CLIVE, Iowa — Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) criticized President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s (R-CA) debt ceiling deal, brokered days before the Treasury Department projected the country would default on its loans.
“We must restore sanity to our nation,” DeSantis told a crowd in Clive Tuesday during his first in-person event as a presidential candidate. “We need fiscal and economic sanity. Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrow, print, and spend policies.”
BIDEN NEEDS TO SHELVE TAX INCREASES AND FOCUS ON SPENDING
“Our nation was careening towards bankruptcy before the debt deal, and it will still be careening towards bankruptcy after this deal,” he said. “This is not going to solve our nation’s fiscal problems.”
Emphasizing how the Biden-McCarthy deal “locks in inflated COVID-level, -era levels of spending” and “keeps 98% of the 87,000 new IRS agents that Joe Biden instituted,” DeSantis cited the budget surpluses he has notched as Florida’s governor.
“It can be done,” he said. “You just have to be willing to make choices and stop passing the buck to subsequent generations.”
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In a press conference afterward, DeSantis challenged former President Donald Trump to take a position on the debt ceiling deal and scrutinized his opponent’s spending record.
“Republicans talk about limiting spending,” he told reporters. “And if a Democrat’s in the White House, they will talk a lot about it. But when we get in, Republicans do not have a good record on limiting spending and being fiscally responsible in Washington. In the states, we do.”
