While fears of flooding are renewed in Iowa, Senator Chuck Grassley says he’s worried about a different sort of flood — a sea of red ink engulfing the federal government. The Iowa Republican is on the Senate Budget Committee which begins working on the 2010 budget plan tomorrow.
Grassley says experts in the Congressional Budget Office say President Obama’s three-point-six trillion dollar budget would be extremely expensive. Grassley says, "They scored the president’s budget and said it would increase the deficit by, get this, two-and-three-tenths trillion more than what the president said that their own budget would cost."
Grassley says the proposed budget would have dangerous financial ripple effects into future generations. "Over the last 40 years, federal spending averaged just 20-.7% of the gross national product," Grassley says. "Under the new president’s (budget plan), spending is up to more than 28% this year and will stay around 24% of the economy for the next decade." Grassley has been on the Budget Committee each of his 29 years in the Senate and says America needs jobs but it also needs government to stop taxing, spending and borrowing such incredible sums.
Grassley says, "In the end, someone has to pay and eventually, it’s the middle class, because you can confiscate all the money from rich people and you still aren’t going to have enough to keep government functioning, particularly at this rate."
Grassley says the proposed budget will end up "destroying opportunities for the next generation," as it boosts the federal deficit to a projected $1.8 trillion. He says he hopes some "blue dog Democrats" in Congress will help the minority Republicans to trim out some of the massive spending from the proposed plan.