Tom Leppert

Proud to Support Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Pat Toomey's Budget Proposals

America is facing a dire fiscal situation we can only escape by electing leaders with experience making the tough calls. I'm proud to be the candidate in this race who has spoken out fully in support of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity,' which takes on issues others deem too heated to discuss in Washington or confront on the campaign trail. We will not achieve solvency for entitlements, let alone our country, until elected officials show the courage to put their political careers on the line to reach a balanced budget and preserve entitlements. Paul Ryan's plan looks toward the future and is the answer for our country's long-term fiscal health. I would vote for it.

In the short-term, however, I believe we must confront realities that will require us to tighten our belts faster. The fate of American prosperity will be determined over the course of the next ten years. Either we continue on our current path and doom future generations to foot a bill that will leave them with a debt too high to surmount and resources too few to prosper, or we say enough is enough, get America back on track, and continue on as not only the greatest nation the world has ever known but also a beacon to the rest of the world. Conservatives will ultimately pass a Balanced Budget Amendment and Paul Ryan's budget, and right now, I believe we also must pass Senator Pat Toomey's plan to balance the budget within ten years without raising taxes.

Senator Toomey returns non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels. His plan also promotes economic growth by lowering marginal tax rates and simplifying the tax code while eliminating special-interest tax loopholes. Obamacare's spending, taxes, and entitlements will be repealed by this budget, and it will implement a Medicaid block grant program to the states, reform medical malpractice, and permanantly reform the sustainable growth rate to Medicare, preventing devastating cuts to doctors.

While Senate Democrats refuse to propose any budget at all, Republicans have now offered two bold plans to move our country forward. I give my support to both. There is, of course, far more that must be done to turn our country around, and we must continue working for more reforms moving forward. But these plans are the cornerstones for saving the American Dream and returning our country to prosperity for generations to come.

Will you stand with me in supporting Congressman Ryan and Senator Toomey today?

Washington is doing everything it can to avoid the hard calls that must be made. Senator Tom Coburn, one of the few leaders who has been actively campaigning for real structural change, questioned this week whether any agreement could be reached to set our country on the path back to sustainability. His op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post makes it clear that the Senate has no intention of pursuing the difficult decisions necessary to avoid fiscal calamity:

The lack of leadership and initiative in the Senate is appalling. As of this week, the Senate has held just 72 roll call votes this year, about one per legislative day on mostly noncontroversial and inconsequential matters. By this time last year, we had taken more than twice that number of votes (152). By this time in 2009, we had taken 192 votes. If we continue to avoid tough choices, we will lose control of our economic destiny and go down in history as the Senate that lost America. Our epitaph will read: Never before in the field of legislating was so much ignored by so many for so long.

[...]

As the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid bears special responsibility for failing to direct attention to the central challenges of our time. His floor strategy seems to be focused on saving Democrats more than democracy. I would relish a debate on tax earmarks, spending cuts and competing budgets (if there were competing budgets), yet the votes he seems most interested in scheduling—such as tax breaks for big oil companies—are designed for short-term political gain rather than long-term deficit reduction.

Senate leadership is stonewalling. They would rather risk our country falling apart than cut wasteful spending and find commonsense entitlement reforms that will prevent our country from going bankrupt.

I did not run for Senate so I could go to Washington and toe the line. I'm the candidate who has made tough choices in both the private and public sectors, and I'm determined to do the same in the U.S. Senate. I know how to bring both sides to the table, and I understand the urgency of meaningful action. As Senator Coburn explains:

History has not been kind to republics that pretend they can borrow and spend beyond their means indefinitely. We can cheat history, but only if we act quickly. If senators put our national security ahead of our political security, the American people will see there is no problem we cannot solve. Let the debate begin.

He's exactly right. Reining in our debt is no doubt a matter of national security, and we need leaders who will "put our national security ahead of our political security." We must act now.

Imagine the following scenario: Your irresponsible teenage son has spent far beyond his monthly allowance. As a result, he's overdrafted his bank account and incurred a nasty bank fee. Now, as a parent struggling to pay your own bills, which of the following two reactions would you choose? Would you be inclined to discipline your child and make him pay his debt? Or would you think it better to increase his future allowance in the hope he stays on budget next time? Any responsible parent knows the answer to this simple question. Only in Washington could this sort of common-sense, kitchen-table logic be puzzling.

American taxpayers are the single largest contributors to the International Monetary Fund, an organization that claims to promote economic development by stabilizing currency exchange rates. But over the past several years, while families and businesses have trimmed budgets to address the financial hardships they've faced, the amount of our money that has been made available to the IMF has more than doubled. Few Americans yet know about the tab coming due. But with the IMF making ever-bigger, ever-riskier loans to seemingly any nation with its hands outstretched, America will soon be stuck with yet another bill we and our children will have to pay.

