Signs of conservative discontent emerge as debt ceiling negotiations continue
Samantha-Jo Roth
Video Embed
After negotiators for President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) held what both sides called productive debt ceiling talks, conservative lawmakers in both the House and the Senate raised concerns about the details of a deal in the works.
With seven days until a potential federal default, a debt ceiling deal continues to be elusive. But according to those close to negotiations, the White House and Republicans are inching closer to a compromise on spending levels, although they remain tens of billions of dollars apart.
BIDEN AND REPUBLICANS BLAME EACH OTHER FOR DEFAULT THEY INSIST WON’T HAPPEN
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) sounded the alarm over the direction the debt negotiations were taking in a radio interview on Thursday, saying he believes Republicans are likely to get a “modest reduction” on fiscal 2023 spending levels.
“I am going to have to go have some blunt conversations with my colleagues and the leadership team. I don’t like the direction they are headed,” Roy said. “That doesn’t sound like a deal that I can support.”
Roy sent a memo to House Republicans on Wednesday, outlining a number of the GOP’s top priorities in the debt ceiling fight. The memo lists seven reforms that House Republicans say must be included in the final debt limit legislation and should not be compromised on merely to reach a deal with Biden. The reforms are already part of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Limit, Save, Grow Act, which narrowly passed the House last month. The legislation pairs nearly $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction measures with a debt limit increase into the next year. The bill would freeze spending at last year’s levels for a decade and would also roll back parts of Biden’s expansive health, climate, and tax law, expand mining and fossil fuel production, and impose work requirements on social programs.
McCarthy and Biden are considering compromises that could lose the votes of both the hard Right and the hard Left in Congress, which would require them to put together a coalition of Republicans and centrist Democrats to back a final deal.
There are emerging signs of trouble with Republicans in the upper chamber as well. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) threatened to tank any deal that does not include significant reductions in spending.
“I will use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms,” Lee said in a tweet on Thursday morning. “I fear things are moving in that direction. If they do, that proposal will not face smooth sailing in the Senate.”
https://twitter.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1661716721575804928?s=20
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
McCarthy shrugged off concerns from Lee and Roy Thursday, saying the two just “need to be updated” on how negotiations are materializing, according to reporting from Politico.
The window to get a debt limit deal through both chambers and signed into law by June 1 is growing more unlikely. It will take at least two days to draft the legislative text, at least three days to move it through the House, and several days in the Senate.