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As a taxpayer, I want to assure you that Republicans are doing everything we can to reduce wasteful spending.

To be fair, Republicans are not blameless. The deficit began to spiral out of control on President Bush's watch.

There are as many Democrats that are guilty as Republicans and their spending habits. And the fact is, is that Washington is just broken.

Republicans spend and borrow, Democrats tax and spend.

To simply argue that public spending must always go up and never be cut is irresponsible.

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

There's no reason why fiscal responsibility is a Democrat or a Republican point of view. It ought to be all of our points of view.

It's easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president.

It is time for us to insist that we are accountable for the money that we are spending.