After U.S. Senate Democrats released their budget plan on
Wednesday, U.S. Senators from Virginia Tim Kaine and Mark Warner stated that
the budget was a “good start” to reining in America’s debt and restoring monetary
discipline in the nation’s capital.[1]
Sen. Tim Kaine stated, “I believe the Senate budget is a
good one for the country and a good one for Virginia. While the House proposal
seeks to balance the federal budget in ten years, our primary values are a
growing economy and the creation of jobs.”[2]
Kaine continued that the budget slashes the deficit “in an
economically responsible way by adding $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction to
the $2.4 trillion we’ve already achieved…in a balanced way that involves both
spending and revenue.”[3]
The federal budget that seeks to balance the budget in a
decade that Sen. Kaine is referring to is that of Rep. Paul Ryan[4],
a hero of conservative conservatives for his arbitrary schemes to balance
America’s budget and throw America’s economy into a tailspin from which it may
take years, if not decades to recover.
The idea that debt in and of itself is a bad thing is starkly
reflected in the Ryan budget, a budget that is part political document and part
business-as-usual Republican Party hard-line talking point. But a little debt,
even a large $17 trillion debt, isn’t going to drag America’s economy down, not
in the foreseeable future anyways.
And for the most part, I believe at least
some Republican legislators in the U.S. Congress know this.
What the Republican Party is attempting to do is cut away
and totally eliminate many of America’s most helpful domestic programs and
agencies, all in the name of a “balanced budget,” a budget that has as much
meaning as someone standing in front of a mirror. That is, we as individuals
make the meaning, not the mirror.
The budget released by the Senate Democrats is indeed a good
first step towards forcing U.S. legislators to be more fiscally responsible while
allowing them to attend to the needs of programs and American’s that need
assistance.
[1] http://blogs.roanoke.com/politics/2013/03/13/kaine-warner-comment-on-senate-budget-proposal/
[2] http://blogs.roanoke.com/politics/2013/03/13/kaine-warner-comment-on-senate-budget-proposal/
[3] http://blogs.roanoke.com/politics/2013/03/13/kaine-warner-comment-on-senate-budget-proposal/
[4] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/paul-ryans-gop-budget-vs-the-senate-democrats-budget-in-1-graph/274025/
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