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Today the President released his Fiscal Year 2012 budget blueprint which spends a record $3.8 trillion leaving another record $1.6 trillion budget deficit, the third straight trillion dollar budget deficit in a row. The President’s budget will lead to a $1.6 trillion tax increase on families and businesses, fails to address entitlement spending and paves the way for adding another $13 trillion to the national debt by the end of the decade. The budget proposal also deviates from the NASA Authorization compromise passed by Congress and signed into law last year by the President.

“Less than a month ago, the President stood before Congress and delivered a State of the Union Address in which he talked about the need for the federal government to live within its means but his new budget moves us in the opposite direction,” said Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge). “This budget is a path to bankruptcy.”

The President’s budget comes at a time when the House is considering funding the government for the rest of fiscal year 2011, since former Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid failed to pass a budget for FY 2011. Current funding is set to expire on March 4, 2011.

The President’s budget also ignores the NASA Authorization bill he signed into law last year by decreasing funding for the next human spaceflight launch system from $2.6 billion to $1.8 billion and decreased funding for a new crew vehicle from $1.4 billion to $1 billion. NASA officials already had complained that the legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President asked NASA to do too much with too little for advancing human space flight and the next generation launch vehicle.

“After the Administration let NASA flounder for the past two years, a flawed NASA authorization bill was finally agreed to and signed into law. Now the Administration is proposing to ignore this law, placing a higher priority on global warming research and making cuts to the next generation launch vehicle,” said Posey. “Over two years ago, the President promised to close the space gap, but now he seems intent on repeating the events that created the space gap in the first place – putting in place a new rocket design and then trying to underfund the effort, ensuring that it will never happen and ceding American leadership in space to China and Russia.”