Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) spoke about the Republican budget reconciliation plan after the House passed the framework.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you very much, Leader Schumer.
00:06When it comes to fiscal responsibility, Republicans have lost their damn minds.
00:13Back in 1974, all 100 senators came together to pass the Budget and Impoundment Control Act,
00:21and it had three pillars.
00:23The first is, within a 10-year period, it had to reduce the deficit.
00:28The second pillar was that in every year after the first 10 years, it had to be deficit-neutral
00:35or reduce the deficit.
00:37And the third was, we were going to have honesty on the numbers by creating the Congressional
00:42Budget Office and having impartial, independent, nonpartisan numbers so we'd have no more smoke
00:49and mirrors, no more gimmicks.
00:51We'd be honest with ourselves and honest with the American people.
00:56Three pillars.
00:57Well, the Republicans struck down the first of those pillars in 1996, when they said,
01:03we're going to use this filibuster-free pathway that even Robert Byrd voted for, for one reason,
01:10reduce the deficit to increase the deficit through tax giveaways to the richest Americans.
01:15Now they're poised to strike down the second and third pillars of fiscal responsibility,
01:20driving up deficits through reconciliation in years 11 and beyond, making tax cuts permanent.
01:27So now CBO has to estimate 30 years out, the impact, and abandoning the CBO numbers and saying that the budget chair in the Senate can create any set of fabricated numbers that budget chair wants.
01:44This is insane.
01:47Last week, we really emphasized the fact that families lose and billionaires win.
01:55Two trillion in cuts to programs like health care and housing and education to fund additional tax giveaways to the richest Americans and additional debt.
02:06But I asked for CBO, with the updated bill, the Republicans proposing, to take an updated look at what the debt would be as a factor as well.
02:19And now we have the results, as Leader Schumer has pointed out.
02:24It isn't $4.6 trillion over 10 years.
02:27It's $7 trillion over 10 years.
02:30It's not $37 trillion or more over 30 years.
02:34It's $52 trillion.
02:36Let's keep this in perspective by understanding that the current debt run up by our predecessors over 249 years since the Declaration of Independence
02:48is less than $37 trillion right now, about $36.5 trillion.
02:53They want to add in a single vote, $52 trillion.
02:57And that's assuming the conservative interest numbers that CBO is using.
03:03Let's consider what happened yesterday.
03:06Yesterday, there was a little surge of loss of faith in the American economy.
03:10And at the same time, stocks were being sold off, which normally means people move their money into bonds and interest rates drop.
03:19The reverse happened.
03:20People fled bonds as well.
03:22This certainly panicked the administration and led to the 90-day pause.
03:26If that happens in the future and interest rates are 1% higher than CBO is estimating,
03:31this isn't $52 trillion, it's now $76 trillion.
03:36Republicans are paving the path to debt that will burden our children for a generation to come, hurting normal families.
03:47If we take and look at the fact that interest rates under CBO's analysis will go up,
03:54that means higher interest families have to pay on their home loans.
03:58That means higher interest on their auto loans.
04:01It means a shrinking economy.
04:03And the share of that shrinking economy will average $4,300 in current today dollars for a family 30 years out.
04:12So impoverishing families in the future, cutting the program's families depend upon to thrive,
04:21inflicting massive debt on the next generation.
04:24No matter how you look at it, the Republicans have lost their mind on fiscal responsibility
04:32and on the understanding that we need to strengthen, not diminish, the foundations for families to thrive.