CNN anchor Jake Tapper confronted a Biden administration official on the tensions between Republicans and Democrats on raising the debt ceiling Thursday.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy introduced congressional Republicans’ plans to cut entitlement and discretionary spending in negotiations with President Joe Biden’s administration to raise the debt ceiling after it had reached its $31.4 trillion limit on January 19, 2023.
Tapper told Mitch Landrieu, a White House senior adviser and infrastructure implementation coordinator, that the only solution to the debt ceiling is establishing a bipartisan plan, but nobody on either side wants to “solve the problem.” He pointed to a bipartisan plan established during former President Barack Obama’s administration that the then-president later backed away from.
“I can’t take any of this seriously, nobody wants to solve the problem, because it’s going to require imposing pain on people that politicians are then gonna turn around and ask for their votes,” Tapper said.
“Alright, are you old enough to remember that when Ronald Reagan was president, you’re certainly old enough to remember when Donald Trump was president, that they didn’t have a fight over the debt limit?” Landrieu began.
“Of course, it’s all hypocrisy, 100%” Tapper interjected.
“Obviously, the deficit is a problem,” Biden’s adviser continued. “The president knows that. The president’s proposals have actually reduced the deficit by a substantial amount of money and $3 trillion is on the table. The question is how you reduce the deficit. Do you reduce the deficit by giving a tax cut to the wealthy and giving a break to Big Pharma and Big Oil, and cutting services for everybody else like veterans and firefighters and police officers? Or are you gonna reduce the deficit by investing in America and making sure that Big Pharma and the folks that have a lot of money actually pay their fair share?”
McCarthy’s plan raises the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion and intends to avoid default in August or September and allow the U.S. to remain creditworthy until March 2024. The plan includes a $130 billion cut in spending and cap spending increases by 1% per year, which the speaker said will lead to debt reductions of about $4.5 trillion. (RELATED: CNN’s John King Commends Marjorie Taylor Greene For Sounding ‘Reasonable’ About Debt Ceiling)
The White House and Democrats have been opposed to Republicans’ spending cut proposals, and have accused Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare. Republican leadership has denied their claims and has repeatedly vowed that any cuts to Medicare or Social Security are “off the table.”