December 29th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned Congressman Marion Berry for “voting with the big spenders in Washington who are robbing American taxpayers like thieves in the night.”
“More often than not, Congressman Berry has voted with Nancy Pelosi on major pieces of budget-busting legislation brought to the floor of the House of Representatives that he was present for,” Wilson said.
“The House of Representatives this year alone has voted to spend more than $3.6 trillion, to nationalize the health care system, to strangle the nation’s access to energy, and to bankrupt the Treasury—and Congressman Berry has not stopped the profligate financial catastrophe unfolding at the nation’s Capitol,” Wilson explained.
Yesterday, ALG released the voting records of some 90 Blue Dog and what it dubbed “so-called moderate” House Democrats on what ALG President Bill Wilson called “some of the most controversial votes of 2009.”
The ALG analysis shows 856 Yea votes and 207 Nay votes, which Wilson said “was not enough to stop anything.”
The study includes votes on the $789 billion “stimulus”, bankruptcy mortgage “cramdowns,” ACORN funding, a $108 billion International Monetary Fund expansion, the Waxman-Markey carbon emission caps, the $2.1 trillion “public option” health system, the $154 billion assistance program for bankrupt states, and the $290 billion debt limit expansion.
“The national debt is spiraling out of control, and Congressman Berry has done nothing to stop the nation’s Treasury from being bankrupted,” Wilson said.
Wilson pointed to the record national debt which currently stands at over $12 trillion, as placing an “insurmountable burden on the next generation of Americans.” The total debt is projected to top the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011 at over $14 trillion. By 2020, it will top $20 trillion.
Wilson said that if entitlement spending is not reined in, it will soon take up half of the entire budget. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), entitlement spending as a percentage of budget outlays will continue to increase over the next decade. In 2019, OMB projects that entitlements spending will stand at $2.482 trillion (45.93 percent of outlays totaling $5.403 trillion).
According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, by 2050 entitlement spending “will consume nearly the entire federal budget.”
“So-called Blue Dog ‘conservative’ and other ‘moderate’ Democrats in the House have long touted their caucus as being fiscally-responsible, but what emerges from an analysis of their voting records is a pack of lapdogs who have voted largely in lock-step with their more radical counterparts in House leadership,” said Wilson.
According to the Blue Dogs’ website, “In the 111th Congress, the Coalition intends to continue to make a difference in Congress by forging middle-ground, bipartisan answers to the current challenges facing the Country. A top priority will be to refocus Congress on balancing the budget and ridding taxpayers of the burden the debt places on them.”
“While the nation is going bankrupt, Congressman Berry pretends that her support for these terrible pieces of legislation is ‘deficit-neutral.’ He has done nothing to stop the madness, which will only bankrupt the Treasury, destroy the dollar, and saddle American taxpayers with a debt that can never be paid.”
