget.

Just ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya would save enough money to keep us from going over budget for almost a year. The rest could easily be made up with smaller cuts. For example, RLC-endorsed Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has identified $42 billion we could cut from agricultural programs. That would buy us another month. He has also suggested $16 billion in cuts to the Commerce Department and $27 billion in cuts to the Department of Energy. Add those and you’ve bought more than a month more without even shutting those departments down.  Measures like furloughing federal workers one day a week could buy even more time, so the crisis is nowhere near as immediate as some would like you to think.

Congress has already raised the debt ceiling three times in the last two years. That level of growth in borrowing and spending is absolutely unsustainable. Right now our deficit actually seems relatively small at an anual rate of 15%, but projections show it ballooning to 40% of the current budget within a decade. That’s what we should really be afraid of, not a cap on spending which would just necessitate some reasonable spending cuts.

The only way to stop that explosion of debt is to stop borrowing and start paying back what we already owe. The first step towards that objective is to not raise the debt ceiling. Congress and the executive branch have already shown that, if you give them money, they will spend it. If they cannot be responsible then maybe we can force them to control themselves by not giving them any more money.

The National Committee of the Republican Liberty Caucus voted unanimously to pass the following resolution in opposition to any increase in the federal debt ceiling.

WHEREAS government should tax citizens only at the minimal level necessary to fund the essential functions of government; and

WHEREAS the funding of unnecessary government spending from direct taxation and excessive debt is an assault on the natural property rights of all taxpayers and on the future liberty of our children; and

WHEREAS the national debt has tripled in the last decade and is expected to exceed 100% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the end of the year; and

WHEREAS Congress has raised the debt ceiling three times in the last two years; and

WHEREAS Congress has continued to raise the debt ceiling time and time again, showing no capacity for fiscal discipline or deficit reduction;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Congress should not raise the debt ceiling in 2011.

Instead, Congress should shut down non-essential government programs and limit operational expenses to incoming revenue until a balanced budget can be passed.

We urge our members and state affiliates across the country to contact their Representatives and Senators to urge opposition to any increase in the debt ceiling and demand responsible cuts to end deficit spending/reduce the debt.

Before releasing his budget publicly, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) gave Senate Republicans a private briefing about the plan in early April. During that meeting, RLC Advisory Board member Rand Paul, a Tea Party-backed freshman from Kentucky, challenged Ryan in front of the rest of their party, according to two GOP aides briefed on the meeting.

Sen. Paul said Rep. Ryan’s plan did not do enough to cut spending and relied on too much deficit spending for too long, according to the aides.

Ryan gave it right back to him. The budget committee chairman went directly after Sen. Paul’s five-year budget plan, which he had clearly studied closely. Ryan’s criticism went roughly like this: yes, he said, you slash the Department of Education and make fast, dramatic cuts, but you don’t deal with entitlement spending. In the out years the deficit would sky-rocket, he said, making an air chart with his hand moving through the air and pointing sharply upward.

A GOP aide sympathetic to Sen. Paul said that Rep. Ryan’s criticism unfairly isolated a single part of his plan and treated as if it represented Paul’s global approach to deficit reduction. Paul does plan to announce a proposal for cutting entitlement spending, the aide said, but wanted to put the domestic spending plan out first.

The private challenge from Sen. Paul reflects criticisms of Rep. Ryan’s plan Paul also made to HuffPost. Paul thinks that Ryan’s approach doesn’t go nearly far enough.

“Here’s how bad it is: The president’s proposal, his ten year plan, is 46 trillion in spending. Paul Ryan’s alternative, which everybody is going crazy over, is still 40 trillion dollars in spending,” Paul told HuffPost. “My problem with the whole thing is that all of the proposals basically increase spending.”

Rand Paul said that Paul Ryan’s plan relies too heavily on deficit spending. “The president adds, I think, 11 trillion to the gross debt and Ryan’s plan adds eight trillion. I don’t think anybody up here realizes that we can’t withstand trillion dollar annual deficits,” he said.

A Ryan spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The House recently approved Ryan’s spending plan, but it was rejected by the Senate. A compromise budget expires at the end of September.

(Source: Ryan Grim at Huffington Post)

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote the following letter urging his fellow lawmakers to vote against compromise.

__________________________________________________

To my fellow Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives,

The much-ballyhooed 2011 continuing resolution will leave the federal government spending $1.6 trillion more than it takes in. Despite descriptions of cuts, the 2011 Congress will spend more than it did in 2010 and with a larger annual deficit. It is the third year in a row with a record deficit.

Only in Washington can a budget that spends more than it did the year before, with a larger deficit, be portrayed as “cutting.”

The only “good news” from the 2011 CR would be that it adds less debt than President Obama’s plan, but it does not appreciably change the accumulation of debt.

Last November, riding a wave of voter discontent with out-of-control government spending, nearly 100 new House and Senate Republicans were sent to Washington to put an end to Big Government.

Most of us are small-government conservatives, who truly believe the size and scope of our federal government needs to be reversed. But being serious about this mission requires being honest with those who sent us; and it requires standing up when our leaders themselves abandoned their promises.

House Republicans were all voted in on the promise to pass a spending bill that cut $100 billion, a modest proposal when you consider our estimated $1.65 trillion deficit.

House leaders promptly floated a 2011 spending cut of less than $33 billion in January. House freshman rightly balked, saying that is not what they promised and not why they came to Washington. So the leaders went back to the drawing board and proposed a better, but still inadequate, $61 billion.

