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Floor Speech
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Mr. HICKENLOOPER. Mr. President, this month, my fellow colleagues in the Senate--the Republican Senate Members--are working to pass a budget proposal that I feel can best be described as dangerous.
Their plans are going to dramatically reduce--even gut--services like Medicaid and SNAP, which give food to hungry, low-income workers. It will strip healthcare away from, most likely, more than 16 million Americans and threaten millions of seniors living in nursing homes.
All of this is focused, really, on just trying to give larger tax breaks to very wealthy people--who don't, really, in most cases, want them--or to the largest corporations. This lavish--and I think ``lavish'' is the only word that describes it fairly. This lavish tax bill gives more to the top earners while taking away from Americans with the least.
But it really doesn't have to be that way. If Republicans could focus on extending tax cuts for working families rather than on the wealthiest--that one effort, in and of itself, that one initiative-- they could avoid ripping away healthcare from more than 15 or 16 million Americans; gutting our much needed investments in climate change--in fighting climate change--and making sure we have lower energy prices. Instead, they are going full steam ahead with really what is a god-awful bill.
I want to focus today on another dangerous part of this plan: how it explodes our national debt and really risks our economic future.
Many proponents of the bill love to hem and haw about being financially responsible. Like a few people in here, I have managed budgets before. It was back when I started Colorado's first brewpub and then as mayor of Denver and as Governor of Colorado. So I know something about fiscal responsibility, and it is not partisan. At its best, fiscal responsibility should be bipartisan. I can definitely say this bill that we are looking at is the opposite of fiscal responsibility. It is fiscal madness. This is a massive spending bill that is going to create the largest national debt in American history.
You don't have to take my word for it. You can look at the numbers.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House Republican plan--so this is the plan coming over from the House--would add $2.7 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t,'' $2.7 trillion--to the deficit over the next decade.
The Penn Wharton model, which includes something like north of $500 billion in additional interest payments from that accumulated debt year after year after year, over 10 years, suggests it would add up to not just $2.7 trillion but more like $3.2 trillion or $3.3 trillion.
The bill our Senate colleagues are putting together makes many of the same mistakes, and I think, by most measures that a small businessperson would look at, it is reckless.
The bottom line is that more American tax dollars would go toward tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. Again, at least in Colorado, the very wealthy people I have talked to aren't asking for and aren't seeking these tax cuts. You know, under this tax plan that is coming over to us right now, those tax cuts for the very wealthy are coming instead of expanding access to healthcare or building roads or improving our schools, and more tax dollars would go to paying off the massive debt-- to paying the interest on the massive debt--than all of our defense spending combined. It will become more than 25 percent of our Federal budget just to pay the interest on the debt.
Now, if that sounds like a bad idea to you, it is because it is, and the markets agree. Moody's, which is the last major credit rating agency to maintain the U.S. at its highest rating--at its highest, you know, designation as being a safe place to invest your money--just downgraded our credit rating. It is the first time that happened, and it shook investors that Moody's would downgrade our credit rating. Investors aren't confident that the United States will be able to pay its debts. At least in terms of Moody's, that has never happened before.
It is really just going to lead to more trouble. Those investors who buy those tenured bonds and help pay for our national debt are demanding higher returns because they view it as a riskier investment; that they will need a higher return if they are going to hold U.S. debt. Since you have got to attract that investment, it means you have got to offer higher interest rates, which means you have got higher borrowing costs. That means that Coloradans and Americans are going to pay higher interest rates when they want to buy a house or expand their business or if they want to pay off their credit cards. They are going to have to pay more because the interest rates are going to be higher.
Americans are already plenty concerned about rising prices and for good reason. This whole system could lead to the dreaded stagflation. This could all become a one-two punch to working families, all the while the wealthiest families will end up being better off.
But we don't need to do this. We can certainly grow our economy. We can help working families, and we can cut the deficit. We were able to balance the budget all 8 years I was mayor of Denver and all 8 years I was Governor and still grow our investments in our roads, in our education system, and in our healthcare system. We also did this with the Inflation Reduction Act, which will reduce the deficit by over $175 billion over the next 10 years. It has already, dramatically, lowered a number of prescription drug costs, has expanded healthcare access, and in the process, has created hundreds of thousands of good jobs. The Republicans' budget, I think, does the opposite.
We also can't forget that this budget comes in the midst of the Trump administration's efforts around tariffs and what our good friend, the Senator from Washington, was just talking about when she described the consequences of Smoot-Hawley and how those tariffs, just at 20 percent, led to a global slowdown in the overall economy. We all know that these tariff taxes are really not so hidden; they are taxes on the American people. They raise prices on everything from groceries to kitchen appliances. None of this is a growth strategy. It really is a recipe for a recession, at best, and stagflation, at worst. We can't borrow millions, we can't borrow billions, we can't borrow trillions just to hand out tax cuts to the top when working families are struggling to afford everyday goods. It doesn't add up. It never has. It never will.
There are many issues that may be partisan but being financially responsible doesn't need to be one of them, neither should good, strong economies, neither should economic fairness, neither should protecting working families. They don't have to do it this way. Now, I am always game to roll up my sleeves and dig into a balance sheet, but we haven't seen from the other side that they are willing to negotiate or really invest in long-term economic growth. I would suggest that we write a budget that reflects our values and puts tax cuts toward working families first, a budget that strengthens the middle class, one that keeps our economy strong and will keep it growing for generations to come. This bill is not any of that.
I urge my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate not to temporarily put a pass on their values and to support, again, what I think is a truly reckless fiscal bill. I hope that we can come together and negotiate a better bill that does more for economic growth and puts a far, far lesser penalty on the working people of America.
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