BILL: Should We Cut Spending on Social Programs? - Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 - H.R.2811

The Bill

H.R.2811 - Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023

Bill Details

• Sponsored by Jodey C Arrington (R-Texas) on April 25, 2023
• Committees: House - Ways and Means; Budget; Appropriations; Oversight and Accountability; Education and the Workforce; Agriculture; Energy and Commerce; Judiciary; Rules; Transportation and Infrastructure; Natural Resources
• House: Passed
• Senate: Not yet voted
• President: Not yet signed

Bill Overview

• The GOP-backed bill is designed to raise the debt ceiling while cutting government spending, implementing "commonsense spending reforms" targeted at wasteful spending.
• The goal of the bill is to avert a historic default by the U.S. on its debt obligations by raising the debt ceiling, and ensuring that spending on social programs is reduced.
• The U.S. Treasury reached the current debt limit of $31.4 trillion in February, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has employed "extraordinary measures" to avoid a default.
• Designed to end the labor shortage "killing Main Street businesses" while reducing Democrat handouts to corporations.

What's in the Bill?

Raises the debt limit

• The plan would lift the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first.

Cutting government spending

• The bill will cut $4.5 trillion in government spending by canceling Biden's student loan forgiveness plan (which would offer relief of up to $20,000 per borrower), targeting welfare, and would recoup unspent COVID-19 assistance funds.
• Eliminates $70 billion in additional IRS funding
• Limits increase in the federal budget to 1% per year.

Repeal green provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act

• Ends what the GOP is calling green Handouts to China, the Wealthy, and Corporations.
• Cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in special interest green energy handouts that are going to corporations.
• The Joint Committee on Taxation projects that green subsidies will cost more than double to $570 billion.
• Over 90% of the green electricity tax breaks flow to companies making $1 billion every year in sales. 

Adds work requirements to public relief programs

• Seeks to re-establish welfare reforms that impose work requirements as a condition of public assistance.
• The aim is to boost labor force participation, reduce chronic worker shortage, and reduce welfare rolls.
• As part of the fight against government handouts and subsidies for people to stay at home, GOP supporters say the bill will help small businesses struggling to find staff.

What Supporters are Saying

• Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy:

"If Washington wants to spend more, it will have to come together and find savings elsewhere, just like every household in America."

• The GOP-led House Ways & Means Committee says:

"This bill delivers on Republicans' commitment to America by tackling the chronic labor shortage hurting small businesses while reining in President Biden's wasteful spending that has fueled the inflation crisis and sparked the fastest interest rate hike in decades."

• Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.):

"It puts real limits on future spending so that we begin to turn the ship back in a more fiscally sound direction. It saves taxpayer dollars by clawing back unobligated pandemic spending…by ending welfare for the wealthy and loopholes for big corporations in the Inflation Reduction Act. This plan will also take the target off the backs of low- and middle-income taxpayers under threat from a supercharged army of 87,000 at the IRS."

What Opponents are Saying

• The White House has called on Republicans to pass a no-spending-cuts-attached debt ceiling. The combination of debt-limit increase and spending cuts on social programs is likely to fail the Democratic-controlled Senate.
• President Biden said:

"[T]he House leading Republican proposal would cut critical programs, so-called discretionary spending, by 22%. That would mean cutting the number of people who administer Social Security and Medicare, meaning longer wait times. Higher costs for child care, significantly higher, preschool, college, higher costs for housing, especially for older Americans, people with disabilities, families with children, veterans."

• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said:

"... House Republicans must avoid default and stop playing economic brinkmanship with the American people's livelihoods and retirements. The American people have made clear which economic vision they support."

Do you agree with cutting social spending as a condition for raising the debt ceiling? Tell your reps

—Emma Kansiz 

(Photo Credit: Canva)