Here comes Obama's dead-on-arrival budget plan

The chairman of the House Budget Committee indicated over the weekend that President Barack Obama's $4 trillion budget plan for 2016 will essentially be ignored by the Republican Congress, and that the GOP will instead press ahead with its own plan to pass a budget that eliminates the budget deficit in 10 years or less.

Obama's budget, scheduled to be released just before noon, is expected to call for $4 trillion in spending, and a $478 billion infrastructure program paid for with new taxes on corporations and people.

But in a Sunday interview with Fox News, House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) said Republicans would ignore Obama's plan and pass their own.

"It seems to be more of the same policies that have resulted in the lowest, slowest economic recovery out of an economic downturn in the history of the country," he said. "The better way is to present budget that we will through out committee and through the House, that will actually get to balance."

As Price pointed out, both Congress and the White House are allowed to ignore each other's budget plans, and often have over the last few years. "The good news about a congressional budget is that it doesn't have to be signed by the president," he said.

Some of Obama's recent budget proposals, which generally call for more spending and more tax revenue, have been completely rejected by Congress, in votes that saw not even a single Democrat vote for the plan.

In contrast, House Republicans have put out more modest budget plans that they have then used as a guideline to pass spending bills that have broadly reduced or at least slowed down the growth of discretionary budget items.

With Republicans leading both the House and the Senate, the GOP seems likely to pass a unified budget this year, one that is highly unlikely to include any of Obama's plans.

But Republicans may give Obama's plan a shot, by allowing it to come up for a vote in order to show how little support there is for Obama's vision. Price described Obama's plan as one that will take economic freedom away from millions of Americans.

"Every single dollar that's taxed, and every single dollar that's borrowed, is a dollar that can't be used to pay the rent, to pay the mortgage, to buy a house, to buy a car, to send your kids to college," he said. "The things that the American people want to do, the president's budget is making more difficult."

Earlier this year, Price has said he wants to eliminate the budget deficit in less than 10 years, if possible.