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Republicans Blast President Obama On His Budget
The bipartisan feelings between President Barack Obama and House Republicans barely survived the weekend.
Republicans are ripping into Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget today, criticizing the spending increases, record deficits and tax increases on the wealthy.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) hinted at hypocrisy in the White House’s budget, which was delivered to Capitol Hill this morning. He said that Obama spoke about “the importance of fiscal responsibility” at his conference’s retreat in Baltimore last weekend but delivered a budget that “spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much.”
Boehner said the budget is filled with “reckless spending and more unsustainable debt.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), like all other Republicans, blasted the budget.
“This budget provides a startling figure that should stop us all in our tracks,” McConnell said. “According to the administration’s budget, the interest on the federal debt is expected to be nearly 6 trillion dollars over the next decade. We’ve all heard about interest-only loans, but this is the equivalent of an average of $600 billion dollars in interest every year. That’s an astonishing number.”
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had little praise of the president’s spending plan, saying in a statement that it “spends more than any other in history, creates the largest deficits in history, and imposes the largest tax increases in history — at a time when our country can least afford it.”
Democrats defended Obama’s budget and dismissed the Republican criticisms as predictable.
Taking the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Majority Leader Harry Reid defended the President's budget, saying Obama's plan prioritized putting Americans back to work and "smartly" invested in infrastructure, science and technology.
Reid continued by going after Republicans for their "no" votes on both the "Pay-as-you-go" and the Conrad-Gregg debt reduction commission amendments last week—calling their dissent "a real shame" and a "partisan game."
"The Republicans voted in unison against pay-as-you-go, a simple concept that we should only spend what we as a government have. Some Republicans [who] sponsored the legislation creating the deficit reduction commission voted against their own bill. Had they voted with us, the bill would have passed," Reid said. "Our economy and our future cannot afford partisan games like that."
Still, after Obama’s widely praised question and answer session with Republicans, the GOP leaders tried to find something nice to say.
Boehner said Obama’s funds for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq “ensures our troops…have the resources they need to succeed in their mission.”
Cantor, however, did add that Obama’s spending freeze, “is a step in the right direction, but one that is far too small considering the fiscal situation we face.”
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who asked Obama on Friday if his budget would triple the nation’s debt, thinks he got the answer to his lingering question Monday.
“This budget sends a clear signal to American taxpayers who are tired of the spending, deficits and bailouts — and who recognize that they are not working — that the president is taking the policies they have rejected to a new high,” Hensarling said. “This is clear evidence that the president is ignoring the will of the American taxpayers who want Washington to go on a diet.”
Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said the budget has “too many new taxes, too much new spending and too much debt, all of which will discourage hiring and further reduce Americans’ job security.”
“While I am glad to see the budget seeks to increase exports of American-made goods and services, those efforts are far outweighed by trillions of dollars in job-killing tax hikes,” Camp said in a statement.
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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Fox News, Youtube, Google Maps
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