A press release from McHenry County’s newly-elected Congressman Peter Roskam:

Roskam on Kudlow: Where are the Spending Cuts?

Washington, DC— Yesterday, Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06) appeared on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report” to discuss the White House refusal to put cuts on the table and avoid the coming fiscal cliff.

Where are the Cuts? Where are the Savings?

The White House is acting with impunity right now. Essentially, the House GOP came to the table with an offer that is substantive, and the White House has so far said, “Look, we want to continue talking about one quarter of the president’s own architecture.” The president said there was a three-to-one ratio between savings or cuts and revenue. But for the past thirty days they have focused exclusively on the revenue side, and they have been silent–I mean silent–absolutely nothing, on how they propose to achieve savings.

Is the President Running the Federal Government Like Illinois?

If you have a White House that is committed to going from $16 trillion in debt to $22 trillion in debt, which is where the Obama Administration would lead us over the next four years, then what do you do with that knowledge? What if you come to certainty that the president’s world view has been created in the state of Illinois, which is fiscal a basket case today? The state of Illinois, similar to the federal government, has a structural deficit, and its remedy was to raise taxes. And what happened? Revenues didn’t come in as predicted—no surprise. $7 to $8 billion in current unpaid bills that the state has, more per capita debt than almost any state in the union, and a higher than average unemployment rate.

White House is Over Selling Revenues as a Solution

What sales people end up staying in their positions for very long if they over sell a product? It doesn’t work. President Obama and his administration is overselling what the revenues will do. They’re basically saying if you go tax somebody else, then the fiscal problems will go away.

GOP Has Put Revenue on the Table

We’re willing to put new revenues on the table, that is coming from a party that doesn’t believe that we have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. So the willingness to move toward that remedy, I wouldn’t characterize it as heroism, but it is a very significant move. And so far we’ve seen nothing on the part of the White House to engage substantively on the real cost-driver.