Committee President Maya MacGuineas Testifies on Taxation of Corporations and the Wealthy

For Immediate Release

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya MacGuineas will testify today, March 25, before the Senate Budget Committee on whether wealthy taxpayers and corporations should pay higher taxes and how those policies could help the country’s fiscal outlook.

The full written testimony is available here.

You can view the hearing here.

Below is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Congress deserves credit for responding swiftly to the pandemic and economic downturn. But now that a robust recovery appears to be in sight and vaccinations are accelerating, it’s time to start paying for our priorities.

The national debt was already projected to grow faster than the economy before the crisis. Now debt is larger than the economy for the only time in history outside of World War II. The deficit and debt could both set a new record this year, and the debt will continue to grow. Because Congress has failed for years to address rising health care and retirement costs, the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are only a few years from insolvency.

With so many fiscal challenges, the last thing politicians should do is fall back on bad habits and borrow more. During the campaign, President Biden proposed over $5 trillion in tax increases and spending offsets – which is more than enough to cover the spending package currently being discussed.

The President’s proposals ask the wealthy and profitable businesses to pay more. This makes sense – it’s much fairer to tax those who can most afford it today than piling up even more of our bills for future generations.

Yet with revenues and spending so far out of whack, getting our long-term fiscal situation under could require more than just taxing the wealthy. Lawmakers need to look at both sides of the ledger and can’t rule out broad-based taxes or spending controls.

Although serious deficit reduction should wait until after the economy has fully recovered, we shouldn’t delay the discussion much longer. This hearing offers an important opportunity to begin the conversation anew, and members of both parties should take seriously the need to agree to new revenue and spending options to pay for priorities, rescue our trust funds and get the national debt under control.

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For more information, please contact John Buhl, director of media relations, at buhl@crfb.org.