Republican Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) thinks House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA.) debt ceiling compromise with Democrats will lead to economic conditions that many House Republicans do not support.
Speaking to Newsweek on Friday (June 9), the South Carolina Republican described McCarthy’s compromise as “a tragedy for the American people.”
Norman asserted that spending would need to be “reined in” in 2024, adding that a previous bill passed with the support of 217 Republicans didn’t have one thing included in the debt ceiling, declaring, “That’s not what we hired McCarthy to do.”
In April, House Republicans passed the “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023,” which aimed to raise the federal debt limit until March 31, 2024, or until the debt grows by $1.5 trillion. The final vote was 217-215, which went along party lines.
The bill, which sought to recoup unused COVID-19 relief funds totaling less than $80 billion, would reverse the priorities of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which sought to cut $80 billion from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The bill would have repealed President Joe Biden’s $400 billion student debt cancellation scheme and some IRA Green tax incentives.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the GOP’s proposed bill would have saved the federal government $4.8 trillion through fiscal year 2033, about $4.2 trillion in policy savings and $543 billion in interest savings.
The bill would also restore discretionary spending to the fiscal year 2022 level in fiscal year 2024, after which it would increase by 1 percent per year for ten years.
But legislation passed in the House and then in the Senate fell short of the expectations of many Republicans, including Norman because it returned fewer COVID-19 funds and made softer changes to expanded work requirements for programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
