Growls

In the wake of President Obama’s first State of the Union speech, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) completed a  “line-by-line analysis” of the spending proposals, and found that taxpayers would be burdened with an additional $70.46 billion in new federal spending.

According to the study, conducted by senior analyst Demian Brady, the findings included:

• "President Obama outlined items whose enactment would increase federal spending by a net of $70.46 billion per year. Since 1999, when NTUF began tracking Presidential addresses, the lowest recorded total was President Bush’s address in 2006, coming in under $1 billion in new spending; the highest was President Clinton’s 1999 speech, which proposed $305 billion in new outlays. Obama’s speech last night amounted to $36 billion less than the $106 billion that George W. Bush offered in his first State of the Union speech in 2002."
  

• "Obama outlined 21 proposals with a fiscal impact last night, eight of which would boost spending, three of which would cut them, and 10 of which had costs or savings that could not be pinpointed. The single largest item Obama mentioned was a call to pass cap-and-trade national energy tax legislation, with an outlay cost of $51.5 billion (not including revenue increases or price hikes in energy bills). Other large initiatives included immigration reform ($9.8 billion) and subsidies for retirement savings among low-income Americans. Major undertakings with unquantifiable costs included a student loan forgiveness program and a new round of mortgage refinancing subsidies."

• "President Obama was not able to address all of his planned spending increases in his speech yesterday. Among them were: a $44 billion increase in Defense spending, the largest single-year request for federal funding in education ever (which will include up to $4 billion to reform No Child Left Behind), an increase in NASA spending, and between $7-17 billion in new costs for the Department of Transportation (which does not include an additional $5 billion planned to continue a high speed rail project)."

The bottom line, Brady wrote:

“While the President should be commended for his newfound support of a spending freeze on one-eighth of the federal budget, Americans won’t be happy to learn that his other proposals would far outweigh any savings the freeze might provide.” (emphasis added)