President Joe Biden speaks about his 2024 proposed budget at the Finishing Trades Institute, Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Philadelphia. Biden's federal budget is a statement of his values. It's a governing philosophy that believes the wealthy and large corporations should pay more taxes to help stem deficits and lift Americans toward middle class stability.
(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
LISA MASCARO and JOSH BOAK
Thu, March 9, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — For President Joe Biden, his federal budget is a statement of values — the dollars and cents of a governing philosophy that believes the wealthy and large corporations should pay more taxes to help stem deficits and lift Americans toward middle class stability
In the view of his chief congressional critics led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the budget is also the arena where they intend to challenge the president with values of their own — slashing the social safety net, trimming support for Ukraine and ending the so-called “woke” policies rejected by Republicans.
It’s the blueprint for a summer showdown as Biden confronts Republicans over the raising the debt ceiling to pay off the nation’s accrued balances, a familiar battle that will define the president and the political parties ahead of the 2024 election.
“I’m ready to meet with the speaker any time — tomorrow, if he has his budget,” Biden said while rolling out his own $6.8 trillion spending proposal Thursday in Philadelphia.
"Lay it down. Tell me what you want to do. I’ll show you what I want to do. See what we can agree on," said Biden, the Democratic president egging on the Republican leader.
But McCarthy, in his first term as House speaker, is nowhere near being ready to present a GOP proposal at the negotiating table to start talks in earnest with the White House.
While Republicans newly empowered in the House have bold ideas about rolling back government spending to fiscal 2022 levels and putting the federal budget on a path to balance within the next decade, they have no easy ideas for how to meet those goals.
McCarthy declined this week to say when House Republicans intend to produce their own proposal, blaming their delays on Biden's own tardiness in rolling out his plan.
“We want to analyze his budget based upon the question as to where can we find common ground,” McCarthy said. “So we’ll analyze his budget and then we’ll get to work.”
Squaring off, it’s a fresh take on the budget battles of a decade ago when Biden, as vice president, confronted an earlier generation of “tea party” House Republicans eager to cut the debt load and balance budgets.
What's changed in the decade since the last big budget showdown in Washington is the solidifying of the GOP's MAGA wing, inspired by the Trump-era Make American Great Again slogan, to turn the fiscal battles into cultural wars. The nation's total debt load has almost doubled during that time to $31 trillion.
Beyond the dollars and cents, the new era of House Republicans see the coming debt ceiling fight as a battle for their very existence — a test of their mandate in the new House majority to push back against liberals in Washington.
“There’s going to be a whole bunch of noise, and then everybody will push up to the brink and then someone’s gonna blink — I don't intend to,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, an influential member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus.
As pressure mounts on McCarthy, the president is trying to steal some thunder as he rolled out a proposal this week that spotlights deficit reductions that are a centerpiece of GOP goals.
Biden's approach is a turn-around from the start of the year when he refused to negotiate with Republicans, demanding Congress send him a straightforward bill to raise the debt limit. At the time, the president wouldn't entertain a conversation about spending changes McCarthy committed to as part of his campaign to become speaker.
The White House's budget plan would cut the deficit by $2.9 trillion over 10 years, a rebuttal to GOP criticism that Biden's deficit spending to address the pandemic has fueled inflation and hurt the economy.
Speaking to union members in Philadelphia, Biden said McCarthy needed to follow his lead and publicly release his own numbers so that they can negotiate “line by line.”
With his budget, Biden showed the math of how he would lower the trajectory of the national debt. Yet his approach to fiscal responsibility is unacceptable to Republicans, since it would require $4.7 trillion in higher taxes on corporations and people making more than $400,000.
The president also wants an additional $2.5 trillion in spending on programs such as an expanded child tax credit that would improve family finances.
“When the middle class does well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy still do very well,” the president said as he framed the showdown as a difference of principles.
By refusing to raise taxes, the Republicans in the House are relying almost exclusively on reductions to bring budgets into balance. It’s a painful, potentially devastating endeavor, inflicting cuts on programs Americans depend on in their communities. Republicans cannot say when their budget will be ready.
