10.04.12

‘Serial Misrepresentations’: President’s Budget Claims Disproven By Own Budget Document

“All we have to do is review the President’s own budget document, as submitted to Congress, and look up the figures in the tables provided… The biggest obstacle we face in preventing [a debt] crisis is a president who refuses tell the truth about his plan and a Democrat Senate that refuses to produce any plan at all.” 

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today about President Obama’s “serial misrepresentations” about his budget plan, pointing to figures in the President’s own budget tables:

“The debt is the greatest challenge facing our country. But the President continues to falsely represent his budget plan to the American people. These serial misrepresentations have the effect of lulling the citizenry to the danger instead of rallying them to action.

President Obama repeats the near-universally discredited claims that his budget would achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction, coupling $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in new taxes. Rebutting these claims does not require theory or speculation. All we have to do is review the President’s own budget document, as submitted to Congress, and look up the figures in the tables provided.

Tables S-1 and S-4 from the summer budget update show a $1.8 trillion tax increase. So for the President to promise 2.5 times as many spending cuts would require reductions of $4.5 trillion. But table S-4 shows outlays of $46 trillion—a spending request $1.4 trillion greater than what we are currently planning to spend. Overall, under the President’s plan, the federal budget will grow 58 percent larger—from $3.6 trillion today to $5.74 trillion in 2022. The gross federal debt, as shown in table S-14, will rise $11 trillion from last year’s debt total—to $25.4 trillion in 2022.

As for the President’s mysterious $4 trillion in deficit reduction, it’s nowhere to be found. The President’s net change in spending is a $1.4 trillion increase and his net change in taxes is a $1.8 trillion increase—leaving less than $400 billion in deficit reduction, one-tenth of what he pledges. As Glenn Kessler writes: ‘The repeated claim that Obama’s budget reduces the deficit by $4 trillion is simply not accurate… fake money is being used to pay for real spending projects.’

America is nearing a debt crisis. And the biggest obstacle we face in preventing this crisis is a president who refuses tell the truth about his plan and a Democrat Senate that refuses to produce any plan at all.”

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