Transcripts For CSPAN3 WH 20240706

Testimony on capitol hill from the white house budget director, shalanda young. A special welcome to director young, who has had a very busy past few weeks and we look forward to your testimony. The budget is a statement of values that makes clear what we prioritize. President bidens budget would lower costs for households, strengthen medicare and protect Social Security. Invest in our kids, families, and communities. Reducing the deficit and making our corrupted tax code fairer. It is decidedly not budget for b billionaires and for creepy billionaires and fossil fuel overlords. Its a budget for families. These investments are more than worthwhile, they are overdue. I challenge anyone to say it isnt worthwhile to make investments in our kids. This would create Childcare Options for 60 million kids and fund prek access for fouryearolds and restore the full Child Tax Credit which we beta tested and saw work wonderfully well through covid. I challenge anyone to say that it isnt worthwhile to ensure that workers can care for a child or loved one and keep a steady paycheck. This would guarantee up to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave, believe bringing the United States in line with rp or countries around the world all of whom guarantee paid leave. I challenge anyone who said it isnt worthwhile to reduce the astronomical costs of Prescription Drugs, education, and reducing costs for homeowners and renters. To accomplish this and more, the biden budget would stop the freeloading by corporations, the wealthiest families in our country and by firms that pollute the environment and wont clean their mess. Sending profits offshore and outsourcing american jobs. Looking to reduce the deficit, ending tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry, with hundreds more billions in subsidies to big pharma. Helping not only the deficit, but it is the right thing to do. We currently have teachers and firefighters paying higher tax rates than billionaires. The biden budget puts a 25 minimum tax on those who earn 500 million annually. This would extend medicare solvency by 25 years by asking the wealthy to contribute more to medicare and asking those at the top who contribute less than nurses and cashiers. I tend to endorse legislation for these commonsense proposals. These remedies are worthwhile on their own merit. Put together, it reduces deficits by almost 3 trillion. This is the dark the contrast to the dark house plan that contracts Economic Growth. A plan that hides its people effects by b behind rhetoric like wouk and weaponized. Wealthy donors keeping getting a free ride. The new House Majority said they would make permanent trump tax giveaways, 40 of which go to the top 5 , at a caustic to the country of 3 trillion over a decade. According to a letter we received from the Congressional Budget Office yesterday, republicans promised to ballot balance the budget within 10 years, imposing draconian cuts to the program that boosts wellbeing, in a word impossible. Mathematically it cannot be done. Even if republicans zero about everything, eliminating 100 of the funding for Public Safety and border security, medicaid, environmental protection, health care, opioid addiction treatment, so much more, they would not still be able to meet their own goal of balancing the budget but they would be able to make every family worse off and send the economy into a tailspin. Ok. If that is what House Republicans really want, they should only. Champion it through the regular legislative order provided by the constitution. Not by stealth, not with debt limit threats, not by trying to force a covert backroom deal to got popular pet popular federal programs. Heres our choice, the biden progrowth investments versus spending cuts deep enough that economists believe they could plunge the u. S. Into a recession coupled with extending the trump tax giveaway and adding 3 trillion to the deficit. Families versus creepy billionaires. Economic responsibility versus chaos and corruption. Seems like an easy choice. We welcome the debate. Ranking member grassley . Guest first of all, i appreciate you holding this hearing and i hope it is the first of many more we will have discussing the nations finances. Director young, i welcome you to the hearing as well. We all know you have a very, very not only important job but difficult job. Some decades ago, when federal government was staring at something as small as a 200 billion budget deficit, there was then a senator joe biden who warned of Economic Disaster unless Congress Took dramatic action on deficits right now. Senator biden called for getting a grip on federal spending and limiting its growth with a temporary government wide spending freeze. Thats right. Including coal. He called for a review of the necessity and efficiency of Government Programs and he pushed for changes to the budget process that would improve accountability and make it harder for president s to pass the buck. Today the situation is far more dire. To borrow from the biden playbook, you might be interested in when this acrosstheboard budget freeze in 84 called the grassley cast bomb biden baucus budget freeze past of the senate by a onevote margin. You might want to read about the work the speech the now president gave during the debate. Unfortunately his Budget Proposal continues to take the nation down a path of fiscal and economic ruin. The white house referred to this budget as biden positive vision for the future of america. Lets talk debt, deficits, and spending previously reserved for times of world war or recession. President bidens vision for the future, the job killing tax hikes, cradletograve entitlement proposals, if that sounds familiar, its because it is the same proposal that members of his own party rejected last congress when they called it too extreme. The president uses sleightofhand to claim he is reducing the deficit well. The deficit between 21, 2131 2031, 10 year window, the deficit will be six times higher than what was projected when biden took office. His Spending Priorities are on track to put even more on our already maxed out credit card. His vision for the future is the continuation of his it his administrative assault on the health of the nation during times of economic uncertainty. Annual deficits were always expected to decline from pandemic levels because we put emergency programs in place. In those emergency programs were set to expire. In other words when you put something in because we have a National Catastrophe of a pandemic, those programs would not be in place because of were it not for pandemic, when the programs go away you should get back to the level of expenditure prepandemic plus inflation plus increase in population. But the leadership here in congress has recklessly accelerated the return to multitrillion dollar deficits through legislation and even executive actions. In 2021, despite warnings for the former obama economic advisor, democrats abused the reconciliation process to fasttrack a liberal wish list sparking the highest inflation have seen in 40 years. Democrats follow that up last year with another partisan reconciliation bill they claimed would reduce inflation and cut the deficit. What should be to nobodys surprise and backed up by cbo figures and other independent experts found that the bill actually increases inflation. By this administrations own admission, it added to billion dollars to the national to. At least those actually passed congress. The same cannot be said of the 400 billion student loan bailout or the unilateral expansion of the food stamp program. President bidens vision for the future, public at affects the entire National Output with annual deficits under the budget going from one out of 4 trillion to over 2,000,000,000,010 years from now and by 2027 public debt will surpass the record levels set in the wake of world war ii and continuing to climb. We have a chart that shows that. Like a family or business that incurs more debt, simply to make good on past debts our nations risk is of entering a vicious death spiral as Interest Rate costs soar. In President Biden positive vision of the future, interest on the debt costs more than the national defense. Interest costs nearly triple from 476 Million Dollars last year to one and three at the end of the 10 year budget window. Totally staggering 10 trillion, 2 10 trillion, over 10 years, as you can see in the chart. Thats hard earned tax dollars that will not go to improving the lives of american. A large share of them have budget tied up in servicing the debt and will be able to less able respond to future recessions, pandemics, and foreign threats. It leaves us more vulnerable and less competitive on the world stage. At home, private investment will be increasingly crowded out, leading to unmet Economic Growth to anemic Economic Growth. We had Bank Failures this past week. The Bank Failures highlighted how fragile our economy is right now, given decades high inflation and rising Interest Rates. The more congress r. O. C. And spends, the higher Interest Rates will have to go up and ultimately families and Small Businesses will suffer the economic consequences. President bidens vision for the future includes 5 trillion in tax hikes on all income levels. Including millions on families with income under 400 100,000, regardless of what the president says about people 400000 and above. Tax revenues are currently at historic highs yet the president wants to track more from families and Small Businesses struggling under decades high inflation. Remember, inflation is a tax. Under his budget, the governmental bite out of the economy would be the largest since world war ii. Despite that, he continues adding to the National Debt at breakneck speed. Clearly, we arent going to be able to tax our way out of the current fiscal mess. To climb out of the fiscal hole that we dug, we must stop digging. This isnt just the democrat deficit spending. Republicans have been culpable as well. Instead the president has proposed a 2. 