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TALLAHASSEE—Congressman Allen Boyd (D-North Florida) hosted a forum today to discuss our nation’s unsustainable fiscal policy and the problems it will pose for all Americans if this policy is not addressed. The forum, held at Tallahassee Community College, is part of the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour, a nationwide series of town hall meetings on the country’s long term fiscal challenges.
Congressman Boyd was joined at the forum by U.S. Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office, David Walker, as well as Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition, Paul Cullinan of the Brookings Institution, and Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation. During the panel discussion, all of the participants cited the need to correct the large imbalance between our country’s expenditures and revenues.
“The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour recognizes that better public awareness of our fiscal problems is a crucial step to finding responsible and meaningful solutions. I hope that this forum serves as a serious wake-up call that the longer we wait to address these problems, the more severe and the more difficult the solutions will be,” said Congressman Boyd. “With a national debt now exceeding $9 trillion and foreign borrowing consuming about 25 percent of our debt, we must act now and work together to restore fiscal discipline to our country. By bringing all parties to the table—Democrats, Republicans, Congress, the Administration, fiscal experts, and economists—we can develop a solution that is practical and will most benefit the American people and our great country.”
“The basic facts are a matter of arithmetic, not ideology,” said Robert Bixby, Executive Director of the Concord Coalition. “Members of the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour have different perspectives on the best level of government spending, taxes, and debt. We all agree, however, that current policies are unsustainable. It’s not so much the short term deficit that is cause for alarm, but the fact that there is no plan to deal with our long term challenges. Simply running up the national debt is economically disastrous and generationally irresponsible. The people who will pay the price are today’s youth.”
Since 2001, the national debt has increased by $3.5 trillion, and we have borrowed over $1.2 trillion from foreign sources, like China and Japan, to finance our country’s priorities. Additionally, in 2007, we will have paid $239 billion in interest alone on the national debt.
“The consequences of not paying our bills today are serious,” Boyd stated. “Spending more than we take in is an unsustainable path that will damage our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately, our national security. For the sake of our nation’s fiscal future, we must face up to our fiscal challenges and begin to work together to address these problems.”
The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour has visited more than 30 cities across the country, helping to educate and focus attention on the nation’s daunting long term fiscal challenges by cutting through the usual partisan rhetoric and stimulating a more realistic public dialogue.
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