It was the most recent assault on a draft budget that is scheduled to get a crucial vote in the House the next week, in the midst of a dispute over increasing the country’s $31 trillion debt ceiling and House Republicans’ demands for budget cutbacks.
Karine Jean-Pierre, a communications secretary for the White House, said that the House Budget Committee’s proposal amounted to “holding our economy hostage.”
She referred to it as a “ransom demand” because to the GOP’s intention to link hikes in the legal debt limit to reductions in overall government expenditure.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, said that the House GOP budget will “kill jobs, fill our cities with smog, and give our kids asthma.” She emphasized that the anti-inflation bill from last year will eliminate the green energy tax credit.
“The idea would eliminate the green energy tax credit provided under the inflation-reducing bill and “send thousands of jobs back to China,” she said. It would be simpler for oil firms to use hazardous substances that result in severe burns, eye damage, and physically melting bones, added Jean-Pierre.
She said that doing so would significantly undermine the Clean Air Act, returning us to a period when cities throughout the nation were covered in thick smog that contaminates our air and damages our children’s lungs.
Prior to Speaker Kevin McCarthy putting it up for a vote the next week, the White House had slashed the House GOP budget.
Her remarks were made on the same day Biden issued an executive order mandating that government agencies include “environmental justice” into their operations.
“Imagine telling all the parents who reside in polluted cities that you’re sorry, but you’re on your own and turning your back on them. That cannot happen,” said Biden.
The “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” the Republican budget proposed by the House of Representatives, would cut expenditure by $4.5 trillion while raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion. Spending growth would be restricted to 1% annually, significantly below inflation.
Additionally, it would promote oil and gas leasing on federal lands while eliminating programs that fight climate change from the $740 billion IRA, such as subsidies for efficient equipment.
