The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has tabulated the costs of President Obama’s annual State of the Union Address and it comes out to $40.97 billion in new, annual spending.
And, they add, there were no offers to cut any spending programs already in place.
“It was more of the same from President Obama who continued to call for tens of billions in new spending programs and tax hikes, trends that we’ve seen in his past State of the Union Addresses,” said NTUF spokesman Douglas Kellogg.
The $41 billion is his average for State of the Union spending, said the group. They said his highest tab was in 2013 at $83 billion. His low was in 2012, an election year, when he cut $28 billion.
NTUF said that his promises of childcare help were put at $3.4 billion. His paid leave plan will cost $2.2 billion. Free community college will cost taxpayers $6 billion. Fixing crumbling national infrastructure will cost $21 billion. Slapping the rich with a new tax will cost $6 billion. And paying off student loans will cost $1.4 billion.
The president wasn’t specific with some of his proposals that could have incurred a huge bill, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansion and war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, said the group that annually does a back of the envelope calculation of spending in State of the Union speeches.
NTUF figures EITC will be $5.6 billion per year, cap-and-trade legislation $56 billion a year, raising the annual amount proposed to over $101 billion.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
