Merkley Highlights How Republicans’ Budget Proposal Benefits Billionaires, Not Working Families
Merkley Kicked Off Debate on Republicans’ Budget Bill That Will Add Mountains of Debt
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, took to the Senate floor to start debate on the Republicans’ budget proposal which will benefit millionaires and billionaires, while gutting programs families rely on.
Merkley’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, follow.
M. President:
Families lose, billionaires win.
That’s the proposition at the heart of the Republican budget resolution.
This Republican budget slashes programs for families to deliver even more massive tax giveaways to billionaires.
This Republican budget explodes the deficit and debt with $5.3 trillion of unpaid for tax cuts over the next 10 years – and at least $37 trillion over the next 30 years!
And this Republican budget changes the rules to pretend that $37 trillion costs $0 – destroying the integrity of our federal budget process.
How can they do this?
Republicans claim that Section 312 of the Budget Act allows the Chair of the Budget Committee to wave a magic wand and declare that the bill costs whatever the Chair says.
That’s not how arithmetic works!
In the past, Section 312 has been used to address specific anomalies in complex scoring questions on single topics – not entire bills.
By law, the Congressional Budget Office must use a current law baseline to calculate the impact of any new law.
By practice, CBO has used a current law baseline for 51 years since the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act was passed.
The rules require that a budget cannot increase the deficit past 10 years.
This Republican budget explodes the deficit past 10 years.
But rather than rewriting their budget, Republicans are trying to rewrite the rules.
They want to use Section 312 to ignore the current law baseline – the real numbers – and instead use a current policy baseline – magic numbers – to tell you that $37 trillion in deficits and debt magically costs $0.
This is an outright attack on the integrity of the federal budget process in a desperate attempt to hide from the American people the true cost of their tax giveaways to billionaires.
I’m here to expose this fraud and stop this corruption, in which families lose and billionaires win.
The budget process was designed to make it as easy as possible for Congress to decrease deficits and debt.
From 1958 to 1968, deficits averaged about $5 billion a year.
Those numbers exploded between 1971 and 1973 up to averages of $20 billion year.
Congress was so concerned about these deficits that they wrote the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which did two big things:
Created a fast-track for legislation that reduces the deficit;
Created the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to preserve the integrity of the budget process by providing Congress and the American people with honest numbers about costs and savings of proposed changes to law.
This fast-track for deficit-reducing legislation has two parts:
First, as part of the Congressional budget resolution, each chamber adopts a resolution that gives specific instructions to authorizing committees on spending and revenue requirements within their jurisdictions.
Next, to make deficit reduction as easy as possible, the legislative proposals from the authorizing committees are assembled into a single “reconciliation bill” that moves on a filibuster-free fast-track process.
Deficit reduction was such a bipartisan priority in 1974 that even Robert Byrd, the fiercest defender of the filibuster, agreed to create this special filibuster-free fast-track for deficit reduction.
The Budget Act was so popular it passed unanimously with bipartisan support.
And it has been strengthened over the years, like in 1985 when Congress codified in law how CBO must base its calculations on real provisions in law.
As former South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings, the first Budget Committee chair to pass a reconciliation bill, said: “The whole idea of the reconciliation — and I am giving you firsthand history; it is honest as the day is long — was to, by gosh, cut back on the deficit.”
The reconciliation process has specific “rules of the road”.
One of the rules of the road — written in budget law — is the “Byrd Rule”, named after Senator Robert Byrd.
The “Byrd Rule” says: First, that every provision in a budget reconciliation must have a “budgetary effect”, meaning that the budget process can’t be used to pass a huge policy agenda on other issues.
Second, that, in a single title, reconciliation policies can’t increase the deficit after ten years.
That’s why the budget debate happening now is so important.
This week, Republicans are trying to force through a budget that will run deficits for ten years, twenty years, thirty years without paying for them!
The reconciliation bill anticipated by this budget violates the rules — so now Republicans want to get rid of those rules.
For two decades, the Budget process worked the way it was designed.
Then, in 1994, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” carried Republican majorities into the House and Senate for the first time in years.
The Republican-controlled Congress spent 1995 trying to: Slash Medicare and Medicaid, but were stopped by President Clinton’s vetoes; Pass a ‘Balanced Budget’ amendment, but failed; Pass the Line-Item Veto Act, but it was struck-down as unconstitutional.
So, in 1996, Republicans pivoted to cutting taxes.
There was just one problem: the filibuster required 60 votes, but Republicans controlled only 53 seats in the Senate (the same number they have today).
The only way to pass their tax bill was through the filibuster-free fast-track of reconciliation.
But the Republican tax cuts would increase the deficit.
Reconciliation was only supposed to be used to decrease the deficit.
So, Republicans decided to blow up the rules.
Democrats immediately cried foul.
The question – whether a reconciliation bill could increase the deficit – fell to the Parliamentarian, Robert Dove, a former staffer of Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.
Dove sided with the Republicans, and the Senate debate that followed was prescient:
Then-Democratic Leader Tom Daschle asked: “If this … reconciliation bill does not find a way to end or offset its tax cuts in the years beyond 2002, would the bill violate the Byrd rule?
The Presiding Officer responded: “Yes, it would.”
