As the fiscal cliff approaches, one former U.S. Comptroller General is urging President Obama – and whomever is elected in November — to use his political position to save the nation from financial ruin.“We are living in a bubble right now, and we need to make sure that bubble doesn’t burst,” David Walker said at American University on Tuesday.
No matter who gets elected on Nov. 6, Walker wants the next president to use his position of influence to ask the American people for help pressuring their representatives into working for the sake of the nation, not for party politics. “The president is the chief executive officer of the United States and is the only person that can command television time and the only person who has what we call the ‘bully pulpit,’ the power to go directly to the people,” Walker said during his AU talk. He called the current system, run by special interests, big money and career politicians, a “dysfunctional democracy.”
Walker, who is also the founder and CEO of Comeback America Initiative, is just wrapping up a 10,000 mile, 27-state bus tour called “$10 Million a Minute Tour.” The tour educates Americans about the current financial debt, increasing at a rate of approximately $10 million a minute, and educates them on steps that can be taken to improve the country’s fiscal situation for future generations.
Tuesday’s talk, geared specifically toward college students, was hosted by the American University School of Public Affairs and titled, “Speak Out, Don’t Freak Out.”
The former comptroller general also said salaries for members of Congress should be based on performance, specifically passing budgets on time. “In my lifetime, the Congress has only passed a budget and timely appropriations bill, meaning by the beginning of the fiscal year, four times in 61 years,” he said. “Ladies and gentleman, that is an ‘F’ minus.” He joked that if Congress was paid on performance, “they’d owe us money.”
Walker pointed to the economy, jobs and solving the debt crisis as the three most important factors for determining how Americans cast their ballots on Election Day. “Whichever presidential candidate can demonstrate to the American people that they can do the best job prospectively — let’s don’t fight this about the past,” he said. “There’s plenty of reasons we are where we are, there’s plenty of blame to go around. It’s not a personal and a partisan issue.”
According to Walker, all areas of the federal budget should be up for cuts and reforms. “I respectfully suggest that everything has to be on the table,” he said, including the possibilities of cutting Medicare and raising taxes.
Ultimately, this issue comes down to the immorality behind leaving such a financial burden on future generations,Walker said. “It’s easy to spend somebody else’s money,” he said. “It’s even easier to spend it when they’re too young to vote or not born yet, and that’s what’s going on. And that’s got to stop.”