“We’re getting close,” said Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Because McCarthy has yet to release his budget, Biden has toured the country and talked to audiences about past Republican plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.
McCarthy insists reductions to the Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs that millions of America’s seniors and others depend on are off the table — and Republicans howled in protest during Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress last month when the president claimed otherwise.
But by shielding those programs from cuts and opposing any tax increases, GOP lawmakers would need crippling slashes to the rest of government spending that could offend voters going into the 2024 elections.
The chamber's Freedom Caucus is eyeing reductions to supplemental disability insurance, food stamps and fresh work requirements on some people receiving government aid.
Roy, the Freedom Caucus member, outlined some $700 billion in reductions that could be banked by reversing Biden's student loan forgiveness program, clawing back almost $100 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief and rolling back spending to fiscal 2022 levels.
But the conservative caucus with its few dozen members is just one constituency McCarthy must balance as he tries to cobble together his ranks. The much larger Republican Study Committee is expected to roll out its ideas in April and other GOP caucuses have their own priorities.
McCarthy believes he has won a first round in the budget battles by pushing Biden to negotiate over the debt ceiling. But now the speaker faces the daunting challenge of bringing his own GOP plan to the table.
“The House Republican budget plan is in the witness protection program,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the chamber's Democratic leader. “It’s in hiding.”
__
Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
LISA MASCARO and JOSH BOAK
Thu, March 9, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — For President Joe Biden, his federal budget is a statement of values — the dollars and cents of a governing philosophy that believes the wealthy and large corporations should pay more taxes to help stem deficits and lift Americans toward middle class stability
In the view of his chief congressional critics led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the budget is also the arena where they intend to challenge the president with values of their own — slashing the social safety net, trimming support for Ukraine and ending the so-called “woke” policies rejected by Republicans.
It’s the blueprint for a summer showdown as Biden confronts Republicans over the raising the debt ceiling to pay off the nation’s accrued balances, a familiar battle that will define the president and the political parties ahead of the 2024 election.
“I’m ready to meet with the speaker any time — tomorrow, if he has his budget,” Biden said while rolling out his own $6.8 trillion spending proposal Thursday in Philadelphia.
"Lay it down. Tell me what you want to do. I’ll show you what I want to do. See what we can agree on," said Biden, the Democratic president egging on the Republican leader.
But McCarthy, in his first term as House speaker, is nowhere near being ready to present a GOP proposal at the negotiating table to start talks in earnest with the White House.
While Republicans newly empowered in the House have bold ideas about rolling back government spending to fiscal 2022 levels and putting the federal budget on a path to balance within the next decade, they have no easy ideas for how to meet those goals.
McCarthy declined this week to say when House Republicans intend to produce their own proposal, blaming their delays on Biden's own tardiness in rolling out his plan.
“We want to analyze his budget based upon the question as to where can we find common ground,” McCarthy said. “So we’ll analyze his budget and then we’ll get to work.”
Squaring off, it’s a fresh take on the budget battles of a decade ago when Biden, as vice president, confronted an earlier generation of “tea party” House Republicans eager to cut the debt load and balance budgets.
What's changed in the decade since the last big budget showdown in Washington is the solidifying of the GOP's MAGA wing, inspired by the Trump-era Make American Great Again slogan, to turn the fiscal battles into cultural wars. The nation's total debt load has almost doubled during that time to $31 trillion.
Beyond the dollars and cents, the new era of House Republicans see the coming debt ceiling fight as a battle for their very existence — a test of their mandate in the new House majority to push back against liberals in Washington.
“There’s going to be a whole bunch of noise, and then everybody will push up to the brink and then someone’s gonna blink — I don't intend to,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, an influential member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus.
As pressure mounts on McCarthy, the president is trying to steal some thunder as he rolled out a proposal this week that spotlights deficit reductions that are a centerpiece of GOP goals.
Biden's approach is a turn-around from the start of the year when he refused to negotiate with Republicans, demanding Congress send him a straightforward bill to raise the debt limit. At the time, the president wouldn't entertain a conversation about spending changes McCarthy committed to as part of his campaign to become speaker.
