Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticized her Republican opponents for supporting increased spending under former President Donald Trump’s administration during the first 2024 GOP primary debate. 

Anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy touted his experience founding “multibillion dollar companies” as thw reason he would be capable of steering the U.S. economy. “Now is our moment to start running to something, to our vision of what it means to be an American today. If you have a broken car, you don’t turn over the keys to the people who broke it,” Ramaswamy said. “Again, you handed over to a new generation to actually fix the problem. That’s why I’m in this race and we’re just getting warmed up.”

“Ambassador Haley, why are you better positioned to turn around this economy that we’ve heard all of these voters talking about tonight than Mr. Ramaswamy, who is a successful entrepreneur. nationally right now, he’s beating you in the polls?” the moderator asked. 

“Well, I don’t care about polls. What I care about the fact is that no one is telling the American people the truth,” Haley responded. “The truth is that Biden didn’t do this to us, our Republicans did this to us too. when they passed that $2.2 trillion dollar COVID stimulus bill. They left us with 90 million people on Medicaid, 42 million people on food stamps, no one has told you how to fix it.”

Haley called on Congress to “to stop the borrowing” and “eliminate the earmarks that the Republicans brought back in.”

She then criticized her opponents who supported increaing spending under Trump’s administration.

“They need to make sure they understand these are taxpayer dollars. It’s not their dollars. And while they’re all saying this, you have Ron DeSantis, you’ve got Tim Scott, you’ve got Mike Pence, they all voted to raise the debt and Donald Trump added eight trillion to our debt and our kids are never gonna forgive us for this,” Haley said. 

“And so at the end of the day, you look at the 2024 budget, Republicans asked for 7.4 billion in earmarks. Democrats asked for 2.8 billion ,so you tell me who are the big spenders. I think it’s time for an accountant in the White House,” Haley continued. 

Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.