CAGW Reacts to President’s 2012 Budget

(Washington, D.C.) – The nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today criticized President Obama’s proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget for increasing spending and worsening the nation’s fiscal troubles. 

“For three years we have been dismayed by President Obama’s failure to address America’s entirely unsustainable habit of spending increases and debt accumulation in his budget requests,” said CAGW Tom Schatz.  “Unfortunately, this year will be no different.  The President has requested federal outlays 10.5 percent higher than he did for FY 2011, a budget we hoped would mark a low point in the past decade’s irresponsible trend of deficit inflation and waste.  To make matters worse, the President no longer has the excuse that his free-spending ways are a response to the state of the economy, since prior attempts to spend our way out of unemployment have by now obviously failed.  

“By the Obama administration’s own admission, debt held by the public will reach 75 percent of GDP next year.  By failing to produce cuts to entitlement spending, the President is sitting idly by as our national debt approaches the value of all the goods and services Americans produce in an entire year.  Any budget that ignores the structure and volume of entitlement spending in the face of dramatically longer life spans in an aging population is reckless.

“Out of the $33 billion in program terminations and reductions in the budget, there are $17.5 billion in cuts that are either identical or similar to those that CAGW advocates in its Prime Cuts database.  Most of them, such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Pell grants, will face stiff resistance from Congress.  President Obama should be commended for submitting this list, especially for including defense programs such as the alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter.    However, $33 billion of reductions is less than one percent of his record $3.8 trillion budget.”  

CAGW’s Prime Cuts contains 763 waste-cutting recommendations that would save taxpayers $350 billion in the first year and $2.2 trillion over five years. 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.

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