Budget Fact Check: No Comparison
03/27/2009
Partisan attacks claim that the House Budget is fiscally irresponsible…
In fact, the House budget:
- Cuts the deficit by nearly two-thirds by 2013
- Cuts taxes for middle income families by $1.5 trillion
- Creates jobs with investments and reforms in health care, clean energy, and education
- Reduces non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest level as a percent of the economy in nearly half a century, and 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.
But the House Republican so-called ‘budget’:
- Lacks the details necessary – like numbers – to be considered a legitimate alternative or to answer the question of what impact it would have on the deficit.
- Proposes more of the same failed policies that got our country into this deep financial and economic crisis: massive tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy, huge subsidies to Big Oil and gas companies, and no plan to bring down the costs of health care.
- Would undo the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed earlier this year, which will jumpstart our economy and save or create 3.5 million new jobs.
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.