The White House's budget plan would cut the deficit by $2.9 trillion over 10 years, a rebuttal to GOP criticism that Biden's deficit spending to address the pandemic has fueled inflation and hurt the economy.
Speaking to union members in Philadelphia, Biden said McCarthy needed to follow his lead and publicly release his own numbers so that they can negotiate “line by line.”
With his budget, Biden showed the math of how he would lower the trajectory of the national debt. Yet his approach to fiscal responsibility is unacceptable to Republicans, since it would require $4.7 trillion in higher taxes on corporations and people making more than $400,000.
The president also wants an additional $2.5 trillion in spending on programs such as an expanded child tax credit that would improve family finances.
“When the middle class does well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy still do very well,” the president said as he framed the showdown as a difference of principles.
By refusing to raise taxes, the Republicans in the House are relying almost exclusively on reductions to bring budgets into balance. It’s a painful, potentially devastating endeavor, inflicting cuts on programs Americans depend on in their communities. Republicans cannot say when their budget will be ready.
“We’re getting close,” said Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Because McCarthy has yet to release his budget, Biden has toured the country and talked to audiences about past Republican plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.
McCarthy insists reductions to the Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs that millions of America’s seniors and others depend on are off the table — and Republicans howled in protest during Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress last month when the president claimed otherwise.
But by shielding those programs from cuts and opposing any tax increases, GOP lawmakers would need crippling slashes to the rest of government spending that could offend voters going into the 2024 elections.
The chamber's Freedom Caucus is eyeing reductions to supplemental disability insurance, food stamps and fresh work requirements on some people receiving government aid.
Roy, the Freedom Caucus member, outlined some $700 billion in reductions that could be banked by reversing Biden's student loan forgiveness program, clawing back almost $100 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief and rolling back spending to fiscal 2022 levels.
But the conservative caucus with its few dozen members is just one constituency McCarthy must balance as he tries to cobble together his ranks. The much larger Republican Study Committee is expected to roll out its ideas in April and other GOP caucuses have their own priorities.
McCarthy believes he has won a first round in the budget battles by pushing Biden to negotiate over the debt ceiling. But now the speaker faces the daunting challenge of bringing his own GOP plan to the table.
“The House Republican budget plan is in the witness protection program,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the chamber's Democratic leader. “It’s in hiding.”
__
Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
House Conservatives Outline Spending Cuts to Raise Debt Limit
Erik Wasson
Fri, March 10, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Republican conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus are demanding at least $3 trillion in spending cuts over a decade in exchange for supporting an increase in the debt ceiling, an opening bid in negotiations that is sure to be rejected by President Joe Biden and Democrats.
The group of several dozen GOP lawmakers has more than enough votes to exert significant leverage on Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the narrowly divided House, which must vote to raise the debt ceiling sometime in the coming months to avoid a market-rattling US payment default.
Biden, who released his $6.9 trillion budget blueprint on Thursday, has insisted the debt ceiling must be raised with no strings attached even as he’s said he’s willing to talk about spending. The Freedom Caucus wants an explicit link.
“America will not default on our debts unless President Biden chooses to do so,” Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, said at a news conference Friday.
The group said it will consider voting for a debt ceiling increase if Congress first passes a year-long stopgap bill cutting domestic spending to fiscal 2022 levels — a $130 billion cut if defense is spared — unless congressional appropriations committees can agree on more tailored cuts by the Sept. 30 government funding deadline. Discretionary spending would rise just 1% a year for nine more years, under the Freedom Caucus plan.
Members acknowledged that the group’s plan falls short of balancing the budget—which would take more than $16 trillion in cuts. Instead he said the group ready to start the process of getting to balance eventually now by negotiating with Democrats.
“It is step one of getting our house in order,” said Texas Representative Chip Roy said.
