Steve Bannon slammed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s deal with President Joe Biden to raise the country’s debt ceiling as a “total surrender” by Republicans.
Following weeks of negotiations, Biden and McCarthy announced a tentative deal on Saturday night to raise the $31.5 trillion debt limit for two years while also cutting federal spending, just days before the United States is set to default on its commitments—which experts say would have devastating impacts to the global economy. The deal will extend the debt limit until January 2025, cap spending in the 2024 and 2025 budgets, repeal unused COVID-19 relief funds, cut Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding and add work requirements for food aid programs, CNN reported.
Some conservatives are speaking out against the agreement as McCarthy, a California Republican, aims to pass the bill in the sharply divided House of Representatives. Steve Bannon, a former strategist to former President Donald Trump, said he believes the deal will “condemn the United States to decades of lost economic growth” in an interview with Newsweek on Sunday morning.
Bannon also slammed the bill as a “total surrender” on the part of McCarthy as well as a “total and complete sell out” in a series of Gettr posts after the deal was announced.
He told Newsweek the agreement is “not acceptable” for conservatives, warning that it will add another $4 to 5 trillion to the national debt by the time the U.S. approaches the next limit in 2025, regardless of any “marginal, small cuts” in the bill.
“This bill almost guarantees you $4 trillion with no cuts. It’s dead on arrival. Any Republican that votes for this—they should primary them because this is nothing but a set of small optics compared to the real problem,” he said. “The problem that this exacerbates the debt problem because it takes off any limits to what can be added to the debt ceiling. There’s no number, and we know it’s for two years.”
Bannon said a “vacate to motion” will likely be brought up against McCarthy if the bill passes, and that the negotiations show the House speaker is “not really a leader.”
“This shows no leadership whatsoever,” he added.
Newsweek reached out to McCarthy office for comment via email.
Meanwhile, some House Republicans have already said they will vote against the deal. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado tweeted on Saturday night, “Our voters deserve better than this. We work for them. You can count me as a NO on this deal. We can do better.”
Our base didn’t volunteer, door knock and fight so hard to get us the majority for this kind of compromise deal with Joe Biden.
Our voters deserve better than this. We work for them.
You can count me as a NO on this deal. We can do better.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 28, 2023
While conservatives have blasted the deal, McCarthy has sought to sell the agreement as a major win for Republicans, telling his conference there “isn’t one thing” for Democrats, Politico reporter Olivia Beavers tweeted.
MCCARTHY on what Dems get out of this agreement: “There isn’t one thing… There’s nothing that they asked that I would let in… I just kept saying no.”
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) May 28, 2023
Biden, meanwhile, presented the deal as a “compromise.”
“It is an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “And, the agreement protects my and Congressional Democrats’ key priorities and legislative accomplishments. The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. That’s the responsibility of governing.”
Earlier this evening, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement in principle.
It is an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone. And, the agreement protects my and…
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 28, 2023
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