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Paul Ryan: President Fails Leadership Test
Paul Ryan: President Fails Leadership Test
President’s Budget Destroys Jobs with Record Taxes, Spending & Debt
WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan issued the following statement in response to the release of President Obama’s FY2012 Budget:
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“The President’s budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much – stifling job growth today and leaving our children with a diminished future. In this critical test of leadership, the President has failed to tackle the urgent fiscal and economic threats before us.”
“Failing to heed the warnings of economists and the demands of the American people, the President’s budget accelerates our country down the path to bankruptcy. Far from ‘living within its means,’ the President’s budget puts the government on track to nearly double in size since the day he took office – a direct result of his party’s reckless spending spree. His budget destroys jobs by imposing a $1.6 trillion tax hike, adding $13 trillion to the national debt and fueling uncertainty in the private sector.
“We cannot tax, spend and borrow our way to prosperity. Where the President has fallen short, Republicans will work to chart a new course – advancing a path to prosperity by cutting spending, keeping taxes low, reforming government, and rising to meet the challenges of our time.”
Key facts from President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget:
- Spends Too Much
o $3.8 trillion in spending this year; 25.3% of GDP (highest since WWII)
o $46 trillion in spending over the decade; $8.7 trillion in new spending
- Taxes Too Much
o $1.6 trillion tax hike on families, small businesses, and job creators
o Revenues as a percent of GDP climb to 20%
- Borrows Too Much
o $1.6 trillion deficit for FY2012; a record third straight trillion dollar deficit
o Doubles and then triples debt held by the public since President took office
o $13 trillion added to the debt over the decade
For a bicameral budget analysis from the Senate & House Budget Committee Republicans: http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=224882 (pasted below)
House Budget Committee & Senate Budget Committee Republican Summary of President’s FY2012 Budget
In challenging times, a chief executive must lead. But President Obama has failed to confront the fiscal and economic challenges before us. Instead, he continues down the same unsustainable path: growing the government, weakening the economy, and increasing the burden of debt on each and every American.
Spends Too Much: $8.7 Trillion In New Spending
Despite this year’s $1.6 trillion deficit, the President still refuses to change course and reduce spending. Under his budget, the size of government will nearly double since the day he took office. Ignoring both economists’ warnings and the public’s demands for restraint, the President’s explosive growth of government crushes private-sector investment, fuels uncertainty for job creators, and guarantees a less prosperous future for all Americans. The price tag of the President’s budget for the next ten years:
Total spending: $46 trillion; $8.7 trillion in new spending
New entitlement spending, beyond assumed growth: $404 billion
Increase in non-defense discretionary spending since 2008: 24% (excluding stimulus)Increase in discretionary spending above President’s own deficit commission: $353 billion
Spending this year under the President’s budget: Record $3.8 trillion; 25.3% of GDP (highest since WWII)
Taxes Too Much: $1.6 Trillion In New Taxes
The President’s big-government vision imposes a heavy cost: diminishing economic opportunity through massive tax hikes that depress wages and stifle job creation at a time when millions of Americans remain out of work. In total, the President’s budget imposes $1.6 trillion in new taxes on families, small businesses, and job creators, including:
Income tax hike: $919 billion
Death tax hike: $118 billion
Transportation tax hike: $435 billion
Borrows Too Much: $13 Trillion Added To The Debt
Despite the urgent need to rein in our runaway debt, the President’s budget doubles debt held by the public by the end of his term and triples it ten years after he was sworn in. Gross debt will eclipse the size of the entire economy this year and remain above 100% of GDP for every single year that follows. This crushing burden of debt is depressing economic growth today, yet the President’s budget fails to seriously meet this challenge and instead accelerates our country down the path to bankruptcy:
New debt: $13 trillion
Gross debt by end of decade: $26.3 trillion (107% of GDP)
Annual interest payments by end of the decade: $844 billion
Total interest payments on debt: $5.7 trillion
A Failure Of Leadership
The President’s budget represents an abdication of leadership by failing to address the drivers of our debt crisis and the unsustainability of our entitlement programs. He even ignores the recommendations of his own bipartisan fiscal commission while continuing to increase spending across the board. Instead of fulfilling his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half in his first term, the President’s budget doubles the debt over that same period of time. We are racing in the wrong direction and the President’s foot remains stuck on the pedal.
