John Boehner, Dec 11, 2009

Washington is awash in red and green this December, but it isn’t because of holiday decorations. It’s the color of the cash and bleeding balance sheets swirling around Congress as the Majority wraps up a year-long spending spree.

On Thursday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) completed the latest chapter in this lengthy story by ramming a massive $447 billion spending bill through Congress that contains double-digit funding increases to Washington agencies.

In addition to these excessive increases, the bill includes more than 5,200 earmarks, including $300,000 for music and education programs at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, where they pay the employee who oversees the props more than $530,000 in salary and benefits. Regardless of whether these are worthy projects, are they really more important than our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay the debt we’re piling up to do all this stuff?

Before taking office, the President said he would go through the budget 'line by line, page by page.' But now, having shattered the piggy bank with a $1.4 trillion deficit in the 2009 budget year alone, the President and the Majority in Congress are rifling through drawers and tearing apart couches in a desperate search to find money for more big government we can’t afford.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced plans to extend the financial bailout program for another year. This comes as President Obama and Congressional Democrats signaled they intend to divert billions of these borrowed bailout dollars to pay for another wasteful 'stimulus,' even as it is becoming more apparent by the day that their first trillion dollar 'stimulus' has failed.

This is just another ploy to increase spending at a time when our national debt hit a record $12 trillion last month. Before the end of the year, Democrats plan to raise the debt limit by another $1.8 trillion dollars.

As families and small businesses continue to struggle to make ends meet, Americans are looking at all of this excessive spending and wondering if the Majority is really in touch with reality.

Businesses are frozen with uncertainty as they watch Democrats devote their attention to enacting a government takeover of health care, a 'cap-and-trade' national energy tax, more tax increases, and a regulatory 'reform' bill that gives a new government agency permanent bailout authority.

As a former small businessman, I know what it takes to open shop and risk your own money. I understand what it means to meet a payroll. Employers are looking to Washington for clarity, and they aren’t going to start adding people back to their payrolls until they know how the legislation in Congress is going to impact their bottom line.

We are continuing to see evidence of this here in our state. According to a recent article in the Dayton Daily News, Governor Strickland’s own economists predict that Ohio’s unemployment rate will increase to 11 percent before settling at 10.5 percent over the next year and a half.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Republicans believe it is important to implement policies that will jump-start the economy and support job creation without additional government spending, new bureaucracies, or added debt that will be left to our children and grandchildren. That’s why we have proposed common-sense solutions to end the bailouts once and for all, limit annual federal spending, lower health care costs and tear down barriers to economic growth. I and other GOP leaders have also signaled our eagerness to work with President Obama to open new overseas markets to American products, which will help our farmers and create U.S. jobs.

In a meeting this week with Congressional leaders at the White House, President Obama accused Republicans of 'scaring' the American people. But it isn’t the GOP that is frightening the American people -- it’s the excessive spending and job-killing agenda they are getting from the Majority Party in Washington.

Americans are saying 'enough is enough' when it comes to more spending, more taxes and more double-digit unemployment. Republicans are listening."

Congressman John Boehner is the House Minority Leader. Boehner, a Republican, represents Ohio's Eighth Congressional District, which includes Miami, Butler, Preble, Darke, and Mercer Counties.