Senator Bob Corker released the following statement after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office announced today that the U.S. will add over $9 trillion in new debt and nearly double Medicare and Social Security spending over the next 10 years. The report also finds that the health care law will continue to negatively impact economic growth and result in 2.5 million fewer Americans working in the next decade, he said.
Senator Corker said, “Today’s CBO report gives a sobering outlook on our economy. It confirms what we’ve known all along: The health care law is having a tremendously negative impact on economic growth, while entitlement spending continues to drive our nation’s debt to historic levels. Reforming Medicare and Social Security so they are strong and solvent is the only way to put our country on a sound fiscal path that will allow for continued growth and prosperity.”
Last year, he said he and Senator Lamar Alexander introduced the Fiscal Sustainability Act, S. 11, to reduce the growth of entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) by nearly $1 trillion in the next decade in order to improve the programs’ solvency. The bill incorporates many of the recommendations made by President Obama’s Debt Commission (Simpson-Bowles) as well as by former Republican Senator Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, budget director for former President Clinton, he said.
Senator Lamar Alexander said:
“The CBO’s new report that Obamacare is likely to force more than two million Americans out of their jobs is yet more evidence that the president took the country in the wrong direction on health care reform. We need to start over and go step by step with reforms that reduce the cost of health care so more Americans can afford to buy insurance.”