Emmer Warns Votes Against Debt Limit Bill ‘Empower Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer for a Blank Check’

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) is confident Republicans’ sweeping bill to reduce spending will pass the House when it comes up for a vote and says that any votes against it would work to “empower” Democrats.

Emmer, speaking in an interview in his Capitol Hill office Monday with Breitbart News, said he believes the Republicans who are hesitant about the bill or outright opposed to it will “come around” when the time comes for the House to vote on it.

A no vote “means you empower Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer for a blank check, which is why I’m pretty sure people can express their concerns and everything else, but I think they’ll come around and they’ll be supportive of the bill when we get there.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is expected to bring to the floor this week the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023. The measure is House Republicans’ answer to the debt ceiling, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the nation could reach this summer, causing an “economic catastrophe.”

The bill is packed with conservative priorities to rein in spending in exchange for a debt ceiling increase that would last through about March 2024.

It includes blocking President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout, taking back unspent money allocated toward coronavirus, expanding work requirements for welfare recipients, repealing recent IRS funding and certain climate-related portions of the “Inflation Reduction Act,” and limiting discretionary spending growth to one percent per year for ten years.

Still, stalwart conservatives such as House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) and member Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) remain noncommittal on voting for the bill.

Perry’s office confirmed Monday the chairman is “largely supportive” of the bill, while Biggs told Breitbart News’s Sean Moran he believes Republicans are “pretty close” to passing the bill despite his view that it should contain more “substantial” spending cuts.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), an occasional GOP defector, is currently “leaning no” on the bill. A spokesman confirmed Monday to Breitbart News that Mace currently believes the bill is not conservative enough but that the “devil is in the details” and if the details change then she could potentially support the bill.

One member who remains a hard no on the legislation is embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Santos told Axios last week he has issues with both work requirement and tax credit repeal provisions of the bill.

The 320-page plan will first run through the Rules Committee before heading to the floor, but, according to Emmer, the bill will stay unchanged and pass the House in its current form. The Republican whip can afford only a small handful of defections, given the party’s narrow majority.

If Republicans do not unify behind the bill and it fails on the floor, Senate Democrats could pass their own answer to the debt ceiling that House Democrats and a few Republicans, under pressure to address a looming default, could in theory decide to support.

Emmer said that option is a nonstarter, however.

“That’s the worst choice you could have,” Emmer said. “Actually putting this country in a position to move forward with some fiscal responsibility and hope for a better future or turn it over to Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer to continue more of this awful inflation, crime-driven experience we’ve had since they took over.”

He added, “Yeah, I don’t think people are going to make that choice.”