Editor’s note: We aim to provide balancing perspectives on the hottest issues of the day. Below is a column from Heritage’s E.J. Antoni arguing that the debt ceiling deal is nothing for conservatives to celebrate. You can find a counterpoint here, where GOP strategist Steve Cortes argues that the debt ceilin deal may not be perfect, but is an excellent starting point for further reform.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s and President Joe Biden’s debt ceiling deal is nothing for conservatives to write home about. The legislation is short on fiscal sanity and long on profligate government spending. Here are some of the highlights, but mostly lowlights, of what negotiators from both sides hammered out, and over which legislators are now fighting.
First, let’s dispense with the fallacious nomenclature. This bill does not meaningfully cut spending—it merely provides a slight reduction in outlays this year by $12 billion and claws back $28 billion in unspent COVID money. Saying this bill raises the debt ceiling is also a misnomer – it suspends the borrowing cap on the Treasury until after the 2024 election.
That purposely puts the nation’s financial future into the hands of a lame-duck Congress, and possibly a lame-duck White House, with no accountability to voters.
The deal also removed the REINS Act, which would’ve returned legislative authority to Congress by ensuring their approval for major regulations. Instead, the new bill has a massive loophole that allows the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to simply waive cost-saving requirements.
This workaround is a perfect example of a problem that occurs multiple times in this legislation: it gives big spenders in Washington—both Republicans and Democrats—ways to keep feeding at the taxpayer trough.
This deal also retains nearly all the $72 billion in funding for a new army of IRS agents, along with $1.2 trillion in subsidies for “green” energy boondoggles. It also retains Biden’s unprecedented, and likely unconstitutional, student loan bailout, estimated to cost anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion.
By E.J. Antoni
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