President Obama’s $3.7 trillion spending proposal for 2012 was for the most part embraced by Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill Monday despite a five-year spending freeze and $30 billion in reductions. But it landed with an audible thud in the offices of GOP leaders, who verbally skewered the plan as too skimpy on cuts and too heavy on tax increases. They vowed to put forward a much leaner plan in the coming weeks, setting up a certain battle with Democrats and the White House that will put every lawmaker to the test on spending and deficit reduction.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday called Obama’s thousand-page spending plan “unserious” and “irresponsible,” pointing to new initiatives to expand the nation’s rail system and produce clean energy rather than deeper spending cuts.
Recommended Stories
“The president has said he wants us to win the future, but this budget abdicates the future, ” McConnell said. “It spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much.”
House Republicans not only denounced the budget but pledged to go much further when they put out their own spending plan in about six weeks. Republican Majority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., made an unprecedented promise to cut entitlement spending, which includes the long-untouchable Social Security and Medicare.
House GOP leaders said the president’s plan is essentially dead on arrival in that chamber, or, according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., “debt on arrival.”
Ryan scoffed at Obama’s budget cuts and had harsh words for the president whose budget, Ryan said, ignores a federal deficit that is expected to soon top $1.6 trillion.
Ryan said he had expected Obama to cut further, given his promises to tackle the deficit. Instead, he said, the president’s budget would lead the nation toward bankruptcy.
“We got a punt,” Ryan said. “The president punted on the budget and he punted on the deficit. That is not leadership. That is an abdication of leadership.”
Republicans, Ryan promised, would be “charting a different course” with their budget, which GOP members will begin writing after the Congressional Budget Office provides an official price tag for Obama’s plan.
Ryan would not provide details about what might be in the GOP plan.
“I can’t tell you what is going to be in it, but I’ve got to tell you, we are not interested in punting” on the deficit, he said.
Taking a swing at the high-speed rail expansion proposal Obama touted in his State of the Union address, Ryan noted that Republicans already slashed funding for the program from this year’s spending plan, which the House will take up this week.
“We are not a fan of high-speed rail,” Ryan said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a vaguely supportive statement that gave Obama’s budget credit for taking “critical steps” toward reducing the deficit while reflecting “the best interests of the American people.”