Since Barack Obama's election, IMF intervention has reached fever pitch with the administration giving its support to bailout after bailout. Proponents of these foreign bailouts assert they are nothing more than prudent and temporary loans that will stabilize markets, serve everyone's interests and ultimately be repaid. But the people making these dubious claims are not the average U.S. taxpayer—they're multinational organizations; they're big-dollar bankers with a lot on the line; most frequently, they're the debtors themselves.

If all this sounds familiar, it's because these worn-out arguments have been used time and again to promote taxpayer bailouts of U.S. banks and industries. Now, big government wants taxpayers to prop up European welfare states that have already proven their obsolescence. The inaccuracy of their claim—that this is indeed a wise investment—is revealed by the facts:

In May 2010, Greece's Socialist government received a massive $150 billion joint EU/IMF bailout. Greece had huge debt outstanding and galling deficits. The three-year bailout package was supposed to give Greece time to reorganize its finances, but deficits have since gapped much wider than projected. The country is further from solvency than before the bailout and is likely headed for a default.

Similar stories abound. November 2010 saw a $113 billion bailout provided to "shore up" Ireland's finances. Ireland, too, had an exploding national debt and yawning deficits. We were told the exact same story: this bailout would be a crucial step in resolving Ireland's financial woes. Six months later, a former high-ranking IMF official predicted Ireland will need another bailout in 2013, when the present rescue package expires.

Earlier this month, Portugal performed the same song and dance. The IMF again extended America's checkbook, financing that country's $116 billion bailout. Don't hold your breath waiting for your "investment" to be returned there, either.

Our domestic bailouts were bad enough—banks, auto companies and the like—this notion that we will extend handout after handout to welfare states abroad without any indication that we will be repaid is beyond any basic standard of financial prudence. In fact, there is little indication that these countries will make the real spending cuts necessary to balance their budgets.

On Obama's watch, Washington has expanded our financial obligation to the IMF, and Obama has even fought to disregard U.S. law that would require the Treasury to report on the bailouts it gives to foreign countries. While the U.S. has veto power over the IMF's bailouts, Obama continues to dig the U.S. deeper into debt by bailing out countries that no one seriously believes will be able to pay us back, and at a time when our own financial condition continues to deteriorate. The U.S. must begin exercising its veto, putting the IMF on a tight leash and calling for substantial reforms. Without these changes, Europe and America can expect to ride the road to fiscal ruin together—like cash-strapped parents giving an ever-larger allowance to their irresponsible child.

This originally appeared as an op-ed in the Daily Caller. -Team Leppert

Once more, our taxpayer money is about to be spent on yet another bailout.

You didn't know?

Unfortunately, Congress mistakenly bailed out failed banks and the auto industry, but did you know our money has also been handed over to fund public pensions in Greece and bank bailouts in Ireland? Now Portugal is expected to request a bailout worth more than $100 billion from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Spain and Italy will probably be asking for a bailout soon.

And who is the single largest contributor to the IMF? – YOU.

The truth is that the federal government has left us on the hook to foreign governments and other foreign entities. Under Barack Obama, Washington has greatly increased our financial obligations to the IMF. The sovereign debt crisis in Europe is going to take the United States even deeper into debt, and Obama has even stated he would disregard U.S. law that would require the Treasury to report on the funding it gives to the IMF. And this at a time when our deficits and debt continue to spiral out of control and our ability to fund our own priorities in the future is more and more in doubt.

Washington has our country charging over a cliff. Rather than trying to get us turned around, they latched onto a rope that will pull us off the edge right along with the European welfare states.

Enough is enough. Congress must act to stop borrowing even more from China just so we can pay for the mistakes of Europe. We have decades worth of our own mistakes to pay for already.

Jim DeMint, one of the Senate's strongest conservative voices, was spot-on Wednesday on the Laura Ingraham Show. Last year, Senator DeMint correctly predicted that Obamacare would be Barack Obama's Waterloo. Republicans were successful in the last election because conservative leaders like DeMint took a stand for the free market and limited government when Obamacare came to vote. Asked Wednesday whether the debt ceiling could be conservatives' Waterloo, DeMint responded: "If it is, then let it be."

Unfortunately, Democrats have been working hard to frighten voters into believing the spending cuts our country must make are unnecessary and un-American That's what Obama tried to tell us in his speech this week. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless we take actions to put our fiscal house in order, our ability as a nation to address any situation will be significantly limited.

Obama simultaneously called for a job-killing tax hike. His logic is deeply flawed. A tax hike would shrink the economy and sink us deeper into debt. I believe voters are smart enough to see through Obama's campaign trail rhetoric. But if a well-written speech and teleprompter win the day, then conservatives must still be willing to do what's right, even if that means putting political careers on the line.

We cannot go along with liberals' push to raise the debt, continue spending without restraint, and raise taxes on small businesses. Like Senator DeMint, I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless we first pass substantial structural changes, including a Balanced Budget Amendment, to get our country back on the right track.