As the White House unveiled its budget plan last week, it was accompanied by a request: President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats practically begged House Republicans to present an alternative. So far, those appeals have been ignored.
By way of an excuse, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters last week, “We were going to do the budget in April, but unfortunately the president’s so late with his budget it delays ours.” That didn’t make any sense at all. As a Washington Post report explained, “It’s unclear why the president’s budget would delay the Republican version by so long — they are two separate documents put together by competing parties.”
The truth is hardly a secret: McCarthy promised to put together a budget that eliminates the deficit within 10 years without touching social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. GOP leaders now realize that this isn’t possible in a politically palatable way that their members will support, so their blueprint remains a work in progress.
The House Freedom Caucus, however, doesn’t much care about what’s politically palatable. NBC News reported late last week:
The Freedom Caucus, chaired by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., proposed nixing Biden’s $400 billion in student debt relief; rescinding unspent Covid-19 funds; cutting the climate change funding and $80 billion for added IRS enforcement under the Inflation Reduction Act; and capping discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels for a decade.
For good measure, let’s also note that the same plan would make it more difficult for low-income Americans to qualify for Medicaid, while also demanding new policies to make oil drilling easier.
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who chairs the Freedom Caucus, estimated that the faction’s plan would save about $3 trillion over a decade. That might be true, though there’s been no official tally from the Congressional Budget Office.
The proposal received a quick endorsement from…
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