President Joe Biden on Tuesday touted his administration’s record on reducing the federal budget deficit compared with his predecessor while slamming proposals offered by top Republicans as “extreme” plans to raise taxes and eliminate social services.
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr Biden said his administration is “on track to cut the federal deficit by another $1.5 trillion” this fiscal year, on top of the $350bn reduction seen last year.
“For all the talk Republicans make about deficits, it didn't happen a single quarter under my predecessor, not once. The bottom line is the deficit went up every year under my predecessor before the pandemic and during the pandemic and has gone down both years since I've been here,” said Mr Biden, who said reducing the deficit is just one way to “ease inflationary pressures” that have been a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Biden said his plans to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, cap the price of insulin at $35 per vial, and provide more clean energy tax credits for energy producers and consumers will help further reduce inflation, and stressed that implanting his tax plan would make these things possible while keeping families making under $400,000 per year from paying higher taxes.
He contrasted his plan with a blueprint for a Republican agenda released by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott earlier this year, which Mr Scott called an “ultra-Maga agenda,” referring to ex-president Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
“Let me tell you about this ‘ultra Maga agenda’ — it’s extreme, as most Maga things are,” he said. “it will actually raise taxes on 75 million American families, over 95 per cent of whom make less than $100,000 a year.”
“The working class folks are gonna pay a hell of a lot more — and it goes further than that,” Mr Biden continued. He explained how Mr Scott’s plan calls for all federal legislation to have a five-year sunset, meaning popular social programmes such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would expire and require reauthorisation from Congress every five years.
Such a proposal, if implemented, would give Republicans a chance to fulfil long-held goals of rolling back the core of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programmes.
“It’s hard to make this up — meanwhile, millionaires and billionaires and corporations skate by … I think it is truly outrageous,” he said.
Asked about the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, Mr Biden said the Republican agenda of rolling back rights would not stop with ending women’s right to an abortion.
“This Maga crowd is really the most extreme political organization that's existed in American history,” he said.
