Obama Budget “Another Top-Down, Backward-Looking Document,” AP: “Obama’s Budget Plan Never Reaches Balance”

David Hauptmann:

President Obama released his budget proposal for the next fiscal year today, but it being Groundhog Day, the budget has little to distinguish it from his previous proposals, which are all more tax-and-spend policies designed to grow government rather than grow the economy.

Politico describes it as “a $4 trillion budget . . . designed to convince Americans that they can have it all.” And the story adds, “To pay for it, Obama proposes raising a number of taxes on wealthy taxpayers or businesses — revenue measures that have already been dismissed as nonstarters by the Republican Congress. The budget proposes new taxes on the wealthy, fees on big banks and taxes on companies that do business overseas — plus spending cuts on health programs and other savings — to cover the costs of all the new initiatives, senior Obama administration officials said on a conference call with reporters Sunday. . . .

“The budget will call for $1.091 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016, including $74 billion that goes beyond the spending caps after the ‘sequestration’ spending cuts that Obama wants to eliminate. That would produce a $474 billion deficit for next year.”

The AP notes a few more key details. “Obama’s fiscal blueprint, for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, proposes spending $4 trillion — $3.99 trillion before rounding — and projects revenues of $3.53 trillion. That would leave a deficit of $474 billion. Obama’s budget plan never reaches balance over the next decade and projects the deficit would rise to $687 billion in 2025.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell found little impressive in the budget proposal, saying, “President Obama promised in the State of the Union to deliver a budget filled with ‘ideas that are practical, not partisan.’ Unfortunately, what we saw this morning was another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances—ever. The new Congress will focus on ways to help the Middle Class instead as we work to pass the serious kind of budget all Americans deserve: one that roots out and reforms wasteful spending, and that aims to grow Middle-Class jobs and opportunity instead of Washington’s bureaucracy.

“We’re asking the President to abandon the tax-and-spend ways of yesterday and join us in this practical and future-oriented approach.”