Dan Burton statement after watching President Obama’s speech on his “budget do-over”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN-05) issued the following statement after watching President Obama’s speech on his “budget do-over” which included raising taxes on families and small businesses: “In February of this year, President Obama offered an irresponsible budget for Fiscal Year 2012 that would have imposed a job-crushing $1.5 Trillion tax hike and would have added $9.1 Trillion to the debt over the next decade. After watching President Obama’s budget “do-over” speech today, it is painfully evident that he still doesn’t get it. Our country is broke and the American people understand we can’t continue to spend money we do not have.

“In the President’s second attempt to craft a budget, he failed to offer a serious proposal that addresses Washington’s spending and entitlement problem. Instead, he’s relying on minimal cuts to government bureaucracy while raising taxes on families and small businesses. Doing so is unacceptable and is the wrong thing to do get our economy back on track. We need drastic cuts across the board in addition to lowering the tax burden on those who create jobs, not raise them.

“President Obama talked a lot about “shared sacrifice”, but the government should be the first to step up. Consider that in the first ten years of the implementation of Obamacare, it is estimated that it will cost $2.6 Trillion. If the President is truly serious about deficit reduction, would he at least consider delaying or scaling back a massive new entitlement program that is currently being received by no one?

“My Republican colleagues and I are focused on cutting our bloated budget and bringing down our National debt and deficit. Rep. Paul Ryan, Chairman of the Budget Committee, has put forth a responsible budget that focuses on job creation without raising taxes, that seeks to not spend money Washington doesn’t have, and that eases the burden of debt weighing down on our children’s and grandchildren’s future. These are important steps to securing America’s present as well as its future. We absolutely must get our fiscal house in order now.”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Joshua Gillespie April 13, 2011 (317) 848-0201

TEXT CREDIT: Dan Burton - Indiana 5th District Washington, DC 2308 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-0001 (202) 225-2276

IMAGE CREDIT: This United States Congress image is in the public domain. This may be because it is an official Congressional portrait, because it was taken by an official employee of the Congress, or because it has been released into the public domain and posted on the official websites of a member of Congress. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

Paul Ryan Responds to President Obama Deficit Speech VIDEO

WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan made the following statement after listening to the President’s speech on deficit reduction:

“When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

“We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past. By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we'll be here.”

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Key Facts About the President’s Speech

General:

* Counts unspecified savings over 12 years, not the 10-year window by which serious budget proposals are evaluated.

* Postpones all savings until 2013 – after his reelection campaign.

* Runs away from the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations on Social Security – puts forward no specific ideas or even a process to force action.

* Calls for the appointment of another commission, after mostly omitting from his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget any of proposals submitted by the commission he appointed last year.

* Non-specific framework fails to meet Fiscal Commission's definition of sustainability.

Taxes:

* Proposes to raise taxes on the American people by more than $1 trillion, devastating our fragile economy and stifling job creation.

* Endorsed the Fiscal Commission’s ideas on taxes, which specifically called for lower tax rates and a broader base, but then called for higher tax rates. Which is it?

* Government health and retirement programs are growing at more than twice the speed of the economy. At the current rate of spending, revenue would have to rise “by more than 50 percent” just to keep debt at its current level, according to the Government Accountability Office. That means tax increases across-the-board, now and in the future.

Medicare:

* Instead of proposing structural reforms that would actually reduce health care costs, the President proposed across-the-board cuts to current seniors’ care.

* Strictly limits the amount of health care seniors can receive within the existing structure of unsustainable government health care programs.

* Gives more power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to determine what treatments seniors should or shouldn’t get, against a backdrop of costs that continue to rise.

* Conceded that the relentlessly rising cost of health care is the primary reason why the nation is threatened by debt, and implicitly conceded that his health care law failed to solve the problem.

* Eviscerates the only competitive element anywhere in health-care entitlement programs – the competition amongst Part D prescription-drug plans – which allowed the drug benefit to come in 41 percent under budget.

Medicaid:

* Acknowledges that the open-ended financing of Medicaid is a crippling financial burden to both states and the federal government, but explicitly rejected the only solution to this problem, which is to give states the freedom they need to design systems that work for the unique needs of their own populations.

Defense:

* Proposes more cuts on top of $78 billion in cuts included in his own defense budget, which he proposed just two months ago – all at a time when he continues to task the military with new missions.

* Secretary Gates has said that the military needs 2 percent – 3 percent real growth just to keep executing the missions that DOD has already been assigned.

* Secretary Gates described deficit reduction plans that let budget targets drive defense policy as “math, not strategy.”

Contact: Conor Sweeney (202) 226-7270

VIDEO and IMAGE CREDIT: VideeWell

TEXT CREDIT: U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan Washington, DC Office. 1233 Longworth House Office Bldg Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-3031 Fax: (202) 225-3393