04.02.25

Merkley Statement on Republicans’ Latest Budget Proposal

Republicans’ Plan Means Families Lose, Billionaires Win

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, released the below statement after Senate and House Republicans released their budget proposal. Republicans want to use the budget gimmick known as “current policy baseline” to pretend that adding over $4.6 trillion to the debt over 10 years and $37 trillion to the debt over 30 years by extending the Trump Tax Giveaways will magically add $0 to the national debt.

But it’s not enough to use magic math to hide the huge costs of a second round of the Trump Tax Giveaways. They also want to slash programs families depend on to fund additional tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans. Those cuts are anticipated to be about $1.5 trillion over 10 years—which mean taking health care away from families and children, cutting education funding, and putting our national security in jeopardy—all to ensure millionaires and billionaires never pay their fair share in taxes.

“House and Senate Republicans finally released text of their budget proposal and are trying to jam it through the Senate this week in an attempt to hide the reality of their budget’s effects before the American people have a chance to realize how horrible they are. Their plan: families lose, billionaires win.

“Their plan hides $37 trillion in new national debt under the cover of the ‘current policy baseline’ gimmick. That’s more than the debt that America has built up over the last 250 years and that equals our current GDP. To add insult to injury, their plan also slashes $1.5 trillion in programs families depend on to thrive to help fund expansive tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans. 
  
 “Senate Republicans are embarrassed about their plan to add massive debt on the shoulders of the next generation. So instead of honestly disclosing this fact, they are planning to utilize an artificial baseline to make the additional debt from their proposed law vanish into thin air. This is fraud. It is a massive disservice to legitimate debate.

“It's been asserted that section 312 of the Budget Act allows the Chair of the Budget Committee to declare a score of a bill to be whatever the Chair says it is.  Section 312 has generally been used to address anomalies in complex scoring questions on single topics. By law, the Congressional Budget Office must use a current law baseline to score the impact of any new law. By practice, this has been the case for 51 years since the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act was passed. That Act had unanimous support in the Senate because everyone recognized that having non-partisan numbers was essential for an honest debate in Congress over spending and revenue options. 
  
 “We can't control the debt if legislators are using phony comparisons to hide the production of massive deficit increases. In addition, the Byrd rule states clearly, in law, that changes in spending and revenue in each category outside a 10-year window must produce deficit neutral or deficit reduction results. Hiding a massive increase in deficits in those out years by creating a phony baseline is fraudulent. This approach throws fiscal responsibility overboard and is a massive disservice to the American people.

“Republicans are betraying the commitments they made to middle class families across this country. Only one thing comes from Republican passage of this bill: families lose, billionaires win,” said Ranking Member Jeff Merkley.

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