Latest news with #JodeyArrington
Fox News
8 hours ago
- Business
- Fox News
House Budget chairman explains why there's no 'pork' in Trump tax bill after Elon Musk attacks
FIRST ON FOX: The chairman of the House Budget Committee is pushing back on Elon Musk's claim that President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is full of "pork." Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital it was not possible for "pork barrel spending" to be included in the legislation, called a budget reconciliation bill, because the reconciliation process was simply not the mechanism for such federal funds. "Reconciliation does not have anything to do with discretionary spending - earmarks, and all of that," Arrington said. "And quite frankly, the [Department of Government Efficiency] findings were, I think, almost entirely an issue for . . . annual appropriations." "Discretionary spending" refers to the annual dollars allocated by Congress each year through the appropriations process – also known as "spending bills." It's a process that's historically known to be rife with "pork barrel spending" from both Republicans and Democrats – funding for pet projects or other specific initiatives benefiting a certain member of Congress' district. But reconciliation deals with the government's "mandatory spending" – largely government welfare programs that can only be amended by changing the law. "We're dealing with mandatory spending programs – entitlements, health care, welfare and the tax code," Arrington said. "We did a responsible bill. There's no pork in it. The question, I think, for some folks and the objective of mine and my budget committee members was, whatever we're doing on tax or security to unleash growth and to buy greater security for the American people, we wanted it to be done in a fiscally responsible way." Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller echoed that sentiment on X: "The reconciliation bill cuts taxes, seals the border and reforms welfare. It is not a spending bill. There is no 'pork.' It is the campaign agenda codified." The vast majority of the trillions of dollars in the bill are aimed at Trump's tax policies – extending his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) while implementing new priorities like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime wages. There's also $4 trillion in House Republicans' versions of the bill aimed at raising the debt limit. The legislation is also aimed at amending current laws to enable new funding for border security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – projected to boost those priorities by billions of dollars. To offset those costs, House GOP leaders are seeking stricter work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps, while shifting more of the cost burden for both programs to the states. Republicans are also looking to roll back green energy tax subsidies in former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). But Musk and other fiscal hawks' main concern has been that the legislation does not go far enough with those spending cuts. They've also raised concerns about the overall bill adding to the national debt – which is currently nearing $37 trillion. As part of his social media campaign against the bill, Musk called for both eliminating the tax cuts and removing the debt limit increase from the final legislation. Musk reposted another X user who wrote, "Drop the tax cuts, cut some pork, get the bill through." He's also shown support on X for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his call to strip the debt limit provision out of the bill. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that the bill would cut taxes by $3.7 trillion while raising deficits by $2.4 trillion over a decade.
Fox News
30-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
GUY BENSON SHOW: Live From the Reagan Library, Day Two (Featuring Rick Caruso, Sec. Chris Wright, Gov. Kevin Stitt, Sen. Mike Rounds, Rep. Jodey Arrington)
Today on the Guy Benson Show, we broadcasted the program LIVE from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. On today's program, we featured interviews with Rick Caruso, Sec. Chris Wright, Gov. Kevin Stitt, Sen. Mike Rounds, and Rep. Jodey Arrington. Check out the full podcast episode and the interviews from today's program below! Listen to the full podcast below: Rep. Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the House Budget Committee Representative Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the House Budget Committee and Congressman for Texas' 19th district, joined The Guy Benson Show today to reflect on the legacy of Ronald Reagan, calling himself one of 'Reagan's children,' and to discuss whether the Gipper would be proud of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. Arrington broke down the current Senate negotiations over the bill, and how it could be improved before returning to the House. Guy and Rep. Arrington also discussed Elon Musk's time serving the country through his work with DOGE, and why codifying those cuts is essential going forward. Listen to the full interview below! Listen to the full interview below: Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota joined The Guy Benson Show today to emphasize the critical need for the United States to invest in AI and cutting-edge technology to maintain our competitive edge and drive future innovation