Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that the national debt would be his top priority if Republicans succeed in retaking the House in 2020.
“First thing we would do is make sure our debt is taken care of,” McCarthy told reporters at a GOP retreat in Baltimore. “This is continuing to grow. … Every great society has collapsed when they’ve overextended themselves,” the California Republican warned.
Roll Call’s Lindsey McPherson noted that McCarthy’s comment came on the same day the U.S. Treasury announced that the budget deficit had topped $1 trillion in 2019 – a shortfall driven in part by the 2017 tax cuts that were passed by the last Republican-controlled Congress.
Bloomberg’s Jonathon Nicholson underlined the point. “HR 1 was literally the bill number for the $1.5 trillion deficit-increasing tax cut in the 115th Congress, the most recent one with a GOP Speaker,” Nicholson tweeted.
