03.04.14

Sessions: President’s Budget ‘An Open Declaration That Reality Doesn’t Matter’

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today regarding President Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget submission:

“Just days ago the Director of the Congressional Budget Office sounded the alarm over our nation’s ‘unsustainable’ debt path and ‘the risk of a fiscal crisis.’ But President Obama has ignored the warning and submitted a budget plan that bursts through the Ryan-Murray spending caps he agreed to when he signed them into law. With this proposal, the President has chosen not merely to disregard but to hide the dangers we face.

The President’s plan spends $791 billion above Ryan-Murray, casually wiping away the newly-established spending limits.

The President’s plan increases spending next year alone by $114 billion, including $56 billion in spending above the Ryan-Murray discretionary caps.

The President’s plan dramatically raises taxes by $1.76 trillion—double last year’s proposed tax hike. These astounding new taxes in reality will never happen, and provide a cover to mask the cost of the extraordinary new spending.

The President’s plan increases mandatory spending 78 percent and Medicare and Medicaid spending 73 percent, displaying not even the slightest care for—or offering any steps to prevent—the impending insolvency of these programs. Nor is any measure proposed to shore up Social Security.

The President’s plan adds $8.3 trillion to our nation’s gross federal debt.

The President’s plan is an open declaration that deficits don’t matter, debt doesn’t matter, and that reality itself doesn’t matter.

This profligacy has already inflicted an excruciating financial toll. Last year we paid our creditors $221 billion in interest on our federal debt. Under the President’s tax-and-spend plan, annual interest payments will rise to $812 billion. That’s $424 in monthly interest costs for every American worker, or more than $5,000 per worker per year. This money is not used for roads or bridges or schools—it must be used only to pay off our creditors, and has become the fastest growing item in the federal budget.

Annual interest costs in this budget will exceed our nation’s entire defense budget in just five years.

The President’s plan rejects the very idea of limits. It is the manifesto for a big government, tax-and-spend ideology. It will further grow the government, shrink the middle class, and shield the political elite from accountability as they raid the nation’s wealth.

As Washington prospers, workers suffer. The causes are clear: energy restrictions that destroy jobs; regulations that hamstring productivity; a health law that shrinks the workforce; a welfare policy that penalizes work; a trade policy that sends jobs overseas; an immigration policy that reduces wages; and a crushing tax and debt burden that drains our vitality and growth.

This budget betrays both our responsibility to Americans today—struggling to get by in this slow growth, high debt economy—and to our children, who will inherit perhaps the greatest debt any nation has ever accrued.”