Budget Fact Check: A Responsible Way Forward
03/25/2009
Partisan attacks claim that President Obama's budget is irresponsible…
In fact, both the President’s budget and the House budget, which is being marked up today, share the same priorities to move America’s middle-class families and the nation’s economy forward. The budget grows our economy, creates jobs, cuts the deficit, invests in our priorities and reduces non-defense discretionary spending.
The House Budget:
- Cuts the deficit by two-thirds by 2013.
- Reduces non-defense discretionary spending by 1.5% from the President’s budget blueprint, but still provides for an increase at the rate of inflation plus 2% to make up for years of failure to invest in our global competitiveness.
- Takes steps to reduce health care costs, one of the largest contributors to the deficit, and a growing burden on our businesses’ ability to compete and families’ prosperity.
- Marks the beginning of a new era of honesty in budgeting, finally accurately representing costs like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previous budgets masked these costs to make the deficit appear smaller.
We can’t afford to wait. Failure to reform and invest produced eight years of the slowest job growth in three quarters of a century.
Click here to see the entire series of charts from the House Budget Committee highlighting key portions of Chairman Spratt’s Mark of the FY 2010 Budget>>
Other Resources:
- Selected Portions of Today’s Budget Markup (The Gavel – Speaker’s Office)
- Top 10 Budget Highlights (Majority Leader Hoyer)
- Key Features of the Chairman’s Mark (Budget Committee)
- Legislative Text of the Chairman’s Mark (Budget Committee)
- Summary Tables of the Chairman’s Mark (Budget Committee)