Fiscal conservatives blasted President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget presented today as an election year political deceit that will saddle Americans for generations with increasing debt.  U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) and Rep. Allen West (R-FL) all released statements critical of the budget.

“In an effort to win re-election, President Obama’s budget uses Washington gimmicks and accounting tricks to simultaneously spend more money on items important to his base while falsely claiming to reduce spending,” said Sen. Inhofe.  “He is trying to fund yet another failed stimulus, and it is simply irresponsible. 

"Under this President, we have now had four budgets with yearly deficits
over $1 trillion each.  This budget continues Washington’s disastrous
trend of spending money we don’t have.  He claims this budget has $4
trillion in deficit reductions.  In reality, he is proposing $8 trillion
in more deficits and $11 trillion more added to the debt.  He increases
spending on his liberal leaning agenda items on the backs of dangerous
defense cuts.

“Once again, because of his failure to provide leadership, the President is turning a blind eye to fiscal crisis that is facing this nation.  To further help pay for his big-government spending, the President is proposing $1.9 trillion in new taxes on families, small businesses and job creators – including those in the energy industry.   These industry specific tax increases will simply be passed on to families in the form of higher costs.  The best thing the President could do to help our economy, spur job creation, and assist those struggling to make ends meet would be to provide certainty by cutting government spending, reducing the tax burden, and ending over-regulation.  Instead, President Obama offers more of the same:  too much spending, too much borrowing, and too much taxation,”Sen. Inhofe added.

Rep. Lankford criticized President Obama’s budget proposal as dead on arrival.

"The President’s budget is loaded with budget gimmicks and free campaign benefits in a time when fiscal leadership is desperately required," said Rep. Lankford. "Despite taking an extra week to craft his proposal, President Obama basically follows the same template of his divide-the-nation and stimulus spending ideas that have fallen flat for the past three years. Once again, his budget never balances and offers no hope of ever paying off our $15.3 trillion debt. Three years ago next week, President Obama said, ‘Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.’ Now the final budget proposal of his term contains a fourth-straight year of trillion dollar deficits – more than twice as high as any year during the Bush Administration.”

President Obama’s FY13 budget proposal calls for $3.8 trillion in total spending. The projected deficit for FY13 would be $1.33 trillion. By contrast, the highest deficit prior to 2009 was $459 billion (FY 2008).

“The President still denies that higher spending causes more long-term fiscal pain, and he has again doubled down on the stimulus and bailout strategy that more revenue will fix our problems,” continued Rep. Lankford. “The absurd proposal to tax the ‘rich’ an additional $1.5 trillion over 10 years to solve a projected budget deficit of over $10 trillion may fire up his base for the campaign, but it leaves the American people holding the bag for trillions in new debt. It is time for the President to actually take the lead in cutting spending and reforming our tax code to spur economic growth. We need bold leadership to solve our budget problems – not a campaign document to buy votes on the backs of future generations.”

The White House budget again took a pass on entitlement reform. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are facing insolvency and allowing another year to go by only punts the problem to the next administration.

"The President’s willingness to take a pass on fundamental reform of our entitlement programs emphasizes his inability to offer serious reforms. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are on a path to consume more than 50 percent of GDP by the middle of the century. Our overall deficit spending is already at 100 percent of GDP. It is remarkable that as Greece explodes in riots over its government debt, our President ignores the most predictable emergency in history – the looming American debt crisis. His fear to address entitlement programs does not avoid the ominous problem of bankruptcy in these programs, which will surely lead to an indiscriminate decline in care and benefits,” concluded Rep. Lankford.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) suggested President Obama cannot learn.

“President Barack Obama’s budget is an unserious approach to a very serious situation. Filled with exaggerations, gimmicks, and historic tax increases, the budget released today is bad for jobs, bad for seniors and bad for the economy," said Rep. West.  "For seniors, the budget does nothing to address Medicare, a program sinking and heading towards bankruptcy, and instead increases the power of the Independent Advisory Board, a panel of unaccounted for bureaucrats making decisions for our nation’s elderly. For hard working Americans, the budget increases taxes by an astounding 1.9 trillion dollars, taking money out of people’s pockets during an already turbulent economic period. For small business owners, this budget leaves them with even more uncertainty, as the United States debt increases and regulations remain. With $3.8 trillion projected spending in 2013, increasing every year for the next decade, this President still believes he can spend his way out of this economic crisis. It seems he will never learn the lessons of the past.

"The President will have accumulated $6.4 trillion in new debt in just one, four-year term. According to his own evaluative criteria, doing so is unpatriotic. In ten years, America will have a gross debt of $25.9 trillion dollars.  This is unsustainable and immoral to our children and grandchildren.

Rep. West added, "House Republicans have a Plan for America’s Job Creators and it is time for the President and Democrats in the Senate to stop blocking our jobs bills. We’ve passed a jobs budget with fundamental pro-growth tax reform, the elimination of corporate loopholes and subsidies to help create more jobs. The President is wrong again and completely out of touch and inexperienced with how to create jobs and turn this economy around.” 

Annual Deficit Under Obama

• FY09: $1.413 trillion (the highest in U.S. history)
• FY10: $1.294 trillion
• FY11: $1.299 trillion
• FY12: $1.33 trillion

Obama’s FY2013 Tax Increases

• Total tax increase of $1.9 trillion.
• The largest tax increase in U.S. history, raising taxes by at least $1.5 trillion on families making more than $250,000 per year.
• Imposes news taxes under the so-called Buffett Rule.
• Increases taxes on the fossil fuel energy industry by roughly $41 billion over the next 10 years.
• Increases taxes on the financial industry by $61 billion over the next 10 years.

Election-Driven Spending

• $487 billion cut in defense spending over the next 10 years, and the first cut in military spending since the 1990s.
• $8 billion in a new community college initiative.
• $30 billion in new school construction spending.
• A 55 percent increase in Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative.
• $30 billion in new spending for teachers and first responders.
• $1.4 billion in new energy spending, more than a third ($522 million) of which will be spent on increase in renewable energy programs.
• $45 billion to extend unemployment insurance
• $35 billion to establish a “universal dislocated workers” program.
• $14 billion in additional Pell Grant funding.
• $13 billion for a “Pathways Back to Work” fund.