House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday hit back at acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney for suggesting her position on spending caps and the debt ceiling had shifted as Trump administration officials and congressional leaders from both parties try to reach a budget deal.
“Do we have to waste time on Mick Mulvaney’s characterization of my remarks?” the California Democrat asked reporters on Capitol Hill. “We will never question the full faith and credit of the United States of America. It’s in the Constitution of the United States. Mulvaney is one of the people who shut down government because they didn’t want to lift the debt ceiling and so he has no credibility on the subject what’s so ever.”
House, Senate, and White House negotiators failed this week to reach a two-year caps agreement to raise federal spending levels set under the 2011 Budget Control Act that, if left in place, would cut discretionary spending next year by $125 billion.
“I bragged at the beginning about the good work that the Appropriations Committee is doing. We want to come as close to their number as possible in the discussions and that when the Republicans threatened to not lift the debt ceiling, as you may recall a few years ago, just the threat of it, because it was a very legitimate threat and people were scared, lowered the credit rating of the United States of America, and he was part of that,” Pelosi said. “I have never changed my view on the subject, what we have said is we have to deal with these things sequentially and we will.
Negotiators were hoping to reach a deal so Congress can pass spending bills before the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. One of the areas of disagreement is between Republicans and the administration over increasing both domestic and military caps.
