House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia) says President Obama’s budget is simply more taxes to pay for even more spending and he says congressional Republicans will take a much more responsible approach to cutting spending and improving the nation’s fiscal health.
On Monday, Obama unveiled his $3.99 trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2016. It calls for higher taxes on investors and more fees on large banks in order to pay for “free” community college for students and tax credits for families with two working parents to pay for day care. It also makes major infrastructure spending a priority. Deficits only get bigger in Obama’s ten-year projection. If his budget were adopted in full, well over eight trillion dollars would be added to the national debt over the next decade.
Chairman Price says Obama is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results.
“The president wants to tax more just to spend more. That’s the kind of policy that doesn’t get us a growing economy,” said Price.
“His proposal never balances, ever. (It) never ever balances. It’s more taxes, more spending, more borrowing. Remember what that means to each and every American. Every single dollar that’s taken for taxes or every single dollar that’s borrowed is a dollar that can’t be used to pay for an education for a child, to buy a house, to buy a car, to pay rent. to pay a mortgage. All the things that the American people are so desirous of doing are harmed by what the president’s proposal is. We think there’s a better way,” said Price.
For starters, Price says Congress will have a united front in the budget process after years of partisan clashes and some years of Democrats simply failing to produce a budget.
“It will be a budget that will get to balance, that will lay out that path for solving and strengthening and securing the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the health and retirement programs for our country. We’ll lay the policies in place that would provide for pro-growth activity in our economy, whether it’s tax reform or energy policy,” said Price.
The Obama budget calls for an end to spending caps mandated by sequestration, calling for seven percent increases in defense and discretionary spending. On Monday, Obama said the additional spending was vital to national security and the care of veterans and he slammed the existing caps as “mindless austerity.”
Price says that’s some interesting revisionist history.
“It’s curious because this ‘mindless austerity’ was actually his idea. The sequester was the president’s idea and it’s one of the few things where Republicans and Democrats have agreed with each other over the past four years on how to begin to control spending,” said Price.
The chairman says House Republicans will probably issue their budget late next month. He believes they will likely propose a framework that would lead to a balanced budget within ten years. So how will GOP budget leaders begin to chisel away at our deficits? Step one, according to Price. is to pass spending bills in a responsible way.
“It’s a significant amount of money that can be saved by doing appropriations bills through regular order, which means that the committees in the House and the Senate deal with them individually and they come to the floor of the House and the Senate individually as well,” he said.
“It’s not just the money that can be saved here for the federal government. It’s also all the kinds of regulatory schemes that have been put in place by this administration can be addressed in that way to limit what the EPA is doing, to limit what the National Labor Relations Board is doing to harm job creation. We can do those kinds of things through the appropriations process in a way that’s virtually impossible to do in any other way,” said Price.
Price expects little common ground between the parties, but he does believe Republicans and President Obama could pursue some common priorities if both sides are so inclined.
“I think there can be progress. The president has recognized that the level of taxation at the business level is harming job creation and is harming American businesses. We hope there’s common ground there. The president has suggested that there’s some reform that he might be open to on the international tax side so we can create more jobs and have more resources for research and development and growing our economy,” said Price.
Before the appropriations battles begin over Fiscal Year 2016, Congress is still mired in the fight over funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the end of February through September. The House approved a bill that does not include funding for Obama’s unilateral immigration policy to legalize some five million people in the U.S. unlawfully. Senate Republicans have tried multiple times to advance that bill but have come nowhere near the 60 votes needed to clear procedural hurdles.
Price says the best way to fund homeland security efforts while stopping what Republicans consider an unconstitutional power grab is to keep the heat on Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“If they pass the bill that we passed through the House that would hold the president to account on his unilateral action then that would be wonderful. We would move to the president’s desk and then the American people can see exactly who’s standing in the way of appropriate reform of our immigration system,” said Price.