Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Suzia van Swol-University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag said today that the budget proposals under consideration in the House and Senate Budget Committees "are from the same family as the President’s budget." "The resolutions may not be identical twins to what the President submitted, but they are certainly brothers that look an awful lot alike,” said Orszag, speaking to reporters on a conference call.

In response to Republican criticism of the proposal, Orszag responded that it is “easy to lob criticisms, but part of governing, or part of the policy process, needs to involve putting forward alternatives.” He said that he hasn’t seen an alternative budget proposal on the Senate side and his understanding is that there won’t be one. “It seems off to be criticizing, without putting forward an alternative,” stated Orszag.

The tax gap in the budget proposal amounts to a figure around 300 billion a year, and Orszag says that there are some proposals in the budget to start to reduce this number. However, Orszag stated that “there is widespread concern, frankly, that perhaps even the 300 billion dollar estimate is too low because of the complexity of some of the transactions that are involved.”

Orszag said that he takes issue with the objecture that there is “spiraling debt.” He stated that “we are inheriting a budget situation that is a mess and that we are working our way out of, and under both budget resolutions, the deficit is reduced in reduced in half—by more than half—by 2013.”

Orszag went on to explain that the only constraints on the task force are that there can be no tax increases during 2009 or 2010 and that the proposal should not raise taxes on American families making less than $250,000.

Orszag said that in regards to the committee using reconciliation this year,“reconciliation is not where we would like to start but we are not willing to take it off the table. There clearly are some differences between the Senate and the House on this topic and that will be worked out, assuming that both resolutions are adopted by the respective bodies; that would be something that would be worked out in conference.”