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Secretary Bessent Testifies on the One Big Beautiful Bill Before House Ways and Means, Jun. 11, 2025

June 11, 2025 · Ways and Means Committee Republicans · 5:04:06

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What happened

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on June 11, 2025, in a full-committee hearing published by the committee. The hearing centered on the House-passed One Big, Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) and its proposed Section 899 retaliatory-tax provision, according to EY’s account of the hearing.

Chairman Jason Smith opened by calling on the Senate to pass the bill quickly, saying renewal of the pro-growth tax policies would attract investment, save 1.1 million manufacturing jobs and boost GDP by over 3.5%, as he stated it. Ranking Member Richard Neal criticized Republicans for dismissing Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, as EY reported. In his testimony, Bessent said the bill “will increase wages between $6,100 to $11,600 for the average worker” and, citing the Council of Economic Advisers, take-home pay of $7,800 to $13,300 for the average family of four; “it will cement no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and tax cuts for seniors,” and provide 100% expensing for new factories and for existing factories that expand, as he stated in the hearing.

On Section 899, Bessent said the previous administration “chose to outsource American sovereignty on tax matters” and that the provision would prevent corporate revenues from being drained into foreign treasuries, as EY reported; a committee member cited the Joint Committee on Taxation’s warning that inaction could cost $122 billion in revenue over ten years, against roughly $116 billion the provision could raise, as stated in the hearing. On the deficit, Bessent put the fiscal 2025 figure at “between a 6.5 and 6.7% deficit” and blamed spending: “I find it very difficult to be lectured to by people who created the largest deficit in history,” he said, as the hearing transcript records.

Why it matters

This is Bessent’s fullest early defense of the tax bill that became the administration’s signature economic law: the wage and take-home-pay figures he put on the record here, and the tax-sovereignty case for Section 899, are the claims his later testimony — including his June 2026 return to this committee, paged separately on this site — is measured against.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the figures as stated on June 11, 2025 — average-worker wage gains of $6,100 to $11,600 and family-of-four take-home pay gains of $7,800 to $13,300 from the One Big Beautiful Bill, as Bessent testified, and the Section 899 revenue estimates cited in the hearing. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: House Ways and Means Committee hearing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, June 11, 2025 (committee broadcast, embedded above; the hearing was also carried in full by CNBC Television); EY Tax News, “Ways and Means holds hearing with Sec. Bessent,” June 11, 2025; hearing transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store. Figures as stated by the participants.