5 trillion mandatory spending program. Meanwhile he largely exert ignores programs that are not a path to insolvency. His budget relies on smoke and mirrors to kick the can down the road. His vision for our future is more taxes, more debt, less opportunity and fewer resources for essential government services. If my colleagues on the other seida of the aisle are happy with this budget and want to embrace it as their own, i would say five of us have a vote. I predicted would get very few votes. That has happened to republican budgets as well. The president proposes, congress disposes. Lets mark up the resolution and show how the process is supposed to work. Republicans are ready and willing to work with the president to get a grip on the outofcontrol spending and debt of washington but working together will wire a shared acknowledgment of the serious fiscal problems we are facing and a willingness to work across the aisle and unfortunately i dont see any evidence of that in this budget. But senator biden recognized that he wanted to freeze the budget across the board. Thank you. Host thank you, senator sen. Whitehouse thank you, senator grassley. Our witness today is shalanda young, office of the budget management department. Thank you for being with us here today, director young. Dir. Young i will make it quick so that we can get to the question answer portion. Distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the biden fiscal year 2020 four budget. He came into office with a clear plan to grow the economy. Not from the top down, but from the middle out and bottom up. Over the past two years in the face of significant challenges, the strategy has produced historic results for the American People. Under the president ial leadership we have added more than 12 million jobs, more than any president has created in a single four years. The Unemployment Rate has fallen to 3. 6 . One of the lowest rates in 50 years. We have taken action to lower Prescription Drug costs, Health Insurance premiums, and energy bills while driving the uninsured rate to historic lows. The residential economic plan in rebuilding infrastructure, promoting workers and fueling the manufacturing boom is strengthening parts of the country that have long been left hind. The resident has done it all while delivering on his commitment to fiscal responsibility. During his first two years in office the deficit fell in its largest decline in American History. The Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars more in the next decade. The president ial fiscal year 2024 budget details a blueprints but it is built around four key values. Investing in america, lowering costs for families, protecting and strengthening medicare and Social Security, reducing the deficit. It does all of this while ensuring that no one earning less than 400,000 pays a 10, county deficits by nearly over the next decade and asking the large corporations to begin to do their fair share. The the budget policy looks to lower costs for working families Health Insurance, Prescription Drugs, childcare, utility, housing, energy, college, utility, and more. When working families have more breathing room they can help to power the economy forward. The budget of medicare and Social Security are bedrock. This will provide paid leave, supporting cancer research, deliver for veterans, cut taxes for families with children, and more. Paying dividends for decades to come. And it will be a decisive decade for america and the world, this reflects the nationals strategy by including robust investments in Diplomatic Development rules, honoring a sacred commitment to veterans. Thank you mr. Chairman, mr. Ranking member, members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear here today and testify on behalf of the president s fiscal 2024 budget. Sen. Whitehouse its great to have you here. Last year omb estimated that by the later part of the century federal spending on crop insurance, coastal disasters, and health care with Fire Suppression would increase by 130 4 billion per year due to Climate Change. Put in terms of tenure budget does, which is the way we put things in this committee, that would result in 260 billion and 1. 3 trillion in additional federal spending with a middle case estimate of around 700 billion dollars in additional spending. That estimate does not include a variety of other federal programs that would get affected by other Climate Change disasters including defense spending, infrastructure, and is not include the effect we have been hearing about in this committee, what are called systemic risks. When there is a whole economic meltdown associated with things going wrong. For instance, if Property Values crash in coastal or wildfire areas because the risk is not insurable and the properties are not mortgage of all. Or the widely reported carbon bubble risk. Is it fair to say the omb estimate is a lower bound estimate . Dir. Young i agree with that assessment. Your assessment that it is underreported here, one thing we have to do a better job of here and in the private sector is incorporate what climate damages will mean for expenditures in the future. I just met with some economists and outside organizations who do Economic Forecasting. So that we can share information and figure out how to accurately build this into our Economic Forecast and budget. Sen. Whitehouse the freddie mac chief economist suggested Coastal Property value crashes are likely because of the rise in sea levels and it could cascade into the economy the same way that the mortgage wreckage of 2008 cascaded across the economy. How would you describe how well the federal budget did as a result of the 2008 mortgage meltdown . Dir. Young we saw the impact of the meltdown. I think that most people would tell you that the economic scars from that took years to recover from. Some say we still see some of those weaknesses that that crisis brought to bear. It gave us some lessons that we learned in responding to the covid pandemic and the Economic Outlook of that. We learned to go big and address the problems headon. You are right, when you look at Climate Change and the potential for that, compared to the financial crisis of 2008 it could have sustained economic fallout in the u. S. And on the rest of the global economy. Sen. Whitehouse one of the things that my friend kent conrad used to point out when he sat in this chair years ago was that the only times we have successfully balanced the budget over the last 50 years have been when revenues accounted for 19 to 20 of gdp. If we go below that, we go into to deficit. And if we are accruing revenues at that level, we have got the chance to have a solid budget. Under the president s budget, what share of gdp would revenue account for and how does that compare to the last time we had a balanced budget, during the Clinton Administration . Dir. Young on average the president ial policies would bring in 19. 6 , right in line with where policies and tax revenue were under president clinton. As you mentioned, the last time we saw budget surpluses. Sen. Whitehouse a time when the economy was doing very well. Dir. Young yes. He also saw economic both. Frankly the investments today are about growing the economy. Can women and families enter into the workforce in a meaningful way . Most will tell you they need adequate childcare and able to do that. Sen. Whitehouse the president s medicare tax proposal seems like it would make tax code fairer and extend medicare solvency, looks like a winwin to me. Can you comment . Dir. Young we will have disagreements on tax policy a lot today but the president s message is clear. There are millionaires and billionaires who a lesson a tax rate than nurses, teachers, and firefighters. Some billionaires have an effective tax rate of 8 . The president believes that is unfair. He believes the tax code needs to be changed to make sure that everyone pays their fair share in this country, not just working families. We have several proposals through which to do that. Medicare, we have proposals to extend the Medicare Trust fund by 25 years. The actuaries at cms put out a report. Dont take our word for it. These policies will extend medicare by making sure our net Investment Income tax that was always meant to go into the trust fund is actually going into the fund and making sure that they paid 1. 2 percent more into medicare to make sure that the goals loopholes are closed and making sure the people who are supposed to pay in actually pay in. Those policies will extend the trust fund by 25 years. Sen. Whitehouse thank you very much. Ranking member grassley, then senator murray. Sen. Grassley omb puts out the annual payasyougo act report. The report clearly shows that last year the reconciliation bill added 190 9 billion in deficit to the budget as omb is required to maintain since Majority Party tried to claim phony tax cap savings from the laws of irs funding last year but legally required to produce what this administration was forced to admit, and increased deficit. Im asking you to put that report in the record. Without objection. Sen. Grassley ok. The president and this budgets supporting documents continue to falsely claim that he is a deficit reducer. Nobody believes that. People know about the trillions spent in the last congress and of costly administrative actions. The cbo current law baseline compared to february of 2000 21, the baseline, when President Biden took office, showing deficits of 6 trillion from 2021 to 2031. You can see it here. It seems to me that the administration mislead the American People on real deficit reduction. Your response to that . Dir. Young the job of cbo is to show the response of deficit as though no policy has happened. The president has policies. His policies would bring down the deficit by 3 trillion. Cbo has not looked at the president s policies yet. They will do that later this summer. Cbo gave you a baseline. That assumes none of this happened. That is why the president is putting these policies forward. We do believe that staying on the current course is not sustainable. Sen. Grassley you can see from the chart that these deficit actions go up. I will just leave that where it is. What is the primary driver of our own longterm problem . Dir. Young if you do not want to make a longterm problem worse, you have to deal with yearly deficits. That is why the president has put forward policies to bring down deficits by 3 trillion. Some say do no more harm, we have got to get deficits under control and and can in return it impacts our debt. As you know, most of the spending in this country is in the entitlement around the aging of our country. That is typically what makes up at least half of federal expenditures in the year. Sen. Grassley you dont include the time to change in that list of things the budget goes after. Is that right . Dir. Young as i exchanged with the chairman, we have got to do a better job incorporating Climate Change into the forecast and budget. That is a deficit that we have. Sen. Grassley families in iowa and across the nation are feeling the pinch of inflation caused by the reckless spending i have already referred to. This administration has repeatedly tried to downplay the inflation crisis. Why did the Administration First budget predict inflation would be in 2000 21 . Let me answer that for you. I think its going to be 2 . It ended up being 6. 7. For 2022, 2. 9, but the actual inflation was 7. 