The debt ceiling deal reached between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden does not contain enough spending cuts, according to Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., which is why he told Newsmax on Wednesday he cannot support it.
The House passed the deal in a procedural vote 241-187 earlier Wednesday. Donalds was among the 189 Republicans and 52 Democrats who voted to move the bill for final approval that night.
"This bill, where there's a lot of work that's gone into it, cuts $12 billion in the first year for what is estimated to be a $4 trillion raise [in spending]," Donalds told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "That's just simply not enough in spending cuts to justify that amount of debt on the American people and on our country.
"At this point, looking at this bill, I just can't support it. There are other pieces of levels, sure, which I think just simply don't do enough ... but at the end of the day, this bill cuts about $12 billion, and it actually sets into place the spending caps for the administrative state in a post-COVID world at post-COVID levels, and I just think that's not where the American government should be. And it's not reflective, in my opinion, of the priorities of the American people."
When Donalds was asked what he would have done differently with the deal, he said it was hard to say because only a few House members were on the team negotiating with the White House.
"My job is not to really comment on the negotiations and what happened behind closed doors," Donalds said. "It is to represent my district. If you're going to ask me what I could be supportive of, I've been very clear: getting the federal agencies back to pre-COVID spending levels.
"Everybody understands why we had to raise spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it makes no sense at all that the federal agencies like the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives], the FBI, the DOJ are now up 30% to 40% over what they used to be. There is no sense or reason for that."
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