Two vocal House Freedom Caucus members shot back at the Biden administration after it suggested Tuesday the pair were participating in “dangerous brinkmanship” and seeking “ransom” for a debt limit deal because of their aim to rescind the so-called Inflation Reduction Act as part of the negotiations.
Caucus chairman Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) called the administration’s remarks “soaring and laughable rhetoric” in a statement provided to Breitbart News, noting the administration was “in the untenable position of defending its own fiscal illiteracy while refusing to negotiate.”
“These tactics are always deployed by the desperate and defeated when the facts and time are not on their side,” Perry said.
Roy told Breitbart News of the White House criticizing him, “You’re only taking flack if you’re over the target.”
The congressmen were responding to White House spokesman Andrew Bates, who said in a statement earlier in the day that “by targeting the Inflation Reduction Act, Scott Perry and Chip Roy just showed the real agenda of the ultra MAGA hardliners who increasingly dominate the House Republican Conference.”
Bates continued:
Not only are House Republicans threatening to hold Americans’ jobs and retirement savings hostage by engaging in the dangerous brinkmanship that Presidents Reagan and Trump warned against. Now, the increasingly empowered extreme MAGA Republicans want their ransom to be killing tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in a windfall for China, raising prescription drug and energy costs for middle class families, and sending the deficit skyward — all in the name of sweetheart deals for rich special interests.
The heated remarks over a debt limit deal come after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced Monday in New York that in the “coming weeks” the House would vote on a bill to raise the debt ceiling through next year.
That bill is expected to be packed with conservative items, such as repealing major components of the controversial $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August and which multiple entities have estimated will have a negligible impact on inflation.
The Department of Treasury has warned of a fast-approaching crisis should Congress fail to address the debt limit, which the department has said the nation could reach this summer.
President Joe Biden, who introduced what House Republicans describe as a “dead on arrival” budget in March, is urging the GOP-controlled House to pass a clean debt ceiling increase before any crisis could occur. The GOP, on the other hand, has maintained it must see a budget with dramatic discretionary spending cuts to consider raising the nation’s borrowing limit.
“The president has been doing nothing to actually address the debt ceiling. We are,” Roy said. “We’re trying to actually deal with the [inflation] crisis at hand, and, frankly, the idea that they want to stand behind a piece of legislation that is basically enriching elitist white liberals, go for it.”
He added, “I’m gonna stand behind hardworking, blue-collar Americans who don’t want any of that garbage.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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