Sessions: Budget is Obama’s last chance to be responsible

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said on the Senate floor Monday that President Obama must make deeper budget cuts in his 2012 proposal than the president outlined in the State of the Union address.

Sessions said the Obama 2012 budget proposal, due the week of Feb. 14, may be the administration’s “last chance” to get it right.

“He cannot present the Congress with the same unserious plan he presented Tuesday night,” he said. “We are going to see if the president is moving with the American people to fiscal sanity.”

Obama in the State of the Union called for a five-year freeze in spending at current levels, rather than cuts to those levels.

Sesssions ripped statements by White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who on Sunday said that spending cuts must be accompanied by new investments.

The Republican also said that any vote to raise the debt ceiling must be accompanied by a bipartisan deal cutting outlays.

“Clip back on the credit card a little bit,” he said.

He also pushed back against what he said were Democratic efforts to paint Republican proposals as “heartless.”

“If we go back to 2008, 2006 levels of spending, is the country going to collapse?" he said. "Give me a break!"