'K. Let's say it's seven months after President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011. You haven't forgotten that, have you? You know, all that talk, all that political wrangling, all the hope that government was finally getting serious about reining in its spending.
Well, how are we doing, seven months later? Surely, we're not running the debt up quite as fast as we were. Right?
Wrong. Read this: Govt. sets record deficit in February - Washington Times.
Seven months after about as much attention was showered on the deficit as has even been showered on it, we have a new one-month record, $229 billion for February. Februaries are not good for the nation's budget, the previous record being $223 billion in February 2011.
I think to say the explanation is that the debt ceiling only limits our ability to pay our bills, not whether we will run up the bills in the first place. The real place to limit the budget is when it is set each year, not when it comes time to pay the bills for things already purchased.
But, I think that is only a partial answer. The Budget Control Act may have authorized the paying of bills, but it did also control spending. In fact, it has been reported that it cut spending more than it raised the debt ceiling.
At any rate, it would be nice if a few Congressmen would show up on the chamber floor Monday morning, waving the news story, and demanding that we immediately revisit the budget and curb current spending.
We now have a record 41 consecutive months of deficit spending. That has got to stop. The previous record was but 11 straight months.
You don't preserve the future by wasting the present. If we are going to turn the deficit around in some future year, we should not be spending at record levels now. The word "stop" has to be put in present tense.
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