While traveling in the Middle East, U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) said Monday the President missed an opportunity to send the markets and businesses a clear signal that the government was serious about fiscal restraint by proposing a 2011 budget that simply taxes and spends too much, pushing the deficit to a record $1.6 trillion in FY 2010.

“Since coming back to Congress in 2005, I’ve voted for the tightest, most conservative budgets we’ve proposed under both Republican and Democratic administrations, because we must live within our means,” Inglis said of his votes for the Republican Study Committee budgets.

“We would be $613 billion better off than we are now, if these budgets had been enacted.”

The Republican Study Committee will soon offer its own budget proposal as it did last year that would have reduced the deficit every year before reaching balance in FY 2019. The RSC’s proposal would have also resulted in $6 trillion less debt than the President’s budget.

“I don’t know that we’re ever going to do anything about the deficit when we’re spending at such a record pace,” Inglis said. “Creating new government programs and pushing more money out the door while merely making cosmetic changes is not fiscally responsible.

“The President has acknowledged that we need to get our fiscal house in order. But seeing a new $1 trillion entitlement for health care and his massive tax increase for cap-and-trade is troublesome.”

Spends too much

· The President’s proposed budget for FY 2011 is $3.83 trillion dollars

· The President’s budget projects a $1.27 trillion deficit in FY2011 (down slightly from $1.56 trillion in FY 2010), $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next five years, and would add $8.5 trillion to the federal debt through 2020.

· Despite the President’s proposal to cap non-defense discretionary spending for the next three years, total discretionary spending is projected to grow by about $30 billion a year over the next 10 years.

Taxes too much

· For household making $250,000 per year, the President’s budget eliminates the Bush tax cuts, increases the capital gains and dividends tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent, and reduces exemptions and charitable deductions.

· The President’s budget also proposes a new tax on large banks; increases taxes on oil, gas and coal producers; and assumes revenue from a cap and trade proposal, passage of which is very uncertain.

Note: Inglis voted against cap and trade and has, with the help of Ronald Reagan’s economics advisor Art Laffer, drafted an alternative proposal that would create jobs and improve the national security of the United States by cutting FICA taxes in exchange for a tax on pollution.