WASHINGTON – Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the current House Republican Conference Chairman and former member of the House Budget Committee, today issued the following statement on President Barack Obama’s budget for fiscal year 2012.
“The American people are suffering trillion-dollar deficits and historic, dream-destroying debt because Washington spends too much, not because the American people are taxed too little. The deficits and debt are symptoms. Spending is the disease.
“For the third year in a row, President Obama’s budget should have been printed in red ink instead of black. His budget clings to a failed economic theory that our nation can spend, borrow, bail out, and tax its way back to prosperity. We can’t. We cannot continue borrowing almost forty-two cents on the dollar, much of it from the Chinese, and sending the bill to our children and grandchildren.
“It is disappointing to the American people that as families are struggling to pay their mortgages, pay their health care premiums and send their kids to college, President Obama would add to their hardships with more job-destroying spending, taxes and historic levels of debt.
“After two consecutive years of trillion-dollar deficits -- with another on the way -- and 21 months of at least 9 percent unemployment, the time has come to permanently change the out-of-control spending culture of Washington. In order to help Americans get back to work and allow small businesses to thrive, we need to respect the will of the American people and cut spending and stop borrowing from our children and grandchildren’s futures.
“House Republicans are taking one of the first steps to do that this week when we bring H.R. 1 to the floor, which will save more than $182 billion over the next twelve months.”
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