Republican Congressman Scott Perry on why he will not back the debt limit deal

Interview

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Well, we're not whipping against it right now. We're informing the members, which, look, they just found out what was in this bill, the text.

They found out about the bill, that it existed. That was on Saturday night. The text came out on Sunday evening. And so, into Monday, people are reading it. Now, it's 100 pages. So it's not a big bill. But you got to read through the legislative language to see where the money's coming from and where it's going to.

And it can be very confusing. For instance, in the bill, it says we're rescinding some COVID money. But you would think that would go back to the Treasury to pay down the debt. It's not going to the Treasury. We're doing what's called banking it, which means we're just putting it in another account to spend it later.

So that's not really what people signed up for. And there are other things, like the 87,000 IRS agents, $80 billion. We're rescinding $1.4 billion of that, essentially -- or, ostensibly, we're told to stop the IRS for hiring more people to investigate Americans. But they keep basically the $78.6 billion that they have in the bank that was given a lump sum appropriation that they can spend it any time.

So it really doesn't stop anything. And so those are the things that members are finding out about. And, when they find out about them, they say, well, I didn't sign up for this. I'm not voting for this.

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Well, we're going to have that discussion after this is done, Amna, but we're not done yet. This is in Rules Committee. There still might be amendments in the Rules Committee. It still might not pass on the floor.

And so I'm never willing to really handicap those kinds of things, because you can get out ahead of your skis pretty quickly. And then it's hard to reel things back in. So, right now, we're focused on this and the debt ceiling and the fact, quite honestly, that the Senate hasn't passed anything, still is reluctant, apparently, to come to work.

And so the House has had to negotiate against its own position. That's not where we should be. We have passed a bill in the House of Representatives to deal with this. We think it's high time that the Senate passes something, even has a hearing, or even marks up, writes that the bill text of a bill down that they can pass, before we keep asking House members, what are you willing to give up to not have this circumstance on this debt that we -- where we are right now?

Understand, Amna, this offers unlimited spending for the next two years. So, that's essentially, I don't know, $4 trillion, $5 trillion, $6 trillion. We will probably be at $36 trillion in debt at the end of this term, because it is -- there's no cap on this. There's no limit whatsoever.

This is exactly what President Biden said and demanded back in January, when he said he wouldn't negotiate.

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Yes. Yes.

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Like I said, Amna, we're going to -- we're not going to talk about ifs right now. We're going to talk about things we know for sure.

The Rules Committee is happening right now. We're going to wait and see how that plays out. There might be a great amendment that comes from that. And so we're not going to -- we're just not going to handicap things like that, because it's not productive.

The American people are tired of paying too high prices for gasoline and for groceries and everything they buy. And it's all stemming from this overspending at the federal level. That's what we're focused on right now. Once we get done with that, then we can come back and talk about other things.

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No. No.

Amna, there's not going to be any default. First of all, number one, the -- Janet Yellen has no credibility and is not -- actually, she started helping out the inflation rise to the level it is when she was at the Fed. Then she didn't see inflation coming even as the as they passed the $1.7 trillion omnibus last September.

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First of all, I call that into question.

Second of all, we know that, June, all the quarterly is going to come in. The federal government is going to be flush -- flush with revenues that come in. So all we have to do is get to the middle of the month, and that issue is all…

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Yes.

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They might be correct. I don't know.

But, again, we can stop all this with recisions. We could claw back the COVID money, all of it, and put it towards the debt. We can claw back all that $80 billion for the IRS and put that towards the debt immediately. We can do that right tonight in the Rules Committee and change the trajectory of all this.

And that's kind of the stuff we're looking for, so that we provide some space to negotiate and where the Senate can actually pass a bill.

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Well, that might be true, but the only way we're going to find that out is to see the bill.

But these are folks that haven't even passed a bill. First of all, President Biden isn't in the legislature. He doesn't pass any bills. And we know that this has to go before the Senate. And why does everybody assume that the Senate is just going to pass this? Just because Mitch McConnell says so, it doesn't mean that maybe Democrats are unhappy over there.

Certainly, Republicans probably aren't thrilled over there. Once again, the Senate hasn't done its job. And for there to be any real negotiation between the two sides and the two parties, it requires the Senate to pass a bill.

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Thank you. I appreciate it.

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