‘Hold the Line’: Rep. Roy to McCarthy on GOP Debt Ceiling Demands

​​House Rules Committee member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said during the panel’s four-hour Jan. 30 meeting that ending the federal healthcare worker vaccination mandate is “part of a bigger discussion that we should have regarding deference to the executive [branch] and to the bureaucratic state.” Win McNamee/Getty Images

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) circulated a memo on May 24 encouraging Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to “hold the line” on Republicans’ debt ceiling demands.

“I hope ... Speaker McCarthy continues to pressure President [Joe] Biden to do what is right for the American people,” Roy wrote in a memo to his colleagues obtained by The Epoch Times.

McCarthy and Biden have been negotiating a deal to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling.

McCarthy and his caucus have demanded as much as a 22 percent cut in spending, as included in the party’s Limit, Save, Grow Act—a demand Biden and the Democrat party have called “unacceptable.”

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), joined by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), speaks to reporters following his meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on May 22, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

“While House Republicans are fighting for hard-working American families facing a woke, weaponized government at odds with our way of life, President Biden and Democrats have been dragging their feet for weeks to fight for rich liberal elitists who want more spending, more government, more corporate subsidies, and less freedom,” Roy said, citing Biden’s initial refusal to negotiate with Republicans.

With a June 1 deadline to raise the debt ceiling fast approaching, Roy wrote that the core demands of the Limit, Save, Grow Act remain important to Republicans, who he said “are unified to hold the line.”

Roy said that while Republicans are seeking to rein in spending by cutting federal expenditures by $5 trillion a decade, “Democrats want to keep the status quo of record inflation and record spending.”

Hundreds of Billions

He said Democrats are also seeking to expand “the woke federal bureaucracy interfering with Americans’ ability to live free and prosper economically.

“We are fighting to reassert Congress’ role over an executive branch pumping out new regulations that cost hundreds of billions, Democrats want to empower faceless bureaucrats.

“We are fighting for reliable energy and the working class, Democrats want to preserve IRA unreliable energy subsidies for the wealthy elite, corporations, and Chinese communists,” Roy said, a likely reference to Democrats’ push to expand the electric vehicle (EV) market, a market over which China holds a monopoly on crucial raw materials.

He also referenced provisions in the Limit, Save, Grow Act that would repeal new funding allowing the IRS to hire as many as 87,000 new tax agents.

“We are fighting for poor and middle-class Americans that are already targeted by the IRS at higher rates, Democrats want to expand the IRS to go after these Americans even more.

“We are fighting to preserve an American Dream that increasingly is out of reach, Democrats want to destroy that dream.”

Roy then listed a series of reforms he called “crucial,” adding “none [of these] should be abandoned solely for the quest of a ‘deal.’”

Discretionary Spending

First, Roy said that the measure to reduce discretionary spending—describing spending that is spent at the discretion of federal agencies and not earmarked for a specific use—would help to “rein in the federal bureaucracy.”

“This would cut $131 billion in discretionary spending in year one, save $3.6 trillion over a decade, and—most importantly—restrict the federal bureaucracy’s power to interfere with Americans’ ability to live free and prosper economically.”

He wrote that trading discretionary cuts for a debt ceiling deal would mean “continued expansive funding without constraint of the federal bureaucracy at odds with Americans.”

He also rejected arguments that this measure would slash defense spending, noting that a return to pre-COVID levels of non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending, around $597 billion, would enable defense spending levels to remain at “at least” their 2023 levels.

He said that this is not a position Democrats have historically found radical. In his last budget, Roy noted, President Barack Obama called for $613 billion for NDD spending in FY 2024.

‘Grid-Destroying’ Climate Policies

Roy also said that repealing “grid-destroying” tax credits and other environmental tax benefits in the Inflation Reduction Act was non-negotiable.

That bill was the most expansive piece of climate legislation ever signed into law by a U.S. president, and included an array of tax benefits, government grants, and other financial rewards for conversion from coal and fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

Nevertheless, fossil fuels continue to account for the broad majority of U.S. energy production.

Despite increasing pushes for wind and solar-based energy production these forms made up only 12 percent of U.S. energy production in 2021.

Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park near Werder, Germany on Oct. 30, 2013. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Roy also noted that despite Democrats’ claims that Republicans only want to cut taxes for the rich, EV credits passed into law largely benefit the wealthy: 78 percent of the tax benefits and write-offs for purchasing an EV are claimed by those making over $100,000 per year.

Households with an income of up to $300,000 annually are eligible for these credits.

Abandoning this demand, Roy wrote, “[m]eans the absolute decimation of our grid to the benefit of corporate cronies.”

Another non-negotiable, he said, is rescinding Biden’s “unfair, deficit increasing, and tuition increasing student loan bailout” and repealing new IRS funding.

Work Requirements

Republicans have pushed for upped work requirements in order to receive financial aid from the government, a measure Roy also labeled as a non-negotiable.

“After $5 trillion in COVID spending and two years of Democrats paying people not to work, our labor force participation rate is well below pre-pandemic levels and the federal government continues to undermine the dignity of work through assistance programs,” Roy wrote.

According to estimates, the number of able-bodied young men without children willing to work is the lowest it’s ever been in the United States, with many preferring to rake in cushy unemployment and other state benefits instead.

To address this, Republicans’ Limit, Save, Grow would institute work requirements to receive things like Medicaid and other government assistance.

President Bill Clinton clinches his fist during a 27 October speech on welfare reform at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

McCarthy negotiating this demand away, Roy said, “means turning our back on the dignity of work and [is] a slap in the face to Americans that work hard to make ends meet.”

Roy argued that this demand is not radical, citing President Bill Clinton’s 1990s legislation that did much the same. Likewise, he noted that Biden once supported these measures while a senator.

Speaking on Clinton’s welfare reforms, Biden said then: “The culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work ... The culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. And, the culture of permanence must no longer be a way of life.”

Reclaim COVID Funds

Another non-negotiable, Roy said, is the reclamation of unused COVID-19 relief funds.

Over a series of legislative packages, Congress poured around $5 trillion into the economy, spending that Republicans blame for recent inflationary trends.

Though the public health emergency from COVID has been ended, with Biden going so far as to claim, “The pandemic is over,” Democrats have been hesitant to reclaim unused funds appropriated for COVID.

In April 2023, Biden signed into law a GOP bill officially ending the emergency.

“The $5 trillion we dumped into the economy in the name of ‘COVID’ was one of the main drivers of inflation,” Roy wrote. “COVID is long over, it is time to reclaim the tens of billions of unobligated COVID funding that still remains.”