The unsustainable growth of government dims the economic prospects of millions of Americas by reducing jobs, discouraging new investments, and threatening our nation’s financial security. The true cost of the President’s budget goes beyond the trillions of dollars squandered – it also includes lost opportunities for future Americans because this President chose to hide from tough choices and retreat from the principles that have made America great.
Chairman Ryan on Fox News Sunday: “Presidents are elected to lead, not to punt. And this president has been punting.” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZipJpEMeyqg
A Prophet Not Without Honor…
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.”
- Phillip Marlowe “The Simple Art of Murder.”
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Jeff Flake may be the most consistently decent and good Republican in The House. He’s been there when it was good to be GOP, he held on when it was the equivalent of wearing a scarlet elephant. He’s also been something else. He’s been his own man. I strongly encourage all of you to support his efforts to hold Jon Kyle’s Arizona Senate seat for the GOP in Arizona. My rationale follows below.
Years before Tea Partying was even remotely cool, Jeff Flake was fighting the stupid expenditures that politicians make to buy off idiot voting blocks. In 2007, after Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi had ascended to the heights of Capitol Hill and were opening the money spigots with minimal resistance, from a supine GOP, Congressman Flake stayed and he fought.
Jeff Flake decried the sickening deluge of earmarks. He detested the blatant larding of a Defense Appropriations Act with bribe after bribe for favored Congressional flunkies and lobbyists. For his efforts; his condign defense of the honor and dignity of our national legislature, Congressman Flake got to observe the magic of bipartisanship. Every criminal in the lousy joint, Democrat, Republican or morally in between, jumped on Congressman Flake and subjected him to ridicule.
Real Clear Politics describes what it was like three years ago to Party like it was 1773.
Flake insisted on debating the most egregious of the bill’s 1,300 earmarks placed in the Defense money bill by individual House members that authorize spending in their districts. Defending every such earmark was the chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee: Democratic Rep. John Murtha, unsmiling and unresponsive to questions posed on the House floor by Flake.
Murtha is called “King Corruption” by Republican reformers, but what happened after midnight Aug. 5 is not a party matter. Democrats and Republicans, as always, locked arms supporting every earmark.
Two former Republican chairmen of the Appropriations Committee — Jerry Lewis of California and Bill Young of Florida — eagerly joined the debate on Murtha’s side. Lewis, one of the House members under Justice Department investigation, defended one of his own earmarks and treated Flake with sneering contempt for wasting the House’s time.
- Robert Novak (HT: RealClearPolitics)
In the Millennial Culture of I Wants Mines, where almost all of our political leaders, regardless of ideology, have taken Peggy Noonan’s Separate Peace, Flake stands alone. To use a Biblical allusion, he is a prophet not without honor, except in Congress, where he serves America athwart unending scorn. And yet the scriptural description does not need to remain apt for Congressman Flake.
And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house
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Jeff Flake is determined to take his fight against corruption to the next level. This morning, as of 10am EST, his fight to replace Jon Kyl in the US Senate began. Kyl, a loyal establishmentarian Senator, was of a different era, facing different problems. His retirement complicates the GOP fight to retake the US Senate, but he will be 70 by 2012. A man of honor knows when to hang up his spikes.
Jeff Flake was the Proto-Tea-Partier. He came to Washington, DC, in 2000, for the same ostensible reasons that Rand Paul came in 2010. He has fought spending when doing so rendered him a spectacle and a freak. He will stand with and bolster, Senator Coburn, Senator DeMint, and Senator Paul. He will scourge “Senator 3-Branches of Government” Schumer.
In an age when our deficit is no longer a serious crisis; but rather an existential one, Jeff Flake’s hour has truly come around. I don’t care who else the GOP intends to run against Flake in AZ’s Senatorial Primary. I know, with total and absolute certainty, who I want and I need on that wall.
When twice as many people believe in UFOs as the fiscal soundness of Social Security, we need another Senator who can handle that truth. Given the ability, Jeff Flake will cut all the government I want cut and then a whole bunch of stuff I probably don’t. He’ll show the discipline and determination I would lack to get this deficit well in hand. Now is the time! Jeff Flake is the Man! Jeff Flake, US Senate, 2012 -that is all.
