South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that the House should re-vote on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending bill, claiming Democrats must “quit lying” about the bill.
Graham shared the comments during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.
“The House should revote. The vote in the House was based on a fraud,” Graham argued.
“There is not a plan to pay for it,” Graham later added. “If there is, I missed it. So give it to me.”
The senator also expressed concern about adding more burdens to working families.
“The last thing I’m going to do is add more burdens to working families in South Carolina. And here’s my message to the Democratic Party: Quit lying about this bill. They should revote it in the House,” Graham said.
“We need to stop Build Back Better before it destroys this country,” he added.
Graham also emphasized the Build Back Better bill is filled with gimmicks.
“@LindseyGrahamSC says Senator Joe Manchin came to him and told him the Build Back Better bill is “Full of gimmicks.” a Twitter post from “Fox News Sunday” said.
.@LindseyGrahamSC says Senator Joe Manchin came to him and told him the Build Back Better bill is “Full of gimmicks.” #FoxNewsSunday
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) December 12, 2021
Graham also referred to a Congressional Budget Report (CBO) last week that estimated the Build Back Better Act would increase the federal deficit by as much as $3 trillion over the next decade if its provisions were made permanent.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on the criticisms from the CBO during Friday’s daily briefing.
“This is a fake CBO score. It’s not about the existing bill anybody is debating or voting on,” Psaki told reporters.
“This is about proposing the extension of programs that has not been agreed to without the commitment of the President — which he’s made repeatedly, publicly, that he would never support extending these programs if they weren’t paid for, period. That has been his commitment,” she added.
As the The Daily Wire previously reported:
The Penn Wharton Budget Model — a nonpartisan public policy research initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School — evaluated the legislation under two sets of assumptions. If the Build Back Better Act’s programs expire without renewal from Congress, the analysts foresee a modest impact upon debt:
In the first scenario, PWBM presents the spending and revenue provisions ‘as written’ in the legislative text where certain provisions sunset within the 10-year budget window. Under this scenario, we project that the long-run trajectory of public debt would be 1.5 percent larger and that GDP would be 0.2 percent lower in 2050 relative to baseline projections.
If the Build Back Better Act’s provisions are extended, the national debt would balloon as economic output declines:
Under the second scenario, we assume that temporary provisions of the proposal are extended permanently. We find that, against baseline projections, government debt would be more than 24 percent larger in 2050 and GDP would be about 3 percent lower in the same year.
Another report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that the true cost of the bill may be $4.9 trillion due to a number of “arbitrary sunsets and expirations.” The group argued that in its present state, the Build Back Better Act will increase federal deficits by $800 billion over the next five years and $200 billion through 2031. If provisions of the legislation are made permanent, deficits could rise by $3 trillion over the next decade.