Although a majority in Congress have been irresponsible in dealing with our unchecked federal debt, we shouldn't get the idea that all our representatives and senators are financially reckless.
With the debt up against its $14.3 trillion legal limit, our congressman from Chattanooga, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, and a few other freshman representatives held a press conference outside the White House this week to urge President Barack Obama to present a clear plan of his own to deal with the problem.
The president mainly speaks in generalities about what he would or wouldn't cut. After Obama put forth a vague budget framework in one speech, the head of the Congressional Budget Office was asked to estimate whether the Obama "plan" was workable. "We don't estimate speeches," said Douglas Elmendorf of the CBO. "We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis."
Fleischmann, who supported spending caps and a balanced-budget amendment in a bill that passed the House but is opposed by Obama and Senate Democrats, wants real numbers from the president.
"... President Obama continues to play politics while not presenting any plan of his own ...," he stated in a news release. "The fact is that the president is more interested in scoring political points for his re-election than dealing with our debt in a responsible manner."
He added that "President Obama likes to make it a habit of lecturing others about being adults when it comes to our debt crisis, and now the adults are at the table and President Obama is nowhere to be found."
Considering the urgency of our current situation, shouldn't Obama, all 435 members of the House of Representatives, all 100 members of the Senate -- and all of the rest of us as taxpayers -- be insistent upon approving a real, specific solution, rather than letting the problem fester?
Fleischmann is among too few in government who are seeking a realistic solution. All of us as ordinary citizens should be seeking deficit and debt reduction, too.