Arnett: A Gift from Boren this Holiday Season

Congressional candidate Dan Arnett issued the following release last night:

A Gift from Boren this Holiday Season

In the season of giving, Dan Boren recently voted to give future generations of Oklahomans a larger share of debt. On December 16, 2009 the House voted 218-214 to raise the limit of debt that the federal government may accrue by $290 billion. Thirty-nine Democrats, mostly blue dogs, and not a single Republican voted for the measure citing that this would allow the federal government to “pile even more irresponsible debt onto future generations.” Nancy Pelosi and House leadership had hoped to pass a $1.8 trillion increase in the debt limit but centrist Democrats opposed doing so without also creating a special commission to reduce the national debt.

The national debt has reached $12,000,000,000,000. Public debt makes up $7.6 trillion of the debt and has been borrowed from citizens and foreign countries. The remaining $4.4 trillion is debt held by the government and is borrowed from the surplus of other government agencies and programs, primarily from the social security trust fund.

The publicly held debt requires interest be paid to the debt holders and this interest is paid with tax payer dollars. In 2009 the interest payments amounted to $209 billion. Taxpayer dollars spent on interest payments is money that is not being spent on internal improvements, defense spending, or being returned to the taxpayer as a surplus.

The current track President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the enablers of their efforts like Representative Boren are leading us on is an unsustainable path. The recession coupled with the excessive spending on programs such as TARP, the bailouts of different private businesses and the auto industry, as well as the massive “stimulus” bill has caused the debt held by the public to grow to 56% of the economy. Spending on entitlement programs is expected to double in size over the next few decades and this will cause the national debt to become 320% of the economy.

In order to provide a better future for the next generation, or at least a future as good as the one past generations of Americans had, Congress should build tighter budget controls, reform entitlement programs, and cut wasteful spending. Representative Boren and his 217 colleagues need to work to lower the deficit, not vote to spend and borrow even more taxpayer dollars.

Being a Boren should not entitle our representative to win re-election when he continually votes the future of his constituents down the tubes. I believe children this year would have preferred a lump of coal in their stocking compared to what Mr. Boren just sent them for Christmas.

Arnett is running in the Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District. The GOP primary will be held on July 27, 2010. Fellow candidates are Daniel Edmonds, Howard Houchen, and Charles Thompson.