WATCH: Kevin McCarthy Makes Stunning Admission
In a candid moment during Wednesday’s interview, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted that he had not seen 89% of the debt ceiling deal with Joe Biden.
The startling admission showed the extent to which the deal remains opaque and ambiguous even to top lawmakers.
“Why didn’t you see the whole budget?” Fox’s Harris Faulkner asked.
“Because the president walled off all the others… the majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending,” McCarthy stated. “It’s Medicare, so you only have 11% to look at this budget.”
WATCH:
McCarthy defended that despite his limited access, the bipartisan group was able to make significant strides. “We were able to increase our defense to protect us, take care of our veterans,” he explained. “I’m going to announce a commission coming forward from the Speaker, from bipartisan both sides of the aisle.”
Still, the Speaker’s deflection to mandatory spending only tells some of the story… 36% of it, to be exact. Discretionary spending makes up nearly 30% of the federal budget, and McCarthy appears to have admitted that he was not able to see 64% of the discretionary budget before agreeing to the deal.
REACTIONS:
And he agreed to it anyway. How pathetic.
— Brett (@Texan__Pride) May 31, 2023
In other words we have no idea what you’re going to spend the money on but we should just trust you anyway this is why the American people are getting screwed over so bad because we’re trusting people who created this nightmare to solve the problem that’s the problem. #DebtCrisis
— P K (@NEVERBOW) May 31, 2023
There could be a lot of undesirable items in the other89%
— gar rob (@garrob5) May 31, 2023
Ummmm!!! And you agreed to it?
— Matthew Brown (@Man67Ace) May 31, 2023
he was able to find 2 trillion in cuts of only 11% of the budget???? every day this gets stranger!
— enrico aloi (@forevrboyenrico) May 31, 2023