As Townhall reported earlier this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced movement on congressional efforts to fund the government and avoid a shutdown that included an agreement on a topline funding number: $1.590 trillion for fiscal year 2024 made up of $886 billion in defense spending and $704 billion for non-defense spending.
Former House member-turned-Florida Governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, however, isn't thrilled with the agreement on topline spending. In an interview with The Blaze, the presidential hopeful panned the development and accused House Republicans of "selling out" the voters who sent them there in the midterms.
"They said they were going to change the way Washington operates," DeSantis reminded of the House GOP. "They said that they were going to hold these agencies accountable," he added. "Look, this is just selling out everything that they ran on in 2022," DeSantis emphasized of the spending agreement.
"The House of Representatives is supposed to [hold federal agencies accountable]," the former U.S. Rep. from Florida's 6th congressional district continued. "They're armed with the power of the purse" and should "be the people's redress for when government misbehaves, when government violates people's rights, when government doesn't do its core functions like it's failing to do at the border."
According to DeSantis, if House Republicans are "willing to just simply fund the whole thing into perpetuity, then you're never going to get any of those practices changed," and the Biden administration will continue to bounce from one crisis to another. "What's going on with the status quo is shutting down our country, it's shutting down the American dream, it's shutting down our sovereignty," said DeSantis. "Why would you want to just green-light the current order of things given how bad all this is?"
Lamenting the fact that what he sees as a betrayal of midterm voters' trust "has been standard practice" for Republicans "for a long time," DeSantis said that what the country needs is "leadership." Arguing he's the best suited for the job of leading the country, DeSantis said it's time for a president that "lays down the marker" and "puts pressure on these guys to actually do what they say they're going to do."
"I think one of the problems is they're allowed to campaign as conservatives, then they get up, and they just do business as usual," DeSantis said of elected Republicans, and "they don't really get called on it the way we need to."
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