Republicans Go After Obama’s Budget

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Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:49 pm

In this week’s Republican radio address Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) kept up the strategy of anti-government spending rhetoric, seemingly oblivious to his and his party’s own out of control spending habits.

Here is the video:

Burr attacked Obama’s budget, “This week, the president submitted to Congress the single largest increase in federal spending in the history of the United States, while driving the deficit to levels that were once thought impossible. If we just look at what our debt spending will cost us in interest payments alone, we are talking about 4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, more than a billion dollars of interest payments every day. Think of that 4 trillion as a finance charge on your credit card bill – you have to pay, but you get nothing for it in return. This finance charge obligates more than $52,000 for every family in America over the same 10 year period.”

The joke is that through 2006, the Republicans increased federal spending 35.8%, which is more than even LBJ spent during the Great Society. In five years, the Republicans’ No Child Left Behind increased federal education spending 79.9%. The true hypocrisy here is that Burr is the senator who introduced the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind in 2007. Burr also supported all of Bush’s budgets and voted for the TARP last fall.

Burr is a shining example of why the Republican new found small government rhetoric can’t be taken seriously. Here is a senator who once voted for a balanced budget amendment, but then spent the Bush years spending tax payer money like it was going out of style. If a Republican president had proposed more spending during a recession, Burr would be lining up to vote for it, but since Obama is a Democrat it is all wrong.

The Republican Party is so far out of step with voters that they spent when they should have been saving, and at a time when people are looking to the government for help, they want to save when people want them to spend. The GOP keeps digging itself in deeper, by offering tired ideological opposition, instead of bipartisan practical solutions. The GOP is trying to recapture its soul, but they sold it long ago.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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