1. So this administration has dramatically missed inflation for two years in a row. Why should we believe that you would say inflation would be 3 this year . Dir. Young as you know, the fed has tools they are using and what we see is the administrative policies, what the fed is doing, we are seeing an impact on inflation. We are clear, inflation is too high. American families are paying too much and we have to keep our foot on the pedal to bring down costs. We have seen moderation on a yearoveryear basis with total cpi down 3. 3 in the most recent peak of 2022. So, we have to keep our eye on bringing down costs. I will point out that we have a lot of policies that bring down health care and energy costs for families. Those are Kitchen Table issues. Most families will tell you they are paying too much and that is why we put the policies forward. Senator coleman thank you for coming here today, thank you for the work from your staff in delivering the budget. The president often says this, the chairman said it a minute ago, its a statement of your values, the budget, and this budget shows that the biden values are with the working people of the country to build a country that is stronger, safer, making sure america stays competitive for years to come. Lowering the deficit. Asking billionaires to pay their pick fair share pay their fair share. The president understands that tackling the childcare crisis is an investment in the workforce and economy and includes other important investments, everything from boosting the supply of Affordable Housing to strengthening medicare and Social Security for the next generation. Those are the exact kind of investments that House Republicans are attempting to hold hostage now were cut entirely as congress looks to address the debt ceiling. The full faith and credit of the United States to pay their bills on time like every family is expected to should never be held hostage to score cheap political points. Let me be clear, threatening economic catastrophe to cut pell grants is not the political wiener that you think it is. The president s right, you need to drop the politics and address the debt ceiling without strings attached. Just like we have done under the administrations of both parties. Director young, my question for you, can you talk to us about the imports of the level of nondefense Discretionary Spending in the budget and how a strong nondefense discretionary top line that invests in families, infrastructure, and our work force directly strengthens the country possibility to compete with china and others on the world stage . Dir. Young yeah and im glad one more thing, National Security. I will add one more thing, National Security. We have defense and usaid on one side. Department of Homeland Security, all under what we call nondefense. If we have to take drastic cuts to nondefense discretionary, some plans would wipe out nondefense discretionary. The childcare block grants would be obliterated. Low income heating, which i know many in your community rely on. That would be let go. State department would be harmed. Border operations would be harmed. The list goes on. And on. It would be detrimental to see those cuts. Sequestration for example, we talked a lot about what happened in 2011 and 2012. That was a 5 cut, small compared to what we are talking about now. Some agencies, some programs that working families rely on are still trying to build back from those harmful sequester cuts. Sen. Murray thank you for that. Now we do have the president ial budget and as chair of the Appropriations Committee we will be pressing forward with the work of writing our nations spending bills in a bipartisan way and im working closely with vice chair collins on this and i believe we have the opportunity and responsibility to Work Together to make our country more safe, more competitive, and do good for the people we represent and the risk of sounding like a broken record while it is good to see many republicans acknowledge the need to build on these key areas, investments in nondefense spending are just as critical as defense spending. We have to invest in the workforce to build semi conductors in america the way we invest in military readiness. Its not a question of either or. We need both. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle take this consideration as we move forward. Rest assured that we will be busy in the committee with hearings and markups to get the bills to the floor as soon as possible. Let me say in my last 20 seconds, director, thank you for anthracite funding, i know that is important to my state and im glad the president heard me loud and clear and i appreciate the progress made in this budget. Thank you. Sen. Whitehouse senators johnson and stefan now. Senator johnson welcome. Seeing as this is the Budget Committee i would like to separate rhetoric numbers and using numbers. We have referred to rhetoric in terms of the wealthy. In your testimony you said that the wealthy would begin to pay their fair share. I think my question for you is, and what will you consider the wealthy paying their fair share . The most recent analysis i have comes from tax year 2020 where the top 1 made 22. 2 of income but paid 42. 3 of income tax. 2019 Analysis Shows they made 21 of income and paid 24 of total federal tax. Again, the top 1 paid about 42 percent of income tax and somewhere around 21 of total taxes. What would be a fair percent of total income taxes in your mind for the wealthy to pay . Dir. Young i will point out that you talked a lot about federal tax. Sen. Johnson i also did total tax. In your mind, again, using metrics, when will the top 1 pay their fair share . What percent of income taxes or total taxes would be the fair share . Dir. Young going back to the statistics from earlier, analysis showing the wealthiest families in the country paying 8 effective rates. Sen. Johnson let me start with the average rate of the bottom 50 pay 3. 1 percent. Bottom 50 paid 3. 1 percent, top 1 paying 26 . Thats a pretty big delta on the progressive tax rate. I want to know, what should the top 1 pay in terms of total income tax and what should they pay as a total tax . Right now it is 42. 3 percent of total income tax, around 20 of total tax. Dir. Young i am happy to share our analysis and i would like to take a look at yours. Sen. Johnson you dont need to look at it. Right now it is 42 . Should it be 50 . 75 of the total income tax . In your mind, stepping away from rhetoric, at what point will you be satisfied that the top 1 are paying their fair share . You ought to be able to figure that out top of your head. Dir. Young i told you and im happy to share this analysis. 400 of the wealthiest families in the country sen. Johnson that is not answering my question. Total taxes paid for republican tax reform, 3. 3 trillion revenue raised. Last year 4. 89 seven. Thats an increase in total revenue raised. Pretty good, dont you think . In 2017 corporations pay 297 billion. There was a 43 increase. We are again raising a lot more revenue because of economic. I would say the tax reform worked in the spurring Economic Growth. Those are just the fact. In your testimony you said that the president ial budget reduced the deficit. 2019 prior to pandemic we had a deficit of 984 billion. Still too much. 2022, 1. 3, 1. 37 trillion. 2023 projected to be over 1. 5 trillion. The president ial budget now is projecting 1. 8 trillion. From 1. 3 to 1. 5 to 1. 8, how do you plan to reduce the deficit . How do you claim that . Dir. Young easily, we talk about 10 budget windows. Looking at 2033 the president ial budget would bring down deficits by 3 trillion, nearly 3 trillion, 2. 9. Sen. Johnson again, yeartoyear. Most people looking at it look at your on your. 1. 3 trillion to 1. 6 trillion to 1. 8 . You are actually increasing the deficit by 300 billion in 2024. You are increasing the deficit. By the way, thats a massive deficit. What do you think is sparking inflation . Causing the fed to cause a run on the banks . At what point do you acknowledge the harm that this massive spending deficit is causing the economy . Its not recognized in your 2024 budget. Dir. Young i hope we all realize that inflation is a global phenomenon. The u. K. Doesnt have the same laws as the United States and has had inflation. India, the same. Sen. Johnson the rest of the world catches a cold. Dir. Young it has nothing to do with one piece of legislation. Every developed economy in the world is experiencing inflation. What it tells us is that there is not just one piece of legislation passed by the United States that has that impact. Sen. Johnson trillions of dollars in deficit spending and printed causing inflation by this president. Thank you. Sen. Whitehouse turning to senator stabenow. Senator stabenow welcome, director young. Thank you for your leadership. So much to respond to. I want to talk about one or to shaken project. Let me start by saying for the record that what we know is that of all the deficit related in the history of the country, 25 came from four years of president trump. We are certainly moving forward to lower that amount. You indicated one . 7 trillion in deficit reduction in the first two years. I think it is important to know that in your tenure budget, you, you, you are proposing a 3 trillion reduction in what i have seen in the proposal that is public and in what they want to do they will increase the deficit by 3 trillion by maintaining the huge trump tax cut and doubling down in making sure that rich people dont have to pay their taxes through irs audits and so on and someone. In brief i wanted to go on to my colleague about what is the number one that folks should pay. For pot prior to the Inflation Reduction Act 19 of the top corporations paid zero. Zero is not ok. One Small Businesses are paying a top rate and when individuals are paying zero. Thats not ok if you benefit from clean air, clean water, drive on the roads, the health care system, the military, etc. Etc. Its only fair for everybody else. Im glad that we are investing in america now and bringing jobs home and investing in putting money in the pockets of the middleclass and working folks and Small Businesses. It is growing the economy. The Fastest Growing economy in the last maybe my lifetime. I appreciate that vision. I also wanted to thank you for the wonderful funding for Behavioral Health in the budget. A bipartisan priority. As you know we added to our gun safety legislation last year in expansion of Certified Community Behavioral Health clinics and you have made that permanent in this budget. Our former colleague, im sure as well, and all of our colleagues who care deeply about Mental Health and addiction services. Thank you for that. The other thing i want to thank you for is understanding that Social Security and medicare are Great American success to do what we are hearing from house proposals to raise the age of Social Security or medicare to 70. So you have to wait until that long as a senior. I want to spend my nest last moment to talk about something for the record to make the case as it relates to a Jobs National security economic project that runs through michigan. That is the National Project of significance. We have a large lot that will allow large barges and ships to come down the st. Lawrence seaway into the great lakes from there, there carrying raw materials, but they go by rail and truck to every part of our country. This is a major infrastructure project. We know that simply put, if this one lock which is the one large functioning lock we have went down, it would be devastating to our economy. It would harm manufacturing, agriculture, it would jeopardize our National Security and according to the army corps of engineers, we have an excellent relationship with we so appreciate their leadership. A sixmonth unscheduled outage at the lock would result in 11 million jobs lost, 1. 