09.12.11

Addressing Concerns With 'Paid For' Promise, Sessions Says President Must Submit Debt and Job Plans Together

“The president?s intention to release the details of his spending and deficit reduction plans separately, over a series of weeks, suggests he does not comprehend the debilitating impact America?s debt is having on the economy right now, and casts additional doubt on the president?s sincerity in paying for his latest „stimulus? program.”

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, remarked today on the president’s plan to release separately his long-awaited jobs and deficit-reduction proposals. Sessions raised concern over how the president would fund a dramatic increase in near-term borrowing, and urged him to jointly submit his stimulus package with a detailed, concrete plan for deficit reduction:

“The statutory debt limit places a legal ceiling on how much we can borrow. But we also have an economic debt limit: the point at which we cannot increase our borrowing without undermining growth, confidence, and job creation. We have reached and exceeded that limit under President Obama. Gross debt is 100 percent of GDP—past the 90 percent threshold prominent economists have identified as the point at which we begin to lose GDP growth and thus millions of jobs.

The recently passed Budget Control Act cuts next year?s appropriations by a mere $7 billion, yet the president last night proposed an additional $450 billion in near-term deficit increases—this on top of the $5 trillion in gross debt already incurred under his leadership. While the president claimed his proposal would be „paid for,? his administration?s record of misrepresenting its fiscal proposals makes it even more important that it provide details that can be evaluated.

The president?s intention to release the details of his spending and deficit reduction plans separately, over a series of weeks, suggests he does not comprehend the debilitating impact America?s debt is having on the economy right now, and casts additional doubt on the president?s sincerity in paying for his latest „stimulus? program.

To allow the American people and the Congress to see and evaluate the total effect of the president?s plans on the deficit and the economy, the president should submit to Congress —next week— detailed legislative language and supporting budgetary information for both the „stimulus? proposed last night, and the deficit-reduction options he would like to have reported by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.”

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