WASHINGTON – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday gave the ugly truth about the pending vote to prevent the US from going into default next week: either way, the federal government is spending a “massive” amount of money.
His comments came after President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday reached a deal that would raise the debt ceiling for two years — just long enough to take the limit past the 2024 presidential election — in exchange for cutting government spending.
In his Memorial Day appearance on “Fox & Friends,” DeSantis told host Kayleigh McEnany that regardless of a deal, the national debt is in trouble due to the amount of federal spending that has been on an incline since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“Well, prior to this deal, Kayleigh, our country was careening towards bankruptcy,” he said. “And after this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy.”
Ultimately, McCarthy and Biden’s deal would result in another $4 trillion added to the national debt, which has already drawn criticism from some Republican lawmakers vowing to vote it down.
“To say you can do $4 trillion of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending,” DeSantis said.
Instead of blaming 80-year-old President Joe Biden alone, DeSantis said the nation has been spending too much money since at least the latter part of the Trump administration. The newly minted presidential candidate is the closest rival to former President Trump, 76, for the Republican presidential ticket for 2024.
“I think that we’ve gotten ourselves on a trajectory here, really since March of 2020, with some of the COVID spending and totally reset the budget, and they’re sticking with that,” the 44-year-old governor said. “And I think that that’s just going to be totally inadequate to get us in a better spot.”
The governor went on to boast about his own state’s more-than-balanced budget, noting that the Sunshine State “run(s) big budget surpluses.”
“We have a $1.2 trillion dollar economy, but our debt is only $17 billion — the second-lowest per capita in the country. But we make tough choices, [and] make sure that we look forward to the long haul.”
“Obviously in Washington, DC, they do these cycles to just get that through the next election. And that’s ultimately one of the reasons why they continue to fail,” he added.