1 trillion to the economy. The department of Homeland Security says its hard to conceive of a single piece of infrastructure more consequential in terms of its impact on the economy and National Security from an unexpected and sustained closure. We need to get this done, we are in the middle of the project as you know and i appreciate the support but we are on borrowed time to get this done. I could go on and on, i will not. I appreciate what has happened to date, but i would ask you erector given the stakes is this a priority for you and the administration . Do i have your commitment to do whatever it takes to make sure we complete the project and to do that whatever it takes to secure the funding for the sioux locks this year and through completion . Dir. Young this budget holds 235 Million Dollars for this project. That will hopefully show you our commitment. The federal government understands the importance of this project and you have our commitment to remain partners and get the job finished. Sen. Stabenow thank you. Listening to my friends across the aisle today and the rationale behind the Budget Proposal, i am fearful the white house is using the same accounting that brought down the sbc bank. Im here to tell you the greatest threat our nation faces is not russia china or north korea and though i love the environment, it is not Climate Change. The greatest longterm threat the u. S. Faces is our National Debt. At 31 trillion and growing, this National Debt is unsustainable. For two years, one party rule has controlled washington, d. C. And run up the tab maxing out the nations credit cards on the backs of hardworking americans. President biden has spent more than any other president in the United States history. This has added another 3. 7 trillion to the debt. At 13 increase and cost hardworking families in the wave of 40 year highs skyrocketing inflation which we all know is tax on hardworking americans. Energy prices have risen more than 37 , home heating fuel 52 , electricity 23 , gasoline 45 . Groceries 19 . All the while, real wages are not keeping up with inflation. To the Biden Administration this is more than a number but to families this is their wages. Now the white house gives this committee a new budget that will double the annual interest and soon push our annual deficit toward 2 trillion per year. If that isnt enough, they promise 4. 7 trillion dollars in new taxes including raising corporate taxes that as we know are going to be passed down to consumers further fanning inflation. This budget issue and how we handle it will be the defining action of this committee and the 118th congress. Let me tell you what this reminds me of. This is the equivalent of a young adult who has maxed out their own personal credit card and now instead of cutting expenses, ask their parents for another credit card. What parent would comply with this illfated request . We have to use the debt ceiling issue to pride the nations credit card from joe bidens hands. He must come to the negotiating table and work toward balancing the budget. If not he must be held responsible for the dramatic increase in spending over the next two years, past two years and blowing through the debt ceiling. He alone will bear this responsibility. This committee needs to take back the nations credit card and restore the purchasing power back to the American People. I will not support any budget that does not work to responsibly balance. There is precedent for coupling spending reductions with increasing the debt limit. For the sake of my children and grandchildren, i will hold the line. The president will not get permission from me to increase the debt limit without real substantive cuts to our spending. I hope the members of this committee will join me. Erector young, does this administration have anyn of negd faith with republicans to stop this reckless spending and get back to balancing the budget . Yes or no . Dir. Young i have been here this is my third year on the budget. There is a budget process, an appropriations process, we Work Together every year to fund and we are happy to do that again. Sen. Marshall will this president work in good faith toward negotiating a balanced budget . Dir. Young as he has done since december he will work in a bipartisan basis. Sen. Marshall how do you intend to do that when you know our goals and you bring us a budget that is one month later and brings us the highest sustained levels of taxes debt and deficit in American History . Dir. Young the president is not going to support cutting programs for working families in this country. What he believes is correct is that those at the top of the ladder to pay more so we can invest in those working families you talk about. Im from a small town. What they tell me is they want infrastructure, the government to work for them. This budget does that by asking billionaires who dont exist in louisiana and places like it to pay with a pay when they go to work as an effective tax rate. Sen. Marshall whose idea was it to cut 600 dollars of the department of Homeland Security when there is a raging crisis at the southern border . Dir. Young im happy to give you a sheet of paper that shows you the dhs budget is increased by 9 . That is not correct. There is a fee issue on passenger fees where it is literally a budget scoring issue where dhs keep passenger fees rather than give them back to the treasury in actual dollars in budget authority. The Department Homeland security goes up 9 including 4. 7 billion Contingency Fund that would fund our operations at the southwest border. 2 sen. Marshall this is voodoo accounting im talking about. We look forward to working with your office. We will show you the budget shown to us and we will look at yours as well. Thank you for being here. Chair whitehouse senator luhan. Sen. Lujan i agree with our chair about the importance of the money for mental and Behavioral Health. The one area that im hoping we can still Work Together as colleagues is in the area of retention. What ive heard from providers across new mexico and different parts of america is the concern of a reality or we are losing a lot of folks. That tells me we could be doing more for retention. Is that an area that we can Work Together to ensure that we are able to retain but we are still making a significant investment to train those we need . Dir. Young you absolutely have my commitment to do that. We saw during covid the burnout for people who worked in those jobs in nursing jobs. We have got to do something or we will have a longterm shortage issue in Behavioral Health. As we hopefully Work Together in a bipartisan manner to increase resources, today we dont have the personnel to do the work, the resources are going to be for not so weak have you have my commitment to work on that together. Sen. Lujan you will see action by the senate and the legislative branch of government to Work Together for the good of the country. Turning to broadband, i have the honor of chairing a subcommittee in the Commerce Committee that has a jurisdiction over any of these areas. What we have seen recently is through a bipartisan effort the creation of the affordable conductivity program. Authorized the federal Communications Commission to provide 30 per month for families at 200 of poverty and 75 per month on tribal lands. As we have heard from many the importance of this program toward affordability when it comes to broadband across america. Congress appropriated 14 billion which is a lot of money for this effort to help households to get the broadband they need for work, school, and health care. 16. 6 million households currently participate in this program thats 43 million americans. The affordable conductivity program is expected to run out of money in 2024. Some studies show a june, some are suggesting by the end of the First Quarter. Does the president support funding this Critical Program . Dir. Young yes and we thank you for the resources provided in the infrastructure law for this. Sen. Lujan why was there not Additional Support in the budget for the affordable conductivity fund . Dir. Young thanks to the infrastructure law, 42 billion was invested in the program. The Planning Grant has been awarded. The future award to states and localities will be announced soon. There is a belief that there is money about to hit the ground that will make an historic difference and before that money is spent, there are some views that it would be premature to add additional since those grants to states and locals had not happened yet. Sen. Lujan i think its important for all of us to be more intentioned to this program that was supported broadly by democrats and republicans. The former sec commissioner has talked about conservative approach to this program. My concern is that the Internet Service providers and others responsible for this program they have to start planning a few months in advance. If projections show this program will run out in the First Quarter 2024, means at the end of this year. Theres not want to be anymore. Thats a concern that i have. I hope we can look at all of the ideas out there that allow us to ensure that this program will eliminate the digital divide. That was the point of the investment we worked on together. I will point to a quote from urban league. Your observation was that if Congress Fails to reauthorize acp, the federal government will likely end up overpaying for broadband deployments. The federal dollars will end up funding significantly fewer homes and businesses. I look forward to working with the committee and with our colleagues across the board and i hope this is something we can tackle together. Chair whitehouse senator scott . Sen. Scott you have an impossible job. Massive inflation, massive deficits, no plan to balance the budget. Debt that continue to go up. Low labor participation. I think you have an impossible task. I sent you a letter to make sure you had some of the questions i was going to ask. Do you believe that Government Spending excessive spending causes inflation . Dir. Young we see inflation as a global sen. Scott do you believe excessive Government Spending running big deficits causes inflation . Dir. Young i believe one thing does not cause inflation. It is sen. Scott that was an answer. The federal debt has risen to more than 31 trillion since Joe Biden Took Office almost 4 trillion. Do you believe that his budget reduces debt of the country . Dir. Young i used 24. 