FIVE-ALARM FIRE: The House Freedom Caucus’ Extreme Budget Proposal Ships Manufacturing Jobs Overseas and Undermines American Workers

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus has made their priorities clear: imposing devastating cuts and increasing costs for working- and middle-class families, all to protect and extend tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. In fact, their tax cuts would be so expensive that their deep and harmful cuts would not reduce the deficit.

That’s in sharp contrast with the President’s Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.

Combined with other commitments extreme MAGA House Republicans have already made, the extreme Freedom Caucus proposal will be a disaster for families in at least five key ways: endangering public safety, raising costs for families, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining American workers, weakening national security, and hurting seniors.

Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that Congressional Republicans’ budget math doesn’t add up. CBO found that—in order to meet Congressional Republicans’ stated commitment to balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes on the wealthy or corporations, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and some veterans’ benefits—Congressional Republicans would need to eliminate everything in the rest of the Federal budget.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal will be a five-alarm fire for families—including by shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining workers. Not only would their extreme proposal cost manufacturing jobs in communities across the country, but it would hurt workers by making deep cuts to job training services and preventing workers from recouping back pay that they are owed. Meanwhile, President Biden’s economic strategy is bringing new, leading edge supply chains to America, supporting workers and small businesses, investing in American innovation and industries that will define the future, and fueling a manufacturing boom that is strengthening parts of the country that have long been left behind.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposals will:

• Offshore Manufacturing Jobs. Extreme MAGA Republicans in the House will send manufacturing jobs overseas, reversing the progress the President and Congressional Democrats have made revitalizing manufacturing across the country. During the President’s Administration, the private sector has invested more than $300 billion in manufacturing in clean energy and semi-conductors. Outside estimates calculate that the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy provisions will create millions of jobs over the next ten years, and shovels are already hitting the ground for hundreds of billions in private sector investments the law has attracted. The MAGA House Republican plan would kill those jobs and move them overseas.
  
• Undercut American Workers. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal will deny 750,000 American workers job training and employment services and result in 100,000 fewer workers gaining the opportunity of a Registered Apprenticeship.
  
• Rob Workers of Back Pay. Recovered wages make a real difference for workers struggling to pay rent, buy food, pay for child care, or cover gas or transportation costs to get to their jobs. By reducing investigations and targeted inspections, the extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would mean that 135,000 workers would lose an average of $1,000 in back wages that they are owed and would tilt the playing field against employers who follow the law.

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