Witness tells committee tax-and-spending package gives top 20% average $6,000 while harming poorest

A witness told the Senate Committee on Appropriations that a proposed tax-and-spending package would give the top 20% of households an average $6,000 benefit, while the bottom 20% would be worse off because of cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other programs.

The witness described a chart shown to the committee, saying, "If you're in the top 20% of the country, you're gonna get an average $6,000 benefit." They said the chart used green arrows to show gains from tax cuts and red arrows to show losses from spending reductions.

On the overall effect for the wealthiest households, the witness said the top earners "are gonna get a 2.3% increase in their after tax income and benefits and what they get from the government, essentially."

Turning to the poorest households, the witness said, "If you go down here to the bottom 20% ... These people are actually going to be worse off. They get a very small tax cut, but it is completely, wildly offset by what they lose from Medicaid cuts, from food stamp cuts, from other cuts." The transcript records the speaker saying, "and so they end up actually 5 or $560 worse off minus 2.3%." That phrasing is unclear in the record; the speaker conveyed that the bottom group would be materially worse off, but the exact dollar figure is not specified in the transcript.

The witness framed the package as historically regressive: "in 50 years of watching economic policy, I have never seen a package that was so regressive ... It is the most amazing piece of social legislation in the wrong direction that we have ever seen. This is unprecedented in our history." These assertions were presented as the witness's assessment; the provided transcript contains no recorded response, rebuttal, or formal vote on the proposal.

No statutes, rule citations, motions, or votes are recorded in the provided segment of the hearing.