Source: United States Senator for Pennsylvania Pat Toomey
Washington, D.C. – During today’s Senate Budget Committee Hearing with Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) corrected the Biden Administration’s mischaracterizations of a “sound fiscal course” and questioned the substantial tax hikes included in President Biden’s budget proposal.
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On President Biden’s false claim that his budget would “keep our Nation on a sound fiscal course”: “Our nation is not on a sound fiscal course and hasn’t been for quite some time. After reviewing this budget request, it’s clear to me that the president’s budget would worsen our nation’s fiscal health. The budget proposes $72.7 trillion of total spending and $58.3 trillion of total revenue over the next 10 years. That results in $14.4 trillion of total deficits. Publically held debt balloons in this budget from over $23 trillion currently to $40 trillion by 2032 and that assumes no recession, no unforeseen emergency spending. . .”
“How does making the ten year budget deficit window worse by $2 trillion dollars, despite two huge tax increases, put us on a stable or sustainable path? President Biden’s boastful claim about reducing the 2021 and 2022 deficits compared to 2020 is completely disingenuous and totally context free. In 2020, Congress passed five bills to respond to the public health and economic crisis posed by COVID. The unprecedented bills resulted in $3.1 trillion of budget deficits for 2020 alone . . . The decline from 2020’s record high deficit should be attributed to the expiration of the extraordinary, unprecedented spending that was in response to COVID.”
On reducing defense spending while Putin wages war in Ukraine:
“This Budget calls for a 14 percent year-over-year increase in non-defense—this big, massive increase in the federal bureaucracy and the welfare state well beyond even current inflation. Meanwhile, the budget calls for an inflation adjusted cut to our defense budget. The budget calls for only a 4 percent nominal increase in spending, which is an unrealistic and dangerous level considering inflation running much higher than that and a very dangerous situation around the world that we’re reminded of constantly.”
On major lapses in the budget:
“[Biden’s budget] of course proposes nothing at all to address the looming insolvency and the general unstainable growth of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which now account for 50 percent of total spending. It also hides the various tax-and-spend proposals featured in the so-called Build Back Better Bill, which is still contemplated by the administration.”
On the tax hikes included in Biden’s proposed budget:
“So the top one percent of [Americans] make about 20 percent of all the income, pay about 40 percent of all the taxes. [Yet,] you [Director Young] and the president’s budget say ‘that’s not their fair share, their fair share must be much higher.’”
“I’m quite sure we won’t’ hear what the ‘fair share’ would be if paying twice the proportion of the income earned isn’t a ‘fair share.’ It makes middle class Americans wonder just what kind of tax increase you’re going to hit them with to make them pay their so-called ‘fair share.’”