Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley slammed former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the two GOP 2024 front-runners, for their debt limit support record as Congress scrambles to avoid a default on the nation’s bills before June 5.
In an email to reporters Tuesday, the Haley campaign attacked Trump and DeSantis for supporting a 2018 measure that increased the nation’s debt ceiling. DeSantis, then a member of the House, voted for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which Trump signed into law.
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Going further, the campaign highlighted several conservative groups who opposed the 2018 debt limit, including FreedomWorks, which called the measure “the worst-case scenario for fiscal conservatives under a Democratic president and Democrat-controlled Congress, but it is happening under a Republican president and Republican Congress.”
Similarly, Heritage Action excoriated the proposal as a “mistake.”
“Providing another debt limit suspension in conjunction with a massive spending increase is a mistake,” the group wrote. “The suspension could allow America to take on more than $1 trillion in additional debt over the next 13 months. Adding to the problem, the bill’s offsets are essentially gimmicks designed to give the perception of some fiscal restraint without actually providing any meaningful reforms.”
Haley, who has consistently polled behind Trump and DeSantis, has increased her attacks against the two lawmakers in recent weeks. In a statement, she called for the public to choose a leader that won’t add to the nation’s debt, a subtle acknowledgment that Haley needs to convince voters who are sympathetic to the two men to back her instead. “The best way to fix Washington’s spending addiction is to elect people who have not been part of the problem,” said the former South Carolina governor. “Adding at least $4 trillion to America’s $31 trillion national debt over two years without substantially cutting spending is no way to run our country’s fiscal affairs. Business as usual won’t get the job done.”
DeSantis weighed in on the debt limit fight that could endanger the leadership of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Monday. “Our country was careening toward bankruptcy, and after this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy,” the governor told Fox & Friends. “To say you can do $4 trillion of increases in the next year-and-a-half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending,”
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Trump previously suggested letting the nation default on its bill but has largely remained quiet on the deal that McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden. Former Vice President Mike Pence, himself a potential 2024 candidate, torched the measure in a statement Tuesday. “Congress’ debt limit deal doesn’t just kick the can down the road, it uses Washington smoke and mirror games to make small reforms while weakening our military at a time of increasing threats from foreign adversaries,” he said.
Republican conservatives in the House, meanwhile, have trashed the deal, with 20 members already saying they will vote no on the deal.
