Ben Carson Vows to Not Raise Debt Ceiling, if President Will Address Budget ‘Immediately’

GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson vows he won’t raise the debt ceiling if elected President of the United States, and says he’ll address the budget “immediately.”

Carson – who recently ranked first among the GOP field in a national New York Times/CBS News poll – tells The Hill, “If I’m elected, in January of 2017, we will begin to address the budget immediately.”

He added, “We’re not going to wait until October or November to do it, when we’re backed against the wall. And I will make it very, very clear that there will not be any budget signed that increases our debt ceiling. It will have to be done.”

Carson blamed GOP leadership in Congress for its procrastination on tackling the increasing spending.

“They do the same thing every year,” he stated. “They wait until their backs are up against the wall and the gun is to their head and you either raise the debt ceiling or we default and the world falls apart.”

“Why do we do that?” he continued in the interview with The Hill. “I think the time to address that is at the beginning of the fiscal period, not at the end, because then you have other options. Now, they wait until it’s too late to do anything else, and we keep raising the debt and compromising the future of the next generation. It is craziness.”

“That’s a sentiment shared by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the favorite to be the next Speaker of the House,” reported The Hill’s Jonathan Easley.

Ryan criticized the way the deal was formed in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, saying the deal extends borrowing authority for the government and increases federal spending.

“This process stinks,” stated Ryan.

“He also vowed to change the way Congress does business so that raising the debt limit and negotiating a budget are not perpetually intertwined,” noted The Hill.

According to the interview with The Hill, Carson wouldn’t slam House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on his budget negotiations with Democrats.

“It’s not the preferable way to do it, but it’s done,” he said. “Bygones are bygones, so it’s time to move on. But I hope that the new Speaker and several other members will…start looking now to see what we can do so we’re not in this situation next year.”