Obama 2017 Budget 'Never Balances' - House Speaker

WASHIGTON (Sputnik) — The 2017 budget submitted by President Barack Obama to Congress earlier on Tuesday will never balance, US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

"This budget, like the seven proposed by the president before it, never balances, not in five years, or ten years or 25 years — never," Ryan stated on Tuesday. "No amount of tax hikes… would be able to pay for all the new spending."

The $4.1 trillion budget proposal, which was roundly denounced by Republicans in the US Congress, predicts a $27.4 trillion national debt in 2026.

Though the final US spending plan is certain to be far different from the Obama plan, about three-fourths of the final price tag will be needed to fund automatic cost increases in so-called entitlement programs, namely the Social Security retirement system and Medicare health benefits for senior citizens.

Ryan criticized the proposed plan as it would continue spending and more than double the national debt from when Obama was first elected.

Absent major reform to both entitlements, Congress has no say in the amount spent.

That leaves Congress in control of the remaining one-quarter of the US budget, which is equally divided between defense spending and social programs.

The president’s plan projects the so-called discretionary spending at $1.2 trillion for 2017.