In Speech, Hatch Calls on President to Lead Nation Out of Fiscal Crisis

Utah Senator Says, “American Taxpayers and families want something more from their President. They want leadership. The President of the United States can’t just subcontract out these issues to other people. The President of the United States must lead.”

WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, called on the President “to be bold and to take a stand” by leading the country with a concrete plan to effectively tackle the country’s debt crisis and reform the nation’s broken entitlements.

Below are excerpts of Hatch’s speech:

ON THE PRESIDENT NEEDING TO LEAD:

“American taxpayers and American families want something more from their President. They want leadership. The President of the United States can’t just subcontract out these issues to other people. The President of the United States has to lead. He has to be bold and to take a stand. For all of the elegiac comparisons of President Obama to Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, those were not passive presidents. On the big issues, they took big risks, and they led the country.

“It seems like the President’s advisors have finally figured this out. They need to get involved in a serious way on the issue of federal spending. Sitting back and adding nothing, while your allies demagogue reasonable solutions to pressing problems, is simply not acceptable to the American people. Democrats tried this tired line of attack last week, alleging that Republicans were out to hurt the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. These smears are beneath the dignity of our elected officials, and they show a total disregard for the commonsense of American citizens and the good faith and charity of those who support Republicans. A good first step for the President would be to disavow these statements. He has a chance to do so tomorrow. The President is giving a much-hyped speech tomorrow on the issue of spending, and getting our deficits and debt under control. I can only say that I hope he comes through.”

ON WASHINGTON’S OUT-OF-CONTROL SPENDING:

“We are spending way more than we are taking in, and absent real reductions in spending and meaningful reforms to entitlements, this country is cruising toward a legitimate debt crisis that will adversely impact every American family. This desire to reduce spending and restore the Constitution’s limits on the size of government is the new normal for taxpayers.

“The Obama Administration’s salad days — when they dreamed of permanently expanding the size of the federal government — are way back in the rearview mirror. Because of the undeniable seriousness of our deficits and debt, and the commitment of Republicans to taking it on, the debate has shifted from how do we enlarge the size of government to how can we scale it back. The Administration was slow to recognize this.”

ON TAX HIKES NOT SOLVING THE SPENDING-FUELED DEBT CRISIS:

“And I would add that the American people don’t want solutions to a spending crisis that involve higher taxes. The solution to a spending crisis, is not higher taxes that will give the government more money to spend.

“Our problem is not that citizens are taxed too little. Our problem is that government spends too much. So the President needs to come forward with serious concrete proposals, and commit to working with Congressman Ryan, Speaker Boehner, and Senate Republicans to solve this problem. I am willing to give the President a mulligan on his first budget proposal.”

Below is the text of Hatch’s full speech delivered on the Senate floor this afternoon:

Mr. / Mdme. President, sometimes it amazes me how quickly debates change here in Washington. At this time in 2009, President Obama was riding high.

Heralded as the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt, the conventional wisdom was that his election represented a sea-change in the attitudes of American taxpayers. Where his Democratic predecessor came to Congress and announced that the era of big government is over, President Obama came to Washington convinced that the era of big government was just beginning.

With historic majorities in both houses of Congress, he and his Capitol Hill allies set about the business of transforming the nation’s economy with massive jolts of new government spending and regulation. They cultivated an unholy alliance of big labor, big business, and big government, and the hoped-for result was a corporatist state where government bureaucrats would calculate the fair share that business would contribute to finance the Administration’s redistributionist policies.

They exploded the growth of the federal government through ordinary appropriations and the stimulus. Democrats hiked up non-defense discretionary appropriations by 24 percent in the last two years, and by 84 percent if you count the stimulus bill.

But as an American songwriter once put it, the times, they are a changing. Later this week, we will be considering the continuing resolution that gets us to the end of fiscal year 2011. To hear the left talk, you would think that this proposal is shuttering agencies left and right. They say that we have cut discretionary spending to the bone. This is a bit melodramatic.

Before the Republicans won in November, the federal government was on pace to spend $3.8 trillion dollars. That’s three thousand, eight hundred billion dollars. And the CR we will vote on reduces spending by $38 billion. Thirty-eight billion in spending reductions from spending of three thousand, eight hundred billion dollars. That’s not exactly cutting to the bone.

