Senator David Perdue: America Needs To Lead Again

U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA), a member of the Senate Budget and Foreign Relations Committees, today on Bloomberg TV highlighted our country's two-pronged crisis--our skyrocketing federal debt and growing global security crisis.

Taking A Business Approach To Washington: "What's different is that in business, you get a return on the investment or you don't make it. You use equity and debt to fund those investments. We don't have a capital budget in the federal government. We don't look at investments that way. We look at it as a cash flow decision entirely. That is one of the reasons why we have this debt crisis right now. We haven't been looking at it that way."

Putting Debt Crisis Into Perspective: "I think we are in a debt crisis. The quarter point increase that the Fed just did at the fund rate is about $50 billion of new interest for the federal government. If interest rates went back to their 30-year average, we'd be paying about a trillion dollars in interest alone. That can't happen, so I'm talking about a perspective of this debt crisis and how it fits with the global security crisis. It really does undermine our ability to fulfill our mission to protect the national defense."

Facing A Two-Pronged Crisis: "I think the world is more dangerous now on several levels than at any time in my lifetime. You have the rise in Russian aggression. You have China's aggressiveness. You have ISIS. And not only that, we have something we haven't seen before, and that's the threat of nuclear proliferation among rogue nations. If you look at the cyber warfare--the hybrid warfare that's being conducted right now in Eastern Europe and also the arms race in space that we are not talking about--I think it's a very dangerous time. And, underpinning that is our ability to fund the national defense. That's why I'm talking about this as a two-pronged crisis."

Realizing America Needs To Lead Again: "There are two things I get from all heads of state around the world. One is--and this is singularly universal--America needs to lead again. The second thing is that we are telling Greece and others how they need to get their house in order financially and a lot of people are telling us, look you own about a third of global government debt right now--the United States--at $20 trillion. That's a lot. A lot of people around the world are really concerned that we're not going to be able to live up to our commitments. In fact, we have created a world where allies don't trust us and our enemies don't fear us because of that very issue."

Focusing On National Priorities: "We're trying to find a way to get to the priorities. That's why I ran for the United States Senate. I had never done this before, but I feel like this crisis has reached a level where the people back home understand there's a real problem. They want us to focus on the priorities."

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