Rep.
Mike Pence, R-Ind., says it is time to “pick a fight” with the Democratic Senate on federal spending cuts, and the piecemeal method of continuing resolutions to keep the government running is “no way to run a railroad.”
“With a national government with a $14 trillion debt, $1.65 trillion deficit, Republicans came together in an unprecedented open debate and we passed a resolution that found about $61 billion in savings,” Pence Monday told Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs. “And last week, Democrats in the Senate called that reckless, irresponsible, mean spirited.
“It just convinced me: Look, it’s time to pick a fight,” Pence said, on the premier broadcast of Fox’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” “If we’re ever going to fundamentally change the fiscal direction of our national government, I think it’s important that this new Republican majority draw a line in the sand, and say: ‘This far, and no farther,’ and in effect demand that the liberals in the Senate and the administration sit down at the table and figure out how we put our fiscal house in order – at least make a down payment on that – and we do it now.”
Pence said that all House Republicans are united in their commitment to doing whatever it takes to bring federal spending under control.
“I just hold the view, that when you run into the recalcitrance – and frankly, tone deafness – we heard last week in the U.S. Senate, it suggests that … sometimes things don’t change in Washington, D.C., until they have to,” Pence said. “I say we pick a fight on this one. We’re going to meet in the morning as a Republican caucus and figure out the strategy going forward, and I’m going to continue to advance with my colleagues, that we ought to dig in, and we ought to dig in now.”
Dobbs said it was unbelievable that the federal government is this far into fiscal 2011 and still has no budget and has to rely on continuing resolutions.
“Look, the Democrats didn’t pass the budget last year, they didn’t pass most of their appropriations, that’s why we’re in the fix that we’re in,” Pence said. “Because the last Congress that got fired by the American people didn’t do their job.
“But this piecemeal approach, which began under the last Congress and continues possibly this week, is no way to run a railroad.”
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.