7 trillion. That is probably held that. The rest of the debt that you cite is other government sen. Scott did it reduce the debt . Dir. Young our budget reduces the deficit. Sen. Scott thats fine. His President Bidens budget balanced . Are we going to spend more than we collect . Dir. Young no, because we believe that would hurt working families. Sen. Scott what are you paying right now for interest . What is the duration of the debt . Dir. Young the duration of the debt depends on treasury policy on what they do in the bond market. Right now, it is about a little over five years. The majority of the debt. Sen. Scott what is Interest Rate that you are paying . Dir. Young the Interest Rate is close to 3 on the debt. Dir. Young sen. Scott do you believe in your budget thats going to come down . Dir. Young we do show what we believe are accurate forecast where interest will rise then level off. Of course Interest Rates are rising now as the fed deals with inflation. Sen. Scott what will the federal government have to pay in interest expense next year . Dir. Young over 600 billion. Sen. Scott as a percentage of the budget . Dir. Young im happy did not do math here but give you that for the record. Sen. Scott precovid how much of the u. S. Population has gone up . Do you have any idea . It was on my letter to you. Sen. Scott 6 million people. As a percentage how much of that . 1. 8 . Dir. Young the question is what do we spent per person . Sen. Scott the population since 2019 has gone up 1. 8 . How much do you think your proposed budget has gone up from the 2019 budget . Dir. Young one way we look at it is that spending is down roughly five Percentage Points of gdp since the president took office. Sen. Scott heres the numbers. The population in the last five years has gone up 1. 8 . Your budget would take the budget up 55 . That is 400,000 per new american. Why would we only have a 6 million increase 6 million increase in the number of americans but a 55 increase in our budget . How could anybody explain that . Dir. Young i will take your information as fact but the way we look at a lot of these budget measures are percent of gdp. We think that is the way to determine health and i stated federal spending has gone down as a percentage of gdp since the president took office. Sen. Scott lets go back to precovid. Thats not even close to being true if you go back to 2019. The gdp has not gone up 55 . Joe biden came in the middle of a covid crisis so of course there is extra covert spending. Population is only up 1. 8 and your budget is up 55 , that is staggering. Dir. Young i know people dont want to give the president for presiding over 1. 7 trillion deficit reduction he did and that did not happen by accident had he not gotten the pandemic under control, had a vastly successful vaccine program, im not sure pandemic spending would have ended because we would still be dealing with the scarring of the pandemic and the economic fallout. Because he did that, i believe we are in a better place economically. Chair whitehouse senator van hollen . Sen. Bennet on the Inflation Reduction Act we passed reduced it also did something very important which was to cut the cost of drugs to seniors on medicare including capping the cost of insulin for medicare recipients at 35 per month and putting in place other changes that would reduce costs to seniors on medicare. I applaud you and the president for going even further in this budget in terms of saving costs for seniors on medicare when it comes to Prescription Drugs. As i see it, 200 billion in savings which not only saves the taxpayer and helps shore up the Medicare Program as part of your strategy to keep this insolvent but it will also ring down the cost of drugs to seniors is that not right . Dir. Young that is correct and one thing we have not talked about is outside of the medicare population the president has put into the proposal to cap insulin prices for all americans who have private insurance at 35 per month. Sen. Van hollen yes and that is something i strongly support as you know. In the past congress we were not successful in getting that past. I hope we will be successful in the coming years. A lot of talk about the deficit and debt and appropriately so. This budget will reduce the deficit by 3 trillion over the next 10 years. We are all looking forward to seeing alternatives that are put out there. The House Freedom caucuses talking about various proposals. We are all eager to see what they would do in terms of their Budget Proposals. The House Republicans really need to put something on the table. Let me say with respect to the deficit and debt, i also applaud the president and the Biden Administration for looking at the issue of how we tax work unfairly relative to wealth. The president has a number of proposals in here to change that equation. So that working people dont face higher tax rates than people who make money off of money. If you look at the longterm impacts of the president s revenue changes in this budget, as i look at it in addition to the 3 trillion deficit reduction over the first 10 years, the projection is 7 trillion in deficit reduction in the second decade. While the debt as a share of gdp will rise because of the baby boomers and more people benefiting from medicare and Social Security under this budget, you stabilize the debt to gdp ratio in 2040. Could you talk about that . Dir. Young yes. There is a choice here. We can zero out programs that communities depend on in the name of fiscal responsibility. If you keep tax cuts for the wealthy, you do not save any money for the deficit. Or we can continue to invest in the middle class for things like childcare paid leave things that bring people into the workforce while asking those at the very very top to begin paying something that looks closer to what people who go to work every day pay as far as the tax rate goes. What that does is as you point out bring down the deficit over 10 years by nearly 3 trillion. When you deal with deficits and ring down deficits, it make sure our debt problem does not get worse. We do have a population that is getting older but what we can do is make sure our deficits are under control. We are happy to enter in conversation anyone who wants to talk about that. This president is very clear, he believes the economy grows when you focus on those in the middle and working families and when you look at how those at the very top borrow against money they never pay taxes on and have incomes that are never taxed, he believes that is unfair and this budget does something about it and puts us on a stronger physical path. Fiscal path. Sen. Van hollen i believe that and when you look at the total accumulated u. S. Debt, one quarter that was accumulated during just four years of the Trump Administration. The debt ceiling was raised three times during the time. I hope Going Forward as we work through the budget process and look at houses proposal and the president s proposal and deal with the budget issues the people will not take our economy off a cliff by threatening not to pay our bills on time. Thank you. Chair whitehouse senator romney . Sen. Romney i think it is helpful if we are going to be responsible as we consider discussions about our spending and budget if we put covert funding aside covid funding aside. We had covid over the midst of covid we passed extraordinary measures, the president went far beyond congress to say somehow that he has been cutting the deficit is just not realistic and senator scott describe the change in federal funding. If you are serious about discussing the budget and whats going on, what our needs are putting covid funding aside is essential for that conversation. On a separate topic, im not aware of anyone in this category, but are you aware of anyone of the elected officials we have in the federal government that congress or anywhere else that have proposed cutting currently proposed cutting benefits for Social Security of any kind . Dir. Young i have heard a proposal. Sen. Romney you have heard of puzzles from a current senator proposing to cut benefits to Social Security . Dir. Young yes have they changed their position . Sen. Romney i said the last several months or the last year has anyone republican or democrat proposed Social Security benefits . Dir. Young you are asking if people changed their position . Maybe. Sen. Romney are you aware of anyone proposing cutting so security benefits . Dir. Young current members have wellknown policies out there to cut Social Security and medicare. Sen. Romney that is simply wrong and it is not honest to say that to members of congress. There is no one who is recommending cutting so security benefits. Number two, do you recognize that in the next 10 years or so, the trust fund on Social Security is going to run out and under the law, benefits would be cut dramatically like 25 . You are aware that. Dir. Young i am aware. Sen. Romney thats a problem . Dir. Young of course. Sen. Romney why in the president s budget is there no effort to address that . Dir. Young we clearly disagree on this, there are some that have policies on websites im happy to print them and send them to the committee whether they have changed their position is another thing who want to cut sen. Romney that was not the question. You have to answer the question. I asked the question why does the president budget not layout how you would protect Social Security . Dir. Young this president believes the existential threat to the Social Security is those who want to cut it. Sen. Romney i know of no republican or democrat in the house or senate who is proposing cutting Social Security benefits and its dishonest keep saying it. Its offensive dishonest and not realistic. We have a problem was so security we need to address it. You agree we have a problem. 