Boyle Opening Statement at Markup of Republicans’ FY 2025 Budget
WASHINGTON, DC —Today, Pennsylvania Congressman Brendan F. Boyle, Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, delivered opening remarks at a Budget Committee markup of House Republicans' FY 2025 budget resolution, which a report from Budget Committee Democrats shows would pave the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billion-dollar corporations and the ultra-rich while making draconian cuts to the investments Americans rely on.
Ranking Member Boyle's remarks as delivered:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to be back with you today. Frankly, there is no debate: America's economy today is the strongest in the world. Here are the indisputable facts: Under President Biden, nearly 15 million jobs have been created. That's five and a half million more jobs than the pre-pandemic peak. In 2023, we added an average of 250,000 jobs every single month. And last year, the percentage of working-age women in the workforce reached the highest level since the 1940s.
The stock market is reaching all-time highs, and Americans have applied to create 16 million new businesses in just the last three years. Wages are now growing faster than inflation, and inflation has fallen from a peak of 9.1 percent to now 3.1 percent.
None of this happened by accident. It happened because Democrats took action to rescue our economy, invest in American manufacturing, rebuild our infrastructure, lower health insurance costs, and finally let Medicare negotiate lower prescription drug prices. Those are the facts, and again, they are indisputable.
While President Biden and Congressional Democrats have delivered an economy that is the envy of the world, Republicans have turned the House of Representatives into an embarrassment. The do-nothing chaos caucus driving the wheel of the House Republican Conference will talk a big game about the border, but then refuse to actually put the bipartisan border legislation on the floor. They will complain about inflation, but then do nothing to lower costs for families.
As a member of this very own committee asked recently on the House floor, what exactly are the achievements of this Republican majority? Being the first to depose their own speaker? Impeaching a cabinet member over policy disagreements? How does that help the American people?
And the answer, of course, is it doesn't. And the theme of abandoning the American people continues throughout this budget being put forward today.
This MAGA budget is an assault on everything from health care to education. It would strip funding for food assistance for those in need, attack Medicaid, and make indiscriminate cuts to many government programs upon which Americans rely .
Whether it's making it harder to put food on the table or keep shelter over your head, this budget does plenty of harm, and it does this all while paving the way for an extension of the Trump tax cuts, 83 percent of which went to the richest 1 percent.
So let's be clear, this budget is extreme. Putting food assistance and Pell grants for low-income students on the chopping block while extending tax cuts for billionaires, is extreme. Selling out working families to line the pockets of price gouging corporations, while making it easier for the rich to cheat on their taxes, is extreme.
Not a single Republican joined Democrats to cap insulin prices for seniors and lower health insurance costs for millions. Instead, they support this budget that attacks the progress we have made under President Biden.
I would add, even after trillions of dollars in draconian cuts, they make to programs that help the most in need, this Republican budget still doesn't balance. In order to achieve that, they jettisoned the assumptions of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other reputable sources to rely on astonishing predictions of economic growth that somehow creates three extra trillion dollars out of thin air.
So that's where we are here today. Saying we're here to talk about how Republicans want to fund the government for the next decade would be charitable. We're here to talk about how Republicans plan to take away health care from millions of Americans. We're here to talk about how Republicans plan to cut funding that gives our children a better future.
And Democrats are here to say we completely reject this bleak and backwards budget and all of its misplaced priorities. We will proudly offer a series of amendments today that protect American families from reckless GOP cuts, defend Social Security and Medicare, and preserve the historic climate investments of the Inflation Reduction Act.
This budget is a road map to making life worse, not better, for middle class families. We need a vision that looks to the future, not the past. And thankfully, we will get to hear that vision when President Biden addresses the nation tonight.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I say this: After the historic progress we have made over the last three years, this is no time to turn back the clock and end it all.
With that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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