Smucker Demonstrates Biden’s Budget Raises Taxes on Middle Class Americans

Washington— Rep. Lloyd Smucker (PA-11) questioned U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during the House Ways and Means Committee’s President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request hearing.  Click to watch Rep. Smucker’s questions to Sec. Yellen.

“President Biden’s budget raises taxes on Americans making less than $400,000—violating his repeated pledges to the contrary—by letting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire. Despite raising $7 trillion in taxes, the president’s budget increases the national debt by over $16 trillion. The president’s proposed budgets are a disaster for America’s fiscal trajectory,” said Rep. Smucker.

Smucker began his questioning by asking Sec. Yellen what the projected debt would be at the end of the ten-year budget window. The increase in the gross national debt in President Biden’s budget is over $16 trillion.

The Financial Report of the United States Government released by the Secretary Yellen’s Department of Treasury on February 15, 2024, “indicate[s] that current policy is not sustainable” because of the debt-to-GDP ratio increasing from about 100% currently to over 500% within the next seventy-five years. The national debt would be over five times larger than the size of the entire United States economy.

Smucker noted in his comments and entered into the committee’s record a Washington Post fact-checking article that demonstrates the Biden administration has no plans to stop middle-class tax hikes when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires.

Facts on Biden’s Budget:

- $86.6 trillion in spending over the next decade,

- $16.3 trillion in cumulative deficits over the next decade,

- $7 trillion in taxes on American families and small businesses

- $12.6 trillion spent on paying the interest on the national debt, which is $2 trillion more than spent on the national defense.

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