Biden’s budget is offering more taxes, spending, and crippling debt

Every day, Tennesseans and Americans struggle to pay rent, afford groceries, and fill up their tanks because of President Biden’s reckless, inflationary spending that has added more than $6 trillion to our national debt.

In fact, since Inauguration Day, prices across the board are up 18.6 percent, meaning a family in Tennessee has to spend an additional $922 a month—$11,064 over a year—just to tread water and afford the same goods and services. And as wages struggle to keep up with price increases, real average earnings for Americans have decreased by 4.2 percent over the same time period.

But instead of changing course and restoring fiscal responsibility, President Biden last week rolled out a fiscal year 2025 budget of $7.3 trillion—a dangerous proposal that would further fuel inflation and put our country on the path to insolvency.

Under the President’s plan, for example, the federal government would spend a whopping $86 trillion between FY 2025 and FY 2034, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Over that same time period, the national debt would increase by $18 trillion.

Alongside this massive spending, President Biden is calling for $5.5 trillion in new taxes, including a business tax rate hike that, according to the Tax Foundation, would put 159,000 Americans out of work and eliminate $720 billion from our gross domestic product.

In the words of one budget expert, the President’s surge in spending and taxes would be “the highest sustained income tax burden in American history as a share of the economy.”

With persistent inflation and our national debt at an all-time high, I know Tennesseans and many Americans are wondering: What is President Biden thinking?

Apparently, the President is more concerned about overtaxing families to fund his left-wing priorities than putting our country on a better fiscal path.

Among his reckless funding items, President Biden is proposing at least $50 billion to fund the Left’s radical Green New Deal agenda, including $3 billion for the United Nations Green Climate Fund, $8 billion to train young people to “tackle climate change,” and $1.5 billion to promote “environmental justice.” The budget would also provide $104 billion to help the IRS shake down hard-working taxpayers and $500 million for “free” community college.

This short list—which amounts to more than $150 billion—is just a fraction of the wasteful spending in President Biden’s budget proposal.

Yet on issues of vital importance, President Biden is pulling funding.

Just as the New Axis of Evil is ramping up attacks on our service members and allies, the President’s budget, when accounting for inflation, would reduce funding for the Defense Department. As a result, the U.S. Army would decrease in numbers, the U.S. Navy fleet would shrink, and $600 million in funding would be pulled from the U.S. Space Force, weakening our security and leaving us more vulnerable to attack from our adversaries.

Thankfully, President Biden’s disastrous budget has little chance of getting through Congress. But if the President was serious about strengthening our country, he should be looking for ways to save taxpayers’ money to ensure that we leave a better fiscal future for our children and grandchildren who will be left to pay our bills.

That’s why, in the U.S. Senate, I have introduced legislation to cut federal spending—excluding defense, homeland security, and veterans’ affairs—by 1 percent, 2 percent, and 5 percent. Last year alone, this measure would have saved American taxpayers more than $30 billion.

As we cut spending, Congress must also address the ballooning size of the federal government, which now employs approximately 2.2 million bureaucrats, by freezing salaries and hiring. This crucial measure would provide substantial savings: When President Obama announced a two-year hiring freeze for the federal government in 2010, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated the move would save $60 billion over 10 years. With approximately 100,000 federal employees retiring each year and federal salaries at an average $101,000, many billions more could be saved with a hiring freeze.

Every day, millions of families in Tennessee and across the country look for savings in their own budgets to make ends meet. It is far past time that the federal government did the same—and these measures would be a big step in the right direction to making that happen.