Republican members of a House committee will launch a campaign next week attacking President Biden’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan, condemning the legislation as “welfare expansion” and a job killer, according to a report.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee will huddle at a roundtable forum on Wednesday to spotlight the ways the legislation will cripple the economy, increase entitlements and wipe out jobs, the Washington Examiner reported.
“The meeting will focus on the massive welfare state expansion included in Democrats’ Build Back Better reconciliation bill and how policies that foster government dependency ultimately fail our most vulnerable families and children,” Republicans on the panel said.
Republicans are in the minority in the House, but they plan to roll out an aggressive campaign to scuttle the legislation as Democrats try to work out a deal before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Oct. 31 deadline for a vote.
“Even though the U.S. has more than 10 million job openings and is facing a worker shortage, Democrats are making the largest expansion of the welfare state in our lifetimes and discouraging work, threatening the recovery of our post-COVID economy,” the GOP House members said.
They said American families need good-paying jobs, not “more emergency spending and endless government checks.”
The Republicans also plan to tout how their policies would reduce poverty by building a strong economy, creating more opportunities and linking federal benefits to work.
Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which funds child and elderly care, Medicare and Medicaid expansion and is paid for by hiking taxes on the wealthy, has been stalled in Congress amid infighting among progressive Democrats in the House and moderates in the Senate.
Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have pushed to lower the price tag of the bill to $2 trillion or less.
The fate of the bipartisan $1.5 trillion infrastructure deal is also tied up in the larger spending bill.
House progressives said they won’t vote on the measure until the Senate clears the $3.5 trillion package, leading to a congressional standoff.