President Obama may claim to be rising above partisanship with the release of his newly proposed $4 trillion budget, but don’t tell that to Charles Krauthammer.
Appearing on “Special Report” Monday night, Krauthammer slammed Obama’s proposal, calling it “entirely a political and partisan document” while advising the GOP that it should be “completely ignored.” The syndicated columnist called the proposal “a spending budget,” slamming it for including a nearly $500 billion deficit while adding that it’s “not a real document.”
KRAUTHAMMER: I don’t mind if the president sends a budget which he knows is not going to achieve anything. But when he prefaces his remarks, as we just saw, by saying that we have to put politics aside, posing again as the one person in the country who rises above partisanship and party, speaks for the national interest, it’s really grating. The budget he gave he knows is not going to pass. It’s not a real document. It is entirely a political and partisan ideological document. It’s a way to present liberal budget choices in a way that are completely unacceptable, but a way to frame the debate in the future.
And when he talks about the mindless austerity of the sequester — this is austerity? The budget he presented is a half a trillion dollars of deficit. Until Obama acceded to the presidency, never in our history did we have a half a trillion dollars of deficit. Now he tells us we are in prosperity and recovery, and he still has half a trillion of deficit. And he calls it austerity.
This is a spending budget. The Republicans are not going to accept it, and rather than use it as a starting point for the bargaining on the budget, it should be completely ignored. Let the Republicans start from scratch.