The Punter-In-Chief’s DOA Budget
Debt On Arrival, that is, and it’s what House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) tagged President Obama’s budget proposal, released yesterday to nearly unanimous derision.
“Debt on arrival. D-E-B-T on arrival,” Ryan said at a press conference. “Look, he raises spending everywhere. He raises taxes everywhere, increases borrowing. The trajectory of this budget is in the wrong direction. It would be better if we did nothing than actually pass this budget.”
Indeed, with $8.7 trillion in total new (new!) spending, coupled with $46 trillion total spending over the next decade, Obama’s proposed budget officially hits the tipping point, pushing the national debt to 100 percent of the country’s GDP this year. The federal government’s debt, in other words, tops the total U.S. economy.
Obama’s response? A total abdication of responsibility.
“Our problem is we are running out of road to keep kicking this can down,” Ryan said. “And so what did we just get today? We got a punt. The president punted on the budget and he punted on the deficit and on the debt. That’s not leadership.”
And lest anyone think Ryan is simply making political hay and lobbing cheap partisan talking points, note that even some of Obama’s biggest fans eviscerate The One’s weak-willed budget plan. This from The Washington Post, no less:
THE PRESIDENT PUNTED. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck. To duck, and to mask some of the ducking with the sort of budgetary gimmicks he once derided.
…
Administration officials applauded themselves for having the discipline to offset the cost of two expensive items: avoiding punishing cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for physicians and making sure the alternative minimum tax (AMT) does not hit a growing share of middle-class taxpayers. Not so fast. The patches are temporary – two years in the case of the so-called “doc fix,” three years for the AMT. Meantime, the administration uses up a decade’s worth of financing to pay for them – with no whisper of how to address the problems in the long term.
And that’s not the only gimmickry. The budget assumes that the full cost of the doc fix will be paid for, and therefore not add to the deficit, but fails to explain how. It includes a $328 billion magic asterisk for transportation funding, identified only as “bipartisan financing for Transportation Trust Fund.” Higher gasoline taxes? Don’t ask.
For some by-the-numbers perspective, check out National Review Online, which details lowlights tucked into the budget to include $26.3 trillion in total new debt projected by 2021; $7.2 trillion total deficit predicted by the end of the decade; $2 trillion in increased taxes on businesses and upper-income brackets over the next 10 years; and funding increases for the Department of Education ($77.4 billion, a 22 percent hike from 2010 levels), the Department of Energy ($29.5 billion, a 22 percent increase from 2008 levels) and the EPA ($9.9 billion, up 22 percent from 2008 levels).
And while the president’s own deficit commission recommended cutting $4 trillion from the national debt over the next 10 years, Obama’s proposed budget trims all of $1.1 trillion.
That sound you heard? That would be Obama moving to the center. Right.
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