A conservative Republican at the center of the tortured effort to elect House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he'd welcome a hard-fought battle over the US debt ceiling, but said both parties should start negotiating terms for the increase now so it doesn't go down to the wire.
"Our point is, let's fight now to end the status quo," Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "Let's get in the room now."
Roy helped negotiate a deal with McCarthy giving conservatives more clout that helped give the leader enough backing to win the speakership by a single vote early Saturday on the 15th ballot.
Asked whether McCarthy must tie a debt-ceiling increase to deep spending cuts or face the mightiest tool they secured — the ability for a single Republican to force a House vote to oust McCarthy as speaker — Roy hinted that could be in store.
"I'm not going to play the what-if games of how we're going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement," Roy said. "But we will use tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement."
Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have denounced the deal McCarthy struck that helped bring around many of a group of 20 dissident GOP lawmakers last week. Democrats and other critics say it could hobble McCarthy's ability to reach a bipartisan deal to lift the debt ceiling sometime after July 1, when the $31 trillion limit will need to be raised to prevent a US default on debt payments.
'No Hostage-Taking'
But President Joe Biden has vowed he won't make concessions to prevent Republicans from forcing a first-ever default on the debt.
"Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without conditions and it's just that simple," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. "Attempts to exploit the debt ceiling as leverage will not work. There will be no hostage-taking."
A 2011 crisis rattled financial markets and consumer confidence and led to the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. sovereign debt rating by Standard & Poor's. It ended when President Barack Obama agreed to about $2 trillion in spending cuts over a decade.
Rep. Scott Perry, who chairs the Freedom Caucus, was asked whether he's prepared to let the United States default. "Everybody should negotiate," including Biden, the Pennsylvania Republican said on ABC's "This Week."
"We can't just keep doing the same thing under the same conditions with the same management and expect different outcomes," Perry said. "The American people are sick and tired of this endless debt increasing."