in medicine, automation, and more. Sen. Rounds also weighed in on the Big Beautiful Bill, detailing why its passage in the Senate must be a top legislative priority. He explained why, despite strong support for DOGE, the proposed cuts can't be codified within the current structure of the bill, and you can listen to the full interview below! Listen to the full interview below: Energy Secretary Chris Wright Secretary of Energy Chris Wright joined The Guy Benson Show today to break down why Trump's 'drill, baby, drill' agenda is critical for restoring American energy independence and reversing the damage done by Biden-era energy policies. Wright explained how those policies not only hurt U.S. energy production but failed to make a meaningful impact on climate goals. Sec. Wright also highlighted the Trump administration's renewed focus on natural gas and the importance of supporting the industry through targeted subsidies. Listen to the full interview below: Gov. Kevin Stitt, 54th Governor of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma joined The Guy Benson Show today to and touched on his state's big win as the OKC Thunder head to the NBA Finals. Gov. Stitt also discussed his major legislative victories this session, including his 'path to zero' plan to eliminate the state income tax. Stitt also opened up about the challenges of advancing conservative reforms even in a red state and shared how Ronald Reagan's leadership first inspired him to enter politics. Listen to the full interview below. Listen to the full interview below: Rick Caruso, businessman and Founder and Executive Chairman of Caruso Rick Caruso, Trustee of the Ronald Reagan Foundation & Institute and Founder & Executive Chairman of Caruso, joined The Guy Benson Show today to discuss the devastating LA wildfires and what he calls a complete failure of leadership by Mayor Karen Bass and city officials, from inadequate preparation to the regulatory gridlock stalling recovery. Caruso also pointed to the growing mistrust in Democrat leadership across California as many Californians point blame from the wildfire disaster towards the Dems. Caruso also discussed homelessness skyrocketing in CA despite billions in spending, all suggesting that a political shift may be underway. Caruso also addressed growing speculation about a potential run for office in 2026, and you can listen to the full interview below! Listen to the full interview below:
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Republicans look to stop China's 'backdoor' tariff dodging scheme
Print Close By Rachel Wolf Published May 22, 2025 Republicans are targeting China's efforts to sidestep U.S. tariffs through foreign production, with new legislation introduced Thursday by House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas. The Axing Nonmarket Tariff Evasion (ANTE) Act aims to stop subsidized and state-owned entities from setting up production in other countries to avoid tariffs. "For far too long, adversaries like China have engaged in unfair trade practices, cheated the American economy, and cost the U.S. millions of jobs," Arrington said in a statement to Fox News Digital. TRUMP SAYS CHINA AGREES TO 'FULLY' OPEN COUNTRY'S MARKETS TO US BUSINESSES On April 2, which the White House dubbed "Liberation Day," President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs with the intention of ending trade imbalances. Some of the harshest of the tariffs were imposed on China, which was initially hit with a 145% tariff that was later lowered to 30%. While tariffs seem to be discouraging Chinese manufacturers from exporting to the U.S., as evidenced by a recent Commerce Department report showing import levels at their lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic, imports have not stopped entirely. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has found ways to evade the tariffs, such as setting up production in third-party countries or by shipping goods to another country and re-labeling them before sending them to the U.S. By labeling the goods as originating from another country, manufacturers dodge the high tariffs on China and instead get hit with much lower tariffs that are imposed on other nations. This is something that Arrington hopes to stop with his legislation. CHINA ACCUSES US OF 'TURNING SPACE INTO A WARZONE' WITH TRUMP'S GOLDEN DOME MISSILE DEFENSE PROJECT "The ANTE Act will stop highly-subsidized, state-owned businesses from using third countries as backdoors to evade President Trump's tariffs and help ensure a level playing field for American producers and manufacturers," Arrington told Fox News Digital. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., who is introducing companion legislation in the Senate, is also confident the bill will stop the CCP from falsifying the origins of imports. "Communist China shouldn't be able to dodge U.S. tariffs by slapping a 'Made in Mexico' label on their products," Banks said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "My bill closes loopholes and stops the CCP from cheating American workers and manufacturers." The phenomenon of "place-of-origin washing" is not limited to large businesses. Chinese social media platforms are filled with ads offering services to help sellers avoid tariffs, the Financial Times reported. The outlet also noted that South Korea's customs agency has seen an uptick in cases involving sellers using their country to avoid U.S. tariffs. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Under U.S. law, goods must undergo "substantial transformation" in a country to qualify as originating from there. The transformation must significantly add to the value of the good, according to the International Trade Administration's (ITA) website. As an example, the ITA writes that if ingredients are taken from several countries and turned into baked goods, the country of origin can be listed as where the items were baked, as this constitutes a "substantial transformation." However, if produce from multiple countries is frozen and mixed in another nation, then the origin of each ingredient must be listed. Print Close URL
