On the recordJune 9, 2021
I am here to join my colleague from Iowa who just spoke and others to talk about the President's budget. The budget is comprised of a couple of things. One is what the spending is going to be for the country. The spending, which is unbelievably high and at unprecedented levels of spending at a time of unprecedented deficits and a long-term debt that is at the highest level ever, is concerning. The second is that the budget is about revenue. So on the spending side, we all expected it to be a very high number--over $6 trillion in new spending--but on the tax side, we also have huge new tax increases. The Senator from Iowa just said it is the largest tax increase in the history of the country. He is the former chairman of the tax-writing committee, chairman of the Budget Committee here, and he has been through a lot of tax increases over the years. This is the largest one in the history of the country. It is coming at a time when you don't want to raise taxes because we are coming out of this pandemic, trying to get the economy back on track. One reason that we were in good shape before COVID-19 is because we actually put in place some tax reforms and some tax cuts that really worked. Let's be very specific about that. In the months just before COVID-19 hit, we had an economy that was hitting on all cylinders in every respect. In February of that year--so February before the COVID-19 crisis hit--we had the 19th straight month of wage growth of over 3 percent.…
