In a Fox Business interview Thursday, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) tried to clear up what exactly Republicans want to cut in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Tried is the key word because, well… they have no idea.
During the at times bonkers interview, Roy offered some vague answers to the question that he and his colleagues haven’t been able to answer for weeks. He said the party wants to “freeze the woke weaponized bureaucracy” and “go to war” with “bureaucrats” to save the country.
“The bureaucrats are the enemy,” Roy said on Fox Business. “The American people are what drive this country forward. Let’s go to war with the enemy and the bureaucrats. Let’s save this country and I think that’s what the Republican message ought to be.”
This comes shortly after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Biden met at the White House. The two sat down on Wednesday to discuss how and when to raise the nation’s debt ceiling as House Republicans continue to vow to hold it hostage until they get what they want.
What do they want exactly? No one — including House Republicans — seems to know.
The White House has been publicly emphasizing for weeks that the President refuses to “negotiate” with Republicans on a debt limit hike, calling on Congress to swiftly pass a bill to increase the debt ceiling with no strings attached. Republicans have spun that stance up to mean that Democrats refuse to negotiate on the federal budget, an entirely different issue that the GOP wants Americans to think is in fact the same thing.
“The most important thing coming out of yesterday is that President Biden is in fact going to negotiate with a co-equal branch of government,” Roy said. “He’s gonna negotiate. He has to.”
Republicans have been facing staunch criticism from House and Senate Democrats, not just for holding the debt ceiling hostage but also for refusing to unveil any proposed spending cuts that they want to see as part of debt ceiling negotiations.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) dared House Republicans to lay out the spending cuts they’re proposing as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling instead of taking part in “brinkmanship” and “hostage taking.”
Some critics are saying the lack of a public plan suggests that House Republicans don’t have an actual plan laid out and are once again divided amongst themselves on the issue.
Roy disagrees.
“We know what we want,” Roy said. “We want to see the ’24 spending level revert back to the pre ’23 omnibus explosion. We want to get it back to ’22 levels and importantly we want to freeze the woke weaponized bureaucracy…”
“Joe Biden is the one who will default on the debt if anybody does it,” he added, without acknowledging that Republicans are actually the ones trying to hold the debt ceiling hostage. “No one else. Joe Biden and Joe Biden alone will make that decision. Because we are putting down right now what we want to demand for the American people, which is getting the government out of their way, growing this economy and restoring America where it needs to be.”
But despite all the big words, neither Roy nor any other Republican have introduced an actual plan on how they would like to cut the country’s budget.
Through the nine minute interview, Roy wasn’t able to identify a single specific cut Republicans can make but he did say what they need more funding for — “a non-woke defense, that is actually trying to do the job of lethality of killing people and blowing stuff up.”
“Let’s have the dollars we need to defend the country,” Roy said. “Cut waste over there but do what we need to do to buy bombers and planes and bullets and train people. By the way, a non-woke defense, that is actually trying to do the job of lethality of killing people and blowing stuff up. That’s what the defense is supposed to do.
