The White House accused House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) of stalling the GOP counterproposal to President Joe Biden’s latest budget request at the expense of the public.
Biden published his proposal on March 9 and has openly challenged House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to formalize a counter budget based on his party’s objections. However, Arrington told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that it could take months to produce a budget resolution, potentially extending beyond the deadline to address the debt limit this summer.
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“Every week, House Republicans invent a new excuse to hide their budget from the American people even while signaling that they would impose devastating cuts to American manufacturing, law enforcement, Medicare benefits, and our ability to block fentanyl trafficking — in order to provide rich special interests with new, deficit-worsening tax giveaways,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Now House Republicans’ budget chair is also proving President Biden’s State of the Union warning correct: they intend to cut Social Security benefits at the same time.”
In his interview, Arrington said it was more important to address both the debt limit and the spending priorities outlined by McCarthy and conservatives than the federal government’s operating budget for the coming year.
“The more urgent matter is to address the debt ceiling and negotiate spending limitations and broader fiscal reforms in the process,” he said. “Our list is so much longer, it’s so much more comprehensive and touches every facet of the people’s government that I do worry that it will be a distraction from the debt ceiling discussion.”
McCarthy and Biden met in February regarding the partisan tensions surrounding U.S. debt, and though both parties left that meeting sounding more optimistic about reaching a compromise, little to no progress has been made on the topic in the following weeks.
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Biden has demanded congressional Republicans work with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling absent a larger agreement on U.S. spending levels; White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Tuesday’s briefing that GOP leaders are “playing games” with the nation’s credit.
McCarthy, in turn, sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday accusing the president of “putting an already fragile economy in jeopardy by insisting upon your extreme position of refusing to negotiate any meaningful changes to out-of-control government spending alongside an increase of the debt limit.”
