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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
3:20 PM EDT
Sandra Fabry

Obama Budget Moving Away From “Borrow and Spend”? – Not Quite!

Given that Congress is marking up the budget this week, President Obama's press conference last night were in large part an attempt to defend his budget blueprint.

During his introductory remarks he claimed that his budget would lay the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity and moves us from “borrow and spend” to “save and invest”:

At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow-and-spend to one where we save and invest.
However, the CBO report released on Friday March 20 tells a different story:
  • According to the CBO report, President Obama’s budget would increase total spending over $2.7 trillion over ten years over the current baseline (that is including interest). This would amount to $9,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
  • According to CBO data, spending under the President’s budget would increase from 23.6 percent of GDP in 2011 to 24.5 percent in 2019 – significantly above the past 40 year average of 20.7 percent.

Take a look at this chart:

Says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform:

President Obama may be good with words, but describing his budget as ‘moving from an era of borrow-and-spend to one where we save and invest’ is ludicrous. This budget takes the term ‘tax-spend-and-borrow’ budget to new levels – and the American people will not be fooled.

For a pdf version of the press release click here.

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