The White House Office of Management and Budget has issued what’s known as a Statement of Administration Policy asserting that President Joe Biden would veto a spending proposal from House Republicans should it somehow make it through Congress.
The proposal is an idea for addressing needs around the debt ceiling, which concerns actions the federal government can take to cover for spending to which national leaders previously agreed. That’s not where Republicans stopped, though. Republicans — with even House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) evidently onboard — want to impose drastic spending cuts, pushing the total of discretionary spending back down to levels seen for fiscal year 2022.
Prepared comments previously released by Shalanda Young, who leads that White House financial office, claimed a 22 percent cut across key offices and initiatives of the federal government would accompany the Republican plan, in which GOP members evidently hope to preserve defense spending, forcing more drastic cuts elsewhere to accommodate for the steep, overall declines they want.
The crux of the plan, forcing discretionary spending to the levels seen for 2022, mirrors a series of pushes outlined in March by the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group of House Republicans counting members like Jim Jordan of Ohio and Andy Biggs of Arizona among those who’ve been involved. Such indicates, of course, that this is where McCarthy is basing any flimsy legislative agenda that’s taking shape: with what some of the party’s most extreme members want. There was a lot of talk when McCarthy first consolidated the support he needed among Republicans to secure the role of Speaker of concessions to the far-right.
“This legislation would force severe cuts to education (including for students with disabilities), food safety inspections, rail safety, healthy meals for seniors, research on cancer and other diseases, border security, public safety, and veterans’ medical care,” the statement from the White House team said. “It would repeal tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act that are leading to hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment in the United States, creating thousands of manufacturing jobs.”
“Altogether, this legislation would not only risk default, recession, widespread job loss, and years of higher interest rates, but also make devastating cuts to programs that hard-working Americans and the middle-class count on,” the document concludes. “The bill would make it easier for wealthy tax cheats to avoid the taxes they owe, even as House Republicans are advancing other proposals that would spend trillions more on tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations, undoing much or all of the deficit reduction in this legislation. The bill stands in stark contrast to the President’s vision for the economy. The President’s Budget invests in America, lowers costs for families, grows the economy, and reduces the deficit by nearly $3 trillion by asking the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share.” Read more here.
