Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 313, I call up the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 14) establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2025 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2026 through 2034, with the Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Con. Res. 14.
Mr. Speaker, in the most historic election of our lifetime, Americans resoundingly elected President Trump and a Republican-led Congress to reverse course on the failed policies and the string of self-inflicted disasters of the past 4 years.
Unbridled spending and bad economic policies have weakened our economy, created a cost-of-living disaster for working families, and pushed our Nation ever closer to the precipice of the sovereign debt crisis.
Today, our national debt is at wartime levels, Mr. Speaker. Our deficit is $2 trillion more than our annual appropriations budget. Half of that is interest. Interest on the debt is greater than we spend, Mr. Speaker, on all of Defense and, respectively, it is more than we spend on all of Medicare services to our seniors.
It is completely and utterly unsustainable. We are at a critical inflection point. We have a generational opportunity to rein in wasteful spending, reignite growth, and put our Nation on a responsible and sustainable path.
Members of this Chamber did just that. The Republicans of the House fashioned a fiscal framework that was responsible, that put pro-growth policies in place to incent growth and job creation, move our country forward, strengthen our economic base, which is our power base that gives us our global leadership influence.
We also give tools and resources to our Commander in Chief to provide for a common defense. We bend the curve on mandatory spending, which is 75 percent of the budget, 90 percent of the increase in spending, and it is the spending that is bankrupting the United States of America.
For the next hour, the Democrats will have rhetorical arguments that are tired, old, and completely false. They will prey on the fears of our most vulnerable Americans and they will try to intimidate my Republican colleagues into inaction.
They will try to convince our seniors and those families and individuals who struggle that we will somehow steal their safety net or cut their program, which couldn't be further from the truth.
Mr. Speaker, my Democrat colleagues in the Rules Committee said, listen, if you are just talking about cutting waste, you know we are there. You know we will meet you half way. We want to ensure that the taxpayer dollars are stewarded, and yet they take out their baseball bat when we talk about the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse, and they politicize it.
However, when they had full control of the House and Senate and the White House, they jammed through their Inflation Reduction Act or the American Rescue Plan, there wasn't a jot or tittle, not a single measure of fiscal control or a measure of rooting out waste and fraud, but they say they are with us.
Mr. Speaker, instead, there was $2 trillion in wasted tax dollars opening up healthcare and welfare to illegals, waived work requirements to able-bodied Americans, trapping more people in dependence on the government. Of course, they also had bailouts for student loans and expansion of the IRS by $80 billion, mandating electric vehicles for every American, tax breaks for green energy corporations, and the list goes on and on.
They will also dust off an old playbook where they say that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was simply a tax cut for the rich.
Just to dispel that with a few points, The Washington Post gave four Pinocchios to their claim that it went to the rich and to the corporations. Mr. Speaker, $3 out of $4 went to individuals, and the lower 10 percent of our income brackets received the highest tax break. The top 1 percent actually had to pay a higher share of taxes.
In addition, we saw 25-year wage increases for American families with a median household income able to put $5,000 back into their pockets and 6 million people were raised out of poverty, so all boats rose on the tide of prosperity.
Yet, my Democrat colleagues are trying to stop us from simply extending the tax relief to our small businesses and tax breaks to our families after a 21 percent inflation tax that they suffered through for the last few years.
If they were successful in opposing the extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, an average American will have a tax hike of 22 percent, $1,700 would be the extra expense for families of four, 26 million small businesses would lose their comparable tax break through the 20 percent 199A deduction, child tax credit would be cut in half for 40 million families, the standard deduction for 91 percent of all Americans would be cut in half.
Mr. Speaker, as we unlock the reconciliation process, I am encouraging my colleagues to hold fast to the principles established in the House's budget resolution. If we do that, we will preserve the blessings of liberty and prosperity for our children and grandchildren for generations to come. If we don't, if we shrink back in this monumental moment and this historic opportunity, then we will be the first generation of Americans who have left our country worse than we found it.
If we are to usher in that golden age of America that President Trump is fond of talking about, we must advance a budget resolution bill that doesn't just include tax cuts or deregulation or good energy policies. All that is good, but also, admittedly, the most difficult part but the most necessary, is reining in the runaway spending that is driving the greatest country in human history off of a fiscal cliff.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reverse the curse, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the wages for the bottom 10 percent grew at twice the amount of the top 10 percent and wealth three times the top 1 percent. If Leader Jeffries is successful at killing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extension, he will raise taxes by $1,739 for families in his district.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, interestingly enough, the Democrats' expansion of ObamaCare actually put 90 cents on the dollar for able- bodied adults. They robbed our most vulnerable--our disabled, blind, and pregnant fellow Americans--of having access to healthcare, reducing the quality of outcomes over the years. That was a policy of the Democrats, and there are many others that need to be reversed.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, the inflation tax that my colleague put on her constituents with unbridled spending and failed economic policies actually took $1,100 out of the pockets of our fellow Americans, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act put $5,000 back into the pockets of our fellow Americans in every district.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the top 1 percent of earners in this country, who pay 40 percent of the light bills and the expenses of this growing, massive Federal Government, paid more of a share of taxes than they did less. The code got more progressive.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I say to Mr. Panetta that if we do current policy and don't offset the impact of the deficit, that would be a dangerous precedent.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I take that it we don't have the support of our Democrat colleague for the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid.
Quite frankly, it is pervasive throughout the Federal Government and threatens that program, threatens the benefits to our most vulnerable, and threatens the sustainability of that program for future Americans.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I wonder how my colleagues justified the $800 billion tax break for multibillion dollar, multinational green energy corporations.
Mr. MOORE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, this is an opportunity this evening to vote for a budget resolution that extends tax relief for working families.
If Members want to support working families in America, vote for this. It makes the Trump tax cuts permanent. It also provides security for our southern border. It unleashes American energy, and it sets the stage for generational spending reform. This is an opportunity today to move this resolution forward.
There is a lot of fear-mongering on the other side. As has been said before, the words ``Medicaid'' and ``Medicare'' are not in there. It is simply wrong. ``Medicaid'' is not in there.
It keeps getting said, and I guess if you don't have the facts on your side, sometimes you make up facts, and that is what is happening from the other side. Yet, the American people know, which is why they elected Donald Trump this year. They know what a responsible budget means, and that is why we need to pass this.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I am obsessed with the threat of a looming debt crisis and the irreparable harm it would do to our great economy, our national security, our leadership in the world, and our children's future.
We have an opportunity. It is a historic generational opportunity to right this ship, but we have to grow the economy. We have to have progrowth policies in place that will unleash growth and prosperity, and we have to get serious about the first and most important job of the Federal Government, which is providing for the common defense.
We did that in the House bill, but what we did in the House bill that the Senate fell far short in doing is to have a balanced budget resolution, to have a commitment to enforceable spending reduction targets that would bring the debt to GDP down and put our Nation on good fiscal footing and a sustainable path.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues today to demand that the House budget resolution and that our fiscal framework with our budget targets guide the final reconciliation bill.
Mr. Speaker, again, this may be the last best opportunity to save our country from fiscal ruin. The formula is all there in the House budget resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to demand that that is what drives the bill at the end of the day. God bless America, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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