The GOP’s stalwart House Freedom Caucus convened for a fiery press conference condemning Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt limit deal made with Joe Biden last week. Speakers such as Byron Donalds and Chip Roy denounced the move as antithetical to the conservative movement and excoriated McCarthy for tearing the Republican Party “asunder” when they should be unified against Joe Biden and the Democrats.
McCarthy, for his part, touted the bill, saying it avoided a cataclysmic default on America’s debts, all while coming in under 100 pages. He also boasted of the trillions of dollars being saved in future federal budgets and highlighted key wins for his constituents, including cutting funding for the IRS and demanding student borrowers pay back loans they took out.
Of course, the agreement comes with one major caveat – namely, that the debt ceiling would again be raised. By most accounts, the new debt ceiling would be lifted by another $4 trillion under the plan, keeping with the D.C work ethic of never shrinking government.
While McCarthy and others are celebrating the avoidance of a default, some members of the House Freedom Caucus see the latest agreement as just one more example of endless government bloat.
“Washington is doing it again,” Florida congressman Byron Donalds said over the weekend. “While you are celebrating Memorial Day, all of our men and women who gave their lives for this great nation, and you were spending time with your family and your friends, this town was cutting another crap deal, that’s going to put you more in debt with no real changes whatsoever.”
He continued, specifically citing the bill’s apparent lack of real cuts while providing the federal government a spending cushion worth trillions of dollars. “Who here thinks it’s cool to cut $12 billion in exchange for $4 trillion? I don’t think that’s cool at all,” he went on.
“This bill keeps all of Joe Biden’s policy, all of Joe Biden’s spending intact,” Donalds added, noting that many of the pet projects of Democrats such as supporting student loan help and climate policies were untouched in the agreement.
Representative Chip Roy was another vocal opponent of McCarthy’s aisle-crossing agreement. He urged his congressional colleagues to vote against it when it came on the floor.
“There was a breach in the structure that we agreed to put in place to make sure that we are representing the American people through this here to four United Republican Conference. The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder,” Roy stated.
“No one sent us here to borrow an additional $4 trillion to get absolutely nothing in return,” he pointed out, noting that Democrats get to keep big government in play.
He continued with some basic rationale, observing that Democrats and RINOs all seem to love the bill, which ought to be enough to point out its flaws. “There’s a reason our Democratic colleagues support this. There’s a reason that Mitt Romney supports this,” he blasted.
Going on, he praised two of the top presidential contenders on the Republican side, saying that both Ron DeSantis opposed it and that former president Donald TrumpPresident Trump “thought we should default rather than pursue this kind of lunacy.”
Lauren Boebert was another House Freedom Caucus member who spoke out against McCarthy’s turncoat agreement. Check her speech out below.
The bill will go to a vote on the House floor in the coming days.
Featured image: Screen shots from embedded Rumble videos, via C-SPAN
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