Marco Rubio - U.S. Senate - 2010

Americans Should Defeat President’s Budget
By Marco Rubio

The sheer numbers in the President’s latest spending plan are jaw-dropping: a $1.3 trillion deficit this year, $1.6 trillion next year and a 10-year deficit outlook of $8.5 trillion. The budget also calls for a permanent expansion of the federal government by 3 percent of GDP; a $2 trillion decades-long tax increase on every single American under the auspices of health care reform and cap-and-trade energy policies; deficits of more than $1 trillion until 2020; and a doubling of the publicly held national debt to more than $18 trillion.

For years, Republicans and Democrats have been warning about the dangers posed by Washington’s addiction to reckless deficit spending. Yet, for years, Republicans and Democrats alike ignored the warning signs and hoped they would be long gone when the bills for Congress’ spending came due. Sadly, that day is now upon us, and this President has dramatically accelerated and deepened America’s spending crisis.

Just as the majority of Americans of differing political parties and ideologies banded together to send Washington a message regarding the government takeover of health care, so too must all Americans band together to defeat this budget.

Those who care about our national security, our standing in the world, and the notion of leaving our children a better country than the one we were blessed to inherit, must send a clear and unequivocal message to our leaders in Washington: defeat the President’s budget.

We cannot allow, or afford, this reckless, liberal budget to be jammed through on partisan political lines. They should instead start over and pass a commonsense plan that actually fixes our fundamental problems by focusing first on reducing spending and limiting the size and scope of government.