The state’s most significant congressional issues are federal spending, taxes and mortgage reform, stated an Illinois congresswoman.

“We all know what is best for our district and we don’t want bureaucrats in Washington to decide that,” said U.S. Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL-13) during an economic roundtable held in Downers Grove.

Biggert met with local business leaders from the Downers Grove Chamber of Commerce and Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation to discuss local and national economic concerns, one of which is federal spending and, in particular, earmarks.

The congresswoman announced that she will not participate in Washington’s broken earmark system and that she will back up her demand for reform with a moratorium on earmarks from her office. The moratorium will include all district-specific appropriations requests not included in an agency’s budget.

Last year congress passed 11,737 earmarks at a cost of $16.9 billion in taxpayer money, said Biggert.

“These committee members have found a way to get around the scrutiny and transparency, so we found that there was a lot of wasteful spending,” she said. “My constituents don’t want to pay for bridges to nowhere and indoor rainforests in Iowa anymore.

“Things like that really brought attention to this problem and frankly just showed a lot of greed in some of the astronomical amounts of money that people were receiving.”

Biggert noted that a recent omnibus bill cut funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science by $125 million because of members who acquired money for MRI machines through earmarks.

“MRIs are important,” Biggert said, “but not out of the Office of Science’s basic research and science appropriation.”

As a result of this budget cut, Batavia-based Fermilab has been forced to layoff or furlough their workforce, which is comprised mainly of scientists.

“We’ve already had several of these very prominent scientists go back to France and Switzerland, and we won’t get them back,” said Biggert. “Our lifeblood is our economy. We’re in a global economy and we’ve got to be able to compete. We can only do that through basic research. This is really a challenge.”

This type of erroneous government spending will soon affect taxpayers as well, said Biggert.

“This month, the House Democrat majority passed a budget that sets the stage for more spending and the largest tax increase in history—$683 billion over five years,” the congresswoman said. “They want to raise taxes but they don’t want a transparent process that allows wasteful spending to be challenged on the House floor.”

According to Biggert, a hike in taxes will make it harder for the housing market to recover from its current predicament.

She calls for three necessary housing reforms: a restructuring by congress of Government Sponsored Enterprises, the passing of a Federal Housing Administration reform bill and more funding for the housing counsel.

“Over 2,000 certified housing counselors are armed and ready on the front line to counsel people,” said Biggert. “Unfortunately there are too many people that have gotten into this situation who have not had any real education from their loan originators about what they were really getting into, particularly in the sub-prime loan area.”