Democrats have insisted for months that the massive multi-trillion dollar spending bill pushed by President Biden would be fully paid for. But today the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) blew a giant hole in their promise to pay for all this spending, showing it would add **$367 billion** to the national deficit.
Now these Democrats have to answer whether they still agree this bill should be fully paid for… or whether they were lying for political convenience?
- Catherine Cortez Masto: “I think it should be paid for.”
- Val Demings: “a fiscally responsible and fully paid for plan”
- Val Demings: “it’s fully paid for”
- Mark Kelly: “Let me make it very clear: this is going to be paid for.”
- Mark Kelly: “I’ve told my colleagues that this budget reconciliation package must be paid for.”
- Conor Lamb: “all PAID for in BBB… This is a no brainer.”
- Tim Ryan: “We’re paying for the whole thing”
- Jon Tester: “100 percent” must be paid for
- Jon Tester: “I think it will be fully paid for; it needs to be fully paid for.”
Now that the CBO just stated the obvious – that this bill is going to add gobs to the national debt – these Democrats are caught between a rock and a hard place.
- Others have made similar conclusions as the CBO: the Penn Wharton Budget Model found the bill would add $274 billion to the deficit.
- The Joint Committee on Taxation found the bill already violates President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 – in fact taxpayers who make as little as $50,000 would see their tax bill increase under this bill.
- Even still, the reconciliation package would cut taxes for the wealthy: increasing the SALT cap would provide billions in tax cuts for “the top 10 percent of income earners, with almost nothing flowing to middle- and lower-income families.”
- All this spending is being proposed as inflationrecently jumped 6.2% year-over-year – a 30-year high showing it’s not a transitory problem as Democrats have claimed.
This begs the question: will these Democrats go back on their previous promises and rubber stamp Joe Biden’s reckless tax and spending spree, or will they stand their ground?
“It’s time for Democrats to put their money where their mouth is: either they’re serious about Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree being paid for or they aren’t.” -SLF Communications Director Jack Pandol