March 29, 2022

Smith Slams Biden Budget at Hearing: “Deliberately Makes Every Crisis He Created Worse”

Washington, D.C. – Today, during a hearing of the House Budget Committee with the Biden Administration’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Shalanda Young, House Budget Committee Republican Leader Jason Smith (MO-08) slammed President Biden’s fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget for doubling down on the Democrats’ agenda of reckless spending, high taxes, mounting debt, and weak borders that created and are fueling the many crises American families are now facing. During his opening remarks, Smith laid out the various crises harming the American people that began last year:

“When you testified last year on President Biden’s FY22 budget, alarm bells were already going off about the impact the president’s agenda would have on the economy, on inflation, and on the security of our southern border.

“At that time, the crises created by President Biden and the Democrat agenda were already piling up. That list has only grown since – including an energy crisis with folks paying over $4 a gallon at the pump; a crime crisis in communities across this country; an education crisis that has perpetuated the mistreatment of kids in our schools under the guise of COVID-19.

“So, now we have President Biden’s FY23 budget – a proposal that deliberately makes every crisis American families are facing – because of President Biden and the Democrats’ agenda – that much worse.”

Click here or on the image below to watch House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith’s full opening remarks.

During the hearing, House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith questioned OMB Director Young about the Biden Administration’s unrealistic inflation projections. Smith noted that President Biden’s FY23 budget assumes starting this month, inflation would drop to around 2% in order to achieve the levels his budget predicts, while in reality inflation last month reached another forty-year high of 7.9%. Click here or on the image below to watch the exchange.

House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith also questioned the OMB Director about the President’s decision to freeze $1.9 billion in border wall funding on his first day in office. Since then, more than 2.9 million border encounters have been recorded and Congress has continued to show bipartisan support for the border wall funding, including in the most recent Omnibus spending bill. Despite the growing crisis at the border, the federal government continues to pay contractors not to build the wall, while the Biden Administration initiates “community consultation” and “environmental restoration.” Click here or on the image below to watch the exchange. Prior to today’s hearing, House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith released Biden’s FY23 Budget: Another Year of Crisis – a memo highlighting the various ways in which the President’s FY23 budget would further fuel a spending and inflation crisis, debt crisis, economic and tax crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, security and crime crisis, and education crisis while the Administration is covering up the cost and failed policies of the President’s Build Back Better agenda. Watch the full House Budget Committee hearing on President Biden’s FY23 Budget

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