On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Senate Minority Whip Sen. John Thune (R-SD) responded to a question on the possibility of a government shutdown by stating that “anything right now is on the table” and whether a deal is reached largely depends on how badly Democrats “want to get a deal to not blow it up with all kinds of new non-defense-related spending.” Thune also argued that the massive increase in spending “has contributed to and been largely responsible for the run-up that we’ve seen in inflation.”
Thune said, “I’m hopeful that we can stop a lot of this extraneous, non-defense-related spending. I mean, there are things that we need to do for the military, we all know that. But the Democrats always want you to pay a ransom. You want to get a little bit more in military spending? Then you’ve got to give us a whole bunch more domestic spending. The problem is, they’ve got $4.5 trillion in these last two years since Biden took office, in spending, outside of the regular appropriation process. They should have funded their entire agenda. There is no reason why we ought to…have to give them additional increases, plus-ups in non-defense-related spending in order to get an increase that we need in our military.”
He added, “The Democrats use this to their advantage. They back us up to Christmas, and then it’s either, okay, you vote for this increase in domestic spending or we shut the government down. And that is the problem that we have is the 12 appropriation bills, none of which [were] acted upon earlier this year, now [get] all balled up heading into the Christmas holiday. And the Democrats try to use that as leverage to get a huge plus-up in spending. And that’s where, again, how this gets resolved remains to be seen. But there is, to your point, some logic certainly in doing a continuing resolution funded to last year’s level and then having this litigated next year with a Republican House. The question, I think, is, will the Democrats — are they desperate enough to get a deal this year that they are willing to keep from increasing, dramatically increasing the domestic spending in exchange for getting some additional defense spending which Republicans in the Senate desperately want to see happen?”
Host Larry Kudlow then asked, “[I]f I had to wait, if I had to close the government down for a couple of weeks in order to get real reforms or cuts…in domestic spending, if I had to wait a couple of weeks to pay the interest on 10-year bonds because we all know it’s going to get paid, I think I would. I’m a desperate man for budgetary restraint and inflation restraint because the two go together, as you well know. I mean, why not call their bluff, take them to the edge?”
Thune responded, “I think that anything right now is on the table. I don’t know how this is going to play out. A lot of it’s going to depend on how willing the Democrats are…if they want to get a deal to not blow it up with all kinds of new non-defense-related spending. And, to your point, I think this all impacts, you look at inflation, just the massive flood of spending in the last couple of years, there’s no doubt, no question that that has contributed to and been largely responsible for the run-up that we’ve seen in inflation.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett