Rep. Ryan: Obama 2012 Budget Savings 'Paltry'

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget contains “paltry savings,” and looks like it is “very small on spending discipline.” Obama will submit his 2012 budget Monday.

“It looks like the debt will continue rising under this budget” and “sounds like the similar budgets he has given us the past couple of years,” Ryan, R-Wis., told Fox News Sunday Host Chris Wallace. Obama’s proposed “discretionary freeze, is off of an extremely high base, they just blew spending out the gates in the last two years – a 24 percent increase in domestic discretionary spending, and when you throw stimulus on top, it was an 84 percent increase – and he wants to freeze for a few years off of those high levels; it’s less than 1 percent of spending over the next 10 years.

“We will see the details of this budget tomorrow, but it looks like, to me, that it’s going to be very small on spending discipline, and a lot of new spending – so-called investments,” Ryan said. “Look, the president is elected to lead, and to face the country’s biggest challenges. The country’s biggest challenge, domestically speaking – no doubt about it – is a debt crisis. And I am really hoping he is going to give us a budget that tackles this debt crisis.”

Wallace asked whether Ryan thought the president’s budget, which has spending increases in certain areas, was “dead on arrival”. Ryan said he was adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

“I don’t like to say that until I actually see the budget,” Ryan said. “I wish I could give you a clean, clear answer. We will get this tomorrow, we will [look] through it line-by-line very quickly, we know how to analyze these things pretty quickly, and then we will give you an answer to that tomorrow.

“The great debate we are having in Congress now – which is refreshing – we are debating how to cut spending, not how much to increase spending, and these early press reports show he wants paltry savings on the one hand, and a lot of new spending on the other hand,” Ryan added. “Borrowing and spending are not the ways to prosperity. It will cost us jobs.”