While President Joe Biden has preemptively declared the House debt-ceiling bill dead on arrival, U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) remains hopeful the budget-slashing proposal will bring big spender Biden to the negotiating table.
“Some people question the will of Republicans to fight for a conservative bill. In my first eight-plus years in congress this was the most conservative bill that we have passed yet,” Grothman told The Wisconsin Daily Star on Thursday’s edition of the Vicki McKenna Show.
The Limit, Save and Grow Act of 2023 raises the sky-high U.S. debt ceiling by a whopping $1.5 trillion, staving off a disastrous default on debt as early as June. It also makes deep cuts to discretionary spending in domestic departments, holding them to 2022 levels. Annual government spending growth would be capped at 1 percent over the decade.
Savings could clock in at about $3.2 trillion over the period, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — compared to present projections. Ultimately, CBO estimates, the cuts could lead to $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.
Fiscal hawk Grothman said he was “almost proud” of his colleagues for uniting in passing the proposal. All but four Republicans voted for the bill, which narrowly passed 217-215. Representatives Tim Burchett (R-TN-02), Matt Gaetz (R-FL-01), Ken Buck (R-CO-04) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) cast no votes, arguing the cuts didn’t go far enough to tame the nation’s dangerous debt — rapidly approaching $32 trillion.
“I have never voted to raise our debt limit no matter who was in charge. Our country is nearly $32 trillion in debt right now. That’s a debt neither we, nor our kids or grandkids can pay,” Burchett said in a statement.“We need to do whatever is necessary to get back to a balanced budget and meaningful debt reduction so this issue doesn’t keep coming back to haunt us.”
Biden and the Democrat-controlled Senate have vowed to abort the House bill as it stands.
“The Administration strongly opposes the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, which is a reckless attempt to extract extreme concessions as a condition for the United States simply paying the bills it has already incurred,” the White House said in a statement.
Biden and his congressional allies demand a “clean bill,” an increase to the nation’s borrowing authority without the pain of fiscal responsibility.
They’re not going to get it.
Grothman said the House bill will force Biden to negotiate, something the president has said he would not do.
“Its our negotiating position,” the congressman said. “I think the public will expect, hopefully, President Biden to do some negotiating. All along he said he was going to negotiate with [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy. He won’t meet with McCarthy in part because he said Republicans in the House would never get their act together and pass a bill. Well, we got our act together and passed a bill.”
Even government-subsidized National Public Radio concedes the House bill “could increase pressure on Biden to start talking about compromises, since neither party wants to default on the national debt.” As NPR notes, Biden and McCarthy haven’t had an extended discussion about the debt disaster since February.
U.S. debt is rapidly approaching a shameful — and unsustainable — 100 percent of GDP (gross domestic product). That dubious level is what the U.S. faced at the end of World War II.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel asserts McCarthy’s debt-ceiling victory “blew up President Biden’s entire operating assumption. Democrats aren’t the only game in town after all.”
“The Biden bet was that McCarthy would never unify his caucus around a package of spending reductions and that Democrats would continue dictating policy including a ‘clean’ debt-ceiling increase,” Strassel wrote.
“He lost that bet.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Glenn Grothman” by Leah Herman. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Florian Pintar.
