GOP: House budget reflects 'moral choices'

WASHINGTON, March 23 (UPI) -- The House-passed budget resolution reflects the nation's "moral choices," a key Republican senator said Saturday in the party's weekly media address.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah says President Obama now must step up and reveal his fiscal priorities, The Hill reported.

The House's budget, passed earlier this week, is a measure of "the moral choices we make as a nation and shape the kind of society we will build for the future," Lee said.

The Senate also passed a budget plan early Saturday, but Lee chastised the president as "a day late and a dollar short" in submitting his own.

"The President has again failed to follow the law requiring him to submit his budget by the first Monday in February," he said.

He also criticized the Senate plan for increasing taxes by $1.5 trillion. "They also have no plan to save our entitlement programs," Lee added.

The impasse between Obama, the House and Senate has caused automatic, across-the-board cuts called sequestration to go into effect. The cuts had caused the president to cut spending on "important services," Lee said, rather than working with Congress "to identify and remove wasteful areas in the budget."

He urged Democrats and Republicans to work together, saying, "this budget debate isn't about dollars, it's about common sense."