1000 no republican is proposing cutting so security benefits. Why have you not proposed any action to perm protect Social Security . Why have you not proposed it . This president has put it in black and white and we look forward to seeing a plan that suggests that Social Security is off the table. This president believes the biggest threat to Social Security is those who want to cut it in his budget says no. I really do find that just offensive in the extreme. You cannot name anyone who is proposing Social Security benefits. I know my colleagues, no one is proposing cutting Social Security benefits for our Social Security recipients. No one is proposing that on our site and you keep on saying thats the biggest threat. The biggest threat is in 10 years or so, the Social Security trust fund runs out of money and benefits get automatically cut by 25 . We dont want that to happen. I am upset the president has not included any effort to address that shortfall because i want to protect Social Security benefits for all of our recipients. The question i have is, you fortunately look at medicare and suggest that we should take action to protect medicare and i agree with that. You propose the only solution is not cutting costs but only raising taxes. Do you believe there is any prospect that republicans are going to vote to raise taxes only as a way to save medicare . For those over 400,000, i hope they would raise the taxes. You believe that republicans in the house and the senate will vote to raise taxes and nothing else, just raise taxes to save medicare . That is not the only proposal. If you look, if the net Investment Income tax which was created to go into the Medicare Trust fund and it was not. We suggest moving that over as a part of keeping medicare extended by at least 25 years. Thats one part of the proposal. The other part is to raise taxes. My time is up, do you believe it makes sense for a bipartisan effort to Work Together to find compromise positions, Common Ground to actually say Social Security and protect medicare . Yes. Thank you. Senator kaine is up now. Thank you, mr. Chair and thank you director young. You highlighted the job gains we have seen under President Biden that have been remarkable with an Unemployment Rate is lowes as low as its been in many decades. On the flipside, im hearing from a lot of employers were having a hard time hiring people. Low unemployment is good but increase labor market challenges. At the same time, i am hearing from people across virginia who want to work, who have great skills and want to be in the workforce but whats holding them up is the lack of highquality, affordable childcare. You mentioned this in one of your exchanges with senator whitehouse or senator murray. How will President Bidens budget continue progress in dealing with this issue by funding childcare that will be good for kids and parents but also be good for the productivity of our nations economy . It matters what you invest in. We believe we have to grow the economy and one of the important pieces of the president s investment is childcare. You have always funded for the foreseeable past funded a childcare block grant and everyone here would suggest thats not enough. This budget does because is the one existing program on the federal level at 1 billion building on the increase congress provided to that program on a bipartisan basis so we thank you for that. We also go further and we would establish a mandatory program that would frankly be a game changer for parents across this country. The president believes that along with their prek proposals, universal prek and the high performers, prek3. Between those proposals, families, especially women who dropped out of the workforce during covid can reenter and we can grow our labor pool and get more people into these jobs. Thank you for that answer and i look forward to supporting more childcare investment. Virginias home of a lot of federal employees and they been doing important work in particular the last few years as the constituent needs and demands have escalated during covid. Their wages and salaries have not been keeping up with the cost of living. Talk to me about what the biden budget does with respect to a pay raise for civilian and federal workers. One thing is important to us for the last three budgets to provide civilians and military. Many times the civilian and military personnel sitting next to each other go towards the same mission, its only right that both receive the same pay increase. We also took the recommendation of the pay raise of 5. 2 which was built based on economic factors. It was right to follow that recommendation on an equal basis with the military and civilians. Many of them work diligently during covid and after covid and for the American People. We follow the recommendations of that economic index. It was the right thing to do in our federal workers really have over performed during this difficult time. The federal government really had to respond to make sure our economy and their people got through this pandemic. Here is a question on the topic that is completely bipartisan not only in this body but everywhere in this country. Its a desire to reduce debt death by fentanyl and the desire to invest in strategies that will reduce fentanyl being brought into the United States. Most fentanyl comes across the southern border, it comes through cartels and they can load trucks up with fentanyl and we only had technology to inspect every few trucks and they run the risk of getting caught every once in a while. What does the biden budget do to address strategies for interdicting more fentanyl at our ports of entry . I have gone to land ports of entry and seen the car doors popped off packed full of narcotics, a lot of it is fentanyl is coming through our ports of entry. Weve got to have resources at our ports of make sure we have the minute place, the infrastructure was mentioned a lot today. We started down that path of reinvestment in our ports of entry and we will tilde on this in this budget would have over 500 million for Border Technology that would also help with technology that would look for fentanyl. Additionally, 40 million to combat fentanyl traffic and disrupt transnational criminal exhort organization to get at the problem and 9 million to expand dea operations there. Weve got to keep a forward foot and deal with this problem before it gets across the border. Thank you and i yield back. Thank you, senator braun. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to start off with just some statistics that are astounding to me and also acknowledge that this migration into heavy debt through the federal government has been going on for a while. I think it spans administrations. In 2000, we were up at like 5 trillion in debt. We put a couple of wars on the credit card and by 2008, we were 10 trillion in debt. 0816 we went from 10 trillion to 16 trillion. Two years later, i get to the u. S. Senate and we have now structuralist trillion dollar deficits annually. Therefore, 18 trillion in debt. In a little over four years, we have gone from 18 trillion in debt to 31 trillion in debt. A blueprint for success in this country puts 51 trillion in debt by 2033. I dont know how that can be sold to the American Public as a sustainable, Healthy Business plan. We had a conversation yesterday evening. You are assuming that we can raise 1920 in revenues when historically, over 50 years, its been 17. 5 . Yes, you cited for a few years back in the Clinton Administration that we did raise close to that. You are assuming that we can do that going further. I almost had the cbo recalculate how that last tax cut jobs act was playing into the economy and i was and was chump change compared to what it is now. That was a 1. 5 trillion giveaway to the rich. Precovid, it was paying for itself. Sooner or later, if youre going to try to raise revenues when its above historical levels, it always comes with a price of lower economic activity. How do you justify that as far out as you can see, we will be spending money in the neighborhood of 2425 of gdp. This puts us into such lofty territory, the only country in recent history thats ever been there is japan. We now distinguish ourselves as being the most indebted country of any in the world that has a developed economy other than japan. I know in the real world things have got to be sustainable. I also know that politically, everyone things you can do things differently here. I acknowledge that its been on both sides of the aisle to date. I have a question where i think you can probably save some money. I would love to hear if there is any interest from your point of view. Weve got a broken health care system. Its way too high a percentage of our gdp. 18 or 19 in most other places it deliver similar results at 11 or 12 range. Is the administration going to give any thought to try to Fix Health Care by making it more transparent, more competitive. You have doctors now that are questioning whether they want to invest the time and effort, employed by larger and larger corporations. What about tackling the one thing that would actually take make it cheaper how you pay for health care through medicare or medicaid or the private sector. Are you interested in reforming the biggest sector of our economy . Absolutely, some of their proposals you see here. Prescription drugs for example and that saves money for seniors. We allow medicare to negotiate and it saves the government about 160 billion to have more drugs in negotiation and bring those negotiations forward. Thats one of the proposals in this budget. I dont think anyone would argue with you that the United States pays more as a percentage of health care than most other large economies. You are going to try to use government to price control and sometimes when you operate your business like an unregulated utility, thats going to happen. I think the healthcare Care Industry is asking for that. What about pushing things like transparency, competition . There was an executive order from the Trump Administration asking hospitals to be forthright on transparency and pricing. Are you trying to enforce that . Thats already out there. It seems there is a lot of stuff you can do other than using government to force it by trying to fix the healthcare Care Industry from the bottom up. It looks like you are interested in at least considering that. Are you interested in what we are doing generally, regardless of the politics, whether its democrats or republicans, we certainly have embraced the idea that we want to borrow from our kids and grandkids. You can do things like say real Interest Rates are being looked at. The nominal Interest Rates we are paying and part of the debt and inflation bomb that has been unleashed over the last two or three years, some of which we did bipartisan go after the cares act, that will come home to roost and it is right now in our own Banking System that starting to show strain because you cannot inflate the economy. You will sooner or later find these weaknesses and we are going through it. It boils down to the simple question do we want to run this enterprise unlike any other place in this country . Doesnt make sense to borrow money from your kids and grandkids for the latest and greatest ideas that come out of this place . That seems to be what you are doing here. Give me a simple answer to that it it would be like asking your kids at thanksgiving to put an addition on the house and i want to take a vacation and i want you to pay for it. The president s budget is clear. He will ask the wealthiest top 1 , large corporations, to begin to pay their fair share in order to continue to invest in American People. Good luck with it because it has never generated more than 17. 