Sen. Orrin Hatch: Congress needs fiscal conservatives

WEST VALLEY CITY — If more fiscal conservatives were elected to Congress and to the White House, Americans would see smaller government, less debt and lower taxes, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

"This is the greatest country in the world, but we're in danger of losing it," he said Wednesday while speaking during a lunch meeting for five chambers of commerce in Salt Lake County.

Hatch said he thought the $459 billion budget deficit and $6 trillion federal debt under President George W. Bush were "horrendous." But now there's President Barack Obama's budget deficit hovering around $1 trillion and the national debt at $13 trillion.

"There's not a real effort in Congress, or by those who are in charge of Congress, to get spending under control," Hatch said.

He said he hopes Republicans can make up some lost ground in Congress during this year's midterm election in November.

Though Republicans could gain a majority in the House, it would take four more years before the GOP could gain a majority in the Senate, Hatch said.

However, if Obama is still in office, the federal government likely will have to admit that the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare by opponents, is too expensive and unwieldy, Hatch said.

That's when Obama will want to trade the act for a single-payer system, he predicted.

"That's where the federal government runs everything," Hatch said.

Hatch said Congress should work to repeal the act, which mandates that all Americans have health insurance, and replace it with a law that uses more free-market principles and competition to drive health care costs down. He said people should have incentives for keeping themselves healthy.

"For the first time in history, you have to purchase something you don't want to purchase," Hatch said.

Hatch said that if Republicans take a majority in the Senate, he likely will become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and can get some solid work done on health care issues.

"I guarantee I will break my back to solve the problems of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare," he said.

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