The White House responded to a budget cut proposal from the House Freedom Caucus with a series of criticisms that the group’s senior lawmaker calls “preposterous.”
The Biden administration offered a budget framework earlier this month which would increase spending from $5.8 trillion to $6.9 trillion and implement several tax hikes on wealthy individuals and businesses. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, a bloc of conservative Republican lawmakers, countered with a proposal that would establish topline discretionary spending at the fiscal year 2022 level for one decade and allow for 1% annual growth.
An announcement of the House Freedom Caucus framework asserted that its budget proposal would inhibit “the wasteful, woke, and weaponized federal bureaucracy.”
The release of the budget proposals coincides with negotiations between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) over the debt ceiling, a measure established by Congress that disallows the federal government from spending beyond the predetermined statutory limit of $31.4 trillion. When the national debt surpassed the limit earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that she was forced to implement “extraordinary measures” to fund the government until early June, after which the government will default on obligations.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus will consider voting to raise the debt ceiling contingent upon acceptance of their budget framework, as well as moves to rescind the $400 billion White House student loan cancellation plan, the $80 billion recently allocated to double the size of the IRS, and unspent stimulus funds passed during the lockdown-induced recession. The stringent demands from the House Freedom Caucus were met with claims from the White House on Monday that the framework would “make our borders less secure” and “defund the police.”
House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-PA) told The Daily Wire that the rebuttal from the Biden administration was not a serious counterargument to the proposal.
“This White House has done more to endanger our law enforcement and the American People than any in history. Fear and smear isn’t a pillar of policy,” Perry commented. “It’s propaganda, and this latest tactic is a disgusting attempt to distract, deceive, and deny his record-setting incompetence surrendering operational control of our southern border to lawless drug cartels, sinking our economy, and ushering in debt and bank crises.”
The assertion that law enforcement funding would be jeopardized by the House Freedom Caucus framework likely resides in the call for a reduction in “topline” spending, which would still allow lawmakers to reallocate wasteful spending within individual agencies.
The White House added on Tuesday that the House Freedom Caucus proposal would raise “costs for families.” Inflation rates have more than quadrupled since Biden assumed office two years ago.
The Daily Wire asked Perry under what circumstances members of the House Freedom Caucus would amend their intentions to make votes on the debt ceiling contingent on their budget framework. He responded that “nearly every significant deficit reduction agreement since 1980” emerged from a negotiation regarding the debt limit.
“America is facing an unprecedented, unsustainable debt crisis thanks to out-of-control spending from Washington,” the lawmaker said. “President Biden, however, refuses to negotiate with Congress. Furthermore, the Constitution and our laws require the federal government to pay our debts, and the President has both the money and tools to do so. If he chooses to default on America’s debt for political reasons, that is on him and him alone.”
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