Tim Scott comes out against McCarthy-Biden debt deal for giving president ‘open checkbook’

Published on Maggio 31, 2023

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., announced Wednesday that he opposes House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s negotiated budget deal with President Biden.

In an Axios interivew, Scott argued the bill does too little to cut back on IRS expansion and would also give Biden unlimited spending for the rest of his term. The 2024 presidential hopeful nevertheless praised McCarthy’s ability to negotiate with Biden, going on to note that some members of the House Freedom Caucus have agreed to support the bill despite earlier misgivings.

“Kevin did a good job of figuring out how to negotiate with someone who did not want to negotiate,” Scott said. “But at the end of the negotiation, is it in our best interest as a nation to allow Joe Biden, someone we cannot trust on spending, to have an open checkbook–no limit on the credit card–until the end of his term?”

“My answer is no,” he added.

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Scott, who recently launched his 2024 presidential campaign, went on to say that the bill also does too little to cut Biden’s expansion of the IRS. The Biden administration secured funding to hire 87,000 more IRS agents in the coming years, but the bill only cuts funding for the first year of hires.

“This current deal [includes] a $1.4 billion freeze on spending for the IRS. The 87,000 new agents won’t be coming this cycle, this fiscal year, but the next one we could see that happening,” Scott said. “Some celebrate the $1.4 billion, which, ok. But there’s $82 billion that we gave to the IRS to hire those folks.”

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McCarthy’s bill still has some Republican detractors in the House, where it will soon come up for a vote. Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, both voted against procedural elements surrounding the bill in committee earlier this week.

“This bill is smoke and mirrors,” Norman said Tuesday. “I get why the Democrats are voting for it … because they get pretty much what they want.”

The final agreement reached over the weekend suspends the debt limit with no cap through Jan. 1, 2025, while also cutting non-defense spending to near fiscal 2022 levels, capping growth at 1% for the next two years and proposing non-mandatory caps for the four years after. It also claws back some money aimed at the Internal Revenue Service and some unspent COVID-19 pandemic funds.