CBO Shows $1 Trillion Tax Hike in Obama Budget
An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that President Obama's 2014 budget proposal would reduce borrowing by $1.1 trillion by 2023 thorough increasing taxes by nearly the same amount.
President Obama's budget, which arrived on Capitol Hill in April, would result in a moderate spending cut as it would use nearly $6 in higher revenues for every $1 in reduced spending to achieve it, according to a report released by the CBO on Friday.
The report also says the savings include those from troop reduction in Afghanistan and other overseas contingency operations, without which the plan would increase spending by about $700 billion over the next decade.
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The Obama plan would also cut some Medicare payments to providers and raise costs for some beneficiaries.
The blueprint seeks to raise the revenue mostly by controlling deductions, excluding some higher-earning taxpayers, and increasing taxes on tobacco, property and gifts.
The government would also use a less generous method of calculating inflation.
The CBO said the spending increases in the plan would increase the deficit in 2013 by $27 billion, to $669 billion, and by $115 billion next year, to a total of $615 billion.
"This new report shows that the president's budget doesn't come close to solving the problem," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wis., said in a statement. "The federal government will take in a record haul over the next 10 years. And the President wants yet another massive tax hike. But under his plan, we'll keep adding to the debt – at an alarming rate."
The House-passed GOP plan, on the other hand, seeks to achieve balance over the next 10 years through deep spending cuts.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a Democrat from Md., called the CBO analysis an "important validation" of Obama's blueprint.
"Today's analysis of the President's 2014 Budget from the Congressional Budget Office confirms that the President's proposed budget will substantially reduce the deficit and stabilize the debt below the level recommended by the Bowles-Simpson Commission," Hoyer said in a statement. "This is an important validation of the President's and Democrats' efforts to restore fiscal discipline through a big and balanced approach while maintaining our ability to invest in a competitive economy and a growing middle class."
"CBO's report shows the President's policies bringing the deficit down to just 2.1 percent of GDP by 2023 and putting Federal debt on a downward trajectory," Steven Posner, a White House budget office spokesman, said in a statement.
However, Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told The Washington Post it wasn't a balanced budget "even by Democrat standards."
An analysis by the White House had earlier claimed $1.8 trillion in savings because it adopted a different method to calculate what deficits would be if no action was taken, the CBO explained.
