Rep. Yarmuth Calls Trump’s $4.8 Trillion Budget 'Destructive'

President Trump released his annual

budget

yesterday. The $4.8

trillion

spending plan will impose some deep cuts to entitlement programs while increasing defense and entitlement spending, and that would push gross federal debt above $30

trillion

over the next decade. US House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth responded to President Trump's proposal by writing what the president has portrayed as a

destructive

and irrational

budget

that intentionally targets working families and vulnerable Americans. He has broken his promises to the American people. Congressman John Yarmuth joins us from Capitol Hill. to talk to you, thank you very much, this is how you feel about the budget, what is your solution?

Well, one question, what is the problem at the moment? We have two problems. We have a deficit problem. It is getting worse. We are now handling a trillion dollars. one more year deficit which is a very significant increase since Donald Trump was in office but we also have a deficit in the country we have an infrastructure deficit we have an education deficit we have to start investing in the American people if we are going to have a stable foundation for our future and at this time, when interest rates are still very low, the time is right to do it, instead, what this Republican budget proposes is to reduce taxes in addition to extending the tax cuts after 2025, that's an additional 1.5 trillion. dollars in reduced revenue for the government and they made up for it with significant cuts in Medicare Medicaid Social Security the SNAP program a lot of what we call our automatic stabilizers that are there to protect people in the event of a downturn in the economy so this has exactly the wrong priorities but it's the same playbook the republicans have used for the last two decades any time they can cut taxes and then cut entitlement programs to pay for them well i mean we all know the budget deficit is an issue, but it's not like the Democrats are also tackling entitlements the way they need to be done to get them under control, so what can you recommend?

Well, actually, one of the things that we've been working on is some very important initiatives to reduce prescription drugs. prices that's one of the biggest drivers of our health care costs and therefore our Medicare and Medicaid spending, we'd love to get the cooperation of Republicans in Congress and the administration to work on that with us, because we passed HR 3 legislation which we think would go a long way, we're working on more, but we need a bipartisan effort to handle this. I read the other day that Utah state employees are now being sent to Mexico with the state pennies they are paying. their plane tickets and give them $500 to go buy their medicine in Mexico that's absurd in this country and there are some steps that we know we can take to make a difference in that area the other issues are even though Alyx we have An us.

We have an aging population, 10,000 people a day turning 65, that's not going to change, so we either have to bring in new people to help pay for Social Security and Medicare or we have to take a very hard look at what's driving the increase in those spending doctors, so there seems to be a relatively small chance that any of this will happen okay, so how do you move forward if you're going to try and continue to grow the economy that the Republicans are looking for, say 3%? that seems to be very hard to come up with what you can do to get to two or two and a half if you want to continue to say cut taxes or something like that or not raise taxes we've had a number of economists before the budget committee that have talked about this same and one of the biggest problems we have right now is that we don't have enough people in the country, we need comprehensive immigration reform to bring people into the country to grow the economy grow the tax base and fill many of the jobs that are looking for people, there's really no answer to that, unless everyone becomes much more fertile very quickly, but we can do that with comprehensive immigration reform and we should make that really the only immediate thing that I think we can do to stimulate the growth of the economy that we can invest in sure will make a difference and we have a proposal that was put out last week to do that quite significantly but other than that it's not cutting taxes for the very rich.

The CBO went before the committee last week with our annual report that said tax cuts only 20% of the cost of tax cuts are recovered through the economy, so 80% of tax cuts taxes are reduced. GDP and last year was 1% so again we can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again that the Republicans want to do thinking a trickle down strategy works it never has and it won't so there's obviously a primary in New Hampshire. that will take place today as well, which candidate would be the most apt to do what you say you want done that's a big question that I haven't backed in the race and I think the key factor is not necessarily going to be who is going to be next sits in the White House is what kind of Congress does it have and I think that's really what we need to focus on is who can who can not only win the White House but can get people into the Senate and preserve our majority in the house because otherwise, whether it's Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden or any of the others, they won't be able to pass an agenda