Tuesday evening, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) announced they had reached a deal on a two-year budget. Although full details haven’t been released, the broad outline of the deal announced was enough to draw a rebuke from GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). “This budget agreement is more of the same that we’ve seen out of Washington for years,” Huelskamp said in a statement. “Instead of providing solutions, it continues the insider game of playing ‘Let’s make a Deal.'”
“The deal provides for a $63 Billion spending increase, raises taxes, and adds to the deficit now – all in exchange for another mirage of spending reductions sometime in the future, most of them 5 years after Obama leaves the Oval Office,” Huelskamp continued.
The Ryan/Murray deal promises a $28 billion reduction in the deficit ten years from now. These savings are achieved by requiring a future President to continue sequester cuts to mandatory programs in 2022 and 2023. It is highly unlikely a President a decade from now will feel bound by the terms of the Ryan budget deal.
Rep. Huelskamp said the budget deal “blows up the only real significant spending restraint passed since the Republicans assumed the majority in the 2010 election, it violates the Republican House Conference agreement hammered out in January of this year in Williamsburg, and it does next to nothing to implement the House budget passed earlier this year.”
The full text of the legislation, with details about specific revenue increases and spending increases, is expected late Tuesday. On Wednesday, as the specifics of the deal are digested, it is likely that other House Republicans will echo Huelskamp’s concerns.
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