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Rep. Chip Roy is nothing if he isn’t a passionate defender of fiscal sanity, and he let loose on his Republican colleagues on Wednesday. In a speech on the House floor, the Texas congressman named names and articulated why he believes the debt ceiling deal is the wrong path to take.
As RedState reported, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden struck a deal to raise the debt ceiling, with Republicans gaining some modest concessions. In the overall scheme of things, though, the deficit savings were minimal, and the main win was simply slowing the growth of government. A laudable thing given how out of control spending is, but certainly not the resounding victory McCarthy has proclaimed it to be.
Being a high-level member of the Freedom Caucus, it’s not surprising that Roy would take a different view than his party’s leadership. Here’s what he had to say.
“To my [Republican] colleagues on this side of the aisle … My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.”
🔥SOUND ON: pic.twitter.com/qETdeKuySo
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) May 31, 2023
ROY: I listened to the gentleman from Massachusetts wax on, talking about governing. Well, we don’t govern, Mr. McGovern, we represent. That’s what we are supposed to do anyway, is represent the people of this country, fed up with a government that is now 40 percent bigger since the begging of COVID. A government barreling towards 36 trillion in debt, and an absolute devasting burden on the future of this country, on our children and grandchildren, who are not going to be able to afford homes, not be able to afford, go to school, not be able to afford food and groceries.
Talk about food programs, I don’t hear a whole hell of a lot about what we’re doing to devastate American families with rampant inflation because we keep spending money we don’t have.
He continued from there acknowledging the struggle that negotiators had dealing with a Democratic Party that refuses to listen to basic common sense and reason, content to continue running costs up on American families. But as he notes, the deal that was cut only caps spending for two years and is full of loopholes and gimmicks that would allow the White House to escape its obligations under the agreement.
Roy went on to mock the two percent cut in Biden’s IRS expansion, which was passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. He also decried the giving up of leverage without getting anything done to help secure the Southern border.
Is he wrong? Nope. As I said in a previous write-up, McCarthy is welcome to argue that this is the best he could get. What he can’t argue is that the deal itself was good. The goalposts have been moved so far during the COVID era that agreeing to a debt deal that keeps spending 40 percent higher than the pre-COVID era is now seen as a “win.” It’s ludicrous.
I do sympathize with leadership in this situation because there was never any seriously substantive deal to be had here when Joe Biden is on the other end of the table. Yet, Roy also has a point in that if Republicans aren’t willing to stand up now, with topline spending already so high, when will they ever stand up?
Unfortunately, I think the answer is that they won’t. The country is barrelling toward a fiscal cliff that likely can’t even be avoided at this point. The only decision that is getting made is how hard we press the gas on the way there.
