Bernie Sanders issued a report criticizing the Senate Republican budget in detail Sunday, criticizing what he called accounting “tricks” in the GOP balanced-budget plan before it heads to the Senate floor this week.
“Instead of being honest and upfront about their goals, the Republicans have used a number of budgetary gimmicks to cover up the devastating impact that their budget will have on the lives of ordinary Americans,” the U.S. senator from Vermont said Sunday.
An independent and self-described socialist, Sanders is the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee and a harsh critic of the budget authored by the Republican committee chairman Mike Enzi of Wyoming. Republicans have placed an emphasis on the fact that their plan envisions the government running a surplus within 10 years.
In a 1,000-word-plus summary of the GOP budget plan posted on his site, Sanders took particular issue with the “gimmick” of adding to defense spending through a war account that is not subject to the across-the-board spending caps limiting defense spending to $523 billion for fiscal year 2016.
“I find it particularly offensive that Republicans, who are demanding massive cuts in Medicaid, education, nutrition and healthcare in order to move toward a balanced budget, have no problem adding $38 billion to the deficit through the off-budget Overseas Contingency Operations fund,” Sanders said. “That is hypocrisy, pure and simple.”
The added war spending was not part of Enzi’s original budget blueprint, but was added in an amendment offered by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during the committee’s mark-up of the bill last week.
A similar budgetary maneuver was included in the House GOP budget. President Obama’s plan, however, called for lifting the statutory caps and adding the funding directly through the Pentagon rather than through the war account.
But the war funding account was not the only feature of the budget Sanders said was a “trick.” He also criticized Republicans’ reliance on unspecified cuts marked only as “unallocated cuts” or “government-wide savings,” and on the use of budget accounting that takes into account the effects of faster economic growth on tax revenues.
Lastly, he noted that the budget repeals Obamacare, but assumes the baseline projections of tax revenues, which include the tax hikes that were part of the healthcare law. Republicans have called for a tax reform plan that would raise revenues to the baseline levels.
Sanders plans to offer several amendments on the budget on the Senate floor, including a “war tax” on millionaires to pay for the added military spending, according to an aide.
Enzi, a former accountant, touted his record of balancing budgets in lower levels of government in a video address Saturday and said that “it is time to begin this responsible accounting in Washington.
“Runaway spending habits over the past six years have created a dangerously growing debt, because the habit of spending now and paying later is deeply ingrained,” Enzi said.
