As the deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default on America's debt moves forward through Congress, the Heritage Foundation released a statement from its president, Kevin Roberts, panning the agreement between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) team and President Joe Biden, chastising Republican lawmakers for what he says was a missed opportunity to "protect families" and cut government spending.
"At a time when Americans are struggling to balance their budgets as the cost of gas, groceries, and childcare continue to rise, Republicans had a real chance to protect families and fight sky-high inflation and interest rates by cutting government spending," Roberts said in the statement released Monday afternoon after the text of the debt deal was circulated.
"Republicans entered negotiations with a strong hand, having passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act in April," Roberts continued. "Their plan paired robust spending cuts and pro-growth policies with a modest debt limit increase—giving Americans back $4 for every dollar of increased federal debt. While President Biden demanded a blank check and refused to negotiate, House Republicans passed the only proposal to raise the debt ceiling in Congress," Roberts rightly noted. "Sadly, that leverage was given away in closed-door negotiations."
As Townhall noted repeatedly in recent weeks, the House GOP was, in fact, the only group in Washington to have done anything to address the looming default by passing their version of a plan to deal with the debt and avoid a default. But, as Heritage's Roberts notes, the principally good tenets of the House GOP bill did not make it into the final deal, a consequence of divided government.
"Most fiscally conservative and pro-growth policies contained in the House-passed Limit, Save, Grow Act were stripped out or diluted," Roberts explained. "When Americans last gave their representatives in Washington this much support to rein in the government in 2011, Congress signed into law the Budget Control Act, which cut discretionary spending roughly 15 times more than the deal in front of us today," he reminded. "The new agreement essentially leaves untouched Biden’s slush fund for 87,000 new IRS agents to audit American families."
What's more, Roberts said, the agreed-upon deal "will likely lead to increased overall spending levels next year, giving up on the $132 billion in real upfront cuts promised by Limit, Save, Grow" while giving "the Biden administration and the federal bureaucracy a blank-check debt limit suspension for two years."
Despite that, Roberts acknowledged that there are some conservative "victories" in the final deal. "Permitting reform will be a boon to allow businesses to build with less red tape," he outlined, and "[w]ork requirements will have a modest but real impact in preserving government programs for those who truly need them. But those victories are smaller and fewer in number than they should be," Roberts concluded after Heritage's review of the debt deal. The effect of the bipartisan agreement, according to Roberts, would be to "continue America’s trajectory towards economic destruction and expanded federal control."
As such, the Heritage Foundation president called on House Republicans to "go back to the negotiating table and demand more concessions from the Biden administration," but it seems it's too late for either side to return to the bargaining table now.
House Republicans must go back to the negotiating table and demand more concessions from the Biden administration.https://t.co/vsieJwWUxC
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) May 30, 2023
According to the latest projections from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the "x-date" for default is June 5, and lawmakers are already preparing the text for consideration in the House beginning on Tuesday with a vote currently planned for Wednesday.
In closing his statement, Roberts pledged that the Heritage Foundation stands "behind every member of Congress who is willing to fight for fundamental fiscal change in Washington." As Katie reported earlier, the current number of Republican lawmakers who join Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation in its reservations about the deal now number nine, as of Tuesday morning.