Sen. Corker addresses U.S. debt

Chattanooga's able, conservative U.S. Sen. Bob Corker "visited" our appalling U.S. debt problem in Washington recently. He and some other senators toured the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt.

Unfortunately, too many members of Congress-and the president-are busy piling up more national debt, spending more than even too-high taxes bring in, adding to our country's $14 trillion debt-much of it owed to foreign countries.

In fiscal year 2010 alone, we paid $400 billion in taxes just to cover the interest on that debt! And the debt is increasing more than $1.6 trillion just this year.

Unfortunately, there is no prospect for any immediate solution, with President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress continuing to claim that more spending is necessary to improve the economy.

But Corker, noting that much of our debt is borrowed at short-term interest rates for one month to one year, wants to lock in current low interest rates for up to 30 years to save billions of dollars.

He also wants to limit our federal government spending to 20.6 percent of our gross domestic product-all that we produce in a year.

Corker is trying to do something about our national debt problem, while too many members of Congress and the president are going in the opposite direction.

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