State News

Sessions Response To Obama's Budget Speech

By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter 

United States Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R) from Alabama, issued a written statement Wednesday in response to President Obama’s budget speech. Senator Sessions is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Sen. Sessions said, “Our per-person government debt is now worse than that of Greece. Yet the tax hikes in the president’s budget proposal are used to fuel a $1.6 trillion increase in government spending—not to reduce the deficit. President Obama might have more credibility on these matters were his plan not rejected 0-414 in the House and, the year before, 0-97 in the Senate.”

Sen. Sessions continued, “President Obama would also enjoy more fiscal credibility if he spent less time assailing the House and more time encouraging the Senate’s Democrat majority to comply with the law requiring them to write a budget and pass it on the floor—something they’ve refused to do for three straight years. A major reason why the president and Majority Leader Reid don’t want a budget on the floor of the Senate is because it would mean casting multiple votes on the president’s health law. We now know that law will not only cost $2.6 trillion over the first full ten years, it will also create a new $17 trillion long-term unfunded obligation, severely threatening the funding for Medicare and Social Security at a time when we should be shoring those programs up.”

 Sen. Sessions said, “The American people—Democrat and Republican—are ready for a leader who will rally the country behind a sound, long-term plan to get our spending and debt under control. Until that happens, the government will continue to grow and the middle class will continue to shrink.”

Sen. Sessions included a chart in his presentation showing that President Obama’s budget would lead to a national debt of $25.9 trillion by just 2022.  The President’s budget includes $1.9 trillion in new taxes. President Obama’s budget calls for $47 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years and never predicts a balanced budget.  The President’s budget fiscal year 2013 budget was voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressmen from both parties voted against the budget that President Obama 415 to 0.  The House of Representatives passed a Republican budget plan written by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.  The Ryan budget had no Democratic Party support.  It is unlikely that the Democrat controlled U.S. Senate is going to pass either the Obama budget or the Ryan budget.  The United States Government is the largest financial entity in the entire world and it has not operated under a budget in three years.  In the last ten years the U.S. government has spent $28 trillion.

The National Debt is $15.6 trillion and climbing rapidly.

To read Senator Sessions comments in their entirety

http://sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressShop.NewsReleases&ContentRecord_id=7e6602f5-0738-d9f4-e716-36c2dbb7a409&Region_id=&Issue_id=