Republican whines about infrastructure bill after his own colleagues predict his little rant
Republicans lined up to promote the infrastructure agreement in the Senate Sunday night. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) was the first, predicting that his colleagues were about to trash the bill as a huge spending bill, an addition to the already ballooning deficits and something that would likely cause inflation.
Portman could have written Sen. Mike Lee's (R-UT) speech himself based on the predictions. Lee ranted that the U.S. is bringing in about $3 trillion while its spending $4 trillion and that it can't sustain the spending.
It's an ironic claim that Lee didn't seem to have when he voted to support the GOP tax cut in 2018. The nearly $2 trillion bill did little to bring in anything for the U.S. Treasury, despite promises from Sec. Steven Mnuchin that it would. In fact, at one point, Mnuchin even claimed that the U.S. would make more money because of the bill.
The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) predicted it would increase the deficit by $1 trillion over 10 years. They predicted it would help the economy grow at 0.8 percent per year.
"The Tax Foundation analysis stated that the tax cuts would cost $1.47 trillion in decreased revenue while adding only $600 billion in growth and savings," wrote Kimberly Amadeo in a report. "Congress could choose to make the individual cuts permanent before they expire. If that happens, the cost of the tax cuts would rise to $2.3 trillion instead of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years."
So, perhaps Lee isn't exactly the best person to listen to on deficit spending.
Meanwhile, one of Biden's ideas for bringing in more tax dollars was immediately destroyed by Republicans. Biden wanted to increase funding to hire enough people to go after billionaire and millionaire tax cheaters. There is an estimated $1 trillion in income the United States is losing every year due to tax cheats, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said. So, if Lee wants to create a balanced budget, all he'd have to do is support collecting the bills that are due. But it was a non-starter with Republicans. They never explained why they don't feel that the rich should pay their taxes.
See Portman's speech and Lee's rant below:
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