5 on tax revenues as a percentage of gdp over 50 years. Therefore, i think you are being dishonest with the American People, thank you. Senator merkley is up next. Thank you very much mr. Chairman and thank you director young for your presentation. A group of colleagues in the house, the Freedom Caucus, proposed a 30 sales tax as a way to address revenue issues which would be about a 100,000 tax on a family buying a house and a 10 in a 10,000 tax and a family buying a car. The president did not choose to put this into his budget, why not . I will go back to what i just told senator braun, this president leaves and it is a core value that we can be fiscally responsible to do that. It will not be on the backs of middleclass and working families in this country. We need to ask those at the very top to begin to pay what nurses, teachers and firefighters pay in this country, an effective tax rate. The idea that we will cut taxes on the rich which is what the republicans plan is in the house and put this massive additional tax on the ordinary families, it would not sell in my state for one moment. I do a town hall in every county. The idea that you will tax families 100,000, not a Single Person in the room would stand up for that proposal. I appreciate the president not taking that tax. I did read the analysis behind the rich is 400 families paying about an 8 affected tax which is a sound analysis. It notes that Capital Gains will basically go untaxed and unrealized Capital Gains and the tax rate for dividends and realized Capital Gains are much lower than the regular tax rate. I for one think that the richest 400 family should pay at least what a middleclass american pays rather than 8 and thats with the president s budget seems to be saying. It absolutely is. The billion minimum tax for example, they should pay minimum tax of 25 . We think that is a fair way to have the text system in this country were middleclass and working families have paychecks and get text. The weight you cited gets around that. Those same people often use the wealth they never get text on to go out and borrow for homes, yachts and if its real enough to go out and secure loans, its real enough to be taxed. Lets talk about housing for middleclass americans in low income americans because its the Biggest Issue coming up in my town hall. How does the president s budget address the affordability of housing for ordinary americans . We got to do something about housing supply. As a government, we often have solutions to demand. We had better programs that have been usually successful and are still important some areas that have supply. Not every area is the sames of vouchers are still necessary. We are proposing, like we did last year, tax credits that would go to developers who build Affordable Housing in this country. Also recognizing that zoning laws are often an impediment to building. We have resources that would go to help streamline zoning laws. In some areas of the country, housing is already a crisis when it comes to supply which impacts , as you know, the affordability of that housing when you have too few. Thank you because that is a huge issue and we need to invest a lot more. I see homeownership fading away for many families in my blue color communities and i see the rising rents are driving folks to be paying sometimes more than 50 of their income in a way that was not the case before. I want to turn to the debt issue. The debt is like paying our National Credit card. We passed the spending bills, we passed the revenue bills and it resulted in a deficit and when the debt ceiling is related and whether or not we pay that bill. I am concerned that a failure to pay her credit card bill is going to create a crisis. It might raise the Interest Rates and devalue our Credit Rating. It could crash the stock market. Isnt it possible that the strategy of creating a debt crisis is going to raise Interest Rates that will affect mortgages and the cost of borrowing for a car or borrowing for college . We should study 2011. We did not default but even getting close to default lowered our Credit Rating which meant we paid more. The american citizens paid more for goods. Some more of a pressure on american families. Absolutely. I have another question or im out of time. Senator kennedy is next. Madam secretary, i will call you met him secretary, you gave me a promotion. I am calling you madam secretary because you have capital level status. You are also from louisiana which im proud of. We claim you as our secretary. Does it embarrass you and i know it must because it embarrasses me, that the federal government continues as we have for a while to send money to did people . And they cash the checks. You and i talked about this a couple of years ago. Of course, that should not be happening. Heres what i am hoping the administration will take on. During the stimulus period when we were trying to keep our society on its feet, we sent out checks to the tune of 1. 4 billion to dead people. And they were cast, obviously. As best i can tell, we dont know for sure but we sent out more than 22 billion of checks per year continuously to dead people and they are cashed obviously fraud. We passed a bill that said Social Security, which get the information about who is alive and who is dead from the states, has got to talk to the department of treasury to make sure that its do not pay list includes people who are dead. It was a shame we had to pass a bill to implement common sense but nonetheless, we did it. In order to get the bill passed, i had to make some compromises. I cannot imagine anybody would be against it. We will start doing that on december 23 of this year but its only for three years. The Government Accounting Office says we ought to make it permanent. I will try to make it permanent. I will not ask you today as i know you have to talk to the president but if you can talk to the president and try to get a commitment to pass this . I will, one thing that was shocking is treasury in the last administration with Social Security had to deliver develop an mou to share this database and you would think it would be easy to do that. I support you and i would ask you to work with us. We have a fraud proposal in the budget. Happy to. To make sure ids have what they need and we go after fraud in the u. S. System where we saw transnational crime syndicates take advantage of the system. I would love to work with you on that as well. Another area im hoping the administration will look at, we are spending a lot of money to send pharmaceutical drugs to certain hospitals. These are at really low prices. The idea being those hospitals will pass that savings on to the people who are less fortunate economically. There is just one problem, there is no requirement to do that. And some of those hospitals i think its called the 340 bb program, some of those hospitals are saying thank you for giving me these cheap drugs but they are turning around because dollars are fungible and basically selling those drugs for a profit and paying patients. We are spending billions on this. It makes no sense, madam secretary. I wish you would all take a look at that. Happy to, we had a long discussion about Health Care Costs and im happy to work with you and your office on this and bring in hhs and cms to the conversation. I listened to one of the presence press conferences and he said no middle income people are going to pay any of this 4. 7 trillion dollars worth of new taxes. Is that accurate . Isnt the administration proposing in its budget to rollback some of the provisions of the 2017 tax cuts . No sir. So you are not arguing we should roll them back . We are clear that the president would extend the tax cuts for those making over 400,000 under 400,000. He is proposing to rollback tax cut for people making less than 400,000, isnt he . No sir, he sang the trump tax cuts as we call them expire in 2025 so the 24 budget some of them expire sooner. Yes, like the rnd tax credit and there are various proposals in the senate but for individual taxes, the president in black and white says he would support extending those and would not support raising taxes on anyone under 400,000 but he thinks those over 400,000, ensuring those are rollback, those under 400,000 should be on the table. I agree thats what he said but i dont think thats what he means. Thank you, madam secretary. Come visit us in louisiana. We are always there. Come back get away from d. C. And come back to america. Senator graham . South carolina, come visit us as well. Do you believe we should be voting on the president s budget . Would you like to see the senate take about on the president s budget . Ice to work here for a long time and you know what i will probably say. Budgets are a congressional process and it would not be appropriate for me as an Administration Official to weigh in on what comes on the senate floor. I think it be a good idea to vote on his budget and take the Freedom Caucus budget and we will find out what we are against and find out what we are for. Do you support the idea that entitlement need structural reform to maintain their solvency over time . Senator, im sure you know we have a proposal into extend medicare by 25 years. I heard some nonexcitement about some of the proposals and there but the president stands behind those proposals. Yeah, but ari you familiar with the efforts to reform Social Security . He is also my home state senator so i am familiar he has some hoses and is working with senators across the aisle. We may have different approaches but you agree with the concept . Congress needs to come together in a bipartisan fashion to deal with the looming insolvency of Social Security and medicare . Yeah, we put a medicare proposal forward and hope to work with you in the present has supported policies on Social Security so absolutely, both parties will have to come together and talk about the trust fund. Thats a big step in the right direction because when you look at the pie chart, its impossible to be in a good budget space in these programs are certainly worth saving. I would like to be part of the effort to do that. We will see if we can make some progress on that front. About budget before us today, inflation is at 6 , do you agree thats about right . Yes, senator, down from over 9 . We look at the cpi report. That is not from us. Who is it from . Do we have the bureau of labor and statistics so it is ours. I assume thats pretty accurate. 