Budget Savings: ‘A Fraction of a Percent’
- Senator Mitch McConnell - Press Release
- May 7, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Thursday regarding the President’s FY 2010 budget and proposals to cut .5% of the spending:
“It’s clear that the budget Democrats passed last week on a party-line vote spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much. And as a result, the President has now proposed some modest spending reductions totaling a fraction of a percent of the trillions his budget would add to the debt. That’s a start, but with Democrats in Congress adding to the national debt at a rate of more than $100 billion every month already this year, and with a budget that triples the already unsustainable public debt over the next decade, it’s clear that there is much more that we can do to protect our children and grandchildren from the unprecedented trillions in additional debt proposed by the administration.
“When the government is paying nearly $100 million every day just to pay the finance charges from one stimulus bill, the only way to really address these out-of-control spending and debt levels is to get at the heart of the problem, which is entitlement spending. Nearly 70 percent of the money the federal government spends every year is mandatory spending on programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and on the interest we have to pay on the national debt. So rather than expanding entitlement programs, we should focus on solutions such as the Gregg/Conrad proposal or else we’ll be in very serious trouble as a nation.”
