CBO: Obama Budget Adds $5.2 Trillion to Deficit, $1 Trillion in New Taxes

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget would add $5.2 trillion in deficits over the next ten years and contains nearly $1 trillion in new taxes.

The Obama budget, which was delivered two months after the legally-required deadline, is larded with accounting gimmicks that count as savings war and disaster contingency funds that were never going to be spent. Obama’s budget also assumes sequester-related cuts will all be restored.

But Obama claims his budget is devoid of budgeting tricks.

“The numbers work,” says Obama. “There’s not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here.”

Congressional Republicans are not buying it. 

“This new [CBO] report shows that the President’s budget doesn’t come close to solving the problem,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “The federal government will take in a record haul over the next ten years. And the President wants yet another massive tax hike. But under his plan, we’ll keep adding to the debt–at an alarming rate.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) defending the Obama budget and said the plan offers taxpayers a “big and balanced approach.”

“This is an important validation of the President’s and Democrats’ efforts to restore fiscal discipline through a big and balanced approach while maintaining our ability to invest in a competitive economy and a growing middle class,” said Hoyer.

Obama’s past budgets have resulted in politically embarrassing defeats. In 2011 and 2012, the Senate Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected Obama’s proposed budgets.