Report On Republican Legacy: A Financial Mess

REPORT ON REPUBLICAN LEGACY: A FINANCIAL MESS

Incoming House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) and incoming House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) today released a staff report on the fiscal disaster that the Republican Congress is leaving behind.

The report details how Republicans have ignored key domestic priorities such as college affordability, healthcare access, education, worker training, law enforcement and veterans' healthcare. It also explains how mixed up Republican priorities have underfunded and cut much needed homeland security measures and left our Army at its lowest state of readiness in decades.

"Republicans have spent years handing out billions upon billions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires while shortchanging our national priorities," said Obey. "It is going to take us years to get back on track."

The report also summarizes how the Republican Congress and Bush Administration squandered huge projected budget surpluses - focusing on tax cuts for the most well off - and left nothing in reserve to respond to changing needs and economic shifts. As a result, the nation's debt has skyrocketed, and the interest on that debt is the fastest growing category of federal spending in the President's budget for the next five years.

"Unlike the Bush Administration, which inherited historic budget surpluses when it took office in 2001, the Democratic 110th Congress will inherit a Republican budget legacy that will not be easy to reverse. Over the last six years Republicans have created historic budget deficits and a mountain of debt," Spratt said.

"Democrats in the House have repeatedly offered budgets that return to balance, provide tax cuts for working families, and still address high priority needs. We will continue to balance these priorities within the framework of fiscal responsibility," Spratt added.

"It is not going to be easy," said Obey. "There are no perfect solutions. But, when the Republican Congress adjourned without passing a budget and without enacting 9 of the 11 appropriations bills needed to fund government services for the year, they forfeited their right to complain about whatever action we are forced to take next year to clean up their chaotic mess. Democrats will try to curb the Republican's fiscal mismanagement and to begin to make some of the investments that will keep America strong."

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/press/pr_121306.shtml