President Biden and Democrats are launching a full-scale push to discredit the House GOP’s legislation to raise the debt limit until May 2024 in exchange for $4.8 trillion in spending cuts.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer is planning to hold a public hearing on the legislation to “expose its true impact” on everyday Americans.
“We’ll show the American people how the ‘default act’ would rip away [food stamp] benefits for over a million recipients and eliminate Pell grants for tens of thousands of student loan borrowers,” said Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat.
Apart from raising the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, the GOP bill would cut federal spending by $130 billion for the upcoming fiscal year and limit budget growth to 1% annually over the next decade.
The legislation also rescinds at least $90.5 billion in unspent pandemic relief, imposes new work requirements on welfare, cancels Mr. Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, and scraps $200 billion in green-energy tax credits.
House Republicans’ passage of the bill last week gave Speaker Kevin McCarthy a stronger position in demanding negotiations with Mr. Biden on raising the debt limit. But Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the fact that House Republicans circumvented the standard committee process to pass the bill and then departed Washington for a week-long recess.
“No [House] committee with jurisdiction over spending issues had a chance to hold a hearing or a mark-up,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide. “The American people don’t know what’s in the bill because of that process, but we’re happy to show them.”
The Senate Budget Committee is slated to hold a hearing on the bill Thursday, when the House is still out and Mr. McCarthy is traveling abroad. Democrats believe with Mr. McCarthy and his lieutenants absent from Washington, they can succeed in defining the bill on their terms.
“We’ll show the American people how the [bill] would cut critical funding to nearly all sectors of American life, leading to fewer jobs, higher costs, and leave policemen, first responders, border patrol, and our brave veterans all hanging out to dry,” said Mr. Schumer.
Even before the hearing was announced, White House officials warned that if all of the GOP’s proposed cuts are implemented at least 2,000 border patrol agents and 81,000 healthcare workers at the Veterans Affairs Department could be laid off.
The argument stems from the GOP’s reluctance to explain where the $130 billion in immediate cuts would be made. GOP lawmakers have said any spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year will have to be $130 billion less than the $1.7 trillion government funding bill passed by Congress in December.
Democrats say if the cuts are implemented across the board, the move could be particularly painful.
Defense spending alone has grown by nearly 10% — from $782 billion to $858 billion — between 2022 and 2023. Customs and Border Protection, meanwhile, saw its budget jump from $14.6 billion to $16.5 billion
The Department of Veterans Affairs similarly has said it could see a 22% percent cut under the GOP’s debt limit bill. The VA said that would translate to high backlogs and worse services for America’s veterans.
“The proposal would mean 30 million fewer veteran outpatient visits, and 81,000 jobs lost across the Veterans Health Administration … The Veterans Benefits Administration would eliminate more than 6,000 staff, increasing the disability claims backlog by an estimated 134,000 claims,” the VA said in a press statement.
The GOP legislation does not cite specific cuts to the VA or its programs, but it also does not include safeguards to ensure the agency is not affected by the proposed spending decreases.
House Republicans say budget cuts would be targeted at domestic programs and not aimed across the board at every single federal department.
“Let me repeat this again, and we’re going to repeat it several times,” said House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, Illinois Republican. “No cuts to the VA budget. No veteran will lose benefits. Their benefits are owed to them.”
