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March 30, 2009

ADERHOLT: Obama’s budget not best for America

By Robert Aderholt

On Wednesday night, I participated in a 13-hour long House Budget Committee meeting that ended at about midnight. It’s amazing what you learn about the American economy and the federal budget when you talk about it for that long.

This budget meeting was the time for the Committee members to approve, reject or amend the majority’s budget proposal.

As you know, the majority belongs to the Democrats in the House of Representatives and every Committee therein. The Budget Committee ended up approving the Democrat budget resolution, sending the $3.55 trillion budget plan to the full House of Representatives for consideration this week.

I, along with the other Republicans on the Committee, voted against it. The only good thing that came from this committee meeting was the fact that the scrutiny given to the Budget magnified the problems in my mind, as well as many Americans across the nation who watched on C-SPAN.

The bottom line is that the FY2010 Budget simply spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much at a time when our nation desperately needs economic relief. This enormous budget is a massive expansion of the federal government and the biggest-spending spree the country has ever seen.

Budget Committee ranking member, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), said it correctly when he said, “With this budget, the president and the Democratic majority are attempting nothing less than the third and great final wave of government expansion, building on the Great Society and the New Deal.”

We face an economic challenge that many say comes once in a generation. American workers are losing their jobs at an alarming rate and too many small businesses are struggling to keep their doors open. This time of challenge can either be a time for radical change or a time to recommit ourselves to the basic principles that make our nation great – limited government and personal responsibility.

Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report last Friday that this budget will cost taxpayers $2.3 trillion more than initially claimed by this White House. By any measure, this unprecedented spending binge will have significant consequences for taxpayers now and future generations for decades to come. My children’s grandchildren will be saddled with this debt!

Every day, Alabamians are making tough choices as they deal with this economic recession. Families are tightening their budgets and small businesses are cutting expenses. I believe that the federal government has to do the same when it comes to the proposed FY2010 Budget.

As most Americans know, over the last few months Congress has gone on an unprecedented spending binge. It began with the so-called “bailout” last Fall, then the “stimulus package”, which was intended to create jobs. Instead, it put taxpayers on the hook for a $1 trillion bill that will only stimulate more government and more debt. Several weeks later, the Congressional leadership rushed through Congress more than $400 billion in an “omnibus” spending plan to fund the government for only seven months.

I voted against all of these bills because I believe that massive spending will not lead to a growing economy; it will only lead to a mountain of debt to be inherited by our children and grandchildren and possibly beyond.

The American people know that we can’t borrow and spend our way back to prosperity. The path to our economic recovery starts with fiscal responsibility in Washington.

Instead of continuing a policy of bail-outs and the nationalization of our economy, I call on the President and Congressional leadership, both Democrat and Republican, to reach across the aisle to work together and consider Budget ideas from all House members, not just those in the Democrat majority.

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