Opinion

The 800-pound debt gorilla looms larger with Obama’s new budget

David Bossie President, Citizens United
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President Obama’s FY-2012 budget shows a failure of leadership by a man who claimed that he would change the way Washington works. Red ink continues to be spilled at record rates with no end in sight and yet President Obama continues to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room — our climbing $14 trillion national debt.

America is sinking deeper and deeper into debt, but the president’s own budget projects that the federal debt will top $15 trillion this year — equal to the size of our entire economy — and will reach $21 trillion within five years! President Obama’s budget will spend $3.8 trillion this year; that correlates to 25.3 percent of our gross domestic product, the highest since World War II. The Democrat chairman of President Obama’s very own debt commission, Erskine Bowles, said the budget released today is “nowhere near where they have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.” America must get its fiscal house in order, or our economy will sink into a financial abyss.

President Obama states, “We need to act now to secure and strengthen Social Security for future generations,” but he fails to lay out a clear and precise plan on how he would reform Social Security and Medicare. These entitlement programs are draining America’s resources at an alarming rate. Nobody is saying that this is an easy fix, but not even addressing it in a budget plan is a serious oversight by the Obama administration. President Obama has chosen his short-term election prospects over doing what is right for future generations. He just continues to kick the debt crisis can down the road, but at some point that can will fall off the cliff. When that happens, the American people will remember this failure of leadership.

Citizens United released a short video today highlighting the issue of the national debt and the new federal budget. There was an 800-pound gorilla in the room while the Obama administration was drafting its budget, but they looked the other way when it came to addressing it with meaningful spending cuts and entitlement reform. When will President Obama show real leadership on fiscal issues? How big will the debt gorilla get before something is done? Please pass this video to your family and friends. We must get the word out about this fiscal crisis. President Obama continues to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in Washington, at our peril.

David N. Bossie is the president of Citizens United and Citizens United Productions, and the executive producer of “America at Risk.”