Harper on Obama Budget: "Horrible...socialism"

Gregg Harper spoke to the Meridian Star calling President Obama's budget "horrible" and a "major step toward socialism."

"It spends too much, it borrows too much, and it taxes too much," he said in a phone interview while on his way to view storm damage in Simpson County on Friday. "What I'm seeing is we're spending money on some areas that really shouldn't be talked about."

He took particular issue with the cap and trade system, or as he called it the "cap and tax" system, which is proposed as a way to reduce carbon emissions. "It will increase everybody's utility cost," he said. "It's an indirect tax is what it is... What they're proposing does not help us become energy independent."

"We are spending money we don't have. It's deficit spending at its worst... This is worse than anything they used to complain about under Bush. The plan will tax small business owners at a much higher rate" by raising taxes on people who make at least $250,000 a year, he said.

"Sixty-four percent of those who make that amount are small business owners," he said. "I never had a poor person hire me in high school or college."

"At least we have a chance to discuss it," he said, "even though it's a horrible budget."

He said the budget is "a major step toward socialism for our country," because, "Anytime you're doing things that call for a redistribution of wealth... where you're taking from other people and you're sending it somewhere else, you have to be careful of how and why you're doing it."