Chairman Arrington Highlights Strong Economic Momentum and Calls for Health Care Cost Reform on The Faulkner Focus
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) joined Harris Faulkner on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus to discuss the nation’s economic progress and the urgent need for health care cost reform.
On Republicans delivering affordability for Americans:
We're not just promoting affordability, like the Unaffordable Care Act or promoting reducing inflation, like the quote “Inflation Reduction Act.” We're actually doing something about it. We said if past was prologue, we would see the economy growing, we'd see wages go up, we’d see business investments, and we're seeing all of the above.
Mortgage rates are down now, on average, about $200 in the mortgage payment for our hardworking families. Interest rates in the long term and in the short term are coming down; inflation is stable; historically low unemployment. But the big ticket here is that wages are outpacing inflation, so people are putting more money in their pocket. That didn’t happen for the last four years.
So, there's greater confidence, greater hope. And wait until next year — $350 billion in refund checks on account of the tax cuts, and you'll have less withholdings in the next tax year, so people will again have more take-home income.
On health care cost reform:
Let me start with: stop throwing taxpayer — hard-earned taxpayer — good money after bad by extending a layer of COVID-era, fraud-ridden subsidies that have not worked, wasted a bunch of money — by the way, the GAO — Government Accountability Office — in their recent bombshell report said tens of thousands of Social Security numbers of dead people have been used to draw down these subsidies that are not going to the people — not dead people or alive people. They’re going to insurance companies.
You’ve got, according to CBO, nonpartisan, 6 million-plus people who are ineligible on that program. Not to mention, the way it was structured by Democrats is it's paying taxpayer subsidies for people making half a million dollars or more. That program should die a very unnatural death.
On rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse:
Look at what's happening with Tim Walz in Minnesota. Soaking the system, and building these terrible mouse traps that made health care unaffordable for every American, while it's leaking like a sieve with waste and fraud. And that was the federal government, by the way — upwards of $500 billion a year in fraud.
What did Republicans do? Root out waste, fraud, and abuse by a trillion dollars. The Democrats fought us every step of the way in the Big Beautiful Bill, and now they're proposing that this thing — this Obamacare expansion — is somehow going to save money and make health care affordable. Baloney. Baloney.
Let's do the things that we know will actually make life better and make health care more affordable.
