Walter Jones Votes Against Raising Debt Limit

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JONES VOTES AGAINST RAISING DEBT LIMIT

Oct 29, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) voted against raising the debt limit until March 2017 in the budget deal negotiated between former Speaker John Boehner and President Obama. The deal passed the House 266 to 167, with 79 Republicans siding with nearly every Democrat in passing the deal.

“With a debt of over $18 trillion, congressional leadership and President Obama cooked up a scheme to add $1.5 trillion more to the debt, to provide more deficit-financed money to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) slush fund to continue unauthorized, unconstitutional wars in the Middle East, and to steal money from the Social Security Trust Fund to bail out the insolvent Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund,” said Congressman Jones. “The people of Eastern North Carolina want the federal government to stop out of control spending, and this deal only makes things worse. We can’t continue to borrow from the Chinese and leave our kids and grandkids with the tab. We’ve got to have the courage to start cutting spending, and the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan is a great place to start. But we’ve got to start, and before it’s too late.”

http://jones.house.gov/press-release...g-debt-limit-0

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op-ed

Walter Jones: Time to stop out-of-control spending

Posted Oct. 24, 2015 at 5:54 PM

Here we go again. In early November, the federal government will hit the debt ceiling. By that point, the Treasury Department will have exhausted all measures to keep our debt within its legal limit and won’t have enough revenue to reliably pay our bills. In response, Congress is likely to approve another increase in the debt limit without making meaningful progress to address the root cause of our debt.

That cause is reckless spending – on foreign aid to countries that hate us, on unnecessary wars, on bailouts, and on a bloated federal government. Even though Uncle Sam is collecting record amounts from American taxpayers, our annual federal deficit is still over $400 billion simply because of excessive spending. As a result, America depends on borrowing from foreign powers like China, and Russia just to pay our bills. This debt threatens the sustainability of our economy, the financial stability of every American, and our national security. That is why in September of 2011, then-Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted: “I’ve said many times that I believe the single, biggest threat to our national security is our debt, so I believe we have every responsibility to help eliminate that threat.” At the time he made that statement, our national debt was $14 trillion. Just four years later, it has grown to over $18 trillion.

I am doing everything in my power to stem the tide of red ink that is drowning our nation. Over the last eleven years, I am the only member of Congress who has voted against every deficit-raising, debt-filled budget bill, and against every increase in the debt limit.

Over that time I have also voted against more spending bills than all but one of my Republican colleagues. In addition, I have voted for every balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

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http://www.newbernsj.com/article/201.../15474/OPINION