Washington liberals have an acute case of Attention Deficit Disorder.
 
Faced with the worst economy since the Great Depression, hardworking Utahns and other Americans are tightening their belts and asking the federal government to do the same.  Unfortunately, the liberals are ignoring them, opting instead to blithely continue their headlong rush to spend our nation into bankruptcy.
 
Go figure.
 
I have – and the frightening numbers add up to trouble unless this Administration and Congress change their big-spending ways. For the fiscal year that just ended, Washington added another $1.3 trillion to the deficit, which now totals an astounding $13.5 trillion. That equates to more than $43,000 for every American man, woman and child.
 
Since 2008, Congress has passed a trillion-dollar stimulus bill, bailed out our two largest automakers and enacted an extravagant $2.6 trillion health care law that is as unconstitutional as it is unprecedented – all this and the national unemployment rate still remains near 10 percent.
 
What’s more, in its recent long-term budget outlook, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the publicly held debt will top 66 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by year’s end, the highest it has been since World War II.  In comparison, the national debt was 40 percent of the GDP in 2008 and historically averages roughly 36 percent.
 
Understandably, more Americans than ever are balking at bankrolling this spending spree. The results at the polls this month attest to that fact, as the voters put more fiscal conservatives in Congress to put an end to deficit spending and big government.
 
While I am pleased with the election results and the prospect of working with Sen.-elect Mike Lee and others in January, I have not been standing idly by until they take office to get Washington to live within its means.
 
I recently introduced a balanced budget resolution, which would require Congress to balance the books and use surpluses to pay down the debt. To dismantle Obamacare, the financially ruinous $2.6 trillion health law, I have introduced the American Liberty Restoration Act, which would repeal the unconstitutional individual mandate that forces Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine – something that has never been done before.
 
Another of my bills, the American Job Protection Act, would repeal the health law’s job-killing employer mandate. Business owners in Utah and across the U.S. are telling me that this mandate would place an unfair burden and impose penalties on the small businesses that create most of the jobs in our state and nation. Little wonder that our national unemployment rate is near double digits. With the punitive employer mandate looming over their heads, employers here in Utah and in other states are reluctant to hire more workers, which is precisely what is required to pull our nation out of the economic doldrums.
 
Furthermore, to cut the size of our bloated federal government, which has grown 20 percent since 2008,  my Reduce and Cap the Federal Workforce Act would reduce, through attrition, the number of civilian federal workers to February 2009 levels.
 
These are but a few of the initiatives I have launched over the past six months to bridle the size of government and rein in runaway government spending. When I become the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee – arguably the most powerful committee in Congress – in January, I will be ideally positioned to make an even greater difference for Utahns and all Americans in bringing fiscal sanity back to Washington.
 
Simply put, our nation’s deficit disorder is too serious to ignore. Either we pay attention – or our children and grandchildren will pay the piper. I will continue to fight as hard as I can to ensure that does not happen.