Federal spending has ballooned 28 percent during the Obama Presidency while the government has amassed more debt than it acquired from the first day of George Washington’s administration to the last day of George H. W. Bush’s.

Our nation is racing toward a fiscal cliff. Yet, as Sen. Jim DeMint noted, instead of hitting the brakes, Congress and the President just set the cruise control. “The Budget Control Act of 2011” offers an object lesson in exactly the sort of empty compromise that has gotten our nation into its present mess. Faced with the devastating consequences of unprecedented and unsustainable federal spending, both parties agreed on only one thing: to lock in that spending for at least the next two years. Bypassing the normal legislative process, the deal was written behind closed doors and dumped it into the laps of both houses under the threat that failing to pay the government’s bills would jeopardize the nation’s triple-A credit.

Unfortunately, the deal didn’t just pay our current bills – it gave the most spendthrift administration in history an open credit line to continue its spending spree beyond 2012. Ironically, it ended up costing the United States its triple-A credit rating by failing to rein in spending significantly. Indeed, Standard and Poor’s had explicitly warned for the last two months that $4 trillion had to be cut from the projected ten-year deficit to preserve the nation’s credit. Even if the plan works perfectly, it doesn’t come close.

Yet the same politicians who ignored these warnings were shocked-just-shocked when Standard and Poor’s lowered the boom four days later. Instead, they blamed the “Tea Party” that has been sounding the same alarm for more than two years.

I want to thank you for your invitation to join you this afternoon, and to especially thank you for your support of the Leadership Institute. I did not realize the true extent of the Institute’s work, and Morton Blackwell’s influence, until my staff learned that I would be addressing you today. It turns out that more than half of them are graduates of the Leadership Institute’s training programs. I should have suspected as much.

M. Speaker:

Benjamin Franklin warned us that “Passion governs, but she never governs wisely.”

As the Congress and the President rush to enact the latest in a long line of mega-spending bills, I think we would be well advised to spend a little more time on the dispassionate math of the matter.

M. Speaker:

I saw S-CHIP implemented in California, and I can tell you that it’s a prime example of the law of unintended consequences.  Since its inception, we’ve watched as S-CHIP has been slowly replacing employer health plans with government-paid health plans – with spiraling costs to taxpayers.  Employers discovered that they could avoid their own plans, knowing that their employees would be covered by S-CHIP.