President Obama needs to go beyond his call for higher taxes on wealthier Americans and address entitlement reform if we are going to put the nation on a “fiscally sound basis,” Sen. Orrin Hatch tells Newsmax TV.
His program “clearly cannot be just tax the rich the way he said because that’s not going to produce enough revenue to solve any problems. It would produce enough revenue in a year for maybe one week of running the federal government,” the Utah Republican says.
Story continues below.
“It’s clear that we’re going to have to come up with a program that really goes a lot further than that and it’s also clear that he needs to talk about entitlements.
“Let’s say that they keep Social Security off the table. We know that Medicaid and Medicare are running out of control. The states are having trouble right now paying for their Medicaid share. In fact, it’s costing them law enforcement, it’s costing them education-wise.
“And how does the president solve that? He’s going to push between 18 and 22 million more people into Medicaid.
“The states, now that the Supreme Court has rendered its decision and said they don’t have to take the additional people into account on their books, are refusing to take this 18 million to 22 million more people because they can’t afford what they have right now.
“The president says, well, [the federal government will] pay for it for the next few years and then we’ll pay 95 percent later. With what? Our economy is broke. It needs to be fixed and it’s going to take presidential leadership working with congressional leadership to get this done.”
See other exclusive excerpts from the Newsmax interview with Sen. Orrin Hatch:
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.