4. 7 trillion in taxes in this budget, is that right . When you say 25 tax on billionaires, if you buy an asset at one dollar per simplification and it depreciates to dish and it appreciates to three dollars but you havent sold it yet, with the president s budget proposed taxing that unrealized gain . It would but we would say because these things have ebbs and flows, and makes sense to do it over a long time. A lot of those unrealized gains do you think that will hurt investing . This president has been very clear that he believes we tried trickle down. It did not work. He is about investing in the middle class and believes we can grow the economy best from the middle class and working families. I couldnt disagree more but i understand where youre coming from. You dispute that this budget increase will increase spending by 8. 5 . I have 7. 3 . And the cbo is at 8. 9 . The cbo has not scored the budget yet. Where did the 8. 5 number come from . Is that from our committee . Maybe. You are saying in this budget defense increase is 3. 3 . As that correct . That is correct. Senator, i know you and i go back and forth in this. In december, grew 10 . Some things not necessarily Administration Party that we think will fund. Inflation is 6 . The Defense Budget increase is 3. 3. Of those two numbers are accurate . Those two numbers are accurate . Have i got the numbers right . You got the top numbers right. I will end with this effort. You do not agree with the proposition that at 3. 3 increase for defense spending when inflation is at 6 is increasing defense spending less than inflation . Absolutely not. Thank you, mr. Chair. Good to see you. Despite the recent rain in the state of california and other areas of the west, we still face a crisis of the Colorado River, as drying conditions bring water reservoirs along the Colorado River to dangerously low levels, that means that 40 million americans across seven states face severe threats to their water supply. When i referenced the forms in the west, i am speaking to a key segment of our nations food supply. I want to first thank you for ombs role for facilitating the administrations commitment to invest 250 million for the Inflation Reduction Act to address the Public Health and environmental disasters. Because of Drought Conditions and changin agriculturals practices, more and more of the is exposed due to increased flows, which causes toxic clouds of dust and pesticides and pollution spread for miles goes airborne for miles. Addressing the sea is a critical measurement in security longterm steels in addressing water use in the Colorado River basin. The 4 million included in the Colorado River should be seen as a down payment, given the magnitude of the seven states. This in onetime investment during any ongoing concern. My question is this, how is owen be working with the department of interior, department of agriculture going be working with the apartment of interior, Agriculture Department of interior, agriculture . We understand the problem. The Colorado River basin impacts 40 million americans, seven states. It is a complex problem. It will take a whole government approach, which omb is situated to be able to bring the various agencies together and make sure we are putting our best mind and creativeness to this problem. This means to be reimagined for. The longterm we appreciate the infrastructure and the ira fund. They are helping us started. Without those, we do not know where we would be. This has to be a long systemic change in how the government views the Colorado River basin. We are committed to doing that with your partnership. Thank you. That is exactly where we would be. Another data point to underscore half of the 40 million americans who rely on the Colorado River are in california. On a related issue during your confirmation hearing, which at this point probably seems like a decade to you, i raised an issue for a specific army for a project to improve levees along the river near watsonville, california. I raised that it is the issue of equity. Of the ohio River Project was long overlooked because it would protect a low Income Community with low Property Values. It may or may not be a conscious ignoring of the low Income Community, the systemic consideration of these factors by the army corps engineer. I was proud to help secure 82 Million Dollars in the bipartisan infrastructure law to begin the project to reinforce the levees in its underserved community. Unfortunately, i imagine you have seen the images for days now. Mother nature did not wait for the core to complete its work. This past week, the levee broke, flooding the town and displacing hundreds of households. Many of the residence now out of work longterm because nearby fields remain underwater. These families will probably not be able to return to their homes for months. You and i have talked about the needs on how to address the army corps, you should be thinking beyond the benefit cost ratio in order to ensure we are protecting vulnerable communities equitably. Making sure they receive the resources they need before it is too late. Youre talking to a bash in south louisiana who has pulled out more dry walls. Those communities are more than a benefit cost ratio. Yes my commitment to work with you and congress to make sure there is change beyond it when i am in the seat to make sure we are looking at a way to be costconscious. There is never enough money, even with the infrastructure law. Lots of committees have Flood Control projects that we cant get to. We have to be cost effective. This idea that part communities do not deserve the same Flood Control poor communities do not deserve the same but control as of those as higher value houses is unfair. I am sorry we got there too late to those communities. You know, i certainly want to work with you and see what we can do to systemically change of this for the future. Thank you thank you, mr. Chairman and director young for being here. One of our colleagues made a comments suggesting the house caucus proposed 30 pay up of sales tax. That is not true. House of Freedom Caucus has one member who asked for a vote on Something Like that. I do applaud the House Freedom caucus for the work that it has done in proposing ideas to get us on a sustainable spending trajectory. Recently proposed in fact that congress should be reducing growth rates. The biggest problem we have got is the rate of which Government Spending growth is faster than the rate of increase, the rate of Economic Growth within our country. If we took care of that in time, we could get the balance over a course of a few years. We also identified areas where costs would be appropriate on the discretionary side of the budget while enacting Regulatory Reform to make sure that congress, not unelected unaccountable bureaucrats will have ultimately decisionmaking responsibility over regulations that affect Economic Growth and revenue. I do want to remind everyone, anyone watching this hearing, as well as american taxpayers more broadly, it is congress that determines annual spending in revenue levels, not the president s annual budget. Required by law, the budget request of the president that he submits annually to congress has been a political messaging documents reflecting ambitions of the current president s administration. It should be noted that many of the largest policies embedded in this particular requests have zero chance of becoming law, particularly in the current divided congress, and with good reason. President bidens fy 24 message to congress alludes preposterously to delivering on his commitment to fiscal responsibility. Then it quite misleadingly makes a claim in an effort to claim credit for reducing the fy 2022 budget deficit to 1. 4 trillion from the record high 3 trillion budget in fy 20 and 21. To provide context and to set the record straight on this. Remember the deficit included 2 trillion dollars in finance covid relief from early 2020, something that was passed in both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support. Fy 21 deficit included 2 trillion costs of the deficit finance that democrats and President Biden enacted without a single republican supporting. In march 2021, when inflation was below 2 in the economy was well on its way to recovery, fy 22 sharp deficit decline is solely attributable to the expiration of pandemic spending. It was billions of dollars greater then what cpl projected prepandemic. It is not troubling that the president finds to be a responsibility. With a track record on deficit and debt accumulation, during which there was a democraticcontrolled in the house and the senate, his claims do not add up. This budget request proposes even more spending over the next 10 years than front lock projections which suggest. Wee hours we disagree on that point. I would be curious to know, if any spending cuts or freezes, the last at a minimum on the discretionary side are contained with this budget. Can you identify any of those . Sure. Semi the american taxpayers hundred and 65 million. Tax cuts, do they not cost the American People. We use a different linkage to describe those. We believe everything to do to close the tax loopholes. With nonDiscretionary Spending the president s budget calls for 1 trillion for nondefense Discretionary Spending in fy 24. This is completely unrealistic as an increase, even from the fy 23 levels i endorse wholeheartedly the Freedom Caucus proposal to nondefense depression every depressionera Discretionary Spending. Those are not the correct numbers appeared at the president s budget for 2024 is six 88 billion compared to 886 billion for defense and 120 million for v. A. Medical care. Your time expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We have a boat to get to. I am going to conclude the hearing avote to get to so im going to conclude the hearing. Anyone who has questions, you have until noon tomorrow to get those questions in. We ask you to respond to them within seven days of received. Thank you very much on the president s attention to the blatant injustice of the tax code. It is the product of the power of a big special interests and wealthy donors. Enormous amounts of money goes out the backdoor of the tax code to benefit the wealthiest corporations and people in the country mark the number you. The 400 number has been long been a terrible problem. Those super wealthy tax filers are paying lower tax rates than their limo drivers, private jet pilots, lower tax rates than their household staff. That has to stop as a matter of simple decency and injustice. Thank you for keeping the pedal to the metal on that. With that, the hearing is concluded. Programs to set priorities before the Senate Subcommittee on strategic forces