(AFP) – The Republican-led US Congress adopted a budget Thursday that unlocks trillions of dollars for President Donald Trump’s agenda, jump-starting what Democrats say is a plan to dismantle social welfare in favor of tax cuts for the rich. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the blueprint freed up Republicans to deliver on promises Trump made in his election campaign for “historic” spending reductions and an extension of his expiring 2017 tax relief.
“We will not waver in our commitment to delivering a bill that reduces spending, secures the border, keeps taxes low for families… and makes government work better for all Americans,” he said. The successful vote will be a relief to Trump, who was facing a rebellion from Republican fiscal hawks that exposed the limits of his iron grip and raised doubts over his party’s ability to coalesce around his agenda. He took to social media to congratulate lawmakers for laying the groundwork for what he said would be the “Largest Tax and Regulation Cuts ever even contemplated.”
Adjusted for inflation, Trump’s 2017 tax relief bill was the fourth largest since 1940, according to PolitiFact, and seventh as a percentage of GDP. Democrats see the budget resolution as the opening salvo in Republican plans — spelled out in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” manifesto — to drastically rein in the federal bureaucracy. It will trigger a devastating downsizing of essential services, critics warn, compounding anger over the campaign by Trump’s tech billionaire advisor Elon Musk to slash federal agencies.
The budget resolution raises the country’s borrowing limit by $5 trillion to cover a renewal of Trump’s expiring tax relief through 2034, which is expected to add at least the same amount to the country’s debt.
– ‘Massive tax breaks’ – The budget blueprint, which narrowly passed the House after getting the green light Saturday in the Senate, sets targets for overall spending and mandates $4 billion in cuts. But Republican leaders are eyeing much more ambitious savings of $1.5 trillion, including $880 billion that opponents say would have to come mostly from the Medicaid health care program for low-income families.
Democrats argue that Trump’s first-term tax giveaway disproportionately benefited wealthy individuals and corporations, and extending them would compound inequality. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans for what he called “the largest Medicaid cut in American history in order to pass massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors like Elon Musk.”
“House Republicans broke their promise to address the high cost of living, and they lied about their intention to enact their extreme Project 2025 agenda,” he said in a letter to his members. “The harm being unleashed by Donald Trump and the (Republicans) is staggering.” The two sides of Congress were required to adopt identical versions of the budget before lawmakers can move on Trump’s domestic agenda, which adds beefed-up border security and boosted energy production to the tax relief.
It advanced from the Senate with votes to spare but barely made it through the rubber-stamp vote in the House, put in jeopardy by a rank-and-file rebellion over the spending cuts. Right-wing fiscal hawks in the House were furious over what they saw as insufficient savings in the final version, after it was amended by the Senate. Johnson — backed by his Senate counterpart John Thune — vowed to pursue his much more ambitious $1.5 trillion spending cuts figure, and this public commitment appeared to have assuaged some on his back benches.
– Frankie TAGGART
© 2024 AFP
