Fox News Sunday

Interview

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Good morning. Good morning, Shannon.

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Well, Republicans have put a responsible debt ceiling proposal together and passed it out of the House. So, there's plenty of time for the Democrats to respond to it. We've lifted the debt ceiling in our proposal, we'll pay our bills and protect the good faith and credit of the United States.

But we're not going to give any politicians, including the president, a blank check to continue to bankrupt the country. I mean, $10 trillion over the last two years, six of which has gone to the national debt paid. Our debt trajectory is completely unsustainable and our nation's health is rapidly deteriorating.

So we're going to go from skyrocketing prices and cost-of-living crisis, soaring interest rates, an economy that's nose-diving into a recession, to the brink of a sovereign debt crisis, which will undermine everything from our economy, to our security, to our children's future in this country.

So, we can do both. These aren't mutually exclusive.

The president knows that, Shannon. He has negotiated as vice president and as a senator debt ceiling increases, with commonsense spending controls and fiscal reforms. And we're just asking him to be a responsible leader and do that again.

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It's not true down the list.

Number one, the president negotiated spending cuts but cut cap-and-balance, which was the 10-year discretionary spending caps in 2011. So, one of the anchors to our spending controls is the right size of bureaucracy by returning to '22 levels of spending. So, that's not true.

In fact, some of the best fiscal reforms have come out of debt ceiling negotiations.

The American people are suffering with Biden spending-induced inflation. They're having to tighten their belts. They're changing their spending habits. Three out of four Americans expect this president and all of their elected leaders to do the same.

And I think half of Democrats -- Democrat voters -- expected this president would come to the negotiating table in good faith and make sure that we bend that spending curve, we put our country on better financial footing and we do something to tamp down the inflation that is devastating working families.

Their budgets are being cut. Their paychecks are shrinking, and they're just hanging on living paycheck to paycheck, meanwhile, this president and Chuck Schumer have a death grip on a blank check.

I mean, they are not fighting for the American people, Shannon. They're fighting for status quo and status quo is bankrupting the country, and Republicans in the House and those in the Senate that signed that letter refuse to do -- to allow the status quo to continue.

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Well, think about it. We -- to go back '22 spending levels is to go back to spending levels last year. Where was the apocalyptic rhetoric from Democrats then and all their phantom funding cuts?

The CBO, before COVID, projected we'd be spending hundreds of billions of dollars less than we're spending today. So our government, Shannon, has grown by 40 percent since we entered COVID, and we've got to right size the bloat and the waste in our bureaucracy, number one.

Number two, there are reckless spending -- spending spree initiatives by this president that need to be reversed. We don't need 87,000 IRS agents to close the tax gap.

We don't need COVID money -- there's tens of billions of COVID moneys that have been hanging out there for two years. The public emergency is over, and we need to take that money back, put it towards the Treasury and children's future.

And, finally, the Democrats overwhelmingly supported welfare to work in '96. President Bill Clinton signed it. And we're saying we have a labor shortage, we have to come out of recession and we don't want to trap people in dependency on the government.

Able-bodied adults receiving public assistance should be looking for job or working. That's a fundamental responsibility and an expectation certainly of the American people.

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There is so much wasteful Washington spending and bloat coming out of COVID that --

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Yeah, no, we're going to reduce spending. The president in his budget wants to increase spending by $100 billion in discretionary and more than that, trillions of dollars in nondiscretionary mandatory spending.

I mean, it's the spending from this administration, the trillions of dollars, that has ignited the inflationary firestorm that Americans are suffering from. Of course, we need to right size and return to reasonable levels of spending. And we also need to get the economy growing again, get back to pro-growth, pro-work, pro-energy policies that will leash American prosperity, like we were enjoying pre-Covid.

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Well, I can. I can tell you that President Biden submitted his 30 days late.

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And we're still conducting oversight.

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But we're still conducting oversight hearings. This president hasn't had oversight in two years. But we're well underway with our budget. It's a 10-year budgetary framework. And it will certainly contrast the highest sustained levels of spending, taxing and borrowing that were reflected in President Biden's budget.

But the most urgent matter right now is the debt ceiling, making sure we lift it responsibly, we pay our bills and we put fiscal controls in place. And - and this president's done it. We now have a bill that we've sent to the Senate and we're asking our colleagues to be responsible, do the right thing by the American people who are going the same thing as a result of reckless spending and failed economic policies, mainly from this administration and mainly over the last two years.

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Thank you, Shannon.

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