Excerpts:
The facts are clear: Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies – an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus.
All of this new government spending was sold as “investment.” Yet after two years, the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent and government has added over $3 trillion to our debt.
Then the president and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health care entitlement.
What we already know about the president’s health care law is this: Costs are going up, premiums are rising and millions of people will lose the coverage they currently have. Job creation is being stifled by all of its taxes, penalties, mandates and fees.
Businesses and unions from around the country are asking the Obama administration for waivers from the mandates. Washington should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. The president mentioned the need for regulatory reform to ease the burden on American businesses. We agree – and we think his health care law would be a great place to start.
Last week, House Republicans voted for a full repeal of this law, as we pledged to do, and we will work to replace it with fiscally responsible, patient-centered reforms that actually reduce costs and expand coverage.
……I’d like to share with you the principles that guide us. They are anchored in the wisdom of the founders, in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and in the words of the American Constitution.
They have to do with the importance of limited government and with the blessing of self-government.
We believe government’s role is both vital and limited – to defend the nation from attack and provide for the common defense: to secure our borders, to protect innocent life, to uphold our laws and Constitutional rights, to ensure domestic tranquility and equal opportunity and to help provide a safety net for those who cannot provide for themselves.
……Limited government also means effective government. When government takes on too many tasks, it usually doesn’t do any of them very well. It’s no coincidence that trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high.
The president and the Democratic leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power.
Whether sold as “stimulus” or repackaged as “investment,” their actions show they want a federal government that controls too much, taxes too much and spends too much in order to do too much.
And during the last two years, that is exactly what we have gotten – along with record deficits and debt – to the point where the president is now urging Congress to increase the debt limit.
We believe the days of business as usual must come to an end. We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first.
Our nation is approaching a tipping point.
We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.
Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness and wise consumer choices has never worked – and it won’t work now.
We need to chart a new course.
……Millions of families have fallen on hard times not because of our ideals of free enterprise – but because our leaders failed to live up to those ideals, because of poor decisions made in Washington and Wall Street that caused a financial crisis, squandered our savings, broke our trust and crippled our economy.
……We need to reclaim our American system of limited government, low taxes, reasonable regulations and sound money, which has blessed us with unprecedented prosperity. And it has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed. That’s the real secret to job creation – not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.
The rest here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/26/AR2011012600941.html
Those are good standards and principles, Congressman. We elected the Republican majority to fulfill those goals and reverse the damage done by Obama’s regime over the last two years.
We will hold you to it. Count on it.