Jamie Radtke for Senate

Today the U.S. government reached the federal debt ceiling of $14.294 trillion. The Washington Establishment consensus seems to be that we must raise the debt ceiling and increase the limit on the taxpayer credit card to as much as $16 trillion by some proposals.

There is an expression – “when you are in a hole… stop digging” – but the Washington Establishment and career politicians seem determined to dig us all the way to China. Congressional Republicans should refuse to raise the debt ceiling and should instead take the actual step of balancing the budget.

I have been traveling all over the great Commonwealth of Virginia and something I hear consistently is: don’t raise the debt ceiling and let’s live within our means. People outside of the Washington Establishment are feeling the effects of an irresponsible government every time they fill up with gas or buy groceries. The spending insanity must stop.

It is wiser to make the hard choices now, before the debt crisis explodes and wreaks uncontrollable havoc on our economy. Standard & Poor’s downgraded its credit outlook on the U.S.  to “Negative” and has already warned us that business-as-usual spending approach cannot continue.

The real problem is finding leaders with the backbone to stop the immoral spending. Instead of actual cuts, current career politicians ‘promise’ cuts. However, we saw last March that Congress’ ‘promises’ are meaningless. During the budget negotiations the ‘promised’ spending cuts shrank from $100 billion to $353 million.

So it has fallen to a handful of principled conservatives in the House and Senate to tell Congress and the President: It’s time to stop digging!