House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unveiled his long-awaited debt ceiling package on Wednesday, proposing to raise the debt ceiling over the next year either by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first.
McCarthy released the 320-page bill shortly after he announced the proposal on the House floor, with the speaker hoping to bring the measure to the House floor for a vote sometime next week. The proposal comes after days of deliberations with other House Republicans as part of the speaker’s latest efforts to restart negotiations with the White House on how to address the debt ceiling crisis.
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McCarthy detailed some of the proposals included in his “Limit, Save, Grow” plan that will “responsibly raise debt into next year and provide $4.5 trillion in savings,” he said on the House floor on Wednesday. The debt ceiling will be led by Budget Committee Chairwoman Jodey Arrington (R-TX).
The plan would seek to cool inflation and limit government spending by reducing discretionary funds to pre-pandemic levels and capping budget increases 1% each year. The plan would also “claw back billions of dollars of unspent COVID spending that has sat for the last two years.”
“These are the same levels we had just four months ago. I didn’t hear a single Democrat complain about that level of spending,” McCarthy said. “These spending limits are not draconian. They are responsible.”
The proposal comes as McCarthy’s office has been working for weeks to craft legislation that could garner enough support in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes in order to pass the bill and give him a framework to bring to the negotiating table with President Joe Biden.
The debt ceiling proposal has proved to be McCarthy’s toughest leadership test yet as the California Republican seeks to appease the demands of all corners of his party. One of those demands includes a measure to repeal a portion of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that seeks to provide the Internal Revenue Service with $80 billion in spending.
Republicans have decried that proposal, arguing it would lead to the hiring of 87,000 IRS agents that would be used to “weaponize” the agency against working families. McCarthy also proposed to do away with environmental “green giveaways” that he says “distort the market and waste taxpayers’ money.”
Even with all the government spending cuts, McCarthy vowed that his legislation would preserve and protect both Medicare and Social Security, following through with pledges not to cut the welfare programs.
McCarthy unveiled the plan to GOP lawmakers during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, which was met with mixed reactions from GOP members. However, the speaker expressed confidence it can pass, acknowledging to members the plan is not complete but will act as a catalyst to kick-start discussions with Biden.
McCarthy met with Biden in January to begin negotiations on the debt ceiling, but that meeting ended without a binding agreement because the White House maintained it would not discuss federal spending until the borrowing limit was lifted. McCarthy said he has not spoken with Biden since that initial meeting, accusing the president of “bumbling his way into the first default in our nation’s history.”
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“President Biden is skipping town to deliver a speech in Maryland rather than sitting down to address the debt ceiling,” McCarthy said on Wednesday. “He’s giving America’s debt the Southern border treatment: ignoring it and hope that it goes away. In fact, he’s been avoiding the issue for 77 straight days and counting.”
The White House has declined to continue negotiations until Republicans release their budget proposal for the next fiscal year — a talking point that has been repeatedly used by Democrats in recent weeks.
Read the full bill here:
