DeSantis tears into McCarthy’s debt deal and says US will STILL be ‘careening toward bankruptcy’
DeSantis tears up McCarthy’s debt deal: Florida governor says US will STILL ‘move towards bankruptcy’ with package to raise limit by $4 trillion and proves Washington ‘still failing’
- He nullified the deal to suspend the debt limit until January 2025
- A group of conservatives in Congress have criticized the deal
- The key vote was to take place in the House of Representatives this week before ‘X date’, 5 June
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joined a group of conservatives in Congress as they strike a new deal to raise the debt limit and curb spending for two years.
DeSantis, who formally announced his White House campaign last week, weighed in two days after President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the deal, which would suspend the federal debt limit until January 2025.
When asked about his assessment, DeSantis told Fox News, “Well, prior to this deal … our country was in danger of bankruptcy. And after this deal, our country will still be heading for bankruptcy.”
“And to say you can do $4 trillion in raises over the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a huge amount,” he said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the nation was still “heading for bankruptcy” after a deal to suspend the debt limit and freeze spending at 2023 levels, with spending rising by 1 percent the following year would rise
He was referring to a figure cited by Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and others that the suspension of the country’s $31 trillion debt would lead to an increase of $4 trillion by then.
He also objected to the spending figures enshrined in the deal for the next two years — which Biden is already warming to from his own party’s progressive wing.
It would limit spending to 2023 levels — which, given inflation, represents an effective cut but falls short of Republican House goals. He noted that current year funding was boosted by a drip of COVID relief.
“I think we’ve put ourselves on a trajectory here, really since March 2020 with some of the COVID spending, the budget is completely reset, and they’re sticking to that. And I think that’s just going to be totally inadequate to get us in a better place.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy must now rally the votes to get the plan through the House. He faces criticism from House conservatives over the deal
Progressives in the House reject the spending freeze negotiated by President Joe Biden
McCarthy said he talked to former President Donald Trump about the plan last week. Trump was in New York on Monday with plans to play a round of golf
DeSantis appeared on Fox News at the start of a week that will take him to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina
Then DeSantis pointed to Florida, where state law requires the budget to be balanced.
“Look in Florida, we have big budget surpluses. We have a $1.2 trillion economy, but our debt is only $17 billion. — second lowest per capita in the country,” he said. “But we make tough choices and we make sure that we look to the long term, obviously in Washington DC, they’re doing these cycles just to get them through the next election. And that is ultimately one of the reasons why they continue to fail.’
DeSantis took the deal negotiated by McCarthy and his allies days after McCarthy revealed on Thursday that he had discussed it with former President Donald Trump amid the heat of the negotiations.
“I recently spoke with President Trump and it came up, but just for a second.”
He said Trump told him to “make sure you get a good deal as you go forward.”
DeSantis, a former House member trailing Trump in polls as much as 30 points, joins a disgruntled House faction that has torn up the deal.
Rep. Dan Bishop (RN.C.) wrote on Twitter on Sunday that “RINOs congratulating McCarthy on nearly getting zippo in exchange for a $4T debt ceiling raise was enough to compel you” — then added a puking emoji to it.
Representative Ken Buck (R-Colo.) called it a “surrender of the debt ceiling.”