Patty Murray Calls Out GOP's National Debt Rhetoric: They Discuss ‘Only One Side Of The Ledger’

4 months ago

Before the Congressional recess, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) questioned CBO Director Phillip Swagel on national spending during a Senate Budget Committee hearing.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Murray, Distinguished Chairman of Appropriations. Thank you, Chair Whitehouse.

00:04Really appreciate you holding this hearing. Director Swigal, good to see you

00:08again. Thank you to you and all your staff at CBO for the critical work

00:12you do for our Congress. You know, Mr. Chairman, my dad actually ran a five and

00:19dime store. If you nodded, then you just gave away your age, but he ran a five and

00:24dime store, and my mom worked as a bookkeeper when we were growing up, but

00:29you know, you don't have to run a cash register or be an accountant to

00:32understand the really basic fact that when it comes to our national budget,

00:36spending is just half of the equation. There is also revenue, and I mentioned

00:41this because when our Republican colleagues talk about debt and

00:45deficits, they tend to discuss only that one side of the ledger, which is spending.

00:50So I want to focus on something that goes overlooked, or rather goes unsaid, by

00:56my Republican colleagues, because while they love to talk about reining in

01:00spending, as the chairman just talked about, which in my mind actually means

01:04the investments that we make for families and working people, I don't hear

01:08the same concern regarding the huge tax breaks that go to mostly

01:12billionaires. We need to get one thing clear. Despite all the bogeymen

01:18that Republicans like to point to driving the national debt, the reality

01:22is that the single biggest driver of our national debt since 2001 has been

01:29Republican tax cuts. The Trump and Bush tax cuts have cost our nation over ten

01:36trillion dollars and counting. And what do Republicans want to do if they return

01:41to power? What's at the top of the Trump economic agenda? Do they want to solve

01:45the child care crisis? Do they want to extend health care credits that are

01:50saving millions of families thousands of dollars? Of course not. They want more

01:54tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and biggest corporations. Republicans big

01:59economic vision is to extend their horribly one-sided Trump tax cuts. If

02:04Republicans are so concerned about the national debt, why is it that every time

02:10they get the chance they start giving away cash and writing tax loopholes for

02:15mega corporations? So we've got to get real. There's no reason that

02:19investors on Wall Street should pay less in taxes than a firefighter in

02:24Spokane, Washington or a nurse in Seattle. Or that companies making billions in

02:29profits should pay less than mom-and-pop shops in Washington State. And there's

02:35every reason for us to ask the wealthiest people in our country to pay

02:39their fair share so we can make this country stronger for everyone. So for

02:43parents back in Washington State, for working families, they don't want us to

02:47invest in the richest people in the world. They want us to invest in our

02:51roads and schools and health care and security and ending the child care

02:55crisis. Things that actually make their lives better. You have to be kind of out

03:00of touch to miss that. That is for my colleagues to know why Vice Chair

03:05Collins and I have both worked together to reach a bipartisan agreement to

03:09increase both defense and non-defense discretionary funding as part of our FY

03:1525 appropriations process. So we can invest in our security and in our

03:21working families and our communities. Not just to throw money away at

03:25billionaires. Now Director, I have talked at length about the hardship and pain

03:31capping non-defense discretionary spending puts on Americans. Yet

03:36Republicans only insist on those caps. They also put outsized focus on the

03:42spending as it relates to the deficit. Current NDD spending as a percentage of

03:47GDP has declined from the long-term average and NDD spending accounts for

03:54less than a single percent of the increase in spending since the start of

03:59the pandemic in 2019. Which are the spending levels Republicans want us to

04:04return to? Director Swigal, beyond emergency pandemic spending, what are the

04:10significant drivers behind our country's deficit over the last decade?

04:13Yeah it's, I would point to three things. You know one is rising interest payments.

04:19Two is rising health care costs. And then three is rising spending on on other

04:27benefit programs. Social Security is the largest of them. And so it's the aging of

04:31the aging of the population, it's health care cost growth, and it's interest

04:35interest costs. And revenue? And then and revenue is not kept up. And you could

04:41see that in the charts put up by both the chair and the ranking member, that

04:45legislative action has made it so that you know rather than rising, revenue as

04:50a share of GDP has remained flat. So as spending has gone up, revenue is not kept

04:56up. Okay and there was one legislative change since your last projection in

05:00February that affected revenue. The IRS rescissions. According to your report

05:04these rescissions accounted for a 32 billion dollar reject reduction in

05:09projected revenue. The IRS and Treasury project six-fold returns for every

05:14dollar spent on tax informant. Yet we continue to hear from our Republican

05:19friends that we should target IRS funding as they in as part of the

05:23increasing deficits. So last question, how does the rescinding funds provided to the

05:28IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act impact revenue and deficits? So in our

05:35calculations, a dollar that goes to the IRS results in an additional two dollars

05:41of revenue. So for a net of one. So the rescissions on net increase the deficit.

05:46Thank you, appreciate that.

Patty Murray Calls Out GOP's National Debt Rhetoric: They Discuss ‘Only One Side Of The Ledger’

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