Senate Democrats release first budget in four years, includes $1 trillion in tax increases

The Senate on Wednesday presented its first budget in four years, a proposal by leaders of the Democrat-controlled chamber that calls for nearly $1 trillion in tax increases but includes no strategy to make federal revenue match spending in the coming years.

The plan calls for $975 billion in new tax revenue through closing loopholes and ending deductions and credits benefiting corporations and the country’s highest wage earners.

It also calls for $100 billion in new stimulus spending and cutting $1.85 trillion from the deficit over 10 years.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray said the budget takes a balanced, “pro-middle-class” approach and argued the country’s economic problems started long before fellow Democrats entered the White House in 2009.

 “Despite some of the rhetoric you may hear from my Republican colleagues, the Great Recession didn’t start the day President Obama was elected,” said Murray, D-Wash.

The plan also calls for replacing the recent, $85 billion in spending cuts with more measured cuts.

Committee members will begin voting and submitting amendments Thursday, with a full Senate vote expected by next week.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Session, the committee’s ranking Republican, immediately criticized the proposal.

“It’s anything but balanced,” he said. “Raising taxes and spending is anything but balanced.”

The budget was presented one day after the Republican-controlled House rolled out its fiscal 2014 budget -- a plan to balance the budget in 10 years largely by slowing the rate of spending and adding in the roughly $600 billion in tax increase Democrats got in January.

The upper chamber announced the details as President Obama met with House Republicans.

Obama said after the meeting that it was "good” and “useful."

However, the recent optimism about Democrats and Republicans perhaps agreeing on a mix of tax increases and spending cuts to craft a single budget – or a so-called “grand bargain” – appears to be fading.

"Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide," the president told ABC before going to Capitol Hill.

View the original article here

Ryan: New House Republican budget includes ObamaCare repeal

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Sunday that his new budget includes the repeal of President Obama’s health-care reform law known as ObamaCare.

Ryan told “Fox News Sunday” that the new proposal will make enough cuts to balance the federal budget in 10 years, compared to his previous one that tried to achieve that goal in 25 years.

“We think we owe the American people a balanced budget,” the Republican congressman said.

Ryan said the focus of the ObamaCare repeal would be to stop the expansion of Medicaid, the federal program that provides medical services to low-income U.S. families.

“Our budget does promote repealing ObamaCare,” said Ryan, who was not clear whether he intended to call for a full repeal.

Ryan, the Republican 2012 vice presidential nominee, said he wants states to run Medicaid through federal block grants.

Ryan said his proposal attempts to reach a balanced budget, in part, by slowing the rate of federal spending from 4.9 percent to 3.4 percent. Other parts include consolidating federal job-training programs and reforming the federal Food Stamp program to ensure only qualified applicants receive the benefits.

“I’ve very confident this is the way to go,” said Ryan, whose budget would have a better chance of passing the Republican-controlled House than the Democrat-controlled Senate.

View the original article here