House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Breitbart News in no uncertain terms that this year the House will not pass a clean increase in the debt ceiling without spending cuts and that the House will not raise taxes.
McCarthy said, “The one thing I firmly believe in is that we’re not going to raise taxes and we’re not going to pass a clean debt ceiling.”
McCarthy added: “I told the president we should spend less money.”
Without serious reforms in discretionary spending, McCarthy said, the United States could be on the brink of serious fiscal disaster.
“Every great society collapses when they stretch themselves too far,” McCarthy told Breitbart News.
Such a dire warning from the nation’s top elected Republican candidate came just hours before the collapse of the Silicon Valley bank (SVB) on Friday, raising fears of a broader financial crisis possibly looming in the United States. The collapse of the SVB came in large part as a result of persistently high inflation. In an effort to tame inflation, the Federal Reserve quickly raised interest rates, reducing the bank’s long-term investments in government-backed, low-interest-rate securities.
McCarthy’s comments were recorded last Wednesday during an exclusive lengthy on-camera interview with Breitbart News in the Spokesperson’s Office at the Capitol, the latest in an in-depth On The Hill video series. McCarthy, in the hour-long interview, covered several topics including his release of the surveillance tapes at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, corruption investigations into President Joe Biden’s family business operation, the wide-open US southern border, and the growing threat of the Chinese Communist Party. (CCP). ).
While McCarthy has made it clear that he wants deep cuts to unnecessary discretionary government spending in order to slow inflation — he doesn’t intend to cut Medicare or Social Security — he wasn’t specific in this interview about exactly how much those cuts would be. He was looking for.
McCarthy said when asked if there was a specific dollar amount of cuts that would win him approval of the debt ceiling deal.
McCarthy also pointed to the savings Americans could make by securing borders and pressing for energy independence as possible avenues for a broader agreement.
“The other dollar amount you might be looking at is not only all the savings, but what if you were able to secure the border?” McCarthy said. “What if you were able to become energy independent? That’s a lot of savings in itself because you have lower fuel prices so people can work, and more jobs will come to America.”
When asked to explain what a debt ceiling is, and lay out the terms of a looming battle with Biden and the Democratic-controlled US Senate, McCarthy compared it to the maxed-out credit card spending limit a parent might give their child.
“Look, the debt ceiling is very serious – and we have to understand what the debt ceiling is and put it down, it’s like giving your child a credit card,” McCarthy said. “They charge up to the limit, and you are responsible for paying it. But do you raise the limit without changing the behavior or do you change the behavior?”
McCarthy referred to earlier times in fairly recent U.S. history, such as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 from then on. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Warren Rodman (R-NH), and Fritz Hollings (DSC), as evidence of Republicans and Democrats working together to limit spending. He said that reforms like those throughout history “made America stronger.”
“Right now we have inflation because of the Democrats’ runaway spending,” McCarthy said. “Really, what do people want to look at: Is it a spending issue or is it a revenue issue? Our spending is $31 trillion in debt. I just came out of the Congressional Budget Office a couple of weeks ago and told us projections for the next 10 years. What they say is that in the 10 years Next time we’re going to end up paying $10.5 trillion in interest only. So it’s like paying interest on your credit card and not following the principle. Now put that into perspective. How much interest have we paid over the past 80 years? Let’s go back to 1940. If you add up all the interest we paid Our debt since 1940 is $9 trillion today. So what took you more than 80 years, you will pay more in 10 years.
McCarthy said Democratic President Joe Biden’s position is that taxes should be raised to pay for it, but he fundamentally disagrees and argues that revenue is not the issue and that revenue compared to gross domestic product (GDP) is equal to or close to the all-time high.
“Now let’s compare: Is the problem we need more revenue?” McCarthy said. “Well, when you look at the revenue that comes in, it’s about 20 percent of GDP. Well, is that high or low? The 50-year average is 17 percent.”
Revenue has been 20 percent of GDP only a few times in history, McCarthy said, “So we’re already getting more coffers of money into government coffers, but what the Democrats have done is they’ve increased discretionary spending by more than 30 percent.”
