“In his first 20 months in office, President Biden has set records for spending and debt which have driven the massive spike in prices we’re seeing today,” writes Ways and Means member and Republican Leader of the House Committee on Budget Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) in a new op-ed for the Washington Times. 

Read the full op-ed here.

Key Excerpts:

Democrats’ Spending Fueled the Biden-Flation Crisis.

• “Today’s inflation crisis did not appear out of thin air. In his first 20 months in office, President Biden has set records for spending and debt which have driven the massive spike in prices we’re seeing today.”
• “The Biden White House and congressional Democrats have not cut a dime in spending. Over 80 percent of their supposed deficit reduction is simply expiring or shrinking emergency COVID-19 relief funding, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”
• “In Mr. Biden’s first full year in office, fiscal year 2021, the federal government ran the second-highest deficit in U.S. history at $2.78 trillion. In fact, it was $517 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office had projected for 2021 after Democrats rammed through their $2 trillion American Rescue Plan.”

Democrats Have No Interest in Cutting the Deficit.

• “The $2 trillion so-called American Rescue Plan sparked inflation when the CBO had already noted no additional spending was needed, and simultaneously left behind a massive trail of waste, fraud and abuse, including spending $400 billion to pay people not to work.”
• “Democrats expanded their green welfare for the wealthy and big corporations in their $745 billion Inflation Reduction Act. It bestows $80 billion on the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents to target working families, whose tax dollars will now effectively go toward subsidizing handouts to wealthy environmentalists. Meanwhile, CBO has confirmed that the law will raise deficits by $60 billion in the first five years, and economists at Penn Wharton stated that it would actually increase inflation in the near term.”
• “In less than two years, Mr. Biden has authored over 600 executive actions that have cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion with zero congressional authority or oversight, further fueling inflation.”

Republican Tax Reform Has Offset Some of the Damage from Democrats’ Reckless Spending.

• “This Republican-passed tax reform lowered the tax burden on American families. At the same time, this year, the federal government collected $4.9 trillion in taxes, the most ever, and $1.6 trillion more than collected before TCJA was signed into law. Revenues have now reached 20 percent of GDP, making it tied for the highest level in 77 years.”

Republicans’ Commitment to America is To Hold Government Accountable.

• “Americans are tired and fed up with Washington Democrats putting trillions on the public’s credit card while driving our economy into a ditch. Fortunately, under the House Republicans’ Commitment to America, our country can forge a strong economy that delivers better pay and higher wages, and return accountability to Washington where the people – not unelected bureaucrats – have the final word in how our country runs.”

Read the full op-ed here.