By Susan Duclos
Senate Democrats took four years to finally produce a budget and as as reported at the time, it included massive tax increases, dramatically increases spending and never balances the budget, via The Hill.
“Testimony from [Budget] Committee staff clearly established that compared to current law, their alleged deficit reduction is nowhere close to $1.85 trillion, and by their own admission, is actually only about $700 billion. Removing gimmicks like the war savings accounting trick, the true deficit reduction is only around $300 billion — drastically less than the majority advertises to the nation. That is why, despite a $1.5 trillion tax increase, their budget still make no alteration to our unsustainable debt path.”
In fact, under the Senate Democratic budget, total annual outlays (spending) rise by $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years, a 61 percent increase. At the same time, taxes would go up for the 50 percent of working-age Americans who still pay them.
And they’re not talking small tax increases, but a massive $1.5 trillion. But that’s not all, because it doesn’t count $600 billion in new taxes imposed in January and the $1.1 trillion in new ObamaCare taxes slated to go into effect.
These three tax increases combined equal more money than the United States government has ever collected in a single year. And this is on top of existing taxes.
It came as no surprise that the Republican controlled House of Representatives voted against the Senate Democrats'
Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) said he voted against the Senate budget because it did not go far enough on entitlements.
"It is not enough entitlement reform in there going forward. It needs to be a more complete and balanced picture and it wasn't bipartisan in the end of the day," Schrader told The Hill.
Two other plans were voted down as well.
• The House also rejected the budget from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in a 105-305 vote. That vote split Democrats 105-80, nearly the same as last year when they split 107-75.
• The Progressive Caucus budget was also rejected 84-327, but it managed to pick up a few more votes compared to last year. Most Democrats voted against this bill, just as they did last year when it was rejected 78-346.
The CBC and Progressive budgets call for trillions more in taxes and spending compared to the Senate plan.
Thursday morning, the House of Representatives passed the Ryan budget plan, which balances the budget in ten years and dramatically cuts government spending, without tax increases, with a vote of 221-207.
The Ryan budget has almost no chance of passing through the Democratically controlled Senate.
For the fourth year out of five, Barack Obama has not met the legal deadline, Feb. 4, the first Monday in February, for proposing his own budget and it is expected to be at least nine weeks late.
