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Congressman Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green), a member of the House Budget Committee, will begin a series of weekly updates on the Fiscal Year 2011 budget proceedings.    

Friday, March 5, 2010

On February 1st, President Obama submitted his Administration’s FY 2011 Budget proposal with a record breaking cost of $3.8 trillion dollars.  This budget proposal includes a $2 trillion dollar tax increase over the next ten years and projected record deficits.  This proposal will double our nation’s debt in five years and triple it in ten years from FY 2008 levels.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has stated that under current spending levels, by 2020, American taxpayers will be paying $2 billion dollars per day in interest alone on the national debt.  

Over the last two months, the House Budget Committee, of which I am a member, has held hearings on the FY 2011 budget.  The committee has heard testimony from Douglas Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Peter Orszag, Director, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Timothy Geithner, Secretary, Department of the Treasury.  Their testimony confirmed the fact that our nation’s current spending and borrowing levels are unsustainable and I have reiterated my serious concerns with this during these hearings.  You can read my opening statement that was submitted to the record during Director Elmendorf’s testimony on my blog.  My YouTube Channel has been updated with my questions to the witnesses as well.   

After hearing testimony from the above mentioned offices and departments, I have the gravest concerns about the direction this country is heading and the seriousness of the economic crisis.  During the question and answer portion of the hearings, I continually reiterated the high unemployment rate in Ohio’s 5th District and all the sacrifices that companies and employees have made to be able to remain in business.  In addition, I stressed the economic recovery is not coming quick enough, especially with the out of control spending recommended in President Obama’s budget.  The federal government must reign in its spending and cut costs, just as businesses and families across Ohio’s 5th District have done.

While the President has made multiple public statements on the fiscal state of our nation, he has yet to put these words into action with meaningful reform in terms of spending and borrowing.  In addition to the staggering numbers from the FY2011 budget proposal, the President and Congressional Democrats continue to push legislation with $1 trillion price tags; health care reform, the failed “stimulus” package, and the largest ever national energy tax, commonly known as “cap and tax.”  Similar to this budget proposal, these pieces of legislation are financed with massive tax hikes or simply not paid for at all, tacking hundreds of billions onto our national debt.  To date, the only action the President has taken to cut spending was to place a “spending freeze” that only applies to 13 percent of total spending, frozen at spending levels higher than less than two years ago.  

As we continue to hold Budget Committee hearings, I look forward to hearing from additional members of the Administration on how they plan to bring serious reform to our nation’s out of control borrowing and spending levels.