Fast-forward to last week. What numbers were the House, Senate and White House officials negotiating over? The difference between $33 billion and $40 billion. Note that the original House proposal somehow morphed into the White House/Senate Democrat proposal. If that doesn’t show the complete failure in the initial House proposal from January, I don’t know what does.

Finally, with great hand-wringing and drama, negotiations settled on just over $38.5 billion, or roughly $6 billion more than the freshmen objected to in January.

I didn’t come to Washington to settle for $6 billion less in spending than if I had not been here. I suspect most of my freshmen House friends didn’t either. That’s barely half a day’s spending at our current pace. This discussion is simply not credible or serious, and unfortunately, it has not been from the beginning, as the House leadership has made clear.

Think about it another way before you vote: The entire budget cut plans skim 3 percent off the top of our historic $1.65 trillion deficit. That means the side of Big Government got 97 percent of what they want.

I prefer to be on the other side. The side of the people who sent us here to Washington to do something. To cut spending. To save our economy. To move toward a balanced budget.

I will vote a resounding NO this week to this so-called deal. And I urge my colleagues, if they are serious about cutting government spending, to do the same.

Republican Liberty Caucus Advisory Board member Congressman Ron Paul had stern criticisms of the Paul Ryan budget proposal. According to Dr. Paul,

“We don’t have a king today, but, unfortunately, I think we’re drifting to a point that our big government is king — and the government tells us what we can do and be responsible for us. And, if we don’t have a house, they’ll give us a house. If we don’t have education, they’ll give us free education. If we’re hungry, we get food stamps. And deficits don’t matter. And if you need money, you print the money. And we have this moral obligation to police the world. It goes on and on … the king will take care of us.”

Released last week, the Paul Ryan budget has been praised by some conservatives. Many on the left have said Ryan’s plan is unfair to the elderly and the poor — who would also be affected by Ryan’s approach to Medicare and Medicaid — and benefits corporate interests and the wealthy. Ryan’s budget is set to pass the GOP-controlled House this week.

Paul, who will turn 76 this summer, said Ryan’s plan doesn’t go nearly far enough toward dismantling the welfare state. “We are dealing with a problem in Washington as a budgetary accounting problem and that’s not it. It’s a philosophy problem. What is the philosophy of government? What should the role of government be?”

The Congressman went on to question the role of government in the economy and welfare system. “(Paul) Ryan doesn’t reject (the) notion (of a government-run welfare system). I do.”

Congressman Paul also criticized spending on “maintaining our empire” and “being the policeman of the world.”

“All great societies have ended for foreign policy reasons,” Paul said. “That’s what brought the Soviets down.” Paul, a likely 2012 Presidential candidate, said he also opposes raising the nation’s federal debt limit.

The Republican Liberty Caucus of Wisconsin has been critical of Congressman Paul Ryan for his previous support of Big Government.

Here is a summary of what the bipartisan agreement in Congress on the 2011 budget compromise gained Republicans:

• The largest spending cut in U.S. history. The agreement will immediately cut $38.5 billion in federal spending – the largest spending cut in American history in terms of dollars – just months after President Obama asked Congress for a spending “freeze” that would result in no cuts.

• Hundreds of billions in spending cuts over the next decade. The agreement will cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal budget over the next decade – “real money,” as the Wall Street Journal editorial board recently noted.

• An end to the “Stimulus” Spending Binge. The agreement begins to reverse the “stimulus” spending binge that began in 2009 – signaling the official end of a period of unprecedented government intervention that former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economists say hurt job creation in America by crowding out private investment.

• Guarantees Senate Vote on Repeal of Obamacare. The agreement reached with Senate Democrats guarantees a Senate debate and vote on legislation that would repeal President Obama’s government takeover of health care in its entirety. The House passed such legislation in January as part of the Pledge to America.

• New Tools in the Fight to Repeal Obamacare. The agreement will generate new tools for the fight to repeal Obamacare by requiring numerous studies that will force the Obama Administration to reveal the true impact of the law’s mandates, including a study of how individuals and families will see increased premiums as a result of certain Obamacare mandates; a full audit of all the waivers that the Obama Administration has given to firms and organizations – including unions – who can’t meet the new annual coverage limits; a full audit of what’s happening with the comparative effectiveness research funding that was in Obamacare and the president’s failed “stimulus” spending bill; and a report on all of the contractors who have been hired to implement the law and the costs to taxpayers of such contracts.

• Denial of Additional Funding to the IRS. The Obama administration has sought increased federal funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – money that could be used to hire additional agents to enforce the administration’s agenda on a variety of issues. This increased funding is denied in the agreement.

• A Guarantee of Senate Vote and Debate On Defunding Planned Parenthood.  The agreement with Senate Democrats guarantees a Senate debate and vote on legislation that would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

• Ban of Taxpayer-Funded Abortion in DC. The agreement includes a complete ban on federal funding of abortion in the District of Columbia, applying the pro-life principles of the Hyde Amendment (“D.C. Hyde”).

• Mandatory Audits of the New Job-Crushing Bureaucracy Set Up Under Dodd-Frank. The agreement subjects the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the job-destroying Dodd-Frank law to yearly audits by both the private sector and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to monitor its impact on the economy, including its impact on jobs, by examining whether sound cost-benefit analyses are being used with rulemakings.