Integrity

The first principle of my campaign is "integrity," because I believe it is a principle that is severely lacking in our Congress. This does not mean that all politicians are criminals or are evil - it simply means that very few of them provide leadership in strong moral principles, especially when it comes to promoting an idea that may prove politically risky. Yes, many of them will happily point to certain activities or policy stances they have taken to supposedly demonstrate their integrity, but the fact remains that this leadership is totally lacking when it comes to issues that may jeopardize their political career.

There are many instances of this, but perhaps the most striking example is the national debt. Both parties are clearly to blame. Despite each party blaming the other, the debt has increased regardless of which party controls the House, Senate, or Presidency. And while many politicians give lip-service to the issue, few have proposed any specific solutions, and fewer still have pursued any proposed solutions. We have recently seen two examples of the path that our politicians typically choose instead.

In the first example, we have President Obama establishing the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. This was very similar to Frank Wolf's proposal for the Securing America's Future Economy (SAFE) commission. The President's Commission was tasked with the job of making "recommendations that put the budget in primary balance so that we are paying for all operations and programs for the federal government (achieving deficits of about 3 percent of GDP) by 2015 and meaningfully improve the long-term fiscal outlook." In other words, they were not tasked with balancing the budget -- they were only tasked with reducing our deficits by the year 2015 to the same level they had been at during the Bush admin. And after 2015, the goal is merely improvement over the current situation. After the commission's report was released, no action was taken by the Democrat-controlled House or Senate, nor has the new Republican-controlled House taken action on this report. Instead, 2 weeks after the report was issued, the House, Senate and President all agreed to an extension of the Bush tax cuts plus an additional 2 percent reduction in the payroll tax. Thus, instead of following the commission's recommendations, which included "broaden[ing] the base" and "reducing the many 'tax expenditures'," they directly violated the recommendations without taking any other actions to offset these reduced revenues.

In the second example, the Republicans are hardly offering anything better. In September, they issued their Pledge to America, which promised to save "at least $100 billion in the first year alone and [put] us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt." While they at least gave lip-service to paying down the debt (though not eliminating it), they did not give a time frame or any details for this effort. Where they did give a time frame, they are already trying to backtrack on the promise, saying that there may only be $50 billion in savings this year.

Neither of these efforts have demonstrated true integrity. It is immoral for this generation to acquire a debt that it plans to leave for future generations to pay off. We have already acquired $100,000 of debt for every taxpayer (90% of this was acquired since 1980), and we are adding another $10,000 of debt per taxpayer per year - with absolutely no plan to pay it off. True integrity demands a plan to pay off this debt within a 20- to 40-year time frame.

I recognize that one congressman can only do so much to make this happen; however, our current congressmen are not doing what they can. As a minimum, they should:

1. Propose their own plan.
2. Be willing to compromise, within established principles.
3. Refuse to allow the continued increase in debt until a plan to pay off the debt has been established.