Disappointing. That’s how Idaho Senator Mike Crapo describes President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget package. The president unveiled his more than three trillion dollar proposal on Monday. Crapo says the budget fails to address what he says is the most important issue facing the country – the 15-trillion dollar national debt.
Mike Crapo “The approach taken by the President is to propose significant amounts of new taxes, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.6 to 2 trillion dollars of new taxes, and fail to propose any significant reduction in spending over the same time frame.”
Crapo says the proposal would add 11-trillion dollars in additional gross debt over the next ten years. He believes the President used “gimmicks” in the budget, including rosy economic forecasts and different baselines than the Congressional Budget Office.
Mike Crapo “Frankly we simply have to get on with an aggressive, comprehensive deficit reduction package that focuses heavily on reducing the growth of the federal government and controlling it and actually making the federal government smaller, not larger.”
Crapo says there are some ideas in Obama’s budget that he may agree with. He supports funding the Secure Rural Schools Act, which is in the proposal, but he wants to do it without adding to the deficit. The president’s budget plan calls for new government spending including for roads. His budget also details a four trillion dollar deficit reductionover the next decade.
Copyright 2012 BSPR
