Two outspoken members of the House Freedom Caucus retaliated against the Biden administration after it claimed on Tuesday that the two were engaging in “dangerous brinkmanship” and demanding “ransom” in exchange for a debt ceiling agreement because they wanted to have the so-called Inflation Reduction Act revoked as part of the talks.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the chair of the caucus, referred to the administration’s comments as “soaring and laughable rhetoric” in a statement made available to Breitbart News. He also noted that the government was “in the unsustainable position of justifying its own fiscal illiteracy all while declining to negotiate.”
“When the evidence and the passage of time are not on their side, desperate and defeated people always use these strategies,” according to Perry.
When the White House criticized him, Roy told Breitbart News, “You are receiving flack if you are over the target.”
The lawmakers were responding to a statement made earlier in the day by White House spokesman Andrew Bates, who claimed that “by targeting the Inflation Reduction Act, Scott Perry alongside Chip Roy just demonstrated the true intentions of the ultra MAGA hardliners that are increasingly dominating the House GOP Conference.”
Bates went on:
“House Republicans are not only indulging in the risky brinkmanship that Presidents Reagan and Trump warned against, but they are also threatening to hold Americans’ employment and retirement funds, hostage. Now, the increasingly powerful extreme MAGA Republican Party want their ransom to be the destruction of tens of thousands of production jobs as a windfall for China, an increase in the cost of energy and prescription medications for middle-class families, and a skyrocketing deficit — all in the form of sweetheart deals for wealthy special interests.”
The argumentative comments on a debt limit agreement follow House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) announcement Monday in New York that the House will vote on a package that would raise the debt ceiling throughout next year in the “coming weeks.”
The contentious $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden passed into law in August and which several organizations have predicted will have little influence on inflation, is anticipated to have many conservative provisions.
