House budget chief slams Grover Norquist for ‘bullshit’ criticism

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) didn’t mince words Wednesday when discussing past criticisms from anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist.

Arrington was discussing an ongoing effort in Congress to establish a tax commission at a Wednesday event hosted by The Hill and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“We need people willing to do the right thing, even if it’s not politically popular,” Arrington said at the event, which marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act.

“We passed a bipartisan fiscal commission, for example, and now I have Grover Norquist and [Americans for Tax Reform] saying I’m a big tax guy, you know, and I’m stabbing Trump in the back,” he said, referring to Norquist’s anti-tax activism group.

“This is the kind of bullshit you have to put up with sometimes,” he said.

Arrington apologized soon after, saying that “the Texan came out of me a little bit,” adding, “But, you know what, it lets me know that maybe I’m close to doing something that could help the country.”

Norquist dismissed Arrington’s comments in a statement released later on Wednesday, accusing the congressman of suggesting the creation of “yet another commission with the power to promote higher taxes.”

“The answer to excessive spending in Washington is to spend less,” the statement said. “We need to bring back the ‘anti-appropriations committee’ that helped Congress reduce wasteful spending during/after WWII. This congressional committee saved billions. He should be reinstated.”

Arrington’s comments come after Norquist criticized him earlier this year for signaling openness to discussing changes to revenues, along with expenditures, to address the country’s growing fiscal challenges.

“It’s fair to have income and expenses on the table”, he said to Semafor in February. “The last time there was a Social Security solution that addressed solvency for 75 years, it was Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, and it was bipartisan. It had revenue measures and program reforms. That’s just the reality.”

Not long after, Norquist accused Arrington of stabbing “Trump in the back” with his remarks, which he said “undermine efforts to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent and greatly please the press.”

“It is now obvious that the Romney-Arrington Commission was designed to bypass the Republican Party majority in the House and the Ways and Means Committee to raise taxes. Romney says so. Arrington says this, ” he wrote in a post on social platform X, referring to Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

The push for a bipartisan tax commission has gotten some momentum in the current Congress, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the threats of insolvency facing programs like Social Security and Medicare, which account for the majority of federal spending.

However, Republicans and Democrats have been far apart in how to address the country’s growing debt, as many in the former camp have pushed for funding cuts, especially on the nondefense side, and others in the latter camp continue to focus on in taxes that target the rich. .

In his comments Wednesday, Arrington said he personally thinks the country has “a bigger spending problem,” while also noting that Democrats may “think it’s a combination.”

“Let me tell you something. This budget chairman, whenever someone mentions tax cuts [and] fiscal permanence, I’m mentioning mandatory spending, I’m mentioning entitlement reform, and I’m mentioning the real reason we added reconciliation. Thank you to our founders of this 1974 Budget Law, which was supposed to reduce the deficit,” he said.

“The revenues were on the table and… the expenses. So the only way out of this mess in this country is to have leaders who are willing to work together and put their country’s interests first.”

This article was updated at 7:30 p.m.