Senate Democrats Unveil First Budget In 4 Years

Today marks the end of the four-year streak Senate Democrats were on of failing to produce a budget. Senate Democrats finally unveiled their budget blueprint, led by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), which includes a mix of spending “cuts” and $1 trillion in new taxes. Cut them some slack though, it's always a rough start when you take four years off.

Not only does this budget collect an additional trillion dollars in new taxes ($620 billion in new taxes from the fiscal cliff deal), but also it fails to cut spending. It repeals the sequester, spends an additional $100 billion on more economic stimulus, and simply lowers the rate of growth in spending. It also fails to reign in our deficits:

From the Hill:

“Murray argues that her budget cuts $1.85 trillion from deficits over ten years. But once the sequester cuts are turned off, Murray’s budget appears to reduce deficits by about $800 billion, using the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline. The Murray budget does not contain net spending cuts with the sequester turned off.”

The budget raises taxes and closes all of the loopholes, for individuals and corporations and achieves these so called “cuts” through money that we have yet to spend from the Afghanistan war. Apparently that chalks up $482 billion in “savings.” Let’s pause for a moment of quick reflection.

Let’s say you declare that you want to buy a new $30,000 car. Then, a week later, you decide you don’t want to buy it anymore and start cheering, “I just saved $30,000!” People would think you were an idiot. This is how a Democrat achieves “savings.” They count money we were planning to spend that we decided not to spend as savings. It’s ridiculous.

Back to the new Democratic budget: it will include $493 billion in other “cuts” and absolutely no reform to our entitlement programs. Somehow, Murray argues that when you count the apparent $2.4 trillion in savings from the last Congress, her budget presents $4 trillion in deficit reduction. In sum, here is some simple math to help you understand Senate Democrat’s latest budget.

A Cut in the rate of growth from last Congress +

Money we haven’t spent yet +

$1 trillion in new taxes +

 = A magical budget the reduces the deficit by $4 trillion.

This new budget is a joke, along with all Senate Democrats.

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