WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, released the following statement today about the selection of current OMB Director Jack Lew to be the new White House chief of staff, and the resulting vacancy at the Office of Management and Budget: “I wish Jack Lew the best fortune in his […]
“At $89 billion, the annual food stamp budget is… the second-largest of nearly eighty federal welfare programs that cost taxpayers around $900 billion a year… the USDA recently [announced] ‘new tactics to combat fraud and enhance SNAP program integrity’… I would therefore ask that the Committee be immediately provided with a thorough explanation of all […]
“House Republicans have worked vigilantly all year to change our debt course, and produced a budget to do exactly that. The great shame is that they never had willing partners in President Obama and his Democrat-led Senate.” WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today prior […]
Soon, the Senate will hold a series of three votes on H.R. 2055, H.R. 3672 and H. Con. Res. 94 to complete the appropriations process for Fiscal Year 2012. The first vote is on H.R. 2055, the omnibus appropriations bill; the second vote is on H. Con. Res. 94, a 1.83 percent across-the-board rescission to […]
“[The Keystone Pipeline] is precisely, precisely the kind of thing that this Congress should take action on… because it will create jobs, lots of jobs, create wealth, make us more secure as a nation, and help bring down the cost of energy… yet the president has blocked the pipeline construction for some time, deferring a […]
THE PRESIDENT’S BUDGET SPENDS, TAXES, AND BORROWS TOO MUCH – STIFLING JOB GROWTH TODAY AND THREATENING OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE In challenging times, a chief executive must lead. But President Obama has failed to confront the fiscal and economic challenges before us. Instead, he continues down the same unsustainable path: growing the government, weakening the economy, […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today in support of S.J. Res. 10, the Republican balanced budget proposal, and expressing concern over provisions in the Democrat counter-measure (S.J. Res. 24): “Washington has both a moral and economic responsibility to balance the budget. Morally, we have […]
The House bill extends the temporary two percentage point payroll holiday for an additional year and relies largely on reductions in mandatory spending to offset its cost. There are no tax hikes. Major Budgetary Provisions Extends for one year the temporary Social Security payroll holiday. Increases the incentive to expand and hire by extending 100 percent […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, appeared on FOX News’ “America’s News HQ” today to discuss how President Obama’s policies are hurting hardworking taxpayers, including on the issues of debt, energy, trade, and illegal immigration. Excerpts from the interview follow: On the lack of honest leadership:“I felt this president […]
“With no long-term economic plan of any kind, the president has abandoned governing in favor of campaigning. His only ideas are short-term measures and temporary stimulus checks that make the debt worse… no one can disagree that this country, and our beleaguered middle class, would be better off if the president would lay out a […]
“The president talks about fairness. Yet one of the results of his administration has been to widen the inequity between the middle class and the political class… The middle class must pay for the president’s failed policies twice—first, they have to pay the bill for profligate federal spending, and then they must pay the price […]
Recent reports assert that the federal government has entered a new era of austerity. For instance, an article in Politico claimed “2011 was a year that saw spending trends break heavily in favor of deficit hawks.”[1] In fact, federal spending continues to increase at a rate well above inflation, despite the country having amassed $15 […]
Some in Congress are willing to use a reduction in war spending to offset increases in domestic spending and reductions in revenue. This offset is a budget gimmick since it claims savings from money that would never be spent in the first place. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline assumes that war spending (overseas contingency […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today regarding reports that some lawmakers may attempt to use the war savings gimmick to ‘pay for’ increased spending and borrowing: “There are a series of items that Congress must address before the year ends that, together, could add […]
“President Barack Obama has unveiled a hugely disappointing budget, cutting only a few percentage points from the $100,000bn in projected US federal deficits over the remainder of this century… If Mr Obama will not make this case, who will?” Financial Times, Obama’s budget shows failure of leadership “The larger problem with the budget is the […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered an opening statement today at a hearing with former Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former OMB and CBO Director Alice Rivlin to discuss the report from their bipartisan debt reduction task force. Sessions argued that immediate reductions in discretionary spending will […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, released the following statement ahead of tomorrow’s hearing to consider Heather Higginbottom’s nomination to be Deputy Director for the Office of Management and Budget. Over the past 20 years, other appointees for this position have had an average of seven years of budget […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following comment today after the passage of a non-binding resolution that expressed the “Sense of the Senate” that the Senate should cut 5 percent of its budget, but that will not actually do so. Sessions opposed the measure, urging more significant […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered the following statement today at a hearing to consider the nomination of Heather Higginbottom to be Deputy Director for the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike previous nominees for this post, Higginbottom lacks formal budget experience or training. Sessions’ remarks, as […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, spoke on the Senate floor today in support of a continuing resolution to fund the government over the next three weeks while reducing spending by $6 billion. The measure, which passed by a vote of 87–13, follows a resolution early this month to […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, made the following statement today after the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the president’s budget, which revealed that the official White House proposal concealed an additional $2.3 trillion in deficits and, within a decade, would quadruple our nation’s publicly held […]
Dear Honorable Trustees: We strongly reject the notion that the spending reductions from and the payroll tax increases to the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund enacted in the new health care law (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA) can both improve the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and finance […]
“America’s strength is measured not by the size of our government but by the scope of our freedoms. Endless spending, taxing, and borrowing is a certain path to decline.” WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered remarks on the Senate floor today explaining that Republicans stand behind a strong, […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today after all 47 Republican Senators joined to introduce a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “In the Budget Committee we have heard countless warnings from expert after expert and witness after witness. We are on a dangerous […]
The Budget Control Act imposed caps on discretionary spending and provided a mechanism for achieving an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years through the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the so-called supercommittee). The failure of the supercommittee to find that additional deficit reduction will cause a $1.2 trillion spending […]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today upon the release of a new Budget Committee analysis about the concrete effects of the sequester on both defense and non-defense spending. In light of the supercommittee’s failure to reach a deficit reduction agreement, the disproportionate nature of […]
“Had the president made clear he wanted an agreement, a deal would have been achieved. It seems clear he wanted a campaign issue instead. Rather than confronting the great threat of our time—our $15 trillion debt—the commander-in-chief fled the battlefield.” WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following […]
“It is strange and bizarre that we have tasked a committee of 12 to achieve deficit reduction at the same time that Congress is working to increase the deficit with bills such as this… With the president at the helm, Washington is continuing to steer the ship of state towards financial disaster. I therefore oppose […]
“[Under the Budget Control Act,] we’re supposed to spend $1,043 billion, down $7 billion from $1,050 billion in discretionary spending last year. Unfortunately, this is just one more empty Washington promise. Because the bill was rushed to passage in the 59th minute of the 11th hour, nobody knew the gimmick at the time… The truth […]