On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries schooled host Chuck Todd after he claimed Democrats should come up with a counterproposal to McCarthy's hostage-taking plan just because they came up with "something."
The MTP host started the interview by discussing the debt ceiling crisis and after playing video of President Biden weirdly asked if Jeffries had accepted the premise that they would not get a clean debt ceiling hike.
"I do not," Jeffries replied. "The only responsible thing to do is what Democrats did in the previous administration where we helped Trump raise and avoid a default three times."
Jeffries explained that Trump accrued vast amounts of debt under his leadership and Democrats did not hold the country hostage.
Todd came back and said Republicans are refusing to honor the premise and then cited outside Beltway groups to scold Democrats.
"They have said, Republicans have done their job. You may not like the bill the House passed, but they did do something," Todd said. "Shouldn't Democrats respond with a counterproposal?"
See, all Republicans have to do is "something," anything at all. It doesn't matter if they demand to cut the federal budget by 50%. Todd is already ceding victory to Republicans, no matter the cost to the American people.
Jeffries had other ideas.
Well, President Biden has consistently made clear and in fact he introduced his budget two months ago and it is a budget that will invest and protect in Social Security.
It's going to try to strengthen the economy in a way that builds an economy that works for everyday Americans, an economy from the middle out and the ground up, not the top down.
And President Biden's budget will also cut the deficit by three trillion dollars.
We've been waiting for months for the Republicans to articulate their position.
They didn't produce a budget.
What they did was produce a ransom note.
That is what the default on America Act is.
And effectively, what they're saying to the American people is that either you accept these dramatic cuts, cuts to Medicaid spending for disabled children and for elderly Americans, cuts to law enforcement, cuts to education, cuts to health care, cuts to nutrition assistance for food insecure Americans, more than 30 million people throughout the country.
Either Republicans want us to accept these dramatic cuts or accept a catastrophic default on our nation's debt.
That is what is the unreasonable position.
And hopefully in a few days, Republicans will come to their senses and do what's right by the American people.
Republicans refuse to address their budgetary concerns during appropriations and instead used a procedural tactic that leverages a US default to force drastic spending cuts they could not attain otherwise.
As usual, the Beltway media plays the useful idiot to aid and comfort the MAGA cult.
