By Senator Mitch McConnell

March 17, 2008

Passing a budget in Washington is a chance for Congress to show what’s more important: increasing the family budget for millions of Americans, or increasing the federal budget to grow government. This year, the liberal Democrats who control Congress picked the wrong answer.



According to the Democrats’ own budget documents, their budget proposes to hike annual discretionary spending above the $1 trillion mark for the first time ever. They would spend $800 billion from the Social Security surplus, run a deficit of $400 billion, and increase our national debt by over $2 trillion. To pay for these massive spending increases, they seek to impose the largest tax hikes in American history.



Liberal Democrats claim they only want to raise taxes on “the rich.” But to them, “rich” means a single worker earning $34,000 a year, or a married couple earning $63,000. That means your average single Kentucky schoolteacher, or a police officer married to a nurse and raising a family, will see their taxes go up.



Under their budget, the average American family of four will pay an extra $2,300 a year to the taxman. That much money could buy groceries for the same family to last over eight months. Or the money could fill up the family car gas tank, and keep the oil changed, for about a year. The record-busting budget endorsed by Washington Democrats will make it harder for families to afford these everyday, necessary items.



In all, 43 million families will suddenly become “rich” thanks to this budget and face higher taxes. Nearly 20 million seniors will face tax hikes of more than $2,000 a year. Nearly eight million lower-income workers who currently pay no tax at all would find themselves added to the tax rolls. And tens of millions of small businesses, which create two out of every three new jobs in America, will have to fork over $4,100 more a year to the government instead of reinvesting that money back into the economy.



Kentucky will pay its share of the new tax burden, too. Over 250,000 Kentuckians will face higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains, including many seniors who count on this as retirement income. Over 450,000 Kentucky families will pay an income tax marriage penalty, and 380,000 will lose the valuable child tax credit. Over all, more than 1.4 million Kentuckians will see their taxes increase substantially.



When Democrats last controlled Congress over a dozen years ago, they passed a budget with what was then the largest tax hike in history. Astonishingly, it was only about one-third the size of what they propose now.



Republicans recognized that the best economic policy was to lower tax rates and let the great American economy get to work. We did, and created millions of jobs in the process.



The way to stay on this path is not to raise taxes, but to keep them low, control the growth of entitlement spending, and pay down the federal deficit. In short, government should work to grow the family budget, not the federal budget.



*Senator McConnell is the Senate Republican Leader and only the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the U.S. Senate.