10.27.11

Sessions Responds To Latest Developments On Spending Negotiations, Potential Shutdown

“[The House’s] reductions in spending are a crucial first step towards getting our fiscal house in order. But President Obama and the Democrat-led Senate have so far refused to take even this first step towards fiscal sanity… Instead, Democrat leaders have resorted to exaggerated, dishonest doomsday predictions about what would happen if we cut government spending by even 2 percent… Years from now people will look back at this year’s spending fight as a turning point or a lost opportunity to change direction. History will not judge kindly any president who failed to rise to the moment and failed to confront the defining challenge of our time.”

   WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, made the following comments today urging the Democratic Senate leadership to adopt funding measures passed by the House that would prevent a government shutdown and reduce spending:

“The Republican House has passed a bill, H.R. 1, which would fund the government for the rest of the year while cutting $61 billion from a federal budget that has swelled to almost $3,700 billion. It is also poised to pass a one-week extension that further reduces spending while funding our troops through the end of the year and preventing the government from shutting down—a bill that the president has now threatened to veto. These reductions in spending are a crucial first step towards getting our fiscal house in order. But President Obama and the Democrat-led Senate have so far refused to take even this first step towards fiscal sanity—nor has the Senate passed any sort of bill as a counter-offer. Instead, Democrat leaders have resorted to exaggerated, dishonest doomsday predictions about what would happen if we cut government spending by even 2 percent.

These are serious times. We need serious leaders.

Witness after witness, expert after expert, has testified before the Budget Committee that our current path of spending and borrowing has put our nation on path to fiscal calamity. The Democrat co-chair of the president’s own fiscal commission said that the United States “faces the most predictable economic crisis in its history,” and that, if we fail to act, a debt crisis could arrive in an soon as two years. This could mean a recession that impacts millions of Americans throughout the country.

This should not be a partisan issue. This is about limiting a government that has grown dangerously large. This is about the financial strength, integrity, and future of our Republic. It’s about jobs and economic security for countless Americans. I truly hope the president and Majority Leader Reid will finally accept economic reality and do what must be done to fund the government and bring spending under control.

We have two choices: prosperity or decline. We can continue to blindly spend money we do not have, or we can spend less and grow more as a country.

Years from now people will look back at this year’s spending fight as a turning point or a lost opportunity to change direction. History will not judge kindly any president who failed to rise to the moment and failed to confront the defining challenge of our time.”