Congressional conservatives gird for battle with Biden over debt ceiling and spending

House Freedom Caucus members and “Breakfast Club” senators are ready to start the budget and debt limit work with President Joe Biden as the deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit is looming. “We’re ready to go right now,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the House Freedom Caucus chairman during the press conference.

The group recently released a blueprint for budget cuts as a condition for a vote to raise the debt limit. The exhaustive list of demands includes cutting current spending, placing a cap on future spending, rescinding unspent COVID-19 funds, ending student loan bailout programs, and repealing increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service that was part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The White House called the House Freedom Caucus’s budget proposal a “five-alarm fire,” arguing that its spending cuts would endanger public safety. Democrats are also utilizing Congressional Budget Office analysis to argue that the Republican push for a balanced budget would impose devastating cuts to important federal programs.

Biden continues to say he won’t negotiate conditions to raise the debt limit. Lawmakers still have a couple of months to work out a deal before the nation defaults on its bills.

The looming debate will likely be one of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s most difficult challenges as he attempts to negotiate with Biden without upsetting his right flank. After the chaos of the speaker’s election, members of the caucus are standing firm on their demands, firing a warning shot at the Biden administration.

As the deadline draws closer, Senate Republicans are making it clear a plan to raise the debt ceiling must originate in the House, leaving negotiations to McCarthy.

“What Senate Republicans are doing, we’re supporting our counterparts in the House of Representatives and leadership and their efforts to negotiate a deal with the White House. I can’t speak to the current progress of that,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate during a press conference on Wednesday.