On Thursday, President Joe Biden released his budget request for fiscal year 2024, prompting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to conclude that socialists rather than Biden are really the ones in charge in the Oval Office.
“The sad truth is the socialists are in charge of the White House. Biden certainly isn’t,” Cruz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, adding that the people that Biden has “surrounded himself with have a very simple approach to everything; they want to spend money they don’t have, [and] they want to raise taxes on you.”
“They’ve unleashed record inflation,” continued Cruz. “This budget that Biden put out would create a $50 trillion national debt, and their view is they can just keep printing money and unleashing inflation and keep borrowing money from China. It’s wildly irresponsible.”
As of March 10, the total federal debt was $31.459 trillion, breaking down to over $94,000 per citizen.
Biden has claimed that his new proposal is fiscally responsible, but many have pushed back on that claim. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget advocacy group, said, “When it comes to fixing the debt, this is by no means an award-winning budget.”
The $6.8 trillion proposal, which the White House claimed will ultimately reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over a 10-year period, was touted by director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young, as the “start of a healthy dialogue.”
However, Biden’s proposal seemed to ignore many of the issues impacting many Americans. Fentanyl, the drug killing tens of thousands of Americans every year, was mentioned only twice in the 182-page budget, while the word equity was invoked 63 times and the word queer was mentioned seven times.
Biden proposed to spend only $40 million to combat fentanyl trafficking while allotting 7.3 billion for refugees. The budget would also only fund an additional 350 border patrol agents to tackle the stream of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S.
“You know what is not in this budget?” Cruz asked Hannity. “Funds to secure our southern border. They want to fund 87,000 IRS agents, but they don’t have funds for significant numbers of new border patrol agents. They don’t have funds for significant numbers of DEA agents to stop the fentanyl crisis that led to over 100,000 overdoses that happened last year on Biden’s watch.”
“This is a tax and spend budget,” continued the senator. “They’ve got $5.5 trillion in new taxes in this budget. That includes taxes directly on energy. So, remember all of the Democrats who said they wanted the gas prices low? They were lying.”
The Biden administration’s “extreme and really dangerous” priorities revealed in the bill “tell you who they are,” said Cruz, noting that as far is Biden is concerned, issues surrounding inflation, opioid deaths and border security are outweighed by so-called environmental justice, transgender issues and climate alarmism.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) agreed with Cruz, stating that Biden’s “budget makes his priorities clear. His administration is at war with the American people’s freedom and prosperity. … We need to shrink Washington and grow America. His budget would do the opposite.”
Cruz added that the “political document” has “zero-point-zero percent chance of being enacted into law.
After unveiling the plan on Thursday, Biden said, “I want to make it clear I’m ready to meet with the speaker anytime, tomorrow, if he has his budget. Lay it down, tell me what you want to do. I’ll show you what I want to do, see what we can agree on.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), however, responded to the plan, saying, “Biden’s budget is a reckless proposal doubling down on the same Far Left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis.”
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