Steve Hilton: Let's get serious about America's economy
Fox News host Steve Hilton explains how reducing government spending would help America on 'The Next Revolution.'
"The Next Revolution" host Steve Hilton tore into U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday, urging her to take responsibility for the "years of destruction" she caused the American people after the U.S. hit its debt ceiling last week.
The U.S. government reached its statutory debt limit, which now sits at $31.381 trillion. Yellen warned Thursday that unless Congress takes swift action, the government may not be able to pay its bills as early as June.
Yellen said she instructed the Treasury Department to begin deploying "extraordinary measures" to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations.
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"You know what would really be extraordinary, is Janet Yellen actually taking responsibility for the years of destruction she has wrought on our country," Hilton fired back in his opening monologue Sunday.
"It’s hard to think of a single person on the planet who has done more to hurt Americans economically."
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen talks with other attendees at the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2022. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan (REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan)
"When House Republicans demand accountability and fiscal sanity she says, nope not happening, we have to raise the debt ceiling," he continued. "So our children and grandchildren have to pay for Yellen's mistakes."
The debt limit or debt ceiling is the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments, the Treasury Department detailed.
The limit was boosted to approximately $31.381 trillion on Dec. 16, 2021.
House Republicans are demanding significant spending cuts before agreeing to raise the government’s borrowing limit, pumping the brakes on federal spending as they prepare to negotiate how to shrink the $6.3 trillion federal government.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Washington, DC October 4.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has rallied behind the position that the debt ceiling must be raised without any conditions, making it clear repeatedly that it doesn’t believe there is anything to negotiate.
"It is their job to negotiate," Hilton told viewers. "The voters chose divided government. When Democrats win they say elections have consequences but when Republicans win, Democrats just ignore it and carry on as before. You might even call that election-denying. So yet again, people who shout the loudest about our democracy are the ones undermining it."
"The federal workforce is now over $9 million in a bureaucratic monstrosity so sprawling and unaccountable they cannot even tell us how many departments and agencies there let alone what they do or why they are needed," Hilton continued. "Take it from someone who has worked inside the government machine, most are not needed and most are not even constitutional."
FILE - The U.S. Treasury Department building viewed from the Washington Monument, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, file) ((AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, file))
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Hilton said Democrats opposed to reigning in the "bloated" federal spending have lost sight of how drastically the debt has expanded in recent years.
"Democrats and the media scream and squawk that spending control means unimaginable pain for America. What planet are they on?" he said. "Reducing spending is not some crazy right-wing fantasy. If we just go back where we are at the end of the Obama administration we’d be cutting it by almost half."