Fox host Neil Cavuto wasted no time telling his Republican guest that the GOP budget is probably “dead on arrival” and going “nowhere fast” in the Senate.
Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) visited Your World yesterday to tout the Republican budget.
But Cavuto’s first comment on the subject was, “Dead on arrival, we’re told by Democrats. Going nowhere fast, even Senators are saying nowhere fast with us either.”
Brat tried to put the best face on it. He said, “We’re going to cut spending more than it’s ever been done in U.S. budget history. We’re going to take on entitlements a little bit, we’re gonna balance within 10 years. The Democrat budget never balances. So our thesis is we’re different, we’re the party that does govern. The talking points and the politics has to come to an end. I ran on the $18 trillion debt we have, as a country, passed on to the kids, and, even worse, the $127 trillion in unfunded liabilities on the entitlement side.”
Cavuto didn’t buy it. He said, “No matter what you do, the rap is, ‘The president’s going to reject it …and that means that we’re still in limbo.”
Brat insisted, “As a visionary document, it does the right thing.” He promised, “We’ll stand strong, and get it right.” Then in an homage to Fox as a GOP partner, Brat said, “You’re doing a huge service by airing this issue.”
But in a scathing column, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank called the budget a gimmick. A few examples:
It pretends to keep strict limits on defense spending — so-called “sequestration” — but then pumps tens of billions of extra dollars into a slush fund called “Overseas Contingency Operations.” That means the funds count as emergency spending and not as part of the Pentagon budget.
It assumes that current tax cuts will be allowed to expire as scheduled — which would amount to a $900 billion tax increase that nobody believes would be allowed to go into effect.
It proposes to repeal Obamacare but then counts revenues and savings from Obamacare as if the law remained in effect.
Cavuto didn’t question any of it beyond the politics of what can or cannot get passed.
Watch it below, from yesterday’s Your World.