Democrats joined Republicans on Tuesday in criticizing President Obama’s budget request for doing too little to bring down the national debt.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) faulted Obama for not taking on entitlement reform, and during testimony by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jack Lew, suggested the administration was not being serious enough about reducing the deficit.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of Conrad’s panel, said Obama should have followed through on the recommendations of his own debt commission, which in December proposed nearly $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade that included reforms to Medicare, Social Security and the tax code.
Coons said the commission “laid out the kind of strong, broad vision that we need to take on not just the deficit but the debt.”
“I think in large part, the strongest work of the commission is absent in this budget,” he said.
Harsh criticism from House Republicans continued for a second day as Lew testified before both Conrad’s committee and the House Budget panel led by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will be writing his own budget for 2012.
Ryan said Obama had squandered a prime opportunity to deal with the country’s “crippling burden of debt.”
“Why did you duck?” Ryan asked Lew at the hearing. “Why did you not take this opportunity to lead?”
Even the Democratic chairman of Obama’s debt commission, Erskine Bowles, said the White House budget request goes “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare,” according to a report in The Washington Post.
The tough criticism left Obama playing defense.
At a surprise press conference on Tuesday, Obama defended his budget as a starting point.
“You guys are pretty impatient,” he told reporters.
More here
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) faulted Obama for not taking on entitlement reform, and during testimony by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jack Lew, suggested the administration was not being serious enough about reducing the deficit.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of Conrad’s panel, said Obama should have followed through on the recommendations of his own debt commission, which in December proposed nearly $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade that included reforms to Medicare, Social Security and the tax code.
Coons said the commission “laid out the kind of strong, broad vision that we need to take on not just the deficit but the debt.”
“I think in large part, the strongest work of the commission is absent in this budget,” he said.
Harsh criticism from House Republicans continued for a second day as Lew testified before both Conrad’s committee and the House Budget panel led by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will be writing his own budget for 2012.
Ryan said Obama had squandered a prime opportunity to deal with the country’s “crippling burden of debt.”
“Why did you duck?” Ryan asked Lew at the hearing. “Why did you not take this opportunity to lead?”
Even the Democratic chairman of Obama’s debt commission, Erskine Bowles, said the White House budget request goes “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare,” according to a report in The Washington Post.
The tough criticism left Obama playing defense.
At a surprise press conference on Tuesday, Obama defended his budget as a starting point.
“You guys are pretty impatient,” he told reporters.
More here
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