The group also is demanding an end to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, rescinding unspent Covid funds, and rescinding both the $80 billion expansion of the Internal Revenue Service enacted last year and climate change spending from the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Now, we won’t get everything, but if you don’t put it out there you can’t even start,” South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman, a member of the Freedom Caucus, said. “A clean debt ceiling, we will never vote for that.”
Without the votes of Freedom Caucus members, McCarthy can’t pass a partisan budget blueprint or agree to any deal with Biden. They showed their strength in January when some members denied McCarthy the speaker’s gavel until he agreed to a rules change what would allow just one lawmaker to call a vote to unseat the speaker at any time.
“The House Freedom Caucus is here to set a marker,” Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert said.
Biden released a budget blueprint that claims $3 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, compared with doing nothing, on the back of $5.5 trillion in tax increases. The budget would still increase the deficit to $1.8 trillion in 2024 and add $19 trillion in debt.
McCarthy and Biden last met to discuss the budget at the beginning of February. Biden said Thursday he would meet McCarthy at any time once McCarthy has made his budget plan public.
The official House GOP budget will be delayed past the mid-April deadline, McCarthy told reporters, because Biden’s own plan was a month late.
House GOP Freedom Caucus members want to block student-loan forgiveness in their new proposal to deal with the debt ceiling
Ayelet Sheffey
Fri, March 10, 2023
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) speaks during a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol on February 28, 2022 in Washington, DC.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The House Freedom Caucus unveiled a plan to address the debt ceiling on Friday.
It includes ending student-debt relief and recouping unspent pandemic relief funds.
It comes just one day after Biden released his budget, during which he called on the GOP to do the same.
A conservative group of lawmakers in the House just released a plan to deal with the debt ceiling through major spending cuts.
And unsurprisingly, blocking student-debt relief is on the list.
On Friday, the House Freedom Caucus, comprised of far-right GOP lawmakers, unveiled a plan entitled "Shrink Washington, Grow America" to raise the debt ceiling "contingent upon" legislation that would end President Joe Biden's student-debt relief, rescind unspent COVID-19 funds, and recoup IRS and climate spending, among other things.
According to the Caucus' fact sheet, they are proposing to cap future spending at the 2022 level for ten years, which will "cut $131 billion in FY2024 and save roughly $3 trillion over the long term by cutting the wasteful, woke, and weaponized federal bureaucracy."
"We are here to ensure that we do not default on our nation's debt," Freedom Caucus member Lauren Boebert said during a Friday press conference.
"And the question that we all face isn't, what was the financially responsible thing to do last year? In the last Congress, we fought like hell to make sure that we weren't spending recklessly here in Washington DC, and unfortunately, we did not have the power of the pen, we did not have the power of the gavel, and we certainly did not have the power of the purse under Democrat rule," Boebert continued. "The question is not, what are we going to do in three years, five years or ten years from now — the question is, what can we do today?"
This is not the first time Republican lawmakers have targeted student-debt relief in a proposal to cut spending. The House GOP Budget Committee included blocking the relief in its list of areas to cut spending in a potential debt ceiling deal, and some have also introduced legislation to block the president from enacting any further debt relief.
Currently, Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers remains blocked due to two conservative-backed lawsuits that paused the implementation of the plan late last year, and the Supreme Court will issue a decision on the legality of the relief by June. A major student-loan lender also recently filed a lawsuit to end the current student-loan payment pause, which is set to expire 60 days after June 30, or 60 days after the lawsuits on the broad debt relief are resolved, whichever happens first.
The Caucus' plan comes just a day after Biden unveiled his budget proposal for the upcoming year, which GOP lawmakers assailed as "reckless." But, as the president noted in his remarks on Thursday following the release of the budget, Republicans have yet to come together to put forth a concrete plan to raise the debt ceiling before the US defaults on its debt, which could be as soon as July.
"So, I want to make it clear," Biden said. I'm ready to meet with the Speaker anytime — tomorrow, if he has his budget. Lay it down. Tell me what you want to do. I'll show you what I want to do. See what we can agree on."
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington told Politico that Republicans have "no timeline" for making that happen.
"We are making good progress on our budget resolution," he said.
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