Democrats to Reveal First Budget in Four Years

Senate Democrats are about to reveal their first budget in four years, and it reportedly calls for $1 trillion in new taxes.

Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) brought out the new Democrat budget and said the next nine years of the sequester would be eliminated and replaced with tax increases and spending cuts.

Some highlights from the bill include:

1. $100 billion for more infrastructure spending and job training.
2. Murray claimed that her budget slices $1.85 trillion from deficits over ten years. However, once the sequester cuts are gone, that figure dwindles to $800 billion. And no balanced budget.
3. Murray wants to close loopholes, expecting to raise $975 billion from that tax increase. 
4. Murray’s budget counts $240 billion cut from ending the war in Afghanistan war and $242 billion in reduced interest payments.

Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that if what he was hearing was true, he was not happy:

If the Senate Majority’s budget actually contains these accounting tricks, it would increase spending above already massive projections for spending growth. In other words, Senate Democrats would be proposing a tax hike to fuel even more wasteful government spending. Can it really be this is all they have developed after four years of not producing a plan?  If that it is so, no wonder why they won’t make their proposal public until after the committee meets.

Murray’s budget may also have a sly way around raising taxes; her budget may contain reconciliation instructions on tax reform, which would mean the budget would be filibuster-proof and would thus let a tax bill pass the Senate by simple majority vote.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget, which balances in ten years without raising taxes. It also cuts spending over that same period of time by $5.7 trillion. Ryan wants to cut the highest tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. And unlike Murray’s budget, Ryan did not include any cuts from ending the Afghanistan war.