WASHINGTON — Republicans are keeping up an offensive against a massive social spending bill being pushed by congressional Democrats.
On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) went through a list of many things in the bill that he takes issue with, while also accusing his colleagues on the other side of the aisle of working in secret in order to advance the bill. He said that the bill has an advertised price tag of $3.5 trillion, but that the bill really equates to much more spending than that.
“All told Democrats have proposed $7 trillion in spending in this year alone,” said Young. “Let me put that in perspective. $7 trillion is roughly the mathematical equivalent of putting $1 million of credit card debt on every man, woman, and child in the state of Indiana.”
President Biden met with progressive Democrats in Washington this week where he told them that he is dropping his desired overall price tag of the bill. What was $3.5 trillion, the president is now in the ballpark of $1.7 trillion.
Young said that topics such as this need to be discussed among all lawmakers in Senate committee meetings, such as the Finance Committee which Young sits on.
“The full finance committee has not held a policy hearing in months,” Young said. “To my knowledge, no Senate committee has held any hearing on this bill at all. You see this reckless tax and spend bill has been done largely in secret.”
Young accused Democrats are including tax write-offs for wealthy elites on the west coast in the bill. He also denounced a provision in the bill that would open the federal government up to your banking information if you spend more than $600 at any given time.
Finally, he took issue with a provision giving tax write-offs to Americans who buy an electric vehicle.
“The spending bill raises the electric vehicle tax credit by up to $5,000, among other expansions with the price tag of up to $42 billion,” he said. “You only get part of this credit, if your electric vehicle comes from a unionized plant.”
Young said this would essentially leave the Toyota, Honda, and Subaru plants in Indiana hanging out to dry if they started rolling electric vehicles off the assembly lines because these plants do not have unionized workers.
The final bill is still being pieced together by Democrats which will also likely drop tuition-free community college from the bill altogether. Biden is pressing for an agreement to be done by the time he arrives at a climate conference later this month.