President's budget plan devastating
March 8, 2014
By U.S. Congressman Raul Labrador

This week, the President unveiled his budget for Fiscal Year 2015, a budget that - if passed – would devastate our economy and add a crushing debt burden onto our children.

The President’s plan would raise taxes by $1.7 trillion, increase spending by $791 billion, and add $8.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. By 2024, the national debt would be $25 trillion – or about $200,000 per American taxpayer. Quite simply, the President’s budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much. We can do better.

In 2011, I was an original cosponsor of the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan, which passed the House in a bipartisan vote. This plan would have capped federal spending, cut spending gradually over the next 10 years, and passed a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. However, Senate Democrats wouldn’t consider our plan. They wouldn’t even bring it up for a vote. What we ended up with was the “sequester” – a compromise that, despite some initial problems, did start putting the government on a fiscally-sustainable path.

Since the “sequester” was signed into law, the budget deficit has been cut in half and the economy has grown at a faster pace. The stock market is at an all-time high. And yet, the President wants to gut all that progress. Instead of working with Republicans to expand the policies that have caused gradual progress since 2011, he wants to go back to the “Big Government” policies of his first two years – policies that devastated our economy.

Where is the President’s plan to create jobs, grow our economy, and balance the budget? Where is his plan to reform the tax code, increase domestic energy production, prevent our health care system from going bankrupt, and save Medicare and Social Security? What exactly does President Obama want to accomplish during his next three years in office? The budget he released this week provides no answer. And that’s because there isn’t one.

America is experiencing a major debt crisis. As we’ve seen in places from Detroit to Greece, the rapid growth of government spending and debt is unsustainable and eventually leads to economic ruin. Now is the time for both parties to come together to put America on a fiscally-healthy path.

I will continue to advocate for the policies that have helped America since 2011, and I will continue to oppose the policies that will harm that progress – whether that’s the President’s budget, the “omnibus” spending bill that passed Congress in January, or other policies – even those supported by Republicans – that would expand government at the expense of the private sector.

The President’s “Big Government” budget is simply “more of the same.” To grow our economy and preserve the American Dream, we need more freedom, more opportunity, and more personal responsibility. That is the change we need. And that is the change I will keep fighting for.