"Runaway Federal Spending Will End On My Watch" - Op-Ed By JOHN McCAIN

The New Hampshire Union Leader

October 2, 2007

Article Excerpt

"We're at the start of a new federal budget year, and there's not much good news out of your elected leaders. The Democratic Congress failed to deliver on its obligation to fund the government and instead passed a stopgap measure that kicked the can to November.

Despite the growing evidence that earmarks and pork-barrel spending corrupted the Republican Party, and even put some lawmakers in jail, these practices remain business as usual. Congress is the national legislature and should be focused on national priorities, not divisions by squabbling over who gets a bigger piece of the federal pie.

Worst of all, 2007 marks the first time that Congress has voted for $1 trillion in spending programs. It was only a bit more than half that eight years ago. Spending has gone from irresponsible to indefensible. And we're not spending it on effective programs. When disaster strikes, the government isn't even ready to deliver drinking water to dehydrated babies or rescue the aged and infirm trapped in a hospital with no electricity.

We are fooling no one. The bills come due and we rack up big debts. With those debts come higher and higher interest payments each year. Instead of spending the taxpayers' dollars on real priorities, more and more of them will be devoted simply to keeping the bill collectors at bay.

It is no surprise that Americans have lost trust in their government. Well, trust this:
If elected President, I'll veto every single pork barrel bill. As fast as they come in, I will send them right back. "No" is always the right answer to wasteful spending. Give me the pen and, I promise you, I'll say no to earmarked spending.

There are obvious imperatives of reducing the growth of spending for future retiree income support, health care and long-term care. And yet, year after year, our government pretends there is no problem.

This failure has a real and distressing cost. Our workers make their retirement plans based on promised benefits that cannot be paid even if we burden our children with crippling taxes. If we fix the system now, people will have time to plan accordingly, to ensure that they still have a comfortable retirement. If we wait, we make the problem worse and, in effect, lie to Americans who we encouraged to put their trust in a broken system.

I promise to submit a plan to save Social Security and Medicare. I'll work to make the hard choices to protect the retirement security of the American worker and the growth of the American economy. And if the members of Congress are afraid to make those choices, then they can just let me do it. I'll submit a comprehensive proposal and they can vote yes or no on that proposal: no amendments; no filibuster; no tricks: no Band-Aid solutions; no more lies; no more hoping that a future generation of leaders will have the courage and honesty we lack. "

Please click here to read the entire article.