It's Time to Get Serious About Washington's Spending Addiction

Floor Speech

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, the so-called supercommittee announced last week that it was unable to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the course of 10 years. That is a sad commentary on Washington, DC's addiction to overspending. After all, $1.2 trillion is less than 1 year's worth of overspending at the going rate.

It's time to get serious. Just consider the mess in Europe. The eurozone's bailout fund is struggling to keep debtor nations like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal afloat, while Italy also teeters on the brink of insolvency. Europe's sovereign debt crisis is not an abstract economics lesson; it is the painful reckoning after years of the debt-financed government profligacy.

What should unnerve us is that some of these nations being battered by the consequences of high debt level have debt-to-GDP ratios that are close to our own. If Congress doesn't get serious about reducing spending and ending the Federal debt addiction, we're going to find ourselves in the same boat as our friends in the eurozone.

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