At Budget Hearing, Boyle Sounds the Alarm on Devastating Fiscal Consequences of GOP Giveaways to Billionaires

Ranking Member Boyle’s full opening remarks as delivered:

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, I always appreciate the spirit in which you conduct yourself in these hearings, and the intellectual honesty that you have. Even if we don't totally agree on a number of the specifics and come from different philosophies you have, to your credit, said many times about both parties be contributing to the national debt. I think I'll take issue as far as what percentage of the blame lies where, but nonetheless I always appreciate the good bipartisan spirit you operate in. It's one of the reasons why you and I were able to work together on a piece of legislation that became signed into law last year to help the Congressional Budget Office serve Congress and the American people better.

Now, as for this hearing, when I was told by my staff that there was going to be a hearing on the fiscal state of the nation, I have to admit I made a prediction that was wrong. I said surely the Republicans will cancel that hearing because the last thing they want to talk about is what it has only taken Donald Trump three months to do to this fiscal state of this nation.

Just think back to only three months ago. We had by no means a perfect economy, but we had an economy that was growing and had been growing for four straight years. We had inflation down to the low twos — down almost exactly at target level, which would enable, and was projected to enable the Fed to cut interest rates this year three times.

All of that progress and things headed in the right direction. Every economist, liberal, conservative, moderate, predicting continued growth as far as the eye could see. Three months later, what do we have now? Decline. A 0.3% contraction. It is projected next quarter, the quarter we are in now, will even be worse, which means that would hit the textbook definition of a recession.

And prices? What did last week's report show? All that progress we made over several years getting back to the 2% target — gone. Prices jumped to about three point a half percent, and that's before the full impact of the tariffs have taken effect. Markets down, prices up, growth down, and projected to get even worse. One person did that — the president of the United States.

There have been multiple recessions in the last 25 years — three previous ones. 2001, which was prompted by the  9/11 terrorist attacks. 2008, the Great Recession, which was prompted by the collapse of the real estate bubble, and 2020, of course, which was prompted by the COVID Pandemic.

This is the first recession, I believe, in my lifetime, entirely created by the policies of one president. So. What can we, the first article of the Constitution, do about it? We are, after all, a co-equal branch of government. Nothing. We have a few Senate Republicans who are willing to vote against the tariffs.

Otherwise, we hear crickets from House Republican leadership. Do we really think our nation's founders would've been comfortable with giving unilateral tariff power to one executive? Of course not. It is time for Congress to finally on a bipartisan basis, have a few of our Republican friends join with us on the Democratic side of the aisle and say enough with Donald Trump's price increases.

The American people literally can't afford it. Our economy can't afford it. Yet, we don't see any action whatsoever in this regard. Instead, we see a reconciliation plan that is promising to provide up to $7 trillion of tax cuts almost all of which will be debt financed. We hear a lot about deficit and debt.

This bill will make things far worse. In fact, one very smart not- Democratic source that I talk to that follows the bond markets believes there is not sufficient demand in the international markets to buy all of the debt that we will soon be flooding onto those markets if the Republican reconciliation plan passes. It is true there are some in the House approach who have advocated the biggest Medicaid cuts in American history, the biggest cuts to new to nutrition assistance in American history, cuts to student loan programs, and much more. I vigorously disagree with those cuts. I disagree with it on principle and on philosophy, but I will say at least there's an effort by some on the House Republican side to at least pay for some of their tax cuts.

I don't think that's the approach though that we will by and large see. Instead what we see is something called the current policy baseline. Now this is terrible inside baseball speak, but let me very briefly explain what current policy baseline is. It is a total fraud. Imagine I ate a brownie yesterday and because I ate a brownie yesterday, the brownie that I eat today will cost me zero calories, and the brownie that I eat tomorrow, zero calories. For the rest of my life, calorie free brownies. Why? Because I'll have deemed, well, it's the current policy baseline. I had a brownie yesterday. Give me a break. We think we have a debt problem right now.

Can you imagine if current policy baseline becomes the new norm around here? I predict both sides will use it. It will be just as — mark these words and save this   — it'll be just as disingenuous regardless of who uses it to pretend that something costs $0 and zero calories when we know it just ain't so.

So with that I'll yield back, Mr. Chairman, and I will make a final plea. Let us stop the pain being inflicted on American families now, before it's too late. Let's have Congress reassert its powers as it relates to tariffs and trade. I yield back.

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