President Obama sent Congress an enormous $3.9 trillion budget on Tuesday that includes $1 trillion higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and countless spending hikes. Republicans responded quickly, calling it the president’s most irresponsible budget yet.
“It’s disappointing that the president produced a campaign document instead of putting forth a serious budget blueprint that makes the tough choices necessary to get our fiscal house in order,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.
Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Mobile, said he believes the president has very little interest in actually working with congress to find solutions, and referred to Obama’s FY2015 budget as “a bloated liberal wish list that will do little to pay down our debt, create jobs, or provide for a strong national defense.”
“I cannot support a proposal with such skewed priorities – imposing even more taxes on job creators during a down economy and weakening our military in the midst of an international crisis in Europe while continuing the policies of exploding welfare spending without significant reform,” Byrne continued. “These tired ideas have been tried time and again by this Administration, and have unilaterally failed. I believe it is time for a different approach.”
Here are some other notable facts about the president’s budget:
• It will result in a deficit of at least $564 billion
• It seeks to raise $651 billion in revenue by hiking taxes on tobacco products, airline passengers, financial institutions, estates, and high income earners
• It calls for higher taxes and Medicare costs for people the Obama Administration say are “rich”
• Nearly 1/3 of the savings the president claims in his budget are actually fictional because he counts money that could have been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan as “savings”
• The budget counts almost $160 billion in savings from immigration reform, with no indication that it will actually pass Congress
• It contains over $300 billion to spend on roads, railroads and mass transit
• It calls for more funding for “clean energy research”
• The Pentagon is level funded
• It does not include any savings that could be gained by slowing the increase of Social Security benefits, an offer he made last year but has walked away from because Congressional Democrats dislike it.
Yellowhammer will have more on the federal budget in the coming days.
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