I agree with my colleagues who say that we need to reduce spending by even more. Facing our third consecutive year with more than a $1 trillion projected deficit, these cuts barely scratch the surface of what needs to be done. But make no mistake about it.

Even these cuts would have been impossible if not for the Republicans taking back the House and making gains in the Senate last November. When Republicans won, they changed the debate in Washington. Even the press has been forced to acknowledge the depth of our fiscal crisis, though old habits die hard.

Just this morning, we witnessed a relapse in the mainstream media, as it did its best to enable excessive spending. The headline on the front page of today’s Washington Post screamed, “Cuts will affect vast spectrum of priorities.”

This made me think of the old joke about the likely reporting at the New York Times on the outbreak of a nuclear conflict. Nuclear War Breaks Out: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.
But I should not be too hard on the press. They seem to be getting it. There is certainly no denying it.

We are spending way more than we are taking in, and absent real reductions in spending and meaningful reforms to entitlements, this country is cruising toward a legitimate debt crisis that will adversely impact every American family. This desire to reduce spending and restore the Constitution’s limits on the size of government is the new normal for taxpayers.

The Obama Administration’s salad days — when they dreamed of permanently expanding the size of the federal government — are way back in the rearview mirror.

Because of the undeniable seriousness of our deficits and debt, and the commitment of Republicans to taking it on, the debate has shifted from how do we enlarge the size of government to how can we scale it back. The Administration was slow to recognize this.
When given his first opportunity to weigh in on this crisis, the President voted present.
His FY 2012 Budget was laughable for its failure to take on our deficits and growing debt. Even Ezra Klein, the liberal Washington Post reporter, could not carry the President’s water on this one. He wrote that when reading the budget, it’s almost like the fiscal commission never happened.

The President’s Fiscal Commission recommended over $4 trillion in spending reductions, including adjustments to entitlements. I can’t say that I agree with everything in the Commission’s proposal, but it was a serious effort to get our nation’s finances back in order. But the President chose to pretend that this report did not exist.

Well, since then they must have done some polling over at the White House. They must have realized that on the most critical issue facing the country, American taxpayers and American families want something more from their President. They want leadership. The President of the United States can’t just subcontract out these issues to other people. The President of the United States has to lead. He has to be bold and to take a stand.

For all of the elegiac comparisons of President Obama to Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, those were not passive presidents. On the big issues, they took big risks, and they led the country. It seems like the President’s advisors have finally figured this out. They need to get involved in a serious way on the issue of federal spending.

Sitting back and adding nothing, while your allies demagogue reasonable solutions to pressing problems, is simply not acceptable to the American people. Democrats tried this tired line of attack last week, alleging that Republicans were out to hurt the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. These smears are beneath the dignity of our elected officials, and they show a total disregard for the commonsense of American citizens and the good faith and charity of those who support Republicans.

A good first step for the President would be to disavow these statements. He has a chance to do so tomorrow. The President is giving a much-hyped speech tomorrow on the issue of spending, and getting our deficits and debt under control. I can only say that I hope he comes through.

The people of my state of Utah, and the people of every state, are demanding that Washington tackle out-of-control spending. And vague outlines, or statements of principle, are not going to do it. The President needs to take a stand.

And I would add that the American people don’t want solutions to a spending crisis that involve higher taxes. The solution to a spending crisis, is not higher taxes that will give the government more money to spend. Our problem is not that citizens are taxed too little. Our problem is that government spends too much.

So the President needs to come forward with serious concrete proposals, and commit to working with Congressman Ryan, Speaker Boehner, and Senate Republicans to solve this problem. I am willing to give the President a mulligan on his first budget proposal.

The President, like members of Congress, represents the people. As representatives of the people, we must acknowledge those times when we got it wrong. When the people make it clear that they want their elected officials to go in a different direction, in a democratic republic it is only right that the President and Congress give voice to those concerns.

The President seems to understand that he got it wrong with his first budget. Taxpayers and families want Washington to take on spending. But the people will not be fooled. If the President comes out tomorrow and speaks in vague generalities — if he comes out and simply defers to Congress — he will have satisfied no one.

Being the President of the United States is not like being a law professor. Your job is not merely to facilitate dialogue. Your job is to lead. I look forward to the President’s remarks tomorrow. I guess we could call it, The President’s Budget — Part Deux. My hope is that the sequel will be better than the original.

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