Debt Increases $50,000 Per Household Under Senate Democrat Budget‏

March 20, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Stephen Miller,

               Andrew Logan: 202.228.0575

Under the Senate Democratic budget plan introduced by Chairman Patty Murray, America’s gross federal debt per household will increase by more than $50,000 over just the next decade. On a per person basis, the gross debt increases from $53,937 today to $73,320 in 2023.

How can the debt continue increasing when the Chairman claims $1.85 trillion in “deficit reduction”? First, this Washington accounting convention can be misleading: annual deficits never drop below $400 (and are increasing in the outyears), meaning the nation’s gross debt increases every single year. Second, even the claimed deficit reduction is a fallacy because it relies on several egregious gimmicks and accounting tricks. The largest such gimmick is that the budget eliminates the sequester but does not count the elimination of these cuts as the spending increase that it is. (Chairman Murray’s staff conceded under questioning that, properly accounted, their actual deficit reduction would be closer to $700 billion.) Other gimmicks further reduce that figure, including an unrealistically low estimate of war spending and a doc fix that is assumed but not paid for. Altogether, the Senate Democrat budget contains virtually no deficit reduction whatsoever.

Underneath all the gimmicks and spin is more a fundamental issue: what’s actually in the Murray budget?  What are the actual policies and reforms?  They don’t exist. The never-balancing budget contains no actual fiscal reforms of any kind—just a massive tax increase to fuel a massive increase in government. As shown above, that burden will be borne by every American family.