The House-passed bill suspending the nation’s debt ceiling would give President Joe Biden “an unlimited credit card,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., warned Thursday.
“The biggest detail for me is the fact that Joe Biden, who we cannot trust on spending, has an unlimited credit card until the end of his term,” Scott said while discussing details of the legislation passed Wednesday night by the House in an appearance on Fox News Channel.
“Until January of 2025, there is no limit [on debt],” Scott said of the bill, which the Senate is about to take up. “There is no way for us to understand what he’s going to spend, except for looking back; $1.2 trillion more last time, $2 trillion [more] this fiscal year.”
“I can only imagine that next fiscal year will be more,” Scott, who said Wednesday that he will vote against the measure, added. “The American people cannot afford Joe Biden with an unlimited credit card and no one holding him accountable until after we defeat him in November of 2024.”
Scott recently announced his own campaign for the presidency.
The House voted 314-117 on Wednesday night to pass the 99-page bill, called the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. A total of 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats voted for it, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against it. Another four House members didn’t vote.
The Democratic-controlled Senate now will take up and vote on the House-passed legislation.
“The suspension of the debt ceiling as the nation barrels headlong into a recession is a recipe for disaster,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow in regional economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a written statement following the House vote. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“Government spending will likely be much more than currently estimated, and the nation will be lucky to get through the next two years and not borrow more than $4 trillion,” Antoni said. “The lack of spending reforms also mean that the treasury is going to begin borrowing heavily, almost immediately. About $800 billion is going to be drained out of bank deposits and equities to buy all that treasury-issued debt.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., proposed Thursday to cap government spending in an amendment to the House-passed bill, which resulted from negotiations between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
“Sixty percent of Americans say Congress should only raise the nation’s debt ceiling if it cuts spending at the same time,” Paul said in a written statement. “I would guess the Americans answering that poll meant real cuts in spending, not an annual increase of 1% above already bloated levels of COVID-19 spending.”
“Bold actions must be taken to defeat our mounting national debt,” the Kentucky Republican added, “and my conservative alternative to the Biden-McCarthy deal gives us a real opportunity to get our fiscal house in order.”
The amendment, called the Five Penny Plan of 2023, “places caps on total on-budget outlays that decrease by 5% each year which are enforceable by sequester,” Paul’s office said, and “does not touch Social Security and leaves Congress full discretion on which accounts to cut.”
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