Budget Fact Check: Restoring Fiscal Responsibility
03/26/2009
Partisan attacks claim that the House Budget is fiscally irresponsible…
In fact, 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.
- Contains key integrity initiatives to protect taxpayer money by rooting out waste, fraud and abuse and saving taxpayers nearly $50 billion.
- Reaffirms our commitment to Pay-As-You-Go budget discipline.
- 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.
Other Resources:
- An Economic Blueprint for America (Speaker Pelosi)
- Top 10 Budget Highlights (Majority Leader Hoyer)
- Key Features of the Chairman’s Mark (Budget Committee)
- Summary Tables of the Chairman’s Mark (Budget Committee)