President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 Budget
Just another Tax-and-Spend Proposal

On February 13, President Obama released his budget proposal for the fiscal year starting October 1, 2012.  Just like every budget he has offered, this proposal spends too much, taxes too much, uses budget and accounting gimmicks, and fails to address the nation’s biggest challenges.  Last year, the President’s budget was so unserious that the Senate rejected it 97-0; not even a single member of his own party supported the plan.  This year he hasn’t done much better.

Spends Too Much, Taxes Too Much:  Once again the President produced a budget that never balances, creates trillion-dollar yearly deficits and uses campaign rhetoric instead of pro-growth tax policy.

• The President’s budget envisions over $3.8 trillion in federal spending in 2013.  Over the next five years, his budget runs up $20.6 trillion in government spending.

• The budget calls for $1.9 trillion in higher taxes while the economy struggles to regain its footing.  Economists of all stripes agree that raising taxes during a recession is bad policy, but the President is more concerned with campaign rhetoric about taxing the rich than using proven policies to restore economic growth.  What’s more, raising taxes only gives politicians more money to spend; it will only undermine efforts to control federal spending.

• Even with all these new taxes, the President foresees a $1.3 trillion deficit for this year; the forth straight year with a trillion-dollar deficit.  For 2013, Obama's budget projects a deficit of $901 billion, but if we strip out the budget’s unrealistic assumptions, yet another trillion-dollar-plus deficit is nearly certain.

• The President uses rosy estimates to make his budget look better than it really is.  The past three years the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued an analysis of the President’s budget.  They found the deficits were actually 20 percent higher than the President claimed.

Budget Tricks and Accounting Gimmicks: The President claims over $4 trillion in deficit reduction in his budget based on either budget tricks or policies that he had nothing to do with.  A few of the gimmicks include:

• $1.2 trillion in spending reductions from the 2011 debt ceiling debate. However, it was conservatives and House Republicans that pushed and pushed for spending reductions during this debate; the President wanted a debt ceiling increase with no cuts at all.

• $617 billion in so-called “war savings” from slowing U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Counting money we never planned to spend as savings is disingenuous at best.

• $1.9 trillion in tax hikes.  No surprise here, he’s just another tax-and-spend politician.

• $429 in spending on the Medicare doctors fix is buried in the baseline, covering up this additional spending without paying for it with other cuts.

No Leadership on Nation’s Biggest Budget Challenges: The three big entitlement programs are the main drivers of the nation’s budget woes. The President has once again failed to offer a serious proposal to address these programs.

• The President has already installed his vision to try to control Medicare costs.  In his health care takeover, the President empowered 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to cut provider reimbursements.  This plan will have the predictable effect of putting bureaucrats between patients and doctors, and creating shortages as even more doctors refuse to take Medicare patients.

• Enrollment in Medicaid was greatly expanded under the President’s health care law with no plan to control costs.  More than 15 million people will be added to the welfare medicine rolls starting in 2014.  Instead of block granting the program to states so they can use proven cost control mechanisms, the President didn’t offer any serious proposal to rein in spending.

• The President clung to the failed pay-as-you-go Social Security system that is currently a terrible deal for workers.  Higher taxes, lower benefits or a later retirement age will all make Social Security an even worse bargain for workers. Instead, we should move to an optional private accounts system that will restore the solvency of the system, increase individuals’ rate of return and encourage a personal ownership mentality in a program that is currently at the whim of politicians.