By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A budget framework has been approved by Congress, though Republican leaders had to negotiate long and hard to get the measure through the United States House.
Eastern Kansas Congressman, Derek Schmidt, favors the bill, though it doesn’t aim to cut federal spending as much as he would like. And Schmidt is quick to point out this budget resolution only slows the growth of federal government spending. It doesn’t cut it.
“The top line on spending is what’s driving this,” Schmidt tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “People talk about the deficit. They talk about the accumulating debt. They talk about tax revenues. But if you look at the graphs, what’s really driving this is that spending has exploded over the last several generations, but especially about the last five years, since the start of the pandemic.”
Schmidt, a Republican, says Republican leaders, especially House Speaker Mike Johnson, must walk a fine line to get the votes needed to pass the bill backed by President Trump. Some say it goes too far. Some say it doesn’t go far enough.
Johnson had to withdraw the measure for a time, because he lacked the votes to pass it. Once it returned, it passed on a 216-214 vote.
The plan would extend the 2017 federal tax cuts, increase spending for border security and defense, while making a variety of cuts elsewhere in the budget. Approval just moves the process forward. Detail needs to be added with other votes awaiting.
Schmidt says his Republican colleagues must find the votes needed to slow the growth of federal spending.
“The debate right now, the fight right now is how much can we start to slow down the growth of that spending line before we lose votes and we can’t pass anything,” according to Schmidt.
Schmidt says he would prefer to be more aggressive, but understands the delicate nature of these discussions.
“The risk here is that the balance isn’t struck and we wind up not accomplishing any of this,” Schmidt says. “It’s a real risk.”
Schmidt says spending has spiked since the pandemic. But Schmidt insists growth came before the pandemic response, with passage of the Affordable Care Act that expanded Medicaid well beyond its original intent.
“We have this peculiar situation now where Washington is spending more of our tax money to provide Medicaid coverage for people who able bodied and young, working age, younger than 65, don’t have kids, than it is to provide the same medical coverage for their neighbors down the street who are disabled, who are in a nursing home, who do have young kids,” Schmidt says. “I think that’s been lost in a lot of this discussion.”
President Trump and other Republican leaders say Social Security and Medicare, the two biggest programs run by the federal government, are off the table. The national debt, now at $36 ½ trillion, has caused interest payments on the federal debt to move into the third position in the federal budget. National defense is in fourth, followed by Medicaid, a program of shared costs between the federal government and the states.
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