“Thank you, Madame Secretary, for appearing before the Ways & Means Committee today. I will note, last year we waited 71 days between the release of the President’s Budget and your testimony before this Committee.  So we commend you for promptly appearing today, on the day after the Budget was released, to defend President Biden’s $5 trillion tax hike.

“After two years of economic failures, the American people desperately want results. The budget before us today calls for $4.7 trillion in new taxes and $6.9 trillion in new spending, during a staggering debt crisis.

“The American people are struggling. We know because they told us so in Yukon, Oklahoma, and in Petersburg, West Virginia, during hearings with this Committee.

“Whether it’s Kelli Payne, a fifth-generation rancher from Oklahoma, or Ashley Bachmann, a mother of three and small business owner in West Virginia, the President’s inflation crisis is threatening their livelihoods.

“The President’s budget means more pain, with $1.8 trillion in new taxes on Main Street businesses, many of which still have “Help Wanted” signs hanging in their windows because of the Democrat-fueled worker shortage.

“The $650 billion small business surtax will hit mom-and-pop small businesses, violating President Biden’s pledge not to increase taxes on small businesses.

“The $77 billion increase in the death tax will force family farms and ranches to sell their assets or risk closing their doors.

“The $37 billion in new taxes on American-made energy will kill jobs, raise prices, and make us more dependent on foreign countries for our energy needs.

“And President Biden’s global tax surrender to foreign governments will make it better to be a foreign worker or business than an American one. It’s a tax “deal” only China could love.

“Working Americans are scratching their heads over how you’ll enforce these taxes too.

“But I think your Budget answers that question too. After Democrats handed the IRS an $80 billion raise last year, taxpayers are now asked in this budget to hand the IRS  another $43.2 billion? I have to ask: Is this a joke?

“After a two-year inflation crisis that has cost American workers more than two months of pay, families need every penny they can get. But they can’t even get their own refunds back because of the historic backlog at the IRS. And they can’t get through to a human being at the agency because of the terrible customer service.

“The IRS needs to address its “trust gap.”

“When ProPublica announced it had obtained a vast trove of confidential and private taxpayer information, the American public was rightly worried: What was stolen? Is their information safe? To this day, Treasury has provided no public answers.

“What they do have is Treasury’s commitment to inject woke racial and climate politics in our monetary policy and our tax code.

“The Treasury Department is woefully falling short in fulfilling its core mission.

“I hope that our discussion today covers these topics and more in a productive way, and that we are finally able to get answers to the questions the American people have been asking.”