U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) claims that President Joe Biden is “playing Russian roulette with the country’s finances” for refusing to negotiate on the current state of the debt plan.
This follows House Republicans passing the Limit, Save, Grow Act last week, which aims to address the debt ceiling and implement common sense spending reforms to limit wasteful spending, save taxpayer dollars, and grow the economy in hopes that President Biden would negotiate with them.
On Wednesday, the White House posted a report outlining the possible economic repercussions of inaction on the debt ceiling. The report warned that failure to increase or suspend the debt ceiling might trigger a recession, which could leave the nation in worse shape than it was in 2008.
According to Senator Vance, President Biden has refused to negotiate from the very beginning.
“House Republicans have done something very simple, but I think very profound: they’ve advanced a program that pays the country’s debts while putting the country on a more sustainable path financially. And what Joe Biden has done is refuse to negotiate from the very beginning. He’s basically playing Russian roulette with the country’s finances and telling Republicans they need to do exactly what he wants them to do or he’s going to drive the American economy off the cliff,” Senator Vance said.
The Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” successor to the House-passed Build Back Better Act of late 2021, was touted by President Biden too, among other things, to help reduce the country’s crippling inflation.
Democrats claimed that the act would ensure the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay their “fair share” by closing tax loopholes and boosting IRS funding, all without raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 annually.
Nonpartisan analysis, however, revealed that the legislation would increase taxes on low- and middle-income Americans during a period of declining gross domestic product and high inflation; it would also increase taxes on manufacturers, exacerbate supply-chain disruptions, cost American jobs and investment, and do very little to lower inflation.
Now, Biden’s most recent budget proposal, which is considered to be his biggest tax increase to date, will only make things worse for Ohio taxpayers by hiking income tax rates to the highest levels in the industrialized world.
Biden would increase revenues by $4 trillion on a gross basis during the following 10 years when combined with the tax increases in the Build Back Better Act, which the budget assumes is passed into law. Economic growth would be harmed by the Biden tax increases in the budget and the Build Better Back Act, which would undermine investment incentives and productive capacity at the worst possible time.
House Republicans Limit, Save, Grow Act would repeal unspent COVID relief funds, repeal most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) expansions to energy and climate tax credits, repeal the IRA’s increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), change energy, regulatory, and permitting policies, impose or expand work requirements in certain sectors, and return total discretionary spending to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 level in FY 2024.
According to Vance, Biden has put it entirely on House Republicans to come and negotiate a deal.
“What Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans just did is save the President of the United States from his own failure of leadership. This could have been a very productive process if Joe Biden from the get-go had shown some leadership, which is what you should expect from the President of the United States. Instead, he put it all on House Republicans to come to negotiate a deal. And that’s exactly what they did. The last thing I want to say, I echo everybody’s comments from earlier, the last thing I want to say is I’ve heard a lot of criticisms from Democrats about things they don’t like in this package. I guarantee you, all 217 Republicans who voted for it didn’t like at least one thing in the package, But they came together because paying the country’s debts and doing our job as leadership is more important than any single person,” Senator Vance said.
Last week, Ohio Republican U.S. House Representatives Bill Johnson (R-OH-06), Troy Balderson (R-OH-02), Brad Wenstrup (R-OH-02), Max Miller (R-OH-07), and Warren Davidson (R-OH-08) called on Biden to negotiate with them to address the nations growing debt.
Even Democratic Ohio U.S. House Representatives such as Greg Landsman (D-OH-01) and Marcy Kaptur (R-OH-09) are speaking out supporting debt limit negotiations between Biden and the Republican Party.
According to Senator Vance, President Biden needs to copy the leadership initiatives shown by House Republicans to address the nation’s growing debt problem.
“Joe Biden should take a cue from Congressional Republicans, show some leadership, come to the table, the country needs him to do exactly that,” Senator Vance said.
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Hannah Poling is a lead reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Hannah on Twitter @HannahPoling1. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “JD Vance” by JD Vance. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Quick PS.
