U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) and fellow lawmakers are asking Speaker Pelosi to avoid partisan politics and allow the House to pass funding for our troops without attaching burdensome, divisive and unrelated measures.

There are reports that Democratic leaders are looking for ways to avoid taking a clean vote on increasing the nation’s debt by attaching it to the fiscal year 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act.  

Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Rating Services recently warned that the U.S. government is, once again, closing in fast on its $12.1 trillion debt ceiling.  It is now expected that the $12.104 trillion debt ceiling could be breached by the end of November.

“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.  We urge you to schedule a separate vote to increase the Nation’s indebtedness. 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,” Luetkemeyer and his colleagues said in a letter to Speaker Pelosi. “At a time when voters are increasingly concerned about federal borrowing and spending it is imperative that Congress conduct an open debate on increasing our Nation’s debt limit — including a stand-alone roll call vote on raising the debt ceiling.”

Luetkemeyer said that the heavy-handed tactics being used by House leadership is reckless because it places political considerations ahead of our troops.

“One of the biggest concerns I hear from constituents is that our nation cannot keeping spending money the taxpayers do not have,” Luetkemeyer said. “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.” 

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