09.12.11

Sessions Warns That President's New Borrowing Will Weaken Economy

“The president's plan makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal. That agreement cut $7 billion in appropriations next year but the president now wants to borrow hundreds of billions more to finance a second stimulus package… Saying that something is 'paid for' isn't enough… Borrowing even more to spend immediately in exchange for vague promises of distant future cuts means that we are digging ourselves into a deeper fiscal hole and moving quickly in the wrong direction.”

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement tonight in response to President Obama’s address to a Joint Session of Congress:

"I hoped that tonight the president would finally look the American people in the eye and tell them the bitter truth about how badly their finances have been mishandled—and present a detailed plan to repair the economic damage. Unfortunately, the president again failed to rise to the moment.

The president's plan makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal. That agreement cut $7 billion in appropriations next year but the president now wants to borrow hundreds of billions more to finance a second stimulus package.

His first stimulus package—which cost more than 10 years of war in Afghanistan—is one of the most spectacular policy failures in modern history. The president just doesn't get it: At this point in time, no economic plan can succeed that ignores our staggering and surging debt.

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.

Saying that something is 'paid for' isn?t enough: almost forty percent of what we are now spending is borrowed money. Borrowing even more to spend immediately in exchange for vague promises of distant future cuts means that we are digging ourselves into a deeper fiscal hole and moving quickly in the wrong direction.

I am also concerned that the president continues to resist the kind of permanent, structural tax reform needed to restore predictability in our economy. The short-term credits and stimulus he favors have not worked—especially since he continues to threaten the economy with trillions in permanent tax hikes and heavy regulations. Instead, we should focus on trimming bureaucratic regulations, streamlining the tax code, and producing more American energy—all measures that would put people to work without adding to the debt.

America desperately needs the competent, coherent, and concrete fiscal plan that the president remains unwilling to deliver. A speech is not a substitute for a budget. For America to thrive, lead, and compete in the 21st century we need a plan that reduces the size, cost, and intrusion of the federal bureaucracy—and we need our nation?s chief executive to rally the country behind it."