Recently, a historic press conference detailing the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge brought together more than 60 center-right organizations and 120 Tea Party organizations to support Congressional conservatives’ plans to cut the deficit and enact serious budgetary constraints. However, leaders of the House and Senate are poised to ignore our demands and keep America on a road to a European-style debt crisis and financial ruin.
As you know, a vote on the debt ceiling is looming. And as newly elected members of the congressional Tea Party Caucus brace to hold the ground firmly against President Obama’s radical economic agenda, they need your help more than ever.
Over the last decade, both parties have increased our debt from $5.8 billion to more than $14.4 billion, a 150% increase!
A trillion, which is 1 followed by 12 zeros, is a difficult number to imagine. So imagine it this way: A trillion $1 bills stacked together would reach approximately 68,000 miles into the sky, or about a third of the way from the Earth to the moon.
These numbers are so big that it is easy to be ambivalent about them — which is exactly what the statists and status-quo-defending Washington politicians want!
Therefore, just like the courageous heroes that founded this great nation, the American Grassroots Coalition is teaming up with grassroots activists and implementing strategies to defeat the enemy. We must force Congress to agree to the three demands of the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge, which are:
1) Cut — The enactment of serious budgetary cuts that will reduce the deficit immediately and into the future.
2) Cap— Just as families have to live within their means and on constrained budgets, so should Congress. Therefore, Congress must pass immediate statutory spending caps that will keep federal spending at or below the pre-Obama historic average of 18% of gross domestic product.
3) Balance — Congress must send to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would mandate that expenditures equal revenues, while simultaneously requiring super-majority approval of tax increases.
Just to be clear, this isn’t some cheap pledge, where politicians sign pledges instead of doing the hard work. These three points, which were until recently quite impossible to enact, are entirely achievable thanks to your donations and hard work. Now is not the time to give up! We must work harder than ever before.
As Tea Party champion Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said, “We as a Congress must get serious about the solutions we propose to restore fiscal discipline and prosperity. I am convinced after my time here in Washington that the only way we can get our fiscal house in order is through structural reform such as those proposed in the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge. With these conditions in place, we can begin the process of defeating this catastrophic national debt, which is why I wholeheartedly pledge my support.”
A bloated federal government is all that stands in the way of an economic recovery. While Obama and his supporters in Congress wish to raise taxes and delay making serious, adult choices about the budget, Tea Party activists must demand their voices be heard at the negotiating table. During this complicated process, in the face of opposition from big-spending politicians and a liberal media, we will not rest until these politicians are restrained by rigid, immovable spending limitations.
Democrats and moderate Republicans keep privately assuring people that Republicans will cave on the debt ceiling vote. This commitment to cut, cap and balance will ensure that before politicians sell us out, we will be on a path to capping expenditures and beginning the process of reducing the debt via passage of a balanced budget amendment. This is a more permanent solution that will once again put America on a path to greater prosperity.
Amy Kremer is Chairman of the Tea Party Express and Co-Founder of the American Grassroots Coalition.
