U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers, is watching the actions of his Senate counterparts to see if there are dramatic or untenable changes to President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which passed by one vote in the House a few weeks ago. Rep. Womack and the rest of the state’s Congressional delegation supported the measure.
Womack said how Senators alter the measure could affect its passage in the House when it returns and he wants to see what they propose.
“I’m going to support this bill because the last thing I want to do is impose a major tax increase, 20-plus percent, on the people that I represent. And there are a lot of things in the bill that I would probably change and do differently if I had the opportunity to do it. But I’m not on the relevant committees, the 10 committees that had a stake in it,” he said. “Right now, I would have to tell you I’m undecided because I don’t know what I’m going to get back from the Senate. I was okay with what we sent them, but I might not be okay with what they send back.”
This week, Womack took part in several hearings to get updates on the Federal Aviation Administration and the Office of Management and Budget. Womack asked OMB director Russell Vought when the administration would come to Congress to discuss reducing the federal debt, deficit spending and the reconciliation bill. He noted that nearly two-thirds of government spending is tied up in mandatory spending programs. Womack said eventually there would have to be changes to the nation’s biggest non-discretionary spending items – Medicare and Social Security.
“Now, I want to be careful in answering your question in my discussion with you, I want to be careful for people not to take my comments as meaning we need to cut those programs. I want those programs to survive because too many people count on them, but we have to make this sustainable. And the way you make it sustainable is you cut out waste, fraud and abuse to the extent that you can, and there’s some of it in there,” he said.
“And you’re probably going to have to do some other things that are not going to be very popular among them. And you can call these cuts if you want to, but among them is maybe the age of eligibility threshold has to go higher, maybe FICA taxes have to go higher. Maybe you have to means test some of these programs. All I’m suggesting to you is that it’s going to get buried under its own weight if you don’t do something. And at the stage we’re at right now, at $37 trillion in debt and a $2 trillion hole in our budget, you’re not going to be able to do this by just dinking around with the discretionary budget of the U.S. government, which is what we’re precisely doing right now,” added Womack.
Womack also discussed the accusations of Congressional leaders who have questioned the analysis of the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimates of the House reconciliation bill, which could rack up $2 trillion in additional debt.
“I don’t as a varsity sport, just beat up on CBO. I mean that’s a varsity sport up here. If you don’t like what the model says, then they’re an easy target, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office created as part of the ’74 Budget Act,” he said.
“The CBO has a series of models that they use, and a model is a model. It’s going to be fed input data and then it’s going to be trained to kick out an analysis,” said Womack. “The models just simply aren’t putting out what I would call accurate information when all is said and done, but it’s the best system that we have right now. I think AI maybe is going to change some of that down the road, but that technology has not caught up necessarily with our current CBO modeling programs… But if you look at the CBO modeling and they’re saying 1.8%, 1.9% growth, I think the economy is capable of doing better than that.”
