President Barack Obama is “afraid of the Ryan budget approach,” but Republicans’ overwhelming support for the proposal shows that the GOP is serious about reducing government spending, Grover Norquist tells Newsmax.TV.
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, also said Donald Trump shows signs of being a “serious candidate” and that the real estate mogul would make the Republican presidential primary race very interesting.
President Obama’s own budget speeches have shown only that he has no concrete plans to tackle the deficit, Norquist said.
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“The president is afraid of the Ryan approach. Paul Ryan has put forward a bill that reduces $6 trillion of Obama’s overspending during the next 10 years. Paul Ryan’s takes government spending from 25 percent of the budget to 20 percent.
“If President Obama believes that Paul Ryan’s budget was a political loser, he would stand to the side and let it sink,” Norquist said. “Instead, he rushed out to pretend to have something similar and yet we haven’t seen anything in writing yet from Obama.”
The House passed the Wisconsin Republican’s “Path to Prosperity” budget 235-189 on April 15. No Democrats voted for it, but all except four Republicans did.
“That’s a huge sign of solidarity within Republicans,” Norquist said. “It means that the Republican Party has staked out a dramatic reduction in government spending as their priority, [along with] a refusal to raise taxes.”
Norquist said the credit warning that Standard & Poor’s issued Monday about the U.S. debt is because of “President Obama and the Democrats overspending, the $8 billion they wasted on the stimulus, the $350 billion they wasted on the second TARP bailout, the trillion dollars they added to the budget over the last couple of sessions.”
“Obama has done a lot of damage to the economy and now we, quote-unquote, have to raise the debt ceiling,” he said. “The Republicans are insisting that if we are going to raise the debt ceiling to cover for Obama’s overspending, there will have to be some reform.”
On the 2012 presidential race, Norquist said potential candidate Trump could introduce some good ideas into the mix.
“I understand Donald Trump will be signing the no tax increase pledge, which is the sign of a serious candidate, someone who wants to run as a Reagan conservative Republican,” Norquist said.
“He certainly got a lot of attention as a business person saying he’s going to fix Washington, so he will make the primary race more interesting.”
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