WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Lee released the following statement on the budget deal recently announced by the Chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees:

“Rather than enacting reforms to make government more efficient, the budget deal makes more government more expensive. Sequestration is far from ideal, but at least it forced Congress get serious about excessive spending. This deal cuts into the modest gains taxpayers have won since 2011, by trading concrete spending reductions over the next two years for theoretical spending cuts a decade from now. In the meantime, the deal raises taxes on all air travellers, so that Congress can continue to ignore both waste in discretionary spending and the ticking fiscal time-bomb of our entitlement programs.

“I do not envy House Republicans in their task of negotiating a budget with a Senate majority and president hostile to the very idea of having one. But the deal they have struck is not one I can support.

“If there is a silver lining in this deal, it at least further confirms the need for Republicans to finally develop a comprehensive conservative reform agenda. Real reform involves not simply cutting dysfunctional programs, but fixing them so government doesn’t cost so much in the first place. And as Democrats continue to hide from those reforms at the behest of their special-interest clients, Republicans must begin to advance our ideas openly and transparently, not behind closed doors up against artificial deadlines set by the forces of the status quo.”