Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., on Monday ripped Barack Obama’s former vice president Joe Biden and Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for refusing to reduce congressional spending on Capitol Hill.
In his remarks to the Congressional Gold Medal dinner, Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told guests “we need to cut the budget,” The Hill reported.
“We have a tax code that is so complicated that some big accountants can explain it better than my wife and I,” Barrasso told the crowd, which included Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
“Our budget goes out of control. I don’t like that.”
Barrasso condemned Clinton’s remark in a Huffington Post article that Pelosi “deliberately and purposely overspent” – and Bernie Sanders for telling the libertarian Cato Institute on a panel that it was time for the federal government to “just shut down.”
The “Mad Hatter” in Barrasso’s argument was possible presidential hopeful Biden, who endorsed Sanders for president in 2016, wrote the Huffington Post, and also predicted the country would experience a recession.
The McCain Institute for International Leadership released a study that showed congressional spending tripled in three decades after Biden was sworn in as vice president.
“[Barrasso’s] written this off as a hilarious opening remark,” Amy Bailey, a spokeswoman for the Senate Republican Policy Committee, told The Hill. “We have a long-standing goal of continuing to bring spending under control, but it’s totally unreasonable for anyone to think Congress will achieve the goal.
“And [Barrasso’s] declaration is just plain misleading,” she added. “Congress actually went on record as cutting spending in 2012, when that was actually one of the House Republican planks.”
Fox News’ John Roberts contributed to this report.