A top House Republican said that President Obama has gone too far in defending a $3.6 trillion budget plan that amounts to a “gamble” with the economy.
Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, took the president head on for saying that he’s readying for a fight over a budget that will increase government spending and grow the national debt.
{mosads}Ryan said both the president’s rhetoric and his policies are wrong.
“[Obama] essentially said, ‘You’re either with me or against me,’ ” Ryan said.
Obama took a combative tone in defending his budget plan last weekend, just days after he unveiled it. Obama said that the budget — which seeks to make the healthcare system more efficient, shift more of the tax burden onto the wealthy and end tax breaks for banks, oil companies and large agricultural businesses — will find resistance among special interests and lobbyists.
“I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak,” Obama said. “My message to them is this: So am I.”
Ryan and House Republicans joined that fight on Tuesday, when two of Obama’s top economic aides, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, testified before House committees.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said that the government has spent billions in recent months, on a $787 billion stimulus plan, a $410 spending bill and multiple bailouts of Wall Street firms.
“On top of that now we have a Democratic administration proposing a budget with red ink as far as the eye can see,” he said.
Hensarling pressed Orszag to admit that it would lead to a doubling of the national debt in eight years, which Orszag did.
Obama’s budget plan estimates that the debt, which is now about $11 trillion, will climb to $14 trillion next year and more than $23 trillion in 10 years.
Orszag defended the administration’s budget plan, saying that the president is setting out to take on the nation’s toughest problems.
“None of this is going to be easy,” Orszag said. “But as the country music singer Toby Keith once put it, ‘There ain’t no right way to do the wrong thing.'”
Orszag also disputed calling the budget a “big spending bill,” noting that it aims to cut the estimated $1.75 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2009 to $533 billion in 2013. The administration projected the deficit to rise slightly in subsequent years, but it would stay at about 3 percent of GDP. The 2009 deficit is expected to be 12 percent of GDP.
Geithner, appearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, pushed back against GOP suggestions that the president’s plan to cap carbon emissions would lead to a rise in prices on goods that relied on energy.
“Won’t that hit more than the top 2 percent of taxpayers?” Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), the panel’s ranking Republican, asked Geithner. “And my question is what Americans won’t end up paying more for virtually every item they purchase because of this higher tax on energy?”
Obama’s plan, which seeks to stem the negative effects of global warming, would require companies that produce carbon emissions to buy permits from the government. Obama’s budget projects that the sale of those permits will raise nearly $80 billion in new revenue starting in 2012. That revenue would go toward the development of clean energy sources and toward offsetting increased energy costs, Geithner said.
Geithner, however, stressed that the country should address long-term energy problems would eventually pay off.