Will the Republicans in the legislature finally grasp the concept that we want them to spend less money, not more? Probably not, as being responsible is not something that happens in The Swamp, but McCarthy is at least mouthing the right words on what will happen with the debt ceiling and national debt.
That came when Speaker Kevin McCarthy spoke with Breitbart News and pledged, during the interview, that the House would neither pass a budget that raises taxes nor raises the debt ceiling without cutting spending. In his words, “The one thing I firmly believe,” McCarthy said, is “We’re not going to raise taxes and we’re not going to pass a clean debt ceiling.”
Continuing, he claimed to have told Biden that he wouldn’t back down on the issue, saying, “I told the president we have to spend less money.” Emphasizing that again, later in the interview, he said, “I do not predetermine what that is, but what I laid out with the president is: We’re going to spend less money.”
Adding some context to those statements, Breitbart, which interviewed McCarthy and thus has some reason to know what he’s thinking, said, “While McCarthy has made it clear he wants serious cuts to non-essential discretionary government spending in order to slow inflation—he does not intend to cut Medicare or Social Security—he was not specific in this interview about exactly how much in terms of such cuts he was looking for.”
Adding to that, he said that the budget issue is an urgent one because “Every great society collapses when they over-extend themselves,” so if America doesn’t want to collapse, it needs to reign in its ambitions and stop spending so much.
That point, whether or not McCarthy really meant it, is particularly poignant given Silicon Valley Bank’s ongoing collapse, the disaster that was the FTX drama, the huge and growing deficit, and the havoc that rising interest rates are already wreaking in the mortgage and business spheres and are set to be problematic in even the governmental sphere.
McCarthy also added, during the interview, that solving problems would solve the government money, As two examples, he pointed to securing the border and achieving energy independence, saying that the financial needs of the government would decrease if the border problem were solved and American energy policy led to energy independence. In his words:
“Another dollar amount you would look at is not just all the savings, but what if you were able to secure the border? What if you were able to become energy independent? That’s a lot of savings in itself because you have the price of fuel lower so people can work, that more jobs would come to America.”
He also hammered the Democrats for their irresponsible behavior and the problems that have resulted from it, saying:
“Look, the debt ceiling is very serious—and we’ve got to understand what the debt ceiling is and just to put it down it’s like providing your child with a credit card. They charge all the way up to the limit, and you’re responsible for paying it. But do you raise the limit without changing the behavior or do you change the behavior?”
“Right now we have inflation because of the Democrats’ runaway spending,” McCarthy said. “Really, what people want to look at: Is it a spending problem or is it a revenue problem? Our spending is $31 trillion of debt. You just had the Congressional Budget Office just come out a couple weeks ago and tell us a forecast for the next 10 years. What they say is in the next 10 years we will end up paying $10.5 trillion just in interest. So it’s just like paying the interest on your credit card and never taking on the principle. Now put that in perspective. How much interest have we paid in the last 80 years? Let’s go back to 1940. If you add up all the interest that we paid for our debt since 1940 today it’s $9 trillion. So what took you more than 80 years, you’re going to pay more in 10 years.”
Will all that come to anything? McCarthy suggested that he has a plan to negotiate with Biden and the Democrats over spending cuts, so maybe. But, if the GOP is known for one thing, it’s shooting themselves in the foot and backing down, so we’ll have to wait and see.
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