The Independent
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
To save Trump's ‘one big, beautiful bill,' Republicans disregard the math
As the House Rules Committee's early-hours hearing on President Donald Trump's ' One Big, Beautiful Bill,' got underway, Rep. Erin Houchin, a Republican from Indiana, asked Jodey Arrnington, the chairman of the Budget Committee, a simple question about the Congressional Budget Office. 'Has the CBO ever been wrong?' she asked. Arrington responded by noting that the CBO, which scores and estimates how much legislation will cost, got wrong the price of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the 2017 tax slash law whichTrump signed, and the scoring of the 2010 health care law signed by Barack Obama, also known as Obamacare. 'In my short tenure, they actually were off their estimation of the deficit,' he said regarding spending under President Joe Biden. 'They were wrong in their projections on revenue to the Treasury post-TCJA.' Republicans began their hearing on Rules – which needs to pass legislation for it to go to the floor for a simple majority vote – at 1 a.m. Wednesday. 'So all this conversation about how reliant we should be on the CBO score to tell us what the cost of we're doing is going to be, CBO has not been reliable, as history has shown,' he emphasized. Arrington and Houchin's characterizations are selective at best, but a way to advance partisanship at worst. Despite occasionally falling short, the Congressional Budget Office is still regarded as the most credible and nonpartisan source for spending projections on Capitol Hill. Its director, Phillip Swagel, an alumnus of the George W. Bush administration, began the job during Republican control of the Senate in 2019, and was re-appointed during Democratic control of the Senate in 2023. Yet House Republicans have every reason to discredit the CBO ahead of a vote on Trump's proposal. They don't like the numbers. The CBO found that if Congress passed just an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, the deficit would increase by $3.8 trillion. That same analysis showed that the bottom ten percent of households would lose 4 percent of income in 2033, while the top 10 percent of households would see their incomes increase by 2 percent in 2033. This would be the result mostly of proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, and Medicaid. The bill would put in place work requirements that fiscal conservatives like Texas Rep. Chip Roy and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman considered insufficient. Specifically, it also requires that parents of children between the ages of seven and 18 to work for SNAP benefits – but a parent can get an exception if they are a stay-at-home married parent. And that's not the only body blow that is ready for Democrats to attack. A separate CBO report on the estimated effects on the budget found that as many as 7.6 million people would lose coverage because of the Medicaid changes. That might make some of the lawmakers from swing districts, or with large swaths of their population dependent on Medicaid, queasy. And this all came without the manager's amendment, which would lay out the side deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson made with the SALT caucus, a group of Republicans from blue states who want the cap raised on the amount of money that people can deduct from their state and local taxes on their federal taxes. As of Wednesday evening, the House leadership had yet to release the manager's amendment. As a result, House Republicans are pushing for a bill that is already outdated. Trump had made his trek to the Hill on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, he invited the fiscal hawks in the House Freedom Caucus to the White House. Two of them, Ralph Norman and Chip Roy of Texas, who both sit on the Budget Committee, initially sank the bill on Friday before they voted 'present' late on Sunday evening to allow it to move to Rules, where both men also sit. But it seems like the pressure campaign hasn't worked on the Freedom Caucus. Before the meeting, Roy posted on X, that he would dig in his heels. 'Writing a deficit-backed blank check (SALT) is easier than cutting spending (DOGE, Green New Scam, Post-COVID spending),' he posted. 'Congress/swamp will always choose the easy route but we can't afford it.' In the past, Roy has correctly pointed out that the bill would explode the federal budget deficit. Yet the House Republican leadership has decided to throw congressional math homework on the debt out the window for political expediency. Whether the Freedom Caucus decides to give them a failing grade will determine if Trump's bill passes.
