House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tore into President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats in a speech Monday night over raising the debt limit.
McCarthy, ahead of the president’s State of the Union address, delivered the remarks in a hallway near the speaker’s balcony, a location that is used for major announcements.
“I speak to you as a father, a former small business owner, and a taxpayer. And like many of you, I worry about a future that feels less secure than it should,” McCarthy said. “A lot has changed in recent years. Our southern border was once secure. Now, the number of illegal immigrants who crossed our border in just two years easily exceeds the population of 25 states.”
“Americans are getting hammered by higher prices,” he continued. “Today, nearly two-thirds of all Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to make ends meet.”
“Meanwhile, China is infiltrating our culture, our farmland, and our skies because they see us as weak,” he continued. “This is not sustainable.”
McCarthy warned that while all of those things are bad, they pale in comparison to the threat that the national debt poses to American’s future.
“You deserve the truth. So, let’s start with the facts,” he said. “Our national debt is high. Too high. And the problem is getting worse, not better. We are now 31 trillion dollars in debt. That is more than the size of the entire American economy. 20 percent more. Our debt is now a greater burden than it has been at any time since World War 2.”
“If we continue down this path, in the next ten years, we will spend over 8 trillion dollars just on interest,” he continued. “That’s more than the entire federal budget this year. By a lot. That is neither affordable nor sustainable. When debt is too high, inflation is the result.”
McCarthy noted how the prices of everything have exploded in recent years and how Democrats printing money under the Biden administration has exacerbated the problem.
“Thanks to four years of runaway spending by the Democrats, they increased annual discretionary spending by 400 billion dollars – that’s a 30 percent increase in just four years,” he said. “They took our nation’s credit card, spent like crazy, and left us in deep debt. But not once did they seek or accept any responsibility. Instead, they doubled down.”
“In 2021, Democrats passed the largest debt limit increase in American history. Then, they maxed out our nation’s credit card again just 13 months later,” he continued. “Now, President Biden wants Congress to raise the debt limit yet again … without a single, sensible change to how government spends your hard-earned money. None.”
McCarthy said that defaulting on the nation’s debt was “not an option” but neither is “a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates, and an economy that doesn’t work for working Americans.”
McCarthy called on Biden to quit playing games over the debt ceiling and to come to the table to figure out a sensible solution that will help address the problem at hand.
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