House Speaker McCarthy torches Democrats over profligate spending: Schumer 'has never produced a budget'
Kevin McCarthy sounds off on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin’ on new Congress being forced to abide by predecessor's omnibus bill.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tore into his Democratic rivals and Republicans who helped pass the omnibus package, saying President Biden appears to believe there is not a cent of waste in current government spending.
On "Life, Liberty & Levin," host Mark Levin asked McCarthy whether the Democrats' playbook for fending off conservative Republicans' calls for budget cuts is to add hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt, then accuse the GOP of trying to shut down the government when they advocate for clawing back some of the new spending.
"That's exactly the trick," McCarthy said. "But you've got to think about too, who are the senators who wrote it? Two senators who are no longer here."
Both the 117th Congress' Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who led crafting of the spending bill, have retired. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., replaced Leahy as chairman earlier in January.
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
"None of these bills went through committee. They increased [U.S. spending] trillions of dollars," McCarthy said. "They increased the baseline by $135 billion. That means about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. And when the Democrats have been in power for these four years, they've increased our spending — just in discretionary — by 30%; over $400 billion."
With President Biden continuing to publicly rebut the idea of substantive spending cuts – including a promise at a Virginia event Thursday to "veto everything they send" — McCarthy said it is clear the president doesn't believe government waste exists in Washington.
"[N]ow you've got a president sitting at the White House trying to tell me that he can't negotiate, that there's no place and no waste in government spending, and that I should just raise the debt limit, after it's $31 trillion — 120% of GDP… We haven't been at this position before to-debt since World War II.
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President Biden (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Later, McCarthy reiterated his support for finding places to cut spending that won't affect the average American, citing a recent multi-million-dollar U.S.-taxpayer funded expenditure to promote Tunisian tourism.
A USAID press release from February 2022 heralded the allocation, reporting then-U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia Donald Blome launched a $50 million "Visit Tunisia" project at taxpayers' expense.
"Is this the appropriate time [for such expenditures]?" McCarthy asked. "There are so many efficiencies that we can bring into government, but we have a president who thinks there's not $1 you could be able to save. Nobody in America lives their own life like that."
He claimed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has "never even produced a budget" and does not draft individual appropriations bills specific to the 12 areas of allocation versus the collective omnibus avenue.
"So you know why we're in a fiscal problem: They don't even lay out a budget for the American public to see where they would spend the money," McCarthy said.