“They increased all this spending and that’s what put us in this problem, the $6 trillion that the Democrats added,” McCarthy said. “So we’re in real trouble.”
Biden has already bowed to the Republicans on the debt ceiling since his initial position was that he would not negotiate at all. But now, Biden is having conversations — in public, as he did during his State of the Union address, and in private. As is his first one-on-one meeting with McCarthy in just over a month — and calling on Republicans to put forward their plan and begin negotiations, as he did in a speech this month as he rolled out his budget plan.
“What I said to the president is we can sit down and talk,” McCarthy told Breitbart News. He believes you should only raise the debt ceiling, not negotiate. This is not what history tells us. This is not what the American people want — 74 percent want us to sit down and solve this problem. Why? Because if you keep spending more, inflation comes. That’s what brought us inflation.”
McCarthy added that the failure to rein in government spending only helps the opponents of the United States, especially the Chinese Communist Party, because the United States pays tens of millions of dollars in interest payments on debt owed to China every day.
“It gives China an advantage over us,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to spend $60 million today paying China for interest. We’ll do it tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. I’d rather invest it in America. And we’ll hurt our children and our grandchildren.”
Republicans have yet to formally unite at their convention behind any specific plan, though some ideas have been offered by various factions, such as the House Freedom Caucus or the Republican Study Committee on some of the principles they’d like to see in place. McCarthy, for his part, called a formal briefing for the entire US House of Representatives in a room usually reserved for classified intelligence briefings on US military operations earlier this month, bringing leaders from the Congressional Budget Office to brief members on the debt. .
“I just brought the director of the Congressional Budget Office and brought every Republican and every Democrat into the room,” McCarthy told Breitbart News. “Normally, we just do it for a classified briefing when there are some challenges to America, whether it’s military. Well, I think that’s a big problem. I think it’s our biggest problem. So we’re all getting together because we’re not just going to solve this problem ourselves.”
In addition to discretionary spending cuts, McCarthy has also advocated for energy independence, border security, bringing back some business requirements that Democrats have undermined, and “taking back” unspent COVID relief money that has been spent across the country.
“There are a lot of places where we can find savings and we can make government more efficient – more effective,” McCarthy said. “We can end the pandemic, which will save us money. We can get federal employees back to work. We passed a bill on that, and there was 47 percent of federal employees not at work today in the office. So what I look at is a number of things. But We have to put our financial house in order – it’s the main thing we need to do and put us on the path to balance.”
McCarthy was particularly upset with Biden’s false claim during his State of the Union address that Republicans were seeking to cut Medicare or Social Security, programs he had even before the speech made clear that Republicans had no intention of touching at all.
“He knew it was a lie when he said it,” McCarthy said of Biden’s false statement during the joint speech.
The reaction in the room was swift in response to Biden: Members’ cries that he was lying drowned him out, and then he began haggling with them from the podium about what to do about the debt ceiling.
“It’s louder in person than it is on TV,” McCarthy said when asked what it is like in the room watching who is sitting behind the president as the moment ends. “What’s really sad is that the president loses a lot of credibility when I say publicly we don’t cut Medicare and Social Security, but he loses a lot of credibility when the reason the new Congressional Budget Office reports for the next 10 years is the first time the three trust funds become insolvent.” In the next 10 years – the Highway Trust Fund, Medicare, Social Security. So when they put in Obamacare, they raided Medicare. When they just did their inflation bill, they raided Medicare. So why do we have a problem? Why does bankruptcy get faster? What the Democrats did to Medicare To turn around and find out it’s a lie and try to tell the American public that Republicans are after [these programs]We’re the ones trying to save her.”
As for whether or not Biden and the Democrats will negotiate in good faith — it appeared from that moment during his State of the Union address that he might actually do so afterwards — McCarthy said that remains to be seen.
“I think only time will tell,” McCarthy said. “I mean, the president’s answer is to tax more. That’s the worst thing you can do in an economy right now that isn’t growing. It’s the worst thing you can do with inflation, which he wants to do, too. I think government spending curbs inflation and makes us stronger economically and eliminates On waste in government.”
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