WASHINGTON — A conservative Republican at the center of the tortured effort to elect House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he’d welcome a hard-fought battle over the U.S. debt ceiling, but said both parties should start negotiating terms for the increase now so it doesn’t go down to the wire.
“Our point is, let’s fight now to end the status quo,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Let’s get in the room now.”
Roy helped negotiate a deal with McCarthy giving conservatives more clout that helped give the leader enough backing to win the speakership by a single vote early Saturday on the 15th ballot.
Asked whether McCarthy must tie a debt ceiling increase to deep spending cuts or face the mightiest tool they secured — the ability for a single Republican to force a House vote to oust McCarthy as speaker — Roy hinted that could be in store.
“I’m not going to play the what-if games of how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement,” Roy said. “But we will use tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement.”
Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have denounced the deal McCarthy struck that helped bring around many of a group of 20 dissident GOP lawmakers last week. Democrats and other critics say it could hobble McCarthy’s ability to reach a bipartisan deal to lift the debt ceiling sometime after July 1, when the $31 trillion limit will need to be raised to prevent a U.S. default on debt payments.
But President Joe Biden has vowed he won’t make concessions to prevent Republicans from forcing a first-ever default on the debt.
“Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without conditions and it’s just that simple,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “Attempts to exploit the debt ceiling as leverage will not work. There will be no hostage-taking.”
A 2011 crisis rattled financial markets and consumer confidence and led to the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. sovereign debt rating by Standard & Poor’s. It ended when President Barack Obama agreed to about $2 trillion in spending cuts over a decade.
Rep. Scott Perry, who chairs the Freedom Caucus, was asked whether he’s prepared to let the U.S. default. “Everybody should negotiate,” including President Joe Biden, Perry said on ABC’s “This Week.” Biden has said they limit should be increased without conditions.
“We can’t just keep doing the same thing under the same conditions with the same management and expect different outcomes,” Perry said. “The American people are sick and tired of this endless debt increasing.”
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark said she expects far-right Republicans in the House to take aim at entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare as they try to cut the federal debt.
“That is taking our seniors hostage,” she said on CNN.
Roy said the target for Republicans is both defense and non-defense discretionary spending in the part of the federal budget that is determined by Congress, while saying Republicans have made it clear “we’re not going to touch the benefits” going to people who rely on Social Security and Medicare benefits.
“But we all have to be honest about sitting at the table and figuring out how we’re going to make those work and how we’re to deal with defense spending and how we’re going to deal with non-defense spending,” Roy said.
The deal struck with McCarthy seeks to balance the budget using 2022 discretionary spending as a baseline, he said. “Let’s sit down on how we’re going to spend on that discretionary spending,” Roy said.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican and McCarthy ally, said the deal the new House speaker struck with conservatives is less of an issue than the brutal rounds of failed ballots that could weaken McCarthy.
“There was no reason for us to keep voting, keep voting, keep allowing these speeches that just degraded and diminished and insulted Kevin McCarthy,” Crenshaw said on CNN.
“We didn’t have to keep doing that,” he said. “We could have just adjourned for the week and just kept negotiating. That’s where the heartburn was.”
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(With assistance from Jenny Leonard.)
