Rep. McClintock: Spending Spree in Budget Deal Paid for by 'Higher Taxes'

On Thursday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said he voted against the budget deal brokered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) because the spending spree will be paid for with higher taxes. 

“Some of the discussion has focused on how much of the spending spree will be paid with higher taxes. The answer is, ‘all of it,'” McClintock said. “Once government spends a dollar, it has already decided to tax that dollar – the only questions that remain are who gets the bill and when.”

The deal, which increases spending beyond the sequester levels and raises so-called “fees” on airline travelers, passed the House by a 333-94 vote.  

McClintock said the “House Republican leadership pushed through a two-year budget that will allow the federal government to spend an additional $63 billion more than current law allows – money that our country does not have.”

He also said that “sixty-three billion dollars of new spending – and therefore new taxes in some form – is not a small amount of money. It averages about $570 of added burdens for every family in America.”

McClintock then blasted the deal for its “lie” that requires Americans to believe that “Congress will magically summon the fiscal discipline that has eluded it in the present” before quoting former Reagan budget director David Stockman, who said that the budget deal was a “a joke and betrayal.”

“It’s the final surrender of the House Republican leadership to Beltway politics and kicking the can and ignoring the budget monster that’s hurtling down the road,” Stockman had said earlier in the week.

McClintock, the fiscal conservative who was a part of the Tea Party before it existed in California, emphasized that the “budget is a mistake at a time when we can’t afford many more mistakes.”

“The path of least resistance, even if paved with good intentions, is not a path America can afford to travel any longer,” he said.