‘We Can’t Keep on This Path’: GOP Urges McCarthy to Stand Firm on Debt Ceiling

With pressure mounting on President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to reach a deal to raise the debt ceiling before an unprecedented default on the federal government’s debt sometime this summer, House Republicans are urging McCarthy to stand his ground on demanding government spending cuts before agreeing to raising the debt ceiling.

During Friday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) contended that America’s current level of debt “serves as a form of bondage” to its citizens, before giving a concise rundown of how America arrived at its current debt crossroads.

“[When] COVID hit, they artificially closed the economy,” he explained. “People knew there was a pandemic, but in many places they weren’t even free to interact or transact or even go to work. And then the substitute was more government spending, lots more spending. And there was so much more spending that there [weren’t] even buyers for the debt. The Federal Reserve served as a backstop and bought up $5 trillion worth of U.S. treasuries that no one else in the market would buy. We told them that it would cause inflation. They said it wouldn’t. Then they said, ‘Well, it won’t make it to consumers.’ We said it [would]. They said, ‘Well, it’ll be transitory.’ Now everyone knows it’s not transitory. Everyone knows they were lying at the time. And Joe Biden wants to keep on that same agenda that’s hitting people with crippling inflation. So that’s what that debt limit is about. It’s about not bankrupting America today, but it’s also about not bankrupting America in the future, and frankly, dragging households along with collateral damage with these high interest rates.”

Davidson further argued that most Americans do not support trillion-dollar deficits in the government’s budget year after year.

“[Most] are opposed to the status quo because they understand that you can’t keep on this path,” he observed. “It is going to be a crash. It’s hard to think that there are people that really are for crashing our financial sector. And why? Because they want to fundamentally remake America. That is the Biden agenda. And you see it on issue after issue. They’re trying to create a system that redistributes wealth at every turn under the guise of ‘equity.’ And people are starting to really see that for what it is.”

Davidson went on to state that the coalition of Republicans that held up McCarthy’s election as House speaker in January because of concerns about runaway government deficits and inflation is still very much intact. “There’s a broad consensus that we have to change course now. … I think by the end of April, we’ll pass something out of the House that will make it clear to Joe Biden and the Senate Democrats that … there will be a negotiation, there won’t be just a clean debt ceiling raise.”

The congressman further reiterated that “every American knows we can cut something. … The idea that we’re just going to keep spending like this, everyone knows that [we are] in a problem because of this. Inflation, housing prices, food prices, energy prices. You think about energy policy and border security policies. Joe Biden is for these policies because of the implications. That means he’s for this inflation because of the implications and his plan is to keep dumping fuel on it. We have to make him change course. It’s hurting American citizens.”

As the debt ceiling debate and worries over inflation continue, the Biden administration has enacted another highly controversial financial policy. Last week, it was reported that a new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) rule will take effect on May 1 that will force homebuyers with good credit to pay an additional fee rolled into their mortgage payment that will subsidize homebuyers with poor credit scores.

“It’s really simple — it’s socialism,” Davidson remarked. “It’s a redistribution plan. It takes not just from the rich. It takes from people that have even slightly below average credit and imposes a fee on them when they buy a home that costs them more on their mortgage, and gives it to people that have bad credit. So the average credit score is about 710, and this would impose a roughly 1% fee on anyone that has down to a 680 credit score. So if you have even slightly below average credit, you’re going to pay a fee so that people that have bad credit can get less expensive mortgages — and that’s ‘equity.’”

Davidson had some simple advice for how borrowers with good credit should respond to the measure: “They should sue, because it’s unconstitutional for the president to impose a tax without it passing through the House of Representatives.”