Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said today that closed-door talks between President Barack Obama or Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner do not matter until a proposal is released to the public and scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
“Secretary Geithner has offered no plan on behalf of the President,” Sessions said in
a statement posted to the Senate budget committee website. “Newspaper articles and leaks from anonymous aides are not a plan. Until this fantasy ‘plan’ from a secret meeting is made public and scored by the Congressional Budget Office it does not exist.”
“Based on history, we can safely assume that reports that this ‘plan’ saves $4 trillion is a fabrication. It is a distraction that allows the White House to continue to run out the clock so it can have maximal leverage to force through a bad deal in the last minutes before midnight.”
Earlier in the day, before Geithner discussed White House goals for a fiscal cliff plan with GOP members of Congress, Sessions delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate denouncing Obama for continuing to increase the amount of revenue he wants and never discussing cuts he’d like to make to the budget.
Obama is reportedly asking for $1.6 trillion in revenue increases, mostly from increasing taxes on the top two percent of earners and closing loopholes, and about $400 million in entitlement cuts to be negotiated out in 2013.
“Insofar as I can see, a tax-and-spend policy remains his goal today,” Sessions said in the Senate chamber.
“The President will go out to the press and use all the buzz words — he says he’s for a ‘balanced plan,’ and talks about a ‘responsible path to deficit reduction.’ But where are the cuts? What is the plan? … That’s why the process needs to be taken out of the shadows. With public debate, people would learn facts that are now obscured.”
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