Harper Unleashes on Obama’s Budget Proposal

I believe Gregg Harper has a bright future in the House GOP as a young, strong conservative voice. He recently spoke with the Meridian Star, where he didn’t hold back on Obama’s proposed budget calling it “horrible” and saying it was “a major step toward socialism for our country.”

From the Meridian Star:

“It spends too much, it borrows too much, and it taxes too much,” he said in a phone interview while on his way to view storm damage in Simpson County on Friday. “What I’m seeing is we’re spending money on some areas that really shouldn’t be talked about.”

He took particular issue with the cap and trade system, or as he called it the “cap and tax” system, which is proposed as a way to reduce carbon emissions. “It will increase everybody’s utility cost,” he said. “It’s an indirect tax is what it is…What they’re proposing does not help us become energy independent.”

Harper said he believes room should have been made in the budget for nuclear energy.

In general, Harper took issue with the amount of spending included in the proposed budget. “We are spending money we don’t have. It’s deficit spending at its worst…This is worse than anything they used to complain about under Bush.”

“The plan will tax small business owners at a much higher rate” by raising taxes on people who make at least $250,000 a year, he said.

“Sixty-four percent of those who make that amount are small business owners,” he said. “I never had a poor person hire me in high school or college.”

Harper said he believes the budget will be passed largely unchanged by a Democratic majority in congress. He’s not happy about it, but said he is glad members of congress will have more opportunity to debate the budget than they had to debate the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (stimulus bill).

“At least we have a chance to discuss it,” he said, “even though it’s a horrible budget.”

He said the budget is “a major step toward socialism for our country,” because, “Anytime you’re doing things that call for a redistribution of wealth… where you’re taking from other people and you’re sending it somewhere else, you have to be careful of how and why you’re doing it.”

Harper said he and other Republicans offered amendments to the budget, but that the vast majority were not approved. He said he offered an amendment in which $400 million of the $900 million he said was designated for the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip would have been shifted to provide pay raises to military personnel.

Harper said the budget resolution was approved by the House Budget Committee this week and will go to a vote by the entire House soon.