By now everyone has heard Barack Obama proposed his budget for Fiscal Year 2013, found HERE, and that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has already nixed the idea of even bringing an official budget up for a vote. CNN headlines with "Analysis: Politics trumps policy in Obama budget," and looking through the budget shows that Speaker of the House, John Boehner's terminology of "tax and spend" when referencing the budget is spot on.Via Washington Post:
In his final budget request before facing voters in November, Obama called for $350 billion in new stimulus to maintain lower payroll taxes, bolster domestic manufacturing, lure jobs back from overseas, hire teachers, retrain workers and fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. There would be only modest trims to federal health-care programs and no changes to Social Security, the biggest drivers of future borrowing, despite last year’s raucous political debate over the federal debt.
Instead, Obama would reduce deficits by raising taxes by nearly $2 trillion over the next decade on corporations and the wealthy, in part by letting expire George W. Bush-era tax cuts on household income over $250,000 a year.
And the president is encouraging lawmakers to rewrite the tax code to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which strikes many middle-class families, while requiring millionaires to pay at least 30 percent of their annual income to the Internal Revenue Service.
The $3.8 trillion spending request for fiscal 2013 would limit agency budgets according to limits agreed to during last year’s budget battles, forcing belt-tightening at the Pentagon and the lowest spending on domestic agencies as a percentage of the economy in at least a decade.
Emphasis mine.
At a press conference with Republican leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said President Obama’s budget will make the economy worse by continuing to spend money we don’t have, and imposing a massive tax hike on American job creators. Speaker Boehner urged President Obama to call on Senate Democrats to act on the nearly 30 bipartisan, House-passed jobs bills they are refusing to consider, at the expense of more than 12 million out-of-work Americans.
Video and text of Speaker Boehner’s comments below.
Text:
"You know, the president’s policies are not helping our economy. Matter of fact, a lot of people would argue that his policies are actually making it worse. And when you look at the president’s budget submission on Monday, it shows a real lack of leadership.
This will be the fourth budget that will have over a trillion dollars worth of budget deficits. And when you add the budget deficits up over the president’s submissions over the last four years, we’re talking about over $5 trillion worth of new debt. No real activity when it comes to cutting spending. And when you look at the budget you’ll see … $1.9 trillion worth of new tax revenue, and $1.5 trillion worth of more spending. What we need in our economy is to get control of our spending, cut spending, keep taxes low in order to get more Americans back to work.
Our focus all year has been on jobs. We have 30 jobs bills that are sitting over in the United States Senate. If the president’s serious about getting our economy going again, he’ll call Harry Reid and tell the Senate Democrats: ‘consider these bills, they all passed the House with broad, bipartisan support and they deserve consideration in the United States Senate’ so that we can, in fact, put the American people back to work."
It's been more than 1,000 days since the Senate passed a formal budget.
Via The Hill:
The Senate has failed to pass a budget resolution three times in the past 36 years: 2002, 2010 and 2011. Democrats controlled the chamber all three times.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) disagrees and says the Budget Control Act passed in August had the effect of a budget resolution.
More information on the Senate budget process HERE.
[Update] Fact Checkers have had time now to look over Obama's budget and are weighing in.
AP, via Chicago Tribune, headlines with "FACT CHECK: Obama enlists some familiar phantoms to make the numbers add up in his new budget."
FactCheck.org headlines with "Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Exaggeration."
Linkage below
Overview of the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act HERE and the Bill Summary & Status, 93rd Congress (1973 - 1974), H.R.7130 found HERE.
Related analysis:
Wapo- Obama’s budget guts the government
Bloomberg- Obama Budget Unique Source for $3 Trillion
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