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Congressman Blake Moore Defends Republican Budget Framework, Says U.S. Has a 'Spending Problem'
Summary
Congressman Blake Moore told a committee that a new Republican budget framework targets spending growth rather than revenues, defended the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and blamed post‑2020 relief spending for recent inflation.
Congressman Blake Moore defended a Republican budget framework during a committee hearing, saying the United States “do not have a revenue problem in our country. We have a spending problem.”
Moore said the framework, which he described as a balance sheet rather than a program‑by‑program set of cuts, represents the first serious push for spending reform he has seen in his roughly five years in Congress and called for sustained attention to deficits beyond a single hearing.
The importance of the proposal, he said, is its focus on reducing overall spending growth rather than raising revenue. “Our revenues, for decades, have been at 17% of GDP,” Moore said. “Over the last few, in the last 15 years, it's skyrocketed to 26% of GDP.” He said the framework assumes a conservative economic growth rate and that exceeding that growth would allow for deeper deficit reductions.
Moore cautioned that the framework does not include programmatic specifics. “This is a framework. ... It does not have specifics about programmatic changes,” he said, and predicted that minority members would circulate claims about particular cuts to programs such as Medicaid or welfare even though those specifics are not in the framework.
Defending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Moore asked rhetorically whether measures such as doubling the child tax credit or the standard deduction were aimed at the wealthy. “So doubling the child tax credit was all about the billionaires? So doubling the standard deduction was all about the billionaires?” he said, adding that the act produced pro‑growth tax policy and wage growth.
On inflation, Moore disputed the timing often attributed to the 2017 tax law, saying the most significant rise in inflation occurred after the American Rescue Plan of 2021. “When did we see a rampant rise in inflation? After the American Rescue Plan in 2021, when Democrats had the White House House in Senate,” he said, and cited Larry Summers as supporting the view that relief spending drove higher inflation.
Moore acknowledged the framework will not by itself eliminate the deficit. “This budget today, admittedly, will not solve our deficit. It will not solve all of the issues that we have on this front,” he said, but called the framework “the very best approach to be able to get at that problem.”
He closed by saying he looked forward to collaborative work with colleagues and yielded back his time.
