This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 10, 2009 - With last weekend's House health care vote now settled, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, is now focusing on what could be the next controversial issue before area members of Congress:
Increasing the national debt.
Luetkemeyer is among the Republicans seeking a separate vote. Some Democrats are planning to attach the increase to this fiscal year's defense appropriations bill, an approach often used by legislators over the past decade when the nation's debt ceiling needed to be increased. Critics say the aim is to reduce the spotlight.
Discussion already is underway in the U.S. Senate, in response to estimates that the debt ceiling will need to be increased by mid-December, at the latest. Leutkemeyer says the ceiling could be breached by the end of this month. Some moderate Senate Democrats are calling for a commission to address the nation's debt problem, tied in part to last year's economic meltdown.
Luetkemeyer co-signed a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that calls for a separate debt ceiling vote.
“We believe lawmakers should not be allowed to evade this debate. Raising the debt limit is sufficiently important to require a separate roll-call vote,'' the group wrote. "...The national debt stands at more than $11.927 trillion while our U.S. Federal budget deficit is a staggering $1.42 trillion — the highest since World War II."
“One of the biggest concerns I hear from constituents is that our nation cannot keeping spending money the taxpayers do not have,” Luetkemeyer said in a statement. “We need to get our fiscal house in order and make the difficult decisions needed to pay down our nation’s debt. We should not be passing this debt off to our children and grandchildren.”
