Fred Smith, President, Competitive Enterprise Institute
James C. Miller III, former Reagan Budget Director
Matt Kibbe, President, FreedomWorks
Tim Phillips, President, Americans for Prosperity
Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America
Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
David McIntosh, former U.S. Representative, Indiana
Richard Viguerie, Chairman ConservativeHQ.com
William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government
Alfred S. Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator
Brent Bozell, Chairman, Media Research Center
WHAT DO PAYGO AND POGO HAVE IN COMMON? IN BOTH CASES “WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US!”
For the Congressional Democrats to be credible about pay-as-you-go (PAYGO), they have to start living up to their rhetoric otherwise PAYGO is just a code word for major tax increases. President Obama said of PAYGO, “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.” But his math got a little fuzzy along the way, as he has only asked federal agencies to reduce their budgets by about .002 percent of the total budget for 2009.
This year’s deficit of almost $2 trillion — four times the previous record deficit — includes provisions for unpaid-for projects of mammoth proportions, including the $787 billion stimulus and the $634 billion “down payment” on a government run health care scheme. Apparently, when the president said that every dollar spent must be saved elsewhere, he assumed that the Democrats’ first trillion dollars or so don’t count.
And there is more to come as the President and his Democratic allies in Congress push for government run health care spending, global bailout money for IMF, higher energy bills and 13 appropriations bills that grow the size and scope of the federal government.
PAYGO IN WASHINGTON MEANS “FOOL THE TAXPAYERS”
The President will rack up a deficit of $1.84 trillion this year—four times higher than the all time record deficit of $458 billion last year. In May alone, the deficit was $190 billion, a record high for the month. The President claims that by 2013 he will cut the deficit to $512 billion, which would still be higher than last year’s record. The President’s deficit then shoots back to $800 billion by 2019, digging deeper into the same hole as before. Bigger bailouts, deeper debt, and more deficit spending add up to higher taxes, crippling debt for our children, and more bad news for our nation’s economic future.
Instead of PAYGO congress should institute dynamic budget scoring that recognizes the true costs of spending while incorporating the stimulative effects of tax cuts.
“The Democrat definition of PAYGO is you pay, they go on spending.”– Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana.
For more information: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/10/morning-bell-the-obama-paygo-farce/.
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