Sessions doubts House, Senate can reconcile budget plans

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Friday that he doubts the House and Senate will be able to reconcile the two budget plans that each chamber will pass.

"The Democratic Caucus has produced a budget here that won't work. It does not meet the challenge of our time; it's deeply disappointing," Sessions said on the Senate floor Friday.

"I guess there's still some chance something might happen in conference, but from the looks of this budget, the chances aren't very great, I have to say."

The House has already passed a GOP budget plan that slows growth in government spending, cuts taxes and aims to eliminate the budget deficit after 10 years. In contrast, the Democratic budget that the Senate is expected to pass this weekend proposes $1 trillion in new taxes, fills in the cuts made by the sequester and does not foresee a balanced budget in the next 10 years.

While passage would be the first budget approved by the Senate in four years, the stark differences between the House and Senate plans have already raised questions about how they might be reconciled, and whether the two chambers would even try.

As he has done all week, Sessions criticized the Democratic plan for ignoring the need to balance the budget, which Republicans say is a step the United States needs to take to avoid a debt crisis. He said taxing Americans more, and using those revenues to pay for more spending, ignores the problem.

"The budget spends more money, and it eats up the new taxes with new spending. It really does," he said. "This is a failed plan that's been produced by the majority party in the United States Senate.

"You can't take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it in the other and gain from this, especially when the bucket's going to leak a good bit of it in the process."

---