By Rick Manning – Our nation is another day closer to defaulting on our national debt and the Senate continues to be absent without leave in the debate. It makes one wonder whether anyone has told Harry Reid that he was re-elected by the voters of Nevada and remains the Senate Majority Leader.
In case anyone missed it, in the past couple of days the economic news has continued to worsen and even well respected financial analysts are beginning to get a panicky tone in their voices.
Bill Gross, the head of Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund worried publicly that the United States may in fact have debts that far exceed the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, and in fact approach “nearly $100 trillion.”
New York University’s Nouriel Roubini fears that the world economies may face a “perfect storm” of problems in 2013 based upon a combination of U.S. debt problems, Japanese economic stagnation, the European sovereign debt crisis and a slowdown in China’s rampaging economy noting, “Everybody’s kicking the can down the road of too much public and private debt. The can is becoming heavier and heavier, and bigger on debt, and all these problems may come to a head by 2013 at the latest.”
Meanwhile Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is worrying publicly that if significant cuts are not made in a debt ceiling deal matters may get taken out of the hands of Congress through a vote of no confidence by the financial markets raising interest rates.
So where is the Senate Majority Leader?
No one knows. The Senate, under his leadership, has not passed a budget in more than 700 days.
The Senate, under his leadership, rejected President Obama’s budget with zero votes in favor of it.
The Senate, under his leadership, refused to make significant cuts in the nation’s discretionary budget during the battle over the Continuing Resolution to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year.
There is an old saying that is almost clichéd, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Harry Reid asked the people of Nevada to hire him to be their U.S. Senator, and then he asked his Senate colleagues to trust him to be the Senate Majority Leader. Now it is time for the Senate Majority Leader to emerge from what appears to be a coma-like state and do his job.
If you listen to the experts, we no longer have time to put off making the tough spending cut decisions as the consequences of our nation’s fiscal excesses are rapidly coming to roost.
Rick Manning is the Communications Director for Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.
