As threats continue from Republican House members who want to extort cuts to our social safety net in exchange for not defaulting on our nation's debt, we continue to hear dishonest remarks like these from Republicans doing their best to try to downplay the economic damage to the world's economy that would result from these clowns refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace made an appearance on this Sunday's Meet the Press, and was asked by host Chuck Todd about whether Republicans should be using the debt ceiling "as leverage to try to negotiate spending cuts," and Mace responded by conflating a failure to pass a budget for the coming year, which results in a government shutdown, with a refusal to raise the debt ceiling, which sets the amount of money the government is allowed to borrow in order to pay pre-existing debt. They're not the same thing, but neither she nor Chuck Todd made that clear to the NBC audience.
CHUCK TODD: Let me move on to the debt ceiling. Do you believe it's a valid exercise to use the debt ceiling as leverage to try to negotiate spending cuts?
REP. NANCY MACE: Well, there's no time like the present because we have the debt ceiling looming over us to talk about this. We haven't had a budget since Bill Clinton balanced the budget in 1998, a Democrat president doing that. Before that, it was Republican Richard Nixon in 1970. Clearly, something is wrong. And if you look at nationwide, 49 of 50 states, they balance their budgets every single fiscal year. And, you know, we need to get there, $31 trillion created by both Republicans and Democrats. This is both parties' faults. Now is the best time to have this conversation. And there are plans out there. For example, there's the Penny Plan. I filed that particular piece of legislation in the House. Senator Rand Paul has it in the Senate. That would balance the budget in five years and allow the federal government to raise spending by 10% every year thereafter. I'm not even asking for that. Can we do it over ten years? Let's have a negotiation and build some consensus.
CHUCK TODD: So you want to use the debt ceiling for this moment? You think it's a proper way to use – to force this. Why not the budget process? That's the part of this I don't quite comprehend.
REP. NANCY MACE: Well, it does – clearly the budget process isn't working because we haven't had a budget in decades.* And there is a lot of hysteria around shutting down the government. But, you know, this happened under the previous administration. The government was shut down for 35 days. There was a stalemate. But people still got paid. Accounts still got filled up. And the sky didn't fall. I would like to see the president – and so far, he has said he's unwilling to negotiate with Republicans. That is not how to unify our country. We are very divided right now. We have $31 trillion of debt. The responsible thing to do would be to get to the table with Republicans and negotiate a way. How do we prioritize spending? How do we balance the budget? We're not even asking to do it one year like Bill Clinton did it. Can we do it over ten years, which would be, you know, consensus and be compromised? That's a reasonable conversation to have. It’s not –
"The sky didn't fall." Maybe not, but as reported by CNBC, that government shutdown she was downplaying cost the economy $11 billion, including a permanent $3 billion loss according to the Congressional Budget Office. Somehow Todd failed to mention that as well. Instead he let her continue with more of her bothsiderist nonsense, ignoring the fact that the only time Republicans want to use the debt ceiling as leverage for unpopular spending cuts is when a Democrat is in the White House, and to continue to tout some plan by Rand Paul, which, as Steve Benen explained back in 2021, is extremely radical. Apparently Todd hasn't done his homework on Paul's proposal either.
CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you this: Do you have one thing you're ready to put on the table as a spending cut that you think both parties can accept?
REP. NANCY MACE: Well I think – Well, obviously no cuts to Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security. That's a nonstarter for either side. But otherwise, it's up to – I would lean on the agency heads. Whether it's one penny or five pennies, the Penny Plan does it with $0.05 on the dollar in five years. But we can find some way to negotiate. And I believe we should go to the agency heads and say, "Where can you find cuts? Where can we do this?" and do it over the next decade. That's a very responsible measure that we should all be discussing.
It's anything but "responsible" and Mace knows it. She's no moderate. There's no such thing in today's Republican party.
*Note: A budget has been passed for the current fiscal year -- the Omnibus bill passed in the lame duck. So she lied about that, too.
