House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy pulled a rare all-nighter, speaking from the House floor for a record eight hours and 32 minutes and managing to delay the vote on the Democrat’s Build Back “Bureaucracy” bill until this morning.
Mr. McCarthy kept the House in session until 5 a.m., providing great detail about what’s in the 2,000-plus page bill and the impact it will have on America.
The mammoth social-spending and climate-change bill truly is the most sweeping expansion of government in 50 years, creating more than 150 new government programs, expanding many others, and imposing steep and onerous new taxes on businesses, ordinary taxpayers, and, yes, millionaires and billionaires.
And, get this, the taxes are counted in how much would be collected over 10 years, yet many of the entitlement spending programs are funded for only a year or two.
And it still adds $367 billion to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO was obligated to score the bill under the rules Speaker Pelosi included with multiple tricks and gimmicks that disguise the real cost of the bill by trillions of dollars.
The Wall Street Journal calls it “the most dishonest spending bill in American history.” The independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the actual cost would be closer to $5 trillion, an incomprehensible amount of money that’s being spent without any congressional hearings to learn the impact.
This is historic borrowing, spending, and taxation that will further fuel inflation that already is rising at the highest rate in 30 years.
President Biden says the bill will tax the wealthiest Americans and that no one making more than $400,000 a year will pay more taxes, but the impact surely will fall on the shoulders of average Americans.
“Democrats plan to hire an army of 87,000 new IRS agents, which will result in 1.2 million new IRS audits,” Leader McCarthy said. “Nearly half of those audits will directly impact families earning $75,000 or less and about one quarter will affect Americans who earn $25,000 per year.”
These are Americans…
- who, if they spend just $28 a day, will find the IRS snooping in their bank accounts to try to collect about $207 billion the government thinks they are hiding from federal tax collectors
- who face even higher prices at their gas stations and grocery stores as inflation soars
- and who find good jobs harder to find as the most innovative parts of our economy are crippled by confiscatory new taxes and crippling regulation.
The bill has lots of perks for the wealthy with $250 billion in tax breaks for the top one percent, according to House Budget Committee Republican Leader Jason Smith of Missouri. They get…
- an average tax break of $25,900 in savings from property taxes on their mansions
- $12,500 in government subsidy for couples making $500,000 a year to purchase luxury electric vehicles
- And who also qualify for new tax credits for homebuying, child care, Pre-K, Obamacare, paid leave, and more.
The bill also allows spending federal taxpayer dollars on abortions – abolishing a bi-partisan precedent set in 1976 with passage of the Hyde Amendment.
So, yes, this is all terribly depressing. The bill passed the House this morning 220-213, with only two votes to spare and with all Republicans voting in opposition. All but one of the Democrat moderates caved and voted for the bill.
The welfare-expansion bill now heads to the Senate where it surely will be amended. Many provisions, such as those expanding immigration and imposing draconian price controls on prescription drugs, face being tossed out by the parliamentarian. Any changes mean the bill will have to return to the House for another round.
Our job is to make sure people understand the huge implications for our country and future generations of creation of a massive social welfare state to seduce our freedom-loving citizens into lives of government dependency.
I know I keep writing about this, but it truly is the most dramatic transformation of our economy in my lifetime, and enormous damage to our freedom and prosperity are on the line.
So during this Thanksgiving holiday, let’s count our blessings. All best to you and your family, and our wonderful country!
