In the News
According to the timetable set by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the President is required to submit his budget to Congress by the first Monday in February. Yet, for the fifth time in six years, President Obama missed this deadline, only finally releasing his budget last week. Our Nation’s budgetary challenges are very real. We have more than $17 trillion in national debt, amounting to almost $55,000 for every man, woman, and child and more than $150,000 for each taxpaying citizen.
The scope of our budgetary challenges necessitates a serious response to cut spending, balance our budget and start paying down our debt. Unfortunately, President Obama’s budget is a clear example that he either doesn’t understand or fails to take seriously the need to get our Nation’s budget under control. Instead of building on the bipartisan efforts of the last few years that have set spending limits and reduced our deficit, the President’s budget seeks to tax more, spend more, and further explode our debt.
Instead of working with Republicans to help reduce the tax burden and allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money or put it back into our economy, the President’s budget seeks another massive $1.8 trillion tax hike. Nearly half of this unacceptable tax increase is earmarked in the President’s budget for brand new spending projects. During the Obama presidency, we have already seen cumulative tax increases of $1.7 trillion. Taking more money out of the pockets of the American people to pay for government expansion is not the path forward for sustained economic growth.
The spending surge in the President’s budget goes far beyond the money he seeks to raise through new taxes. If his budget were enacted into law, federal spending would increase by 63 percent, or nearly $800 billion more than under current law. In fact, his budget would spend $56 billion more in 2015 than the Bipartisan Budget Act that he signed into law just two months ago. All of this spending would lead to an additional $8.3 trillion in debt, bringing our total debt to more than $25 trillion by 2024, without ever approaching a balanced budget.
Unlike the President, House Republicans take our budgetary obligations seriously and we understand that Washington owes the American people fiscal responsibility. Since taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2010 midterm elections, we have consistently passed budgets that cut trillions of dollars, deal with the long-term drivers of our debt, and finally bring us back to a balanced budget.
In the next few weeks, we will once again release a fiscally responsible budget that focuses on growing our economy through serious spending cuts, simplification of our tax code, makes necessary reforms to preserve safety net programs, and, most importantly, brings out budget back to balance so that we can begin the process of paying down our debt before it cripples our long-term economic outlook.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: In the news