Paul Ryan: Obama ‘delusional’ on debt, deficit

Paul Ryan House Budget Chair
Photo Credit Zimbio

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan took the president to task Wednesday for assertions he made the evening before during the State of the Union address.

At a budget hearing, Ryan said President Obama’s figures bear no relationship to those of the Congressional Budget Office, adding that the president is “deluding” himself on the nation’s fiscal health.

“It seems as if they think the heavy lifting on debt reduction, deficit reduction is behind us, we have just a little bit left and then we’re done,” Ryan said, according to The Hill. “I really worry that our partners in government, here — two-thirds of it, the Senate and the White House — are deluding themselves in thinking this thing is taken care of.”

On Tuesday night, the president claimed that America is more than halfway to a $4 tillion debt reduction.

“The notion that we already have $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction in the bank, that we don’t have much farther to go to finish the job. This calculation does not count the spending that took place in that time,” Ryan said.

The Hill’s Erik Wasson reported:

Ryan cited CBO’s finding that publicly-held debt had doubled from 36 percent of the economy before Obama took office to 73 percent in 2012. If Congress turns off the automatic cuts from sequestration and a scheduled cut in Medicare payments, Ryan noted, debt would rise to 87 percent of GDP by the next decade.

“We’re in a danger zone,” Ryan said, warning of a possible European-style debt crisis.

“Even if we got every tax increase the president has called for we are not even scratching the surface,” Ryan said. “The other problem is growth. If we keep chasing higher spending with higher taxes we will hurt growth.”

Ryan also criticized the president for missing the Feb. 4 deadline to deliver a budget, which the White House now says will be available in mid-March.

The president also raised eyebrows at his Tuesday night address when he proposed additional spending programs in infrastructure modernization, climate change and social programs that he claimed were fully paid for and would not add “a single dime to the deficit.”

Read more at The Hill.

The GOP responded to the president’s State of the Union address claims that his policies won’t increase our deficit “by a single dime” with a video entitled “58 trillion dimes.”

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