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Sen. Lankford: Obama Does Not Believe in Balancing the Budget

CBN

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This week President Obama released his $4.1 trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year of 2017, but critics say he has no intention of balancing the federal books.

When President Obama first took office, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. That number has skyrocketed during his presidency, and if his proposed 2017 budget plan were to pass, the national debt would rocket to around $27.4 trillion by the end of his time in office.

Sen. Lankford, R-Okla., says the government must address the national debt before there is a crisis and Congress is forced to respond with knee jerk reactions.

CBN News Reporter Abigail Robertson spoke with Sen. Lankford on Capitol Hill. Click play for more.

"We've too far gone at this point, this is going to take years just to get us back to balance, and decades to get us out of the debt crisis we're already in, but we've got to get started," he told CBN News.

"We know the bond markets are going to collapse, we know the stock market is going to have trouble, we know it's going to be harder and harder to be able to get a job," he continued.

"We know that we are going to have a higher interest payment than what we spend on national defense in the days ahead, these are all predictable things, let's deal with it now so we don't have to have this big crisis in the days ahead," he said.

Sen. Lankford says part of the problem with President Obama's budget strategy is he does not feel a need to balance the budget.

"The president and I have had this conversationpersonally, just he and I. He does not believe we should balance the budget, he believes the government should overspend every single year because that stimulates a down economy," he explained.

"I absolutely disagree, I think the overspending of the federal government is what is slowing down the economy because the federal government is continuing to pull more tax dollars out of the private sector, add more debt, add more interest payments, and its making it harder and harder to actually get the economy going again," Sen. Lankford said.

"Congress has to pass a budget that actually brings us to balance," he continued. "Congress did that last year, through the House and the Senate showed the path, here's how we can actually do a balanced budget; the President completely rejected that."

"The problem is we have to have a House, a Senate, and a White House that all agree because whatever we pass as far as spending bills can be vetoed by a president," he said.

Sen. Lankford says the budgeting system is completely collapsed and un-functional. He thinks the entire system needs to be reformed with things such as biannual budgeting, government shutdown prevention incentives, and the elimination of budget gimmicks.

He also says he is not confident Congress will actually act until there is a president that makes fixing the national debt a top priority.

"There are things that can be done; we just have to have the will to actually get them done here," he said.

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