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During Senate floor debate on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) voiced his opposition and cited Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and in his criticisms of Senate Republicans' version of the legislation.
Transcript
00:00Well, Mr. President, I thank my colleague and the ranking member of the Senate Budget
00:07Committee, Senator Merkley.
00:09I just want to start by reading a statement.
00:13This is a quote.
00:15Anyone that says current policy baseline is the right way to go is engaging in intellectual
00:23and economic fraud.
00:25It's intellectually lazy.
00:27My basic mission in life is just to try to create some honest math, unquote.
00:34That wasn't from Senator Van Hollen or anyone on this floor.
00:37This was from a Republican member of the House, Congressman Schweikert from Arizona, talking
00:45about exactly the issue we're debating here in the United States Senate.
00:51Let me read you another quote, a little more colorful.
00:56Again, about this Republican accounting fraud.
01:00Quote, this is fairy dust.
01:03And they're just full of crap.
01:05And I'm going to call them out on it.
01:08Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.
01:11They're right.
01:13This is a fraud.
01:16This is a fraud that would make the Enron scammers blush.
01:22And I quote those House members for a reason, because we can disagree with what they did in
01:26their bill.
01:27And I strongly disagree with it.
01:30But at least they used honest math.
01:31And at least they used the math that is required by the rules here in the Senate.
01:40The honest math that Republicans here in the Senate want to dodge because it will both tell
01:46the American people just how big the deficits are, but also because it will screw up their
01:51whole entire plan.
01:54Just so people listening have some sense of how these Senate numbers are designed to disguise
02:02the real impact of their deficits.
02:05Look at, for example, the basic individual tax rates in the House bill.
02:10And they extended those tax rates from the Trump 2017 bill.
02:16It costs $2.2 trillion under what we call the current law baseline, which is the reality
02:24baseline because that's what it will cost when you understand that they sunset at the
02:30end of this year.
02:31And that's what it will cost to renew them.
02:35So under honest accounting, it's $2.2 trillion.
02:39Under the Senate fraudulent accounting, that $2.2 trillion deficit miraculously becomes an
02:46$83 billion deficit.
02:50Let's look at the House permanent extension of key deductions for businesses.
02:57That would cost honest accounting $821 billion.
03:01Under the Senate accounting scam, $6 billion.
03:06So what we're seeing here is this blatant deliberate effort to mislead the American people about
03:14the true costs of this bill, about the deficit impacts of this bill, about how it will impact
03:20the debt.
03:21And we all know that when the debt goes up and we have to put more of our costs on Uncle Sam's
03:27credit card, it puts upward pressure on interest rates.
03:32That means Americans will pay higher interest rates on their mortgages, on their car loans,
03:40and everything else.
03:42So when you try to hide the deficit impact, you really are trying to fool the American people,
03:49and we're here to blow the whistle.
03:52Now I just want to show our colleagues something that was put together by the Committee for
04:01a Responsible Budget.
04:05And if you look at the blue, you can see for each year, starting this year, 2025-2006, the
04:12blue is what Senate Republicans claim their bill will add to the deficit.
04:18The red is how much more it will actually add to the deficit.
04:25So at the end of this 10-year period, what you see is Senate Republicans are claiming that
04:31their bill will add $441 billion, which is still a big number.
04:35But the real number, the real number when you do honest accounting, when you add up all
04:42of these, it's $4.2 trillion, a much bigger number.
04:48Now I do want to point something out on this chart, I think everybody watching should understand
04:53it.
04:54If you look at these orange parts, these are the additional deficits from tax cuts.
05:01Starting here in year 2029, 2030, you'll see that they actually do start going down.
05:08Why is that?
05:10It's because the tax cut that President Trump promised for no tax on tips, they phase those
05:19out.
05:21This is all just a make-believe ruse.
05:24Yeah, we start providing no tax on tips, but those disappear.
05:30The tax breaks for wealthy people, they go on.
05:34And they go on not just for this 10-year period, but the reason they violate all the rules
05:40of reconciliation is because they keep going on after that.
05:46And as Senator Merkley said, if you look at the entire history of the Byrd rule, that's
05:51Senator Byrd, it was designed to make sure that 51 senators through a vote could not make
05:58these kind of permanent changes in any area, but specifically they were worried about areas
06:04that increase the national deficit and debt.
06:08So what Republican senators are doing is not only misleading the American people, but they're
06:14violating the entire structure that carved out this special procedure that we call reconciliation
06:21for the budget, which was intended to lower deficits and debts, not have them go on forever.
06:29As Senator Merkley has pointed out, I think if you look over a 30-year period, we're talking
06:33about $35 trillion plus additional to the debt.
06:41And Republicans want to hide that from the American people.
06:44That is budget fraud, pure and simple, and it is a violation of the rules of the United
06:51States Senate, this whole special structure that was created not to blow bigger holes in
06:56the debt and deficits, but to actually try to constrain them.
07:01So shame on everybody who's part of this fraud on the American people.
07:05I yield back my time.

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