North Tidewater News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Bobby Scott issued the following statement after voting against H.R. 3746, the budget agreement between President Biden and Speaker McCarthy:

“The historical record shows that Republicans have no business lecturing anyone about fiscal responsibility. Every Democratic administration since Kennedy has left for their Republican successors a better deficit situation than the one they inherited, and every Republican administration since Nixon has left for their Democratic successors a worse deficit situation than the one they inherited. All without exception. President Trump was on his way to fulfilling that trend before the pandemic, and President Biden has already overseen historic declines in the deficit.

“The United States has never defaulted on our debt, yet it became very clear over the last few months that Republicans were perfectly willing to provoke a global economic calamity that would trigger a job-killing recession and raise costs on working families, simply because Republicans believe it would help them politically. The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee herself said that economic default ‘bodes very well for the Republican field in 2024.’ Former president Trump encouraged Republicans to default. Congressman Tim Burchett expressed willingness to default, and Congressman Matt Gaetz believes that Republicans ‘shouldn’t be negotiating with our hostage.’ The hostage in question is the world economy.

“Thankfully, President Biden has produced a compromise to prevent such a catastrophe and reject extreme Republican demands to cut all domestic funding by 22 percent, even as he was negotiating with people who are comfortable with inflicting untold pain on working families. It should also be noted that this compromise will only cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Interestingly, that is roughly the same size of the Trump era tax cut where over 80% of the benefits were scheduled to go to the top 1 percent and corporations, so it begs the question whether Republicans were finally paying for the Trump tax cuts they should have paid for when originally enacted. Alternatively, President Biden’s FY2024 budget proposal, if enacted, would have cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years. If my Republican colleagues were serious about reducing deficits, they could have just passed President Biden’s budget.

“Furthermore, I have significant concerns with this agreement. There are provisions that would allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to move forward with almost no environmental or judicial oversight, and weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, which keeps our communities environmentally safe and healthy. Permitting reform and the Mountain Valley Pipeline have nothing to do with the debt ceiling and should not have been included. Greenlighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline by sidestepping regulatory agencies and the courts undermines environmental safety. That is why I joined my Virginia Democratic colleagues in offering an amendment in the Rules Committee to strip this provision. Disappointingly, the Rules Committee rejected our amendment.

“I also have concerns about provisions that will make it more challenging for some SNAP recipients to receive their benefits, though I am somewhat relieved that the analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the expansion of these benefits for other vulnerable groups indicate that more Americans will actually be able to benefit from these programs than those who will lose benefits.

“The full faith and credit of the United States should never be gambled with and nobody should take the economic security of America as some sort of hostage or bargaining chip. While I appreciate President Biden moving us far from the cruel cuts that the extreme MAGA Republicans initially demanded, I cannot support this agreement. This is only the beginning of the appropriations process and we have no idea what vital domestic programs will be on the chopping block. For example, we were subjected to sanctimonious lectures about how Republicans would never cut veterans benefits. However, they just introduced an appropriations bill that would not fully fund veterans' health care. These cuts were restored in this bill because of the insistence of Congressional Democrats. This spectacle has made it clear that Republicans may well shut down the government, if we don’t give in to their as-of-yet unknown domestic spending cuts later this year.

“I voted against this agreement because we were faced with a false choice: destroy the economy or accept unknown spending cuts and turn the clock back on environmental progress. The fact is that we can avoid economic default without attacks on the environment and then begin to focus on reasonably addressing the budget.”

Original source can be found here.