Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters he can edit federal spending and revenue baselines as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
“As Budget Chairman, under section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act, I have the authority to determine baseline numbers for spending and revenue. Under that authority, I have determined that current policy will be the budget baseline regarding taxation," Graham said, according to HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic.
The full legislation text was posted on the committee's website.
The remark quickly led to ridicule from Democrats and critics on social media, who called out perceived hypocrisy from the GOP.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz (HI) swiftly called out the financial impact.
"They are going to double the debt," he cautioned on X.
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Jesse Lee, former communications aide under the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, asked, "Why stop there? Just say the whole bill is included in the baseline and now it’s free. In fact, they could have spent another $5 trillion on new bridges to nowhere and decided against, so actually it saves $5 trillion."
The economic justice organization The Groundwork Collaborative posted, "Trump’s tax giveaway is so unpopular and economically damaging that his cronies in Congress had to replace math with magical thinking to move it forward."
The Bulwark's Sam Stein pointed out the hypocrisy in an X post.
"Can't really claim to be the party of debt reduction when you do this. Sorry. This will wipe out by many-fold anything DOGE discovers," he said.
Evergreen Action co-founder Jamal Raad quipped, "Future Budget Chair @SenJeffMerkley now has the power to declare any baseline for future reconciliation proposals. Good to know."
Daily Kos staff writer Emily C. Singer wrote, "Republicans are about to explode the deficit to get tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers."
Kelly Allen, the executive director of West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, asked where all the "debt hawks" were.
Washington Post opinions editor Benjy Sarlin drew attention to what Democrats could do when the shoe is on the other foot.
"Democrats came within 1-2 votes of passing trillions of dollars in temporary government programs with no plan to fund them later on — this is a precedent that could really matter when [the] other side is in power," he claimed on X.
