Washington (GoinsReport.com) – Americans for Prosperity held a rally last Wednesday in front of the capitol building with one message in mind: “Cut spending now.”
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), one speaker among many, said he wanted to finish the work of the third U.S. President and to have a bill that would cap the amount of money that the U.S. government can borrow.
“We need the American people to ask for what Thomas Jefferson ask for just eight years after our constitution was written. He said he wished for a single amendment. He said ‘by that I mean a single article limiting the ability of the federal government’s ability to borrow money.’”
He continued: “We need to finish the work that Thomas Jefferson – a great Virginian and a great American – started.”
Currently, 49 out of 50 states have balanced budget amendment. Vermont is the only state not to have one.
Goodlatte has introduced balanced budget amendments multiple times already; at least once in 2009, and twice in 2011.
The second new bill requires a super-majority to raise taxes, and cut back spending as a percentage of GDP to 20 percent.
However, according to Goodlatte, 47 Republican senators say they want to limit government spending as a percentage of GDP to 18 percent.
Like Majority Leader John Boehner, Goodlatte said that he doesn’t want to balance the budget by raising taxes.
According the Office of Management and Budget, federal outlays as a percentage of GDP in 2010 was 23.8 percent, down from a 2009 when spending was 25 percent of GDP.
The last time federal outlays were close to 18 percent of GDP was in 2001, at 18.2 percent.
In the Letter to John Taylor of Caroline (1798), Thomas Jefferson wrote:
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.
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