“Rep. Roy urges McCarthy to hold the line on GOP debt ceiling demands.”

Republican Rep. Chip Roy from Texas is urging Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to stand firm on the party’s debt ceiling demands. In a memo obtained by The Epoch Times, Roy wrote, “I hope … Speaker McCarthy continues to pressure President [Joe] Biden to do what is right for the American people.”

McCarthy and Biden have been in negotiations to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling. However, McCarthy and his caucus have demanded a 22 percent cut in spending, which Biden and the Democrats have deemed “unacceptable.”

According to Roy, “While House Republicans are fighting for hard-working American families facing a woke, weaponized government at odds with our way of life, President Biden and Democrats have been dragging their feet for weeks to fight for rich liberal elitists who want more spending, more government, more corporate subsidies, and less freedom.”

With a June 1 deadline to raise the debt ceiling fast approaching, Roy wrote that the core demands of the Limit, Save, Grow Act remain important to Republicans, who he said “are unified to hold the line.”

Democrats Want More Spending and Less Freedom

Roy said that Republicans are seeking to cut federal expenditures by $5 trillion a decade, while “Democrats want to keep the status quo of record inflation and record spending.”

He also accused Democrats of wanting to expand “the woke federal bureaucracy interfering with Americans’ ability to live free and prosper economically.”

• Republicans are fighting to reassert Congress’ role over an executive branch pumping out new regulations that cost hundreds of billions
• Democrats want to empower faceless bureaucrats
• Republicans are fighting for reliable energy and the working class
• Democrats want to preserve unreliable energy subsidies for the wealthy elite, corporations, and Chinese communists
• Republicans are fighting for poor and middle-class Americans that are already targeted by the IRS at higher rates
• Democrats want to expand the IRS to go after these Americans even more
• Republicans are fighting to preserve an American Dream that increasingly is out of reach
• Democrats want to destroy that dream

Crucial Reforms

Roy listed a series of reforms he called “crucial,” adding “none [of these] should be abandoned solely for the quest of a ‘deal.'”

Reducing Discretionary Spending

First, Roy said that the measure to reduce discretionary spending would help to “rein in the federal bureaucracy.” He wrote that trading discretionary cuts for a debt ceiling deal would mean “continued expansive funding without constraint of the federal bureaucracy at odds with Americans.”

He also rejected arguments that this measure would slash defense spending, noting that a return to pre-COVID levels of non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending would enable defense spending levels to remain at “at least” their 2023 levels.

Repealing Environmental Tax Benefits

Roy also said that repealing “grid-destroying” tax credits and other environmental tax benefits in the Inflation Reduction Act was non-negotiable. He noted that despite Democrats’ claims that Republicans only want to cut taxes for the rich, EV credits passed into law largely benefit the wealthy.

Abandoning this demand, Roy wrote, “[m]eans the absolute decimation of our grid to the benefit of corporate cronies.”