House Budget Republicans Call out Wasteful Washington Spending, Record Inflation, and Hypocrisy at Democrat Hearing on Abolishing Debt Limit
WASHINGTON, DC - Today, House Budget Committee Democrats led a hearing titled “Why Congress Should Abolish the Debt Limit.” House Democrats, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD-05) and House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (KY-03), repeatedly voiced their support for eliminating the debt limit. This would effectively pave the way for Congress to engage further in massive deficit spending, as Democrats have done with their $2 trillion Biden Bailout Bill and are attempting to do with their $5 trillion reconciliation spending bill. At the outset of the hearing, House Budget Committee Republican Leader Jason Smith (MO-08) pointed out that House Budget Democrats’ arguments are confused and contradictory:
“Last year, we had a hearing about Congress’s “power of the purse” and how to reassert our Constitutional role in budgeting and spending, so that it wasn’t being usurped by Executive Branch decision making…And yet, today, we’re talking about passing off Congress’s responsibility for the debt to unelected career government employees.”
Smith called out Washington Democrats for fueling and then dismissing the forty-year-high inflation that is sweeping across America:
“For the last 12 months, Mr. Chairman, Democrats have been focused on their partisan agenda, while the ‘Check Engine’ light of the Biden economy has been on and flashing bright.
“Inflation rose faster in Joe Biden’s first year in office than President Trump’s entire first term. Democrats first denied inflation existed. You denied it today and said that it is only temporary in some cases, and then dismissed it as transitory. Even members of this committee, like you Mr. Chairman, said panicking over inflation was ‘uniformed and misguided.”
Read House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith’s opening statement. Click here or the image below to view House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith’s opening statement.
With recent reports indicating the White House soon plans to request Congress spend $30 billion more in so-called “COVID relief,” House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith inserted into the record a request by Budget Republicans sent to Chairman Yarmuth in December 2021 asking for a full committee hearing on the waste and mismanagement of funds from the $2 trillion Biden Bailout Bill – including money spent on trees in New York, a golf course in Florida, and stimulus checks for Japanese citizens living in Japan and prisoners, like the Boston Marathon Bomber. Read the letter to Chairman Yarmuth. Former OMB Director Mick Mulvaney testified on the importance of the debt limit, and how it serves to force Congress to examine America’s growing national debt. Mulvaney also corrected the narrative around the 2011 debt limit debate and the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor (S&P) – highlighting that S&P’s decision was not because of the debate in Congress, but because the compromise that came out of that debate did not go far enough in addressing the structural issues driving the exploding national debt. Click here or on the image below for Director Mulvaney’s opening statement.
