CNN's Jake Tapper allowed Republican House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer to threaten to crash the U.S. economy over the debt ceiling without asking him exactly what spending cuts they want in exchange for agreeing to pay our bills.
We all know what they want is cuts to Social Security and Medicaid while leaving things like the Pentagon budget intact, but they need to be forced to say that out loud instead of being permitted to give these sorts of mealy-mouthed responses as Comer was here:
TAPPER: Alright. Let's move on to another issue because Treasury Secretary Yellin said just a few days ago that the U.S. will formally hit the debt limit next week and could default on its debt as soon as June. We've just learned that house Republicans are working on a plan to direct the Treasury Department to keep funding bare bones necessities such as interest payments and the military.
If Republicans in the House refuse to raise the debt limit and the country cannot pay its bills in June, you know how potentially disruptive it is to the American economy it could be or any of these measures really. I get you want to have spending cuts, too. Why aren't republicans working with Senate Democrats to bring down spending to avoid this disaster instead of planning for the best way to manage the disaster?
COMER: Well, we hope that this is avoided. We hope that the Senate, House - Democrats and Republicans - will agree to spending cuts. Look, this has to stop. We cannot continue to operate with these types of deficits. Our national debt is one of our biggest threats to our national security.
China continues to have leverage over us because of the basic financial strength of their overall economy versus ours with respect to the national debt. So Republicans were elected with a mandate from the American people in the midterm elections.
We campaigned on the fact that we were going to be serious about spending cuts. So the Senate is going to have to recognize the fact that we're not going to budge until we see meaningful reform with respect to spending.
They did not campaign on cuts to our social safety nets, but he was allowed to get away with that as well as Tapper just moved onto the next topic. Trump ran up the national debt and oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president, but these hypocrites only start harping about the debt as soon as a Democrat is in office.
