House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., delivered a fiery speech on the House floor Friday to say Republicans will push for new spending cuts as part of a debt ceiling deal, and to reject Democratic opposition to those cuts.
“I don’t have my phones lighting up saying, just keep raising the debt and do nothing about it,” he said. “It’s the complete opposite!”
“One-hundred and fifty-four dollars,161,” McCarthy said in a floor discussion with Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. “That’s the responsibility of every single American based upon the debt that we have right now of $18 trillion.”
Hoyer and other Democrats have been pushing for a “clean” debt ceiling increase, but McCarthy said that makes no sense because it would just allow the national debt to soar higher.
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“My friend on the other side of the aisle thinks it’s un-American that we do anything about that,” McCarthy said. “That the only road we should do is just raise it and keep adding it. That somehow, that will build confidence in this country, somehow that will give more opportunity to the future generation.”
“Count me out of that,” he said. “Put me in the column that I want to start talking about the ways we find solutions.”
McCarthy’s comments are a dramatic shift from the wide expectation that Congress will at some point next week pass a “clean” debt ceiling hike, one that doesn’t include any GOP demands for spending cuts.
There’s not much time for a grand bargain. The Treasury Department has said that by Nov. 3, it will either need an increase in the amount of money it can borrow, or find ways to trim federal programs to match expected tax revenues.
Republicans are also hurt by the fact that they have only just agreed that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will be their next speaker, a leadership shift that has distracted the GOP for the last several weeks.
Still, McCarthy said Republicans are looking for cuts at this point, something that could require intense negotiations next week.
“I am hopeful that we stop kicking the can down the road,” he said of bipartisan talks that have started in an effort to reach a debt ceiling deal. “I’m hopeful in these bipartisan discussions that we start the downpayment where we don’t have to worry about raising the debt limit, that we’re actually paying off the debt and not leaving this to our children and grandchildren.”
McCarthy indicated his preferred answer would match the one Republicans proposed earlier this year: one that would allow a debt ceiling hike, but would also see falling budget deficits over time, which would reduce the need for more borrowing later on.
“It’s hard for me to believe that the entire other side of this aisle wouldn’t want to do something about the debt,” McCarthy said. “Why don’t we come together, find a way to raise it, but find a way that we don’t continue to add to it?”
