Study: State of Union Proposals Would Boost Spending Over $20 Billion; Many Items too Vague to Estimate

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Taken together, the fiscal policies President Obama outlined in his State of the Union (SOTU) address would increase federal expenditures by more than $20 billion, but a lack of detail in many parts of the speech significantly obscures the actual price tag. That's the conclusion of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation's (NTUF) line-by-line SOTU analysis.

"President Obama's speech hinted at tax reform and spending restraint, but also opened the door to tax increases and major spending initiatives," said NTUF Senior Policy Analyst Demian Brady. "This leaves taxpayers wondering not only whether the federal budget deficit is headed upward or downward, but also by how much." Among the findings:

• President Obama offered proposals whose enactment would increase federal expenditures by a net of $21.349 billion per year, compared to the $70.46 billion he called for in 2010.
• Obama mentioned 15 items with a fiscal impact, five of which would boost spending, three of which would cut them, and seven of which had costs or savings that could not be ascertained from NTUF's accounting procedures.
• The single largest item Obama mentioned was increased "investment" in transportation (estimated at $50 billion) and savings from extending an existing proposal to freeze certain domestic program outlays ($15.0 billion). However, the items with indeterminate effects were substantial, such as a wholesale reorganization of the government.
• Since 1999, when NTUF began tracking Presidential addresses, the lowest recorded total was George W. Bush's address in 2006, coming in at under $1 billion in new spending; the highest was Bill Clinton's 1999 speech, which proposed $305 billion in new outlays. Bush's first State of the Union speech, in 2002, reached $106 billion.

Since 1991, NTUF has tracked the fiscal impact of proposed legislation through BillTally, an accounting database that reports the "net annual agenda cost" for each Member of Congress. For this analysis, NTUF matched Obama's proposals with those in the BillTally system, in White House documents, and in other third-party sources.

NTUF is the nonpartisan research affiliate of the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union, a non-profit taxpayer advocacy group founded in 1969. Note: Analyses of current and past State of the Union proposals are available at www.ntu.org.

SOURCE National Taxpayers Union Foundation