OntheWilderSide

US Senate Candidate Says More Is Needed Than Just Discretionary Spending Caps

On Wednesday February 3rd, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama spoke on the Senate floor to argue for his amendment to the Tax, Unemployment, Highways Bill that would cap discretionary spending at 2%. In the State of the Union address, President Obama suggested a temporary freeze on discretionary spending to begin next year, although no legislation has been enacted as of yet to fulfill his promise. In a statement made Wednesday, Midge Potts, 2010 Progressive/Green candidate for US Senate in Missouri, agreed that capping spending is a start, but more proactive measures must be taken if America is ever to get out from under the burdensome debt that has more than doubled, to 12 trillion dollars, in the last decade. Potts suggested that as long American tax payers are forced to waste trillions of dollars to sustain a global imperialist military that includes hundreds of bases on foreign soil, the United States will never be able to rebuild our economy.

Midge Potts said:

Although ending earmarks and reasonably capping spending are necessary measures to reel in the federal budget deficit, nothing is as important as realizing that the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year to support our military infrastructure abroad is wasteful and unnecessary. We are going to be driven into bankruptcy by the same bloated military spending that led to the fall of the Soviet Union two short decades ago. America’s current military budget is more than 5 times that of the combined military spending Russia, China, Britain and France, and focuses on maintaining a global empire rather providing for the defense of the United States. Both Democrat and Republican legislators need to realize that the People of the United States do not want to maintain a global American empire that keeps us in perpetual debt and prevents us from moving forward on measures that would truly provide for domestic defense such as universal health care.

In a prior press release issued January 26th, Ms. Potts said ending deficit spending is one of her top priorities, and that she would never vote to increase the debt ceiling if elected to serve in the United States Senate; she also said she would continually support legislation, such as that introduced by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) which would end wasteful earmarks by requiring all appropriations to be properly vetted through congressional committees.

Midge Potts, co-chair of the Progressive Party of Missouri, is the party’s candidate for U.S. Senator in 2010. She and other party members are circulating petitions to get Ms. Potts and other Progressive Party candidates on the Missouri ballot this year.

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Filed under: 3rd party, Action Alert!, activism, Anti-War, economy, election, Election 2010, grassroots democracy, Green Party, News Tagged: | midge potts, Missouri, US Senate