Sen. Chuck Grassley made the following comment on President Obama’s proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget released today.
“The President says his proposal is about looking forward but it looks like a repeat of the past. This proposed budget is more of the same of what we’ve seen from the Obama Administration on more spending, more taxes, more regulations and no attempt to balance the books. It includes a tax of $10 per barrel of oil that likely would raise the cost to consumers at the pump by as much as 24 cents per gallon. Everybody expects oil companies would pass that cost right along to consumers. That’s the sort of idea that’s dead on arrival in Congress, where we rightly hear from our constituents that their money does more good in the general economy than with the federal government. When the President’s proposal does cut spending, it targets areas like crop insurance that hurt rural America. It’s penny wise and pound foolish to cut a program that helps farmers manage the food supply on which the country and the world depend. The budget also proposes cutting Medicare payments to critical access hospitals. That doesn’t make a lot of sense for the health care of the people in the affected rural communities.”
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