By George Allen

Last year, Susan and I watched with pride as our oldest daughter graduated from college, and set off on her life journey in search of a job to start her career.

She was one of the lucky ones, eventually finding a job in her chosen field, but unfortunately many of her friends and peers are still searching.  More and more young people are viewing America not as the land of opportunity as our generation did, but as a place of diminished expectations. The America we grew up in was an America where people were only limited by their imagination, ingenuity and diligence.

 Pessimism is creeping into every corner of our country because the path America is on today is dangerous, debilitating and unsustainable.  It will diminish our children’s future and everyone’s opportunity to achieve their American Dream.

Washington has an opportunity to start taking the necessary steps to set things right and get us back on the path to prosperity.  To get our government under control to improve job opportunities, we have to stop digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt.  In the blink of an eye, our leaders in Washington have made trillion dollar deficits the norm.  This year’s deficit is projected to a hit an astounding $1.65 trillion dollars.

That adds up.  Over $14 trillion dollars in national indebtedness and counting.  The fight in Washington these days is over increasing the debt by over $2 trillion more.

The impending debt-ceiling deadline offers us an opportunity to finally pull Washington back from the brink.  Passing a balanced budget amendment will eliminate the all-too-common debt ceiling theatrics we witness every couple of years.

Some say an amendment to our Constitution is an extraordinary step. 

Correct, and this is an extraordinary crisis that has already done great harm to the American Dream forcing us to borrow approximately 40 cents on every dollar our government spends.  A balanced budget amendment will force leaders in Washington to live by the same rules most Virginia families do – within their means.

Beyond a constitutional amendment, Washington must make meaningful and significant reductions in spending and enact enforceable spending caps to prevent another increase of the debt ceiling in 2 years.  Taken together, these three steps will finally start moving us away from the cliff and into the right direction.

Make no mistake, I do not want to see our country default on its obligations, which could create hardships for everyone here both in the short term and the long term. But, we also can’t continue with the typical Washington band-aid approach, where they take us to the edge of disaster, offer up a short- term solution that fails to address the underlying problem; and then our country is forced to deal with the problem again down the road, spending and wasting trillions of dollars along the way.

Now is the time for us to come together and make the tough choices to stop spending money we don’t have and can’t afford.  Our children deserve better fiscal accountability and pro-job growth solutions. Because, ultimately it will be future generations that shoulder the lasting burdens of Washington’s failures today.

Unfortunately others don’t see it that way. Even with unemployment continuing to climb to 9.2%, some – like my opponent, Tim Kaine – are calling for one trillion dollars in tax increases.  Tax increases will only cripple our already bleak economy by crushing any potential job growth on the horizon.

This is not the first time Tim Kaine has pushed for tax increases.  As governor he called for $4 billion worth of tax increases and under his leadership Virginia lost nearly 100,000 jobs.  He also shut down numerous Rest Areas along interstate roads throughout Virginia, claiming he needed to raise taxes to keep them open.  Upon taking office Governor McDonnell launched an audit that showed V-DOT actually had a surplus of nearly $900 million.

I call on Mr. Kaine and others to offer up constructive, long term solutions like I’ve proposed and am supporting as opposed to raising taxes and not addressing the out of control spending that leads to this reoccurring debt ceiling increases.  He may not like the ideas I’m advocating for – as is his right – but it’s my hope that he will offer up concrete solutions as I have.  We may disagree with each other’s approach but it’s a debate worth having for the future direction of our country.

I want America to be in control of our own destiny.  We remain vulnerable to outside forces due to our dangerous levels of debt and our counterproductive energy policies.

In this pivotal race for America’s future, I’ve laid out a pro-growth plan of action for jobs, affordable American energy, competitiveness, freedom and opportunity that steers us away from mandates, dictates, redistribution and dependency on government.

There is urgency for action to reinvigorate the entrepreneurial spirit of America.

Americans are the most productive, innovative and hardworking people in the world.  It is not the quality of the American people who are holding back our economic growth and security – it is the burdensome course Washington has set us on that needs to change. I want to get “America Open for Business!” again.