The tentative debt ceiling bill reached between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a "step in the right direction" as it means a move toward reducing spending in Washington, D.C., Rep. Bryan Steil said on Newsmax Sunday.
"This is the first time we're going to see Congress actually vote to cut spending in most likely generations, maybe ever in real terms," the Wisconsin Republican commented on Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "We're going to actually spend less next year than we did this year. This is a step in the right direction to begin to clip the wings of the Biden administration."
The measure means funding will be clawed back next year for the IRS, student loan payments will once again be restarted, and work requirements will be in place for some welfare programs, among other measures, Steil pointed out.
A bipartisan agreement is needed before a projected June 5 government default on U.S. debts. McCarthy said Sunday that 95% of the House Republicans approve of the tentative deal. Lawmakers aren't expected to come back to work until Tuesday, after the Memorial Day weekend, and the speaker has promised to abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before a vote is taken.
Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., Sunday on Newsmax called on his fellow Republicans to reject the bill, saying it conceded too much, but Steil said that there is "nothing in this bill for Democrats other than raising the debt ceiling."
"We've got to remember, the president started his negotiations with the reckless and dangerous strategy of putting his head in the sand and refusing to negotiate," said Steil. "At the end of the day, Republicans came together. We passed a bill through the House, forcing the president to come to the table to negotiate…we're walking away spending less money next year than we did this year. We walked away with work requirements, and we did all of that with no tax increases."
That means the agreement is "an absolute step in the right direction to get the reckless spending under control in Washington. The president's negotiating strategy utterly failed, and at the end of the day, he's left with nothing to try to sell to Democrats."
When asked if he thinks a bipartisan agreement can be reached, Steil said he expects some Democrats will come to the table "just to give President Biden some sort of cover for the fact that he was rolled by House Republicans," and it's likely a large number of Republicans will end up supporting the bill.
"This is the first opportunity to truly cut spending in Washington [that] almost any member in the House has ever seen in real terms," he said. "We're going to spend less money next year than we're spending this year. That's a big win for conservatives that are concerned about the inflation that's impacting all American families right now."
Steil also said that he thinks Americans know that spending in Washington was out of control when the Democrats controlled all three branches of government, and that drove inflation.
"This is our chance to get inflation under control, which so many families are suffering from," he said. "It is obvious that the president didn't want to cut spending. We forced him to the table to do it. The American people know it was the Democrats' reckless spending under one-party control that got us into this position in the first place. I think many people are going to recognize Republicans are finally bringing some level of sanity back to Washington."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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