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Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo grilled Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) on Thursday over how the GOP will find spending cuts to offset President Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Bartiromo, a close ally of Trump, even went so far as to challenge the House Republican to look at making cuts to mandatory spending like Medicaid inorder to achieve an significant cuts to government spending.
“The work that Elon Musk is doing has obviously been a very important and a surprise to many people, particularly all those people in the Social Security roles who are over 100 years old. It’s just absolutely unacceptable. But you’re going to have to really cut more than, you know, just waste, fraud, and abuse to actually pay for what you are talking about in President Trump’s agenda. Can you identify some offsets here in terms of what you’re looking at in this reconciliation package?” Bartiromo asked.
“Yes. So we’re looking at 4 to $4.5 trillion worth of tax cuts, perhaps more. And that’s being offset by a mixture of economic growth, which as you know, tax cuts stimulate the economy. These are very pro-growth, as well as at least $1.5 trillion of spending cuts. And let me tell you, you get $800 billion right off the bat from repealing the Green New Deal,” Gill replied, adding:
That’s something that Republicans have run on. That’s half your spending cuts right there. What we’ve been seeing with DOGE, and this is something that we will be cycling into this. And it’s like I said, $4 billion every single day in savings.
We have been seeing savings across the board. Repealing welfare for illegal aliens, going after some of the most egregious forms of waste and uses of our taxpayer dollars. So, frankly, Maria, I don’t think that we’re going to have a problem finding offsets for these tax cuts.
“Congressman, I mean, with all due respect, you haven’t given me one offset. Okay? You say that you’re not going to have a problem finding an offset. And so for all I’ve heard you talk about is Elon Musk’s fraud, waste, and abuse cuts, as well as eliminating climate change rules. Again, 76% of the money is going to mandatory spending,” replied Bartiromo, adding:
You know that better than anyone. I’ve got the numbers in front of me. You’ve got $36 trillion in debt. Isn’t it time to start looking at the mandatory spending and trying to figure out how you’re actually going to cut? I mean, I know nobody wants to say this, but you’ve got to cut stuff like Medicaid, don’t you?
“Well, listen, I actually did just give you an offset. I gave you $800 billion for over a ten-year window for Green New Deal subsidies. That directly impacts the reconciliation process. We’ve got about another hundred billion related to welfare for illegal aliens,’ Gill replied, adding:
I agree with you. We are going to have to find some rationalizations. In Medicaid, for instance, job requirements for welfare. So there is a slew of of offsets that we have in this reconciliation package that we’re going to be that we’re going to be looking through. These are the details we’re working through right now. We’ve only just given the instructions to the various committees. But I just gave you about a billion, excuse me, about $1 trillion worth of offsets right off the top of my head.
“$1 trillion in offsets. We got $4.5 trillion that you need to pay for in tax cuts,” pressed Bartiromo.
“We’ve got $1.5 trillion of spending cuts that are per the reconciliation instructions. And then we’ve underwritten $2.5 trillion worth of economic growth that comes from these tax cuts. As you know, whenever you reduce the individual income tax rate, the corporate tax rate that is very positive for– that is stimulating economic growth. So you have a significant amount of offsets right there,” Gill replied.
“Unfortunately, the Atlanta GDP is expecting a contraction in the first quarter, not growth,” pushed back Bartiromo.
“Well, listen there are various GDP measures. And what we’ve done on the committee is we’re not taking CBO’s numbers. We’re not taking necessarily any particular outside groups. We’re doing our own analysis here. And we’ve underwritten about a 2.6% GDP growth, which is consistent and I think conservative relative to historical averages,” Gill replied.
“All right, Brandon Gill, we appreciate your work. We’re watching you work. You’re on the budget committee and important work. So thanks very much for being here this morning,” Bartiromo concluded.
Watch the clip above via Fox Business.
