It has been more than 1,000 days, the equivalent in time of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s entire presidency, since the federal government had a budget.

Most Americans don’t realize Barack Obama has operated through his entire first term without any spending plan whatsoever.

Why? Because Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of the Obama administration never bothered to pass one. And Democrats who control the Senate still refuse to approve one now.

Yet, this isn’t considered news by most of the major media in the U.S. – therefore, most Americans are completely in the dark about spending, revenues and borrowing.

It is in this hideously surreal and grotesque framework that Obama delivers his State of the Union message in which he calls for more spending, more borrowing, more government intrusion into our lives and more centralization of power in Washington.

What do Republicans in Congress do about it? They squawk. But it must never be forgotten that Republicans had an opportunity to stop this insanity last year and decided not only to allow it to continue but to surrender their authority to freeze borrowing until at least January 2013. House Republicans had absolute power to tear up government’s credit card in 2011 – and instead they handed Obama a limitless line of credit.

It is with this incredible backdrop that the U.S. debt exceeds $15.3 trillion – equal to the entire nation’s gross domestic product. It hasn’t been that high since World War II – when the country was fighting for its very existence. And, still, Washington stays the course – even stepping up out-of-control spending.

Don’t believe it when Republicans in Washington tell you they have somehow “cut spending.” You can’t cut spending without a budget. Without a written spending plan, what is a cut?

The rhetoric coming out of Washington from both Democrats and Republicans is Orwellian. Cut means increase. Overspending is good. Responsibility and the rule of law are bad.

How do we make sense of all this?

Can anything positive come out of such irresponsibility and recklessness?

How do we refocus the national debate in a presidential election year in which no one – not even Republicans – are recognizing the economic calamity ahead of us?

We get in their faces, that’s how.

We need a national movement to stop the borrowing that is equivalent to the movement launched years ago to prevent tax increases.

Without endless borrowing, without trillions more in debt, without auto-pilot increases in the debt limit, we can return Washington to something resembling constitutionally limited government. In fact, I’m convinced, there is no other way.

So I started the movement – the “No More Red Ink” campaign. It has already generated more than 1 million letters delivered to the House Republicans. We are now building a coalition of prominent individuals and organizations to support a debt freeze in January 2013. We are enlisting GOP presidential candidates, Republican House and Senate candidates and current Republican members of Congress to sign a “No-More-Borrowing Pledge.”

I believe this is the only way we’ll see deep cuts in spending next year – no matter who wins the White House and no matter who controls Congress.

We need to get them on record – with signatures. We need to bombard them with paper. We need to change the culture of the Republican Party so it is not just “the party of ideas,” but the party of action.

Ideas are nice. Words are nice. Actions are better.

If you agree with me that drying up the borrowed money is the only way to control Washington, I urge you to get on board the “No More Red Ink” campaign.

[Read More...]