As Townhall has been covering, the White House is absolutely desperate when it comes to their handling of the debt ceiling negotiations, especially in recent days with the clock ticking. Meanwhile, Republicans are urging one another when it comes to "holding the line" and creating a "unified" message as Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has done in a memo issued Wednesday morning to House Republican colleagues. Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, provided instrumental support in getting the Limit, Save, Grow Act passed in the House last month.
"Many of you asked for the talking points I offered during our conference meeting on Tuesday," Roy begins his memo by noting, speaking of a closed door meeting that was held. In addition to mentioning the importance of "making clear we are unified to hold the line," Roy's memo also argues that "the strongest hand" comes by "messaging the specific purposes" behind the bill.
Roy's memo makes many of the same points he wrote about in last month's op-ed for The Federalist, "For America To Grow, Washington’s Swampy Spending Spree Has To Shrink."
"While House Republicans are fighting for hard-working American families facing a woke, weaponized government at odds with our way of life, President Biden and Democrats have been dragging their feet for weeks to fight for rich liberal elitists who want more spending, more government, more corporate subsidies, and less freedom," he points out in the memo.
While addressing seven reforms, Roy's memo goes through each one, which also includes warning of what the "Failure to Carry Through" will mean and a response to "False Criticism[s]."
The first reform lays out the need to "Reduce FY 2024 discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels and cap future spending at 1% growth to cut the deficit and rein in the federal bureaucracy," which "would cut $131 billion in discretionary spending in year one, save $3.6 trillion over a decade, and – most importantly – restrict the federal bureaucracy’s power to interfere with Americans’ ability to live free an prosper economically."
It's worth emphasizing that FY 2022 spending levels are something that Democrats were all too happy to cheer at the time, though they now hypocritically claim such levels are supposedly a disaster.
If this doesn't happen, the memo warns, that means "continued expansive funding without constraint of the federal bureaucracy at odds with Americans."
Repealing parts of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is another reform priority, specifically to do with "the grid-destroying tax credits for unreliable energy."
Further proving how problematic the IRA will be to Americans, the memo also warns that "Last year – through the use of reconciliation, with 158 proxy votes, and on a party line vote inAugust – Democrats jammed through a giant giveaway to the rich. Goldman Sachs estimated the IRA’s unreliable energy subsidies and programs will cost up to $1.2 trillion – over three times the original estimate of $391 billion.
If this doesn't come through, Roy's memo warns with original emphasis that "the absolute decimation of our grid to the benefit of corporate cronies – EIA estimates that the IRA could make wind and solar account for nearly 60% of US electricity generation by 2050, knocking off reliable generation in the process."
Another reform will overturn Biden's student loan "cancelation" that he implemented last August by executive order, which the memo points out, with original emphasis, "will cut the deficit by $400 billion this fiscal year."
Roy's memo really gets to the finer points of how unfair such a policy was from the president, as well as how he does not actually have the authority to do it. If this doesn't happen, the memo warns, "a veteran will have to watch someone who did not sacrifice for this country get the same benefits he does under the GI Bill and a plumber without a degree will have to subsidize his neighbor’s master’s degree in gender studies."
Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) herself acknowledged in 2021 that Biden does not have the authority. "People think the president of theUnited States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress," she aptly pointed out.
The fourth reform involves the weaponization by the IRS with their 87,000 new IRS agents, with the Republican plan to cut spending rescinding the $80 billion spent to hire these agents who the memo warns "will target working- and middle-class taxpayers the most."
Rescinding the $80 billion will not only save costs, but will also protect poorer taxpayers. According to CBS News, an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that the poor were five times more likely to get audited.
Roy's memo shares the most newsworthy provisions for last, specifically when it comes to work requirements for those on government assistance and returning unspent COVID funds. Joe Biden himself, as a senator, had supported those work requirements, as Roy's memo and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have pointed out at length.
The memo emphasizes the concept of "the dignity of work," and how then Sen. Biden at the time of the 1996 welfare reforms under then President Bill Clinton spoke of "the culture of work" and the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility."
Even more recently, when it comes to COVID funds, Biden as president signed legislation last month to end the COVID emergency. He had also emphasized in a "60 Minutes" interview that aired last September that "the pandemic is over."
Roy's memo also hits Democrats for inflation in this regard. "The $5 trillion we dumped into the economy in the name of 'COVID' was one of the main driversof inflation. COVID is long over, it is time to reclaim the tens of billions of unobligated COVID funding that still remains," the memo reads.
Roy also doesn't mince words when it comes to warning of what the "Failure To Carry Through" means in this case, which would be "an abject failure to demonstrate to the American people that we are willing to fight for even the most basic and popular spending cut."
As contentious as Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media may claim such provisions are, the latter two in particular enjoy strong support.
The United States is currently about one week away from the June 1 deadline, at which point Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the country will be headed for default.
These four pages are the MOST IMPORTANT things you need to know about the Debt Ceiling debate!
— Arizona Freedom Caucus (@AZFreedomCaucus) May 24, 2023
“While House Republicans are fighting for hard-working American families facing a woke, weaponized government at odds with our way of life, President Biden and Democrats have been… https://t.co/3ciVayS5Qp pic.twitter.com/9LNOABTwFD
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