Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, says that claims that President Obama's budget released today will reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years are dishonest.Sen. Sessions believes that the president's budget would only reduce the deficit by about $300 billion in comparison to what was agreed to in the Budget Control Act last August.He says the president’s claimed deficit reduction is based on the following deceptions:
- It does not count the cost of replacing the $1.2 trillion sequester (spending reduction plus interest savings) required under current law. This is plainly true because the president eliminates the reductions required by the law that he signed and replaces it with tax increases. Then he fails to score the cost of repeal, a monumental deception.
- It counts the inevitable winding down of the war costs in Afghanistan—all of which is borrowed—as $1 trillion in spending reduction; and
- It buries the $522 billion cost of freezing the Medicare physician update in the baseline, without identifying any source of funds to pay for it.
Senator Sessions will be a guest on Morning Joe Tuesday morning.