Scalise: Biden’s Saying We Can’t Cut Spending When He Has Loan Moratorium, COVID Emergency, and Unspent COVID Money

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Bottom Line,” House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said that there are plenty of ways you can decrease the deficit in order to raise the debt ceiling like reinstating student loan payments, ending the federal COVID emergency declaration and its associated spending, and clawing back unspent COVID relief money.

Co-host Dagen McDowell stated, [relevant exchange begins around 3:20] “Well, there’s five billion dollars every month that’s not coming into the Treasury because of the moratorium on making student loan payments. And that is firmly on the shoulders of Joe Biden. So, maybe we wouldn’t be under such duress.”

Scalise responded, “And there [are] a lot of other ludicrous things like that, Dagen. Look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments during COVID. Today, that’s still going on by the way. We’re still operating under a COVID emergency when everyone else has gotten back to work. And that’s causing hundreds of billions of dollars in more wasteful spending. Let’s get control over spending. I think everybody in America knows that if the federal government just looked around and said, okay, where can we tighten the belt before we go max out and then add more money to the credit card limit and then rack it up again?”

Co-host Sean Duffy then asked, “Claw that money back, Congressman, right? Claw the money back that hasn’t been spent.”

Scalise answered, “Absolutely. Return that money to the taxpayers, let’s pay down our debt.”

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