A Tale of Three Budget Plans (or: A Picture Is Worth A Trillion Words)
Sometimes, a picture is worth a trillion words.
This chart from the 4/21 Wall Street Journal puts the budget battle in perspective.
It’s puzzling why President Obama even bothered to offer a second, revised budget plan (the one he announced in a campaign-style speech, with few details, at George Washington University on April 13th).
Like his February 14th budget, his “new and improved” April 13th budget doesn’t balance the budget, doesn’t repeal the unaffordable new health care entitlement, doesn’t stop America’s staggering debt buildup. What it does do is:
- Promise around $2 trillion in largely unspecified spending reductions (except Medicare: there, he would cut even more deeply than House Republicans over the coming decade) and
- Double the tax hikes from his first budget (i.e., $3 trillion in higher taxes instead of $1.5 trillion).
- Let the national debt keep growing, to a staggering 77% of the economy by 2021.
Even Democratic graybeard Erskine Bowles, who chaired Mr. Obama’s recent deficit commission, felt compelled to dismiss Mr. Obama’s budget(s) as woefully insufficient to meet the enormous fiscal challenges facing the nation.
In short, Mr. Obama is running for reelection on a platform of permanently higher taxes and spending, with even deeper Medicare cuts than Republicans have proposed over the coming decade, while trying to pass it all off as “fiscal prudence” with “compassion.”
It displays neither prudence nor compassion.
True compassion (for future generations) would dictate that the President offer a third, this-time-serious budget — a budget at least as compassionate as the one that passed the House.
For a more defailed comparison, see our handy one-page report card.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress: “No Debt Ceiling Hike Unless You ‘Cut, Cap & Balance Federal Spending!”
Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks’s Legislative Counsel and Vice President, Health Care Policy.
Additional Information
Senate Budget Vote: Republicans 40, Obama 0
PODCAST: Dean Clancy on the Senate Budget Votes (May 26, 2011)
FreedomWorks Budget Report Card: Grading the 10-Year Budget Plans
A Tale of Three (House) Budgets: A Picture Is Worth a Trillion Words
From Billions to Trillions: Why the House Budget Vote Is So Important
