Sessions: Democrats proposing 'fake cuts' to budget

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Monday said the Senate Democrat proposal to cut about $6.5 billion from FY 2010 levels proposes only "fake cuts" to government spending, and said a vote in favor of that proposal is a vote to "do nothing."

"A vote for the Democratic plan that will be presented tomorrow will be a vote to do nothing; that's the fact," Sessions said on the Senate floor Monday. "Those are fake cuts, they're not real cuts. This is Washington talk."

Sessions spoke just after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) again trounced the House GOP spending plan to cut $61 billion from 2010. Sessions responded by saying, "I don't think the 6 percent reduction in spending proposed by the House is going to cause the United States government to sink into the ocean."

Sessions said the Democratic plan is virtually a status-quo spending plan because of the significant cuts many government agencies have seen in the past few ears. In recent hearings, he said, the Department of Education sought an 11 percent increase, at a time when the inflation rate is 2 percent.

He also said the Department of Energy wanted a 9.5 percent increase, while the Department of Transportation wanted a 62 percent increase. "Is this the way to bring this country under control?" Sessions asked. "Is this what the American people expected when they voted last election and sent a new House of Rep and new senators here? I don't think so."

Sessions noted that under Obama's budget proposal, interest on the debt would more than quadruple, to $844 billion a year, and said rising interest rates could make these payments grow beyond $1 trillion a year.

"We're on the wrong road," Sessions said. "This is a road to decline, it's the road to dependence on foreign sources of money to finance our spending spree. It's not the road to prosperity and growth."

Sessions mocked the way the Obama administration has cast its proposed cuts as a way to live within the government's means. "What planet are they on?" he asked, noting that the lowest estimated budget deficit under Obama is $600 billion, after which deficits begin to rise again.

Sessions predicted two weeks of difficult negotiations on the budget, and predicted more dire warnings from Democrats that further cuts are impossible. "They'll begin to negotiate and talk and they'll be seeking some toothless compromise," he said.