By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) from Alabama issued a written statement critical of recent statements by President Barack H. Obama about the budget following release of President Obama’s mid-year budget update. Senator Sessions is the Ranking Republican Member of the Senate Budget Committee.
Sen. Sessions said, “President Obama is currently running a campaign ad saying he has a plan to ‘pay down the debt in a balanced way.’ He has made this claim in public remarks as well. But his updated budget—submitted two weeks after the legal deadline—reveals just how dramatically false this claim is. These ads ought to be pulled down.”
Senator Sessions written statement said that President Obama’s updated budget proposed a $10.6 trillion increase in gross debt through 2022, with debt remaining permanently above 100 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Sen. Sessions said, “The picture in the out-years looks even bleaker. No change is proposed to our dangerously unsustainable debt course.”
Sen. Sessions continued, “The President’s claim his tax hikes are for deficit reduction is shown to be false as well. His budget proposes to spend $46.2 trillion over ten years—an increase of nearly one-and-half trillion dollars above the current law baseline and a 57 percent increase above today’s spending levels. The President’s $1.8 trillion tax increase is not used to reduce the deficit but to fund this massive increase above what we are currently planning to spend.”
Sen. Sessions said, “Meanwhile, the President’s party in the Senate has refused to even produce a budget plan at all for three straight years. America can have robust economic growth—and avert a catastrophic debt crisis—but it requires a credible fiscal plan and the leadership necessary to achieve it.”
President Obama has been campaigning on the message, “I believe the only way to build an economy to last is to strengthen the middle class, asking the wealthy to pay a little more to pay down the national debt in a balanced way.”
If the tax increase that President Obama is asking for on the entrepreneurs and small business owners in the country does pass, according to the White House’s own projections it won’t pay down any of the national debt. Currently the U.S. owes $15.9 trillion. The budget deficit is $1.3 trillion. According to the President’s own numbers raising taxes on the job creators will not even balance the budget….in fact if the government double ALL personal income tax collections the debt would still be increasing by almost $200 billion a year. The President’s election year tax increase on Americans making $250,000 or more a year would do little for the deficit and would do nothing to pay down the debt.