We know what happened next.
In 2001, the Supreme Court delivered the presidency to George W. Bush, and Republicans took control of the White House, House, and Senate for the first time since 1955.
Taking their cues from 1996, Republicans used reconciliation to pass the massive Bush cuts in 2001 and in 2003.
Together, those tax giveaways exploded the deficits by $1.5 trillion.
The results speak for themselves.
Remember when I said that Congress was worried that deficits and debt were getting dangerously out of control in 1974?
In 1974, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 23 percent – Today, it’s over 100 percent.
In 1974, the annual deficit was about $6 billion – Today, it’s about $2 trillion.
In 1974, the total debt was $475 billion – Today, it’s $37 trillion…
And, with this one bill that we’re here to debate today, Republicans want to add an additional $37 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years.
Why am I spending so much time talking about what happened in 1996?
Because the Republicans are trying run that same playbook again in 2025.
They want to destroy the remaining reconciliation rules to deliver even more massive tax giveaways to billionaires.
Our colleagues built the reconciliation process on three pillars:
Reconciliation can’t increase deficits within the 10-year budget window;
Reconciliation can’t increase deficits past the 10-year budget window; and
The process would have integrity in the numbers by clearly laying out costs and savings.
In 1996, Republicans demolished the first pillar when they changed the rules to allow reconciliation to run deficits within the 10-year budget window.
But the budget process was still supported by the other two pillars.
Now, Republicans are trying to destroy the second and third pillars with their phony budget gimmick called the “current policy baseline” that says they can: ignore the laws on the books to make these tax giveaways permanent, and tell voters that $37 trillion costs $0.
Democrats have another word for that: fraud.
Based on honest, independent, nonpartisan numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, this Republican budget would explode the deficit and debt by including $5.3 trillion in tax giveaways over the next 10 years and at least $37 trillion over the next 30 years!
But their bogus “current policy baseline” would hide these costs entirely, claiming that $37 trillion in new debt ‘magically’ equals $0!
And that doesn’t even count trillions of dollars in additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that Republicans are stuffing into this bill!
This gimmick would destroy the last shreds of integrity in the budget process to deliver massive tax giveaways to billionaires.
In February, Democrats stayed on this Floor all night voting on amendment after amendment to help families.
Democrats voted for an amendment to protect Medicaid — Republicans voted against it.
Democrats voted for an amendment to lower the costs of groceries — Republicans voted against it.
Democrats voted for an amendment to lower the costs of housing — Republicans voted against it.
Democrats voted for an amendment to lower the costs of prescription drugs — Republicans voted against it.
Democrats voted for an amendment to lower the costs of health insurance — Republicans voted against it.
Democrats voted for every amendment to help families thrive — Republicans voted every time for families to pay higher prices.
Now families are paying the price in Trumpflation.
This Republican budget resolution opens the door to higher grocery prices —that’s Trumpflation!
This Republican budget resolution opens the door to higher health care prices — that’s Trumpflation!
This Republican budget resolution opens the door to higher prescription drug prices — that’s Trumpflation!
This Republican budget resolution opens the door to higher prices to rent or buy a home — that’s Trumpflation!
This Republican budget makes opens the door to higher prices for a college education — that’s Trumpflation!
This Republican budget opens the door to higher child care prices — that’s Trumpflation!
Higher prices, worse service.
We know the American people don’t want these cuts.
For weeks, each of our offices have been inundated by phone calls, voicemails, and emails from families terrified about what will happen to their housing, health care, education, and child care.
They don’t want Trump and the Republicans to slash they programs they rely on to deliver massive tax giveaways to billionaires, exploding the deficit and debt.
Republicans have been running this playbook for decades.
Republicans run on fiscal responsibility, but every Republican administration increases deficits and debt,
while every Democratic administration decreases deficits and debt.
George H.W. Bush increased the deficit – Bill Clinton decreased the deficit.
George W. Bush increased the deficit – Barack Obama decreased the deficit.
Then Donald Trump blew the top off the deficit – Joe Biden decreased the deficit.
Now, Donald Trump wants to blow the deficit sky-high.
We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people – we have a government of, by, and for billionaires.
President Trump made that very clear at his Inaugural address.
Who do we have standing right behind him and in front of his own cabinet?
Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire of Meta, which owns Facebook.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire of Amazon.
Sundar Pichai, the billionaire of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube.
And, finally, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink – and, now, infamously, DOGE.
These billionaires have bought our democracy through massive campaign contributions and dark money.
Elon Musk has even threatened to fund primaries against members who oppose Donald Trump!
It’s no wonder that under this budget: families lose, billionaires win.
This Republican budget slashes programs for families to deliver even more massive tax giveaways to billionaires.
This Republican budget explodes the deficit and debt to the tune of $5.3 trillion over the next ten years – and $37 trillion over the next 30 years!
And this Republican budget destroys the Budget rules to pretend that $37 trillion costs $0 – destroying the integrity of our federal budget process.
This budget is the Great Betrayal of American families and the bipartisan budget process Congress created in 1974 to reduce the deficit and debt.
Under this budget: Families lose, billionaires win.
Democrats will fight it every step of the way.
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