CBS News
19-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
House GOP eyes tax bill vote this week as disagreements persist
Washington — House Republicans plan to move ahead with a vote this week on the legislation containing President Trump's second term agenda. But fractures in the GOP conference appeared to persist over the weekend, despite the legislation's movement out of committee, throwing its passage into question. "There's a lot more work to do," House Speaker Mike Johson told reporters late Sunday. "But I'm looking forward to very thoughtful discussions, very productive discussions, over the next few days — and I'm absolutely convinced we're going to get this in final form and pass it." After the final three committees advanced their portions of the massive legislative package last week, a handful of conservative hardliners on the House Budget Committee blocked the package from moving forward Friday. The setback prompted work through the weekend to negotiate with the holdouts, who ultimately allowed the legislation to advance late Sunday. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington called it a "critical step," while acknowledging that deliberations are continuing, with disagreements remaining on a cap on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, and on when Medicaid work requirements would take effect. But Arrington said the vote to advance the legislation Sunday "is a sign that people are confident that these things will be resolved." Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, two of the conservative holdouts, celebrated a change made Sunday that would remove delays from the Medicaid work requirements, since conservatives opposed the original plan, which would have delayed until 2029 work requirements for childless Medicaid recipients without disabilities. But Roy noted in a post on social media that "the bill does not yet meet the moment," pointing to remaining sticking points on cutting clean energy subsidies implemented under the Biden administration and cuts to the federal share of payments for Medicaid. Johnson suggested that he and the conservatives had agreed to "minor modifications" over the weekend. The speaker is walking a tightrope between the hardliners demanding more cuts and moderates who are reluctant to slash Medicaid, while a number of Republicans who represent blue states have also threatened to withhold their votes unless their demands are met on SALT, among other divisions. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, at the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, May 15, 2025. Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images The legislation is set to go before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday at 1 a.m., where any changes to the legislation would be made. But Roy and Norman also sit on the Rules Committee and could raise a final hurdle there ahead of the full House vote. Should the package advance out of the Rules Committee, it would tee up a vote on the package on Thursday, before lawmakers are set to leave town for the Memorial Day recess. As Republican leadership irons out the remaining issues, President Trump is expected to continue to pressure Republicans to get the bill passed this week, as he did on Friday on social media. But whether the White House intervenes more forcefully by meeting with key holdouts or making calls to individual members remains to be seen. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing Monday morning that it's "absolutely essential that Republicans unite behind the one big, beautiful bill, and deliver on President Trump's agenda," adding, "there is no time to waste." Meanwhile, the legislation is expected to face some resistance in the Senate, where a number of Republicans have warned that should the House pass the bill, the upper chamber will try to make changes. Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, told reporters late last week that the House bill "would not pass in the Senate, and I think there's plenty of us that would vote against it." And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters that "we've assumed all along that the Senate would have its input on this." Johnson said on Fox News Sunday that "the package that we send over there will be one that was very carefully negotiated and delicately balanced, and we hope that they don't make many modifications to it because that will ensure its passage quickly." Beyond the self-imposed deadlines, the inclusion of a debt limit increase in the package has added urgency to getting the legislation to the president's desk. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged Congress earlier this month to address the debt limit by mid July, warning that the U.S. could be unable to pay its bills as soon as August without action. And top administration and congressional leaders have circled July 4 as the deadline to get the package to the president desk. "We've got to get this done and get it to the president's desk by that big celebration on Independence Day," Johnson said. "I'm convinced that we can." Kaia Hubbard Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C. and contributed to this report.
