OPINION:
Fireworks, hot dogs, picnics and parades are all associated with the Fourth of July as Americans celebrate our nation’s independence. For our Founding Fathers, however, our independence was intrinsically linked not to hot dogs but to prudent fiscal policies and avoiding massive debt.
In a letter he penned in 1816, Thomas Jefferson warned about the risks of endless debt. “[T]o preserve [the people’s] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
The consequence of perpetual debt would be “servitude” — the exact opposite vision the founders held at our nation’s birth.
With nearly $32 trillion in debt, our nation faces a time for choosing. We can begin to make tough decisions and cut spending as part of a plan to preserve our independence and liberty, or we can resign ourselves to the enslaving perpetual debt that will be the death of our independent nation.
For decades, big spenders in Washington have argued that we cannot make any spending cuts without harming children who rely on food programs, veterans, or those with chronic health conditions. The criticism is based on a deeply flawed premise — namely, that every dollar spent in our federal budget is being spent wisely to assist children in poverty, veterans, and other beneficiary groups.
Even a cursory look through the Government Accountability Office reports reveals how disingenuous that argument is.
Each year, the federal government wastes tens of billions of dollars on duplicative programs and incorrect payments. In 2022 alone, just 18 federal agencies reported an estimated $247 billion in improper payments.
The government routinely sends payments to the wrong people or even dead people and often fails to check databases to ensure the recipient isn’t a known fraudster. These mistakes are costly errors, and they add up.
But that number, staggering as it is, does not represent the full extent of improper payments across the federal government.
While the Washington establishment types wring their hands about spending cuts, taxpayers are footing the bill for hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments.
Another indefensible example of waste comes in the form of vacant federal buildings. Every year, taxpayers are forced to pay for nearly $2 billion in maintenance costs for the upkeep of 77,000 empty buildings. We get no value from those tens of thousands of empty buildings, but every month we incur lawn fees, security bills and utility bills, among other fees, just to maintain those vacant properties.
Further, according to GAO, the Office of Personnel Management could save us hundreds of millions of dollars each year by implementing a simple monitoring program to remove ineligible family members from the federal government’s health care program.
We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year to pay for the health care benefits of people who have no business being on the government’s health care program.
Can you imagine a private company making that type of error? Of course not.
Most insidious of all, though, is the interest cost on our debt. In fiscal 2022, the interest expense on our debt was $724 billion. As anyone who has struggled to pay off a credit card balance knows, interest payments are crushing — and those interest payments quickly become a barrier to paying off debt as they continue to climb.
Republicans campaigned in 2022 on a promise to rein in federal government spending and to conduct rigorous oversight of the federal bureaucracy. It is with that promise in mind that I have committed, with several of my colleagues, to hold the Biden administration and even the House GOP leadership accountable for continued reckless spending.
It’s also why, a few weeks ago, we blocked a simple procedural rule on the House floor, stopping legislation from getting a full floor vote.
With the federal debt spiraling out of control, we should disabuse ourselves of the fiction that business in Washington can continue as usual. It simply cannot.
Independence Day is as much about the past as it is about the future. While we celebrate our nation’s birth and marvel at what those who came before us accomplished and sacrificed for our liberty, we also must look ahead to future generations and make sacrifices ourselves to protect their liberty.
Servitude to rogue nations that hold our debt runs counter to our national identity rooted in liberty.
This is our time to choose.
• Ken Buck is an American lawyer and politician who has represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District in the House of Representatives since 2015.
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