By USDR.
US Daily Review reached out and heard from Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which today reacted to President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget submission by noting its timely release for only the second time in his administration, and dismay that the President busts through the budget caps by $74 billion. Even worse, the President pays for these new spending initiatives with an array of tax hikes. The plan is so unsound that in 2025, interest on the national debt will be $785 billion, or $146 million more than the projected $639 billion deficit.
“The President claims he has no intention of ‘trimming his sails’ in regard to any of his budget plans. Unfortunately, the ship of state has been fiscally off course for years and the President’s FY 2016 budget will steer it into a massive, dangerous wave of red ink. Taxpayers sent a very clear message to Washington in November when it drummed many big spenders out of Congress and handed the Senate to fiscal conservatives. The President apparently has no clue that the elections took place. He should stop wasting everyone’s time pursuing a budget that will likely receive the same number of votes that his FY 2015 budget received in the House (two) and his FY 2013 plan received in the Senate (zero). The only thing the President should be ‘trimming’ is the $18 trillion national debt, which will require cooperation with Congress and serious commitment to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
The President’s budget contains $3.99 trillion in spending, $3.53 trillion in revenue, and a $474 billion deficit. He includes his misguided $60 billion program for “free” community college, expansion of child care to an additional 1.1 children under the age of four by 2025, universal pre-school (all federally-funded), $7.4 billion to fund clean energy technologies, $4 billion to push for accelerated emissions cuts to power plants, and $400 million to help communities assess flood risks. The president’s proposals are predicated upon new tax hikes and revenue generators, such as taxing inheritances and ending a tax break for corporate jet owners, as well as an increase in the top capital gains tax rate to 28 percent. The budget also includes a six-year, $478 billion public-works program for infrastructure improvements to the nation’s highways and bridges, half to be paid for with a one-time, 14 percent tax on an estimated $2 trillion in the overseas properties of U.S. companies.
His budget also relies on rosy deficit estimates. While the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the deficit will rise to more than $1 trillion in 2025, the President’s budget pegs it at $687 billion in that same year. A White House official described the budget as an attempt to eliminate “mindless austerity” and replace it with “smart reforms.” While the budget includes a nominal list of spending cuts and a pitiful list of program consolidations, the effort is far short of what needs to be done to eliminate wasteful spending.
“Not surprisingly, this budget once again demonstrates the President’s bewildering capacity for living in denial and promoting his long-established and unimaginative redistributionist philosophy. The budget also dovetails with the Democrats’ tired class warfare rhetoric. The President should therefore not be surprised when these proposals get mugged by reality when they arrive on Capitol Hill,” concluded Schatz.
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