Spending Fights Figure Prominently In Early Days of House-Controlled GOP

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(The Guardian) Furious fights over spending ahead in GOP-controlled House
White House chief of staff Ron Klain has rung alarm bells via Twitter on what Republicans in the House might try to do as they try to force deep national spending cuts.

Here’s Klain after Florida Republican representative Michael Waltz went on Fox.


Earlier, Waltz told Fox: “We have to get spending under control.”

But amid discussions about defense spending cuts, he added that that was not his primary target and he was not going to press for cuts “on the backs of our troops.” He added: “We can work on reprioritizing defense spending but that’s nibbling around the margins. If you really want to talk about spending, it’s the entitlements program – that’s 70% of the entire budget … if you want to talk about big reforms, I look forward to hearing that from those folks who are pushing towards a balanced budget.”

Social security is the federal US social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability and survivor benefits, while Medicare is chiefly the government health insurance program for those 65 and older.

The Washington Post warned in a piece at the weekend that: House Republicans are set to steer the country toward a series of fiscal showdowns as they look to force the White House to agree to massive spending cuts, threatening a return to the political brinkmanship that once nearly crippled the economy and almost plunged the US government into default.

In a Guardian interview before he retired, Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth told our Chris Stein last month that the Republican party is now so extreme it could cause the world’s largest economy to default on its debt for the first time ever in its quest to extract concessions from the Biden administration.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) The White House has accused Republicans of wanting to “defund the military” as the new House majority makes clear that across-the-board spending cuts will be a major part of their agenda in the upcoming Congress.

Here’s what White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates is telling the media, according to USA Today.

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It took four days and 15 ballots for Republicans to resolve their differences and elect Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House.

But he can’t get much done unless the chamber agrees on its rules, and with some GOP lawmakers pledging to oppose the package up for a vote this afternoon, pressure groups have stepped in to make clear there will be consequences if it turns into a standoff.

Hours before McCarthy formally was elected, Texas’s Tony Gonzales said he would oppose the rules package, reportedly over McCarthy’s willingness to cut spending to the defense department:


That’s prompted conservative group FreedomWorks to make this threat: