House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington made the case that Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful” bill is just the beginning of the effort to control the national debt, during an interview Friday on the RealClearPolitics podcast, from the first annual Reagan Economic Forum. “It was the most challenging endeavor of my political career,” Arrington said. “Reminding folks that no faction or caucus is going to get everything they want. I’m a budget hawk; you can’t cut enough spending for me. I know we’re borrowing $ 6 billion a day, and that will double in 10 years. I know we’re spending more to service the debt than we are for national defense.” “But to achieve almost $ 1.7 trillion, which is twice the largest spending cut in the history of our country, is a start,” he said. “We won’t crawl out of this debt hole in one reconciliation bill. We’re going to have to rinse and repeat this process for years and decades to come.” “You’ve got to work on both the numerator and denominator when it comes to our nation’s fiscal health,” he said. “I’m talking about debt-to-GDP, which is at World War II levels right now. The major focus of this bill was on growth, with a minor focus on fiscal reforms.” “If Trump does the job I believe he will and holds discretionary spending at least flat, that’s another $ 1.5 trillion in spending reduction. We are bending the curve on the deficit, overall with the reconciliation bill, absent tariff revenue, we bring the debt-to-GDP down by 10%, mainly because we’re going to be growing faster than we’re taking on debt or inflation,” he said. “It’s an important and meaningful step, but we’ve got to do more.” Carl Cannon asked a bigger picture question about the shift toward strictly partisan votes on budgets and spending since the 1990s: “Conservatives talk about how it would be nice to have some certainty in the markets. One of the things that leads to uncertainty is this whipsaw effect when the House changes hands. Would it be better for your party to be able to talk to the other party? Maybe you’re not going to get Bernie Sanders on board, but to get 40 or 50 people from each party to agree?” “I love that question,” Arrington said. “In the 50 years we’ve had this tool called budget reconciliation (which gives us a simple majority vote in the Senate, that’s the magic here), it has given the Democrats unilateral control to make decisions around budget matters. Now it gives us unilateral control.” “There’s a lot of probably partisan work that needs to be done, quite frankly, to reverse the trillions of dollars in spending from the previous administration. I make no apologies for that,” he said. “I could go down the list of things that need to be reversed that I don’t think I’d get a single Democrat to help me with.” “Reagan did it. He did it in the 11th hour, to be fair. He’s my hero,” Arrington said. “But let’s put things in context. We have eight years before our seniors in this country take a 20% cut, automatically. It’s going to happen if we don’t do something.” “I’m a true believer in what you said. And quite frankly, reconciliation, for the first half of the 50 years that it’s been in existence, was done on a bipartisan basis. It was focused not on broad policy changes like Obamacare or sweeping tax reform, but was used to reconcile the House budget and the Senate budget in a way that reduced the deficit.” “And they did it with revenue, to the chagrin of my Republican predecessors, and with spending cuts, to the chagrin of Democrat colleagues.” “You’re right-we need to return to that, both in reconciliation and on these big deficits and unfunded liabilities within these very important entitlements that will not be sustainable if we don’t address them.” Tom Bevan asked the big question: “One-word answer: is the bill going to get done?” “Yes,” Arrington said. “By July 4.”
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