Obama puts U.S. in 'never-ending Groundhog Day nightmare'

President Obama is urging Congress to adopt the priorities he lays out in his new federal budget that would cost more than $4 trillion for just the next year, but Republicans say the president refuses to change course after American voters roundly rejected his current economic strategy.

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., also said Obama's fiscal approach would greatly burden future generations and make spending on real priorities increasingly difficult.

Obama's federal budget for Fiscal Year 2016 would cost north of $4 trillion. He calls for a series of tax increases on investors and corporations to pay for specific, targeted tax credits for working families. Obama calls it "middle-class economics" and stated Monday that those policies plus spending on education, infrastructure and other priorities amount to investments America can't afford not to make.

Republicans are declaring the proposal dead on arrival. Garrett is the senior GOP member on the House Budget Committee. He said the Obama budget is disappointing but hardly surprising.

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"This is just a lousy Groundhog Day repeat, or as Yogi Berra would say, 'This is deja vu all over again.' You see the same thing from this president budget after budget. It increases taxes. It expands the size of the government. It expands the size of the same failed government programs that are not doing anything to create jobs," he said.

Garrett is also stunned at how both Obama's budget and last month's State of the Union message appeared to contain no acknowledgement of the political upheaval that took place last November.

"The American public had rejected his spendthrift, bailout type of spending patterns that he had in the past," Garrett said. "The American public has also rejected the idea that. And the American public has also rejected the idea that we have to live in an economic morass that we've lived over the last six years. We have to turn things around, and I think that's what the public is asking Washington to do."

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.:

As for the new budget, Garrett said Obama is not only beating the same dead horse but is pursuing badly flawed economic policies.

"It is a failed policy," he said. "It is not what the American taxpayers are looking for. It's certainly not what my constituents back in the fifth district in New Jersey are looking for. In short, they want a Washington that lives like they do, which means live within your means, come up with a budget that actually helps to expand opportunity, expand and create jobs and create more prosperity in the country. His goes in the opposite direction.

"For example, how can you possibly say raising taxes on spending and investment is a good thing? If you raise taxes on something, you discourage that activity. If you discourage saving and investment, that means you're walking in the opposite direction of job creation. You're discouraging good job creation and job growth."

In addition to the $4 trillion price tag, the Obama budget also carries a $474 billion deficit in 2016. In the final year of the 10-year projection, Obama's numbers work out to $687 billion in red ink.

"Those are the same sort of numbers we get year in and year out," Garrett said. "I remember being in budget committee last year and asking the administration, 'When does this budget balance? One year, five years, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years?' Of course, the answer then is the same as this year's budget. It never balances. That means that our kids (and) our grandkids are going to be the ones ultimately paying the price for the largesse that this president puts in his spending packages this year."

Beyond the saddling of future generations, Garrett said the more deficit spending the U.S. racks up, the tougher it is to find room for anything else in the budget.

"The interest on the debt will be $229 billion. That's a huge sum of money," he said. "It's going to go up to over $780 billion by the end of this cycle. That's more money than we spend on defense. That's more money than we spend on Medicaid. That's more money than we spend on all of the discretionary stuff combined. When you're spending so much money on the interest on your debt, that means you don't have any money to spend on the things they have to spend on."

Critics of Republicans are quick to point out that GOP of control of Washington for much of last decade also led mounting debts crippling future generations. Garrett said that fact is inexcusably true, but it pales compared to what the U.S. is seeing in this administration.

"I never defended the Bush administration's spending," he said. "I often criticized what President Bush did, but President Obama is Bush's spending on steroids."

With Republicans now controlling both the House and Senate, a very different budget will be offered by the GOP in the coming weeks.

"It'll be a realistic budget," Garrett said. "It'll be a budget that actually tries to live within our means and also tries to help promote growth and job creation. Once we have that laid out, the American public will have their choice, and their voice will be heard. Do we have a budget that actually grows the economy, or do we have one like we've seen in the past that stunts it, restrains it and leads to the dismal economic growth that we've seen over the last several years?"

The budget blueprints offered by the White House and Congress are really more like wish lists than practical expectations. Some previous Obama budgets have failed to draw a single vote of support in either the House or Senate, even among Democrats. Reality will clash with the wish list once the appropriations process kicks off in earnest later this year.

In the meantime, Republicans and Obama are preparing for a showdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which runs out at the end of this month. President Obama wants a clean extension. Republicans want to withhold funding to enforce Obama's unilateral actions on immigration, citing them as unconstitutional. The House has already passed such a plan to withhold the immigration funds. The Senate has yet to take it up. Obama has promised a veto.

For Garrett, this showdown is about Obama honoring his word. The congressman said there is a simple way to address this standoff without ratcheting up the shutdown drama.

"Pass that bill and then, if he has other ideas on immigration policy and the like, then he should be coming back to Congress and addressing those in the next step," he said. "But right now, it's most important that we make sure that Homeland Security, that appropriations bill, a clean bill if you will, passes both houses and gets signed into law."