House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ripped President Joe Biden’s roughly $6.9 trillion budget proposal, calling it “not serious.”
McCarthy argues that Biden’s budget wouldn’t be viable once in the House. The speaker again called for Biden to negotiate a budgeting agreement with him to avert a debt ceiling crisis.
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The tax-and-spend agenda would skyrocket the national deficit by 17 trillion dollars, partially offset by increased taxes.
According to the Washington Examiner, the budget includes plans to save the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund, which the program trustees project will be exhausted in 2028. The Biden proposal would also increase payroll taxes for those earning over $400,000 to fund Medicare benefits from 3.8% to 5%, reform drug pricing, increase Social Security spending by 10%, and expand child tax credits. The plan commits 59 billion of mandatory spending and tax breaks toward “affordable housing” efforts, akin to what has been tried in cities like San Francisco.
The spending is backed by various plans to increase taxes, starting with those who make over 400,000 per year by raising their marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent, undoing the Trump cuts, which brought it down to 37%. The budget also spikes capital gains tax on those earning over $1 million from 20% to 39.6%, nearly double. People making more than $1 million would also be subject to a federal rate of up to 44.6% on capital gains because an existing Obamacare surtax on investment income is also intended to be increased.
Biden also proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and pitched a brand new type of tax that would set a 25% on the wealthiest people in America, defined as the top 0.01% of earners.
Republicans have ripped the bill as fiscally irresponsible. McCarthy pointed out that, aside from big-ticket items, the budget is stuffed with Democrat wishlist spending, which he mentioned on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
“This budget talks more about equality and climate change than it does dealing with China dealing with fentanyl, dealing with putting our workforce back in the workplace. That is a real challenge….To have a nonserious budget and for a president not to show the leadership to sit down and solve this problem early only weakens America.”
Senator Chuck Grassley said something similar, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Under his plan, the government’s bite out of the economy would be the largest since World War II. And despite all that, he’s somehow managed to continue adding to our national debt at a breakneck speed. It’s an unserious proposal, and will be treated as such by both parties in Congress.”
McCarthy has long decried Biden’s spending habits and has attempted to leverage the debt ceiling fight to force Democrats to agree to cut down on it.
“Don’t play games with the debt ceiling. I’ve sat with this president. I want to negotiate with this president. This is [what] we’ve done every time before an American public wants us to”
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McCarthy concluded that Biden’s handling of the issue indicated a lack of leadership.
“This is an opportunity for this president not to just show leadership to America but to the rest of the world, and we’re just not seeing it,”
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