With a narrow vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday, every man, woman and child in the United States is now on the hook for an additional $6,000 worth of national debt.
The House voted 217-212 to increase the badly misnamed “debt limit” — the amount that Congress allows itself to borrow to pay for its wasteful and often grossly unconstitutional spending — by $1.9 trillion. That creates a total, atrocious debt of $14.3 trillion!
Every single person in America had already owed more than a $39,000 share of the national debt. Now with President Barack Obama’s expected signature on the new debt limit legislation, that appalling figure soon will rise to more than $45,000 for each of us.
Only Democrats favored the legislation, while all Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats opposed it. Republican Rep. Zach Wamp of Chattanooga and Republican Rep. Nathan Deal, whose congressional district includes nearby counties in Georgia, both rightly opposed this outrageous expansion of federal borrowing.
Rep. Wamp noted in a statement shortly after the vote, “We can’t borrow our way out of debt or spend our way into prosperity. The $1.9 trillion debt limit increase keeps us on an unsustainable path of reckless spending. … The debt and the deficit are huge long-term problems that will slow our growth even more.”