(WASHINGTON) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the House of Representatives budget, unveiled Tuesday by Congressman Paul Ryan, “extreme,” which uses “fuzzy math and gimmickry,” to “pull the wool over the eyes of the people of the House” suggesting that it achieves real deficit reduction.
“This budget reflects the same skewed priorities the Republican Party has championed for years, the same skewed priorities Americans rejected in November,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Ryan Republican budget will call for more tax breaks for the wealthy and an end to Medicare as we know it and draconian cuts to education and other programs to help America’s economy grow and prosper.”
Put simply: Reid said “it’s déjà vu all over again.”
“The Ryan budget will shower more tax breaks on millionaires and raise taxes for the middle class,” Reid said. “I know Congressman Ryan has held to be out this guru who understands things so well. What he understands is gimmickry, and that's what he's done so well. He’s pulled the wool over the eyes of those people in the house, and they continue following him. But, Mr. President, his budget is anything but balanced, anything but fair. And members of the house should look at what they're being led into or out of.”
Reid said the Ryan budget relies on accounting that is “creative at best and fraudulent worst.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., however, praised his Republican colleague in the House’s budget, calling it a plan that would give the nation “sound fiscal footing.”
On Tuesday, Senate Budget Chair, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., will introduce the Senate Democrats’ budget, the first time the Democrats will have a formal budget since 2009.
The Murray budget would replace sequestration and include a 50-50 split between taxes and spending -- $1 trillion in spending cuts and raises new tax revenue by nearly $1 trillion from the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. The Murray budget would not balance the budget within 10 years as the Ryan plan proposes.
Reid praised the Murray budget, which will start to be worked on in the Senate Budget Committee this week, saying it will “cut wasteful spending and reduce the deficit, close tax loopholes that benefit the rich and will go really hard to continue to build, to grow. It will encourage a strong middle class.”
McConnell said the Senate Democrats’ proposal includes, “lots of budget gimmickry, lots of wasteful spending and even more tax hikes.”
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