‘Country Is On An Unsustainable Fiscal Path’: Hagerty Urges Congress To Get Fiscal House In Order

3 months ago

During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup on Thursday, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) spoke about the Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Hagerty. Thank you Madam Chair and Madam Vice Chair for your leadership.

00:09Committee has now reported 11 bipartisan bills favorably to the floor and that's

00:12an impressive feat. I want to start with an observation. Currently our country is

00:17on an unsustainable fiscal path. We can't continue to spend more than we collect.

00:23While the spending that this committee oversees, discretionary spending, is not

00:27the main reason for our fiscal problems, it's often the easiest to blame and

00:31ironically it's the type of spending that will be crowded out by other

00:35unavoidable obligations if Congress doesn't get our fiscal house in order.

00:39According to the Congressional Budget Office, our debt is growing faster than

00:42the economy and our net interest payments on the debt are bigger than our

00:47entire defense budget. That means we'll be paying more in interest payments on

00:51our debt than our own national security. Soon the interest payments will exceed

00:55all 12 of these bills combined. Growing interest payments will inevitably force

00:59either more discretionary spending cuts or more debt which will only compound

01:03the problem. This simply cannot continue forever. We must voluntarily get our

01:08fiscal house in order while we can or the markets will force our hand down the

01:12road and the outcome I can assure you will not be pretty. I'm pleased to join

01:17Senator Van Hollen today in presenting the fiscal year 2025 committee

01:20recommendation for the Financial Services and General Government

01:23Appropriations Act. I want to thank Senator Van Hollen and his staff, Jen

01:26Becker, Diana Hamilton, Maddie Dunn, Maria Calderon, and Peyton Thomas for working

01:31in a bipartisan manner with me and my staff Dan Brant and Winnie Chang

01:34throughout the process. The subcommittee hosted two hearings this year and

01:39received requests from 58 senators that we were able to accommodate. The bill

01:43before us today is the result of tough bipartisan negotiations and compromises

01:47by both sides. It's a constructive step towards successfully negotiating a final

01:52bill with the House. While no one got everything they wanted, the bill includes

01:55a host of important provisions that improve the efficiency and operations of

01:59the federal government, protect U.S. economic competitiveness, and enhance

02:03service for our constituencies. I want to highlight some of the

02:07most important provisions in the bill. First, the bill increases funding for the

02:11judicial branch including an 11 million increase for the security and protection

02:15for Supreme Court justices. Further, the bill freezes the discretionary budget

02:19for the IRS for the third consecutive fiscal year. Third, this bill continues

02:23for a second consecutive year hiring freezes at the Securities and Exchange

02:26Commission and rejects a 414 million dollar increase requested by the

02:31president's budget while including several key oversight provisions for the

02:35SEC's rulemaking process to ensure the public has meaningful input and that

02:40proposed rules are based on robust economic analysis. The bill includes

02:45critical funding to combat the fentanyl crisis that's killing thousands of

02:48Americans every year. This bill also includes critical investments at the

02:52Department of Treasury. Finally, while this is an important step, I want to be very

02:56clear that I don't support everything that's included here. There's still

03:00issues that we need to address and I look forward to working with Chairman

03:02Van Hollen and our counterparts in the House of Representatives to solve these

03:05issues during the conference. Generally, I think there's too much

03:09emergency designated spending spread across these bills. Spending designated

03:13as an emergency is exempt from the discretionary spending limits. For a

03:17spending priority to be truly an emergency, it should be necessary, it

03:21should be urgent, it should be unforeseen, and it should be not permanent. Some of

03:25the spending in this bill and these bills don't meet that criteria. However,

03:29my main concern is the 6.6 billion dollar budget gimmick in this bill that

03:33proposes to take phantom savings from the Children's Health Insurance Program.

03:36To my knowledge, it's the first time that this offset has been included in the

03:40FSGG spending bill. It doesn't belong here. The reason I call this as gimmick

03:45is because it pretends to cut spending that will never be spent and then it

03:48turns around and spends that on something that's made up savings and

03:52something else. In conference, it's my aim to replace this gimmick with real

03:55savings. For example, mandatory funds from the IRS enforcement account that were

03:59rescinded last year on a bipartisan basis. Notwithstanding this concern, given

04:03the many positive elements of this bill and the importance of moving the bill

04:06forward through regular order through a conference process with the House, I

04:09support this bill today and I thank my colleagues for their support.

‘Country Is On An Unsustainable Fiscal Path’: Hagerty Urges Congress To Get Fiscal House In Order

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