By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) from Alabama says that President Barack H. Obama’s proposed budget would increase federal spending every year and would increase both taxes and the national debt.
Sen. Sessions said, “Secretary Geithner’s comments yesterday on FOX News Sunday affirm that the President’s campaign pledge—that he has a ‘balanced plan’ to ‘pay down our debt’—remains one of the greatest financial misrepresentation ever made to the American people. From Geithner’s comments, and existing information about the President’s budget, we know the following about the White House’s secret fiscal cliff proposal. “
Sen. Sessions said that the President’s plan, “Increases spending by more than $1 trillion above the current baseline. In other words, spending will increase $1 trillion above the already projected growth after enactment of the Budget Control Act as part of the last debt deal. It achieves not one dollar in net spending reduction or debt reduction, and it continues the country on a dangerously unsustainable debt path.”
According to Sessions the proposal that the President has presented the Congress contains more than $170 billion in stimulus spending. This includes $26 billion to extend unemployment benefits, $50 billion in new spending on transportation spending, and $90 billion to extend the Social Security tax decrease.
The President’s plan would also eliminate the $1.2 trillion sequester promised in the disastrous Budget Control Act of 2010 and would increase spending for Medicare Providers (the so called ‘doc fix’). That would cost another $394 billion.
According to Sen. Sessions, the Obama plan savings are largely illusionary. The President’s supposed cuts are future reductions in Medicare and Medicaid provider payments beyond those already in the President’s healthcare law (Obamacare) without doing anything to change or reform entitlement spending. Sessions said that the plan also has over $800 billion in phony ‘war savings.’ Sen. Sessions said that is, “One of the most widely discredited budget gimmicks in existence.” “Secretary Geithner’s claim of two dollars in spending cuts for every one dollar in tax hikes is therefore an egregious falsehood. The President is calling for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes. But instead of a corresponding $3.2 trillion spending cut, there is a more than $1 trillion spending increase. “
Sen. Sessions said, “Overall, were this secret proposal enacted, it would produce approximately $9 trillion in new gross debt over 10 years. By 2016, yearly federal spending would eclipse $4 trillion, including a 30 percent increase in welfare costs. There is a reason why the White House strongly prefers to operate in secrecy. I am confident that if they made this secret proposal public, and in a form that could be scored by CBO, these facts would become clear and the ‘plan’ would be resoundingly rejected by the American people and their representatives in Congress.”
Senator Sessions is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. Sessions is calling for the fiscal cliff crisis to be resolved in open and public debate as part of the normal budget process in both Houses of Congress. President Obama has rejected the normal budget process and instead has run the country for over three years without any budget. To this point, the fiscal cliff negotiations have largely been a closed door process between the President and his team and a select few members of Congress. Despite this the two sides appear to still be far apart from a compromise resolution to the coming crisis.
