Democrat Budget Doesn’t Account For On-Going Tax Cuts Promised By…Democrats
Democrat “budget hawk” Kent Conrad and his comrades say they can balance the budget, but only if Americans pay massive amounts in new taxes and forget about on-going tax relief even Democrat presidential candidates have promised.
Senate Democrats unveiled a budget plan yesterday that would inject billions of additional dollars into such domestic priorities as education, energy and transportation, while providing $35 billion for a second round of government spending aimed at stimulating a weak economy.
The spending would push the federal deficit to more than $350 billion in fiscal 2009, but Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said the blueprint would erase the deficit within four years, producing a $160 billion surplus in 2013.
To get there, however, Democrats assume all of President Bush’s first-term tax cuts would expire on schedule in 2010, bringing in billions in revenue. But if the most popular tax measures were extended, as the two Democratic presidential candidates have promised, the surplus would all but evaporate, Conrad said.
The Democratic budget also would omit several costly items, including tens of billions of dollars to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the budget proposed last month by the White House, the Democratic blueprint includes just $70 billion for the fighting in 2009 and nothing thereafter.
It’s pretty easy to balance the budget when all you’re doing is jacking up taxes. But shouldn’t our political leaders show a little bit more, I don’t know, leadership in trying to find ways to fix the deficits problem? Leadership that doesn’t just try to solve the problem by forcing Americans to fork over more of their money to government?
