Democrats are leveraging talk of a historic debt default as a threat for an unconditional raising of the debt ceiling, but Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., on Newsmax rejected that as a negotiation tactic and the GOP should not give in to their "panic."
"This is a bit of the dance of legislation," Schweikert, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Vice Chair of the Joint Economic Committee, told "Saturday Agenda."
"I guess if I have one passion: Don't panic," he added to host Kilmeny Duchardt. "This is the dance, and the first side to blink is the side that loses."
Schweikert is taking a hard-line approach amid the talks, which he said he doubts will come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling before the Democrat-pushed June 1 fail-safe deadline.
"I doubt it," Schweikert told congressional correspondent Kilmeny Duchardt. "My instinct is, having been through this multiple times being the senior Republican on Joint Economics — where we're running much of the data and the math — it's right up to the last moment and understand that June 1 date moves, because in middle of June there's substantial tax receipts that come in from quarterly filings.
"So if you get closer to that 13th, 14th, all of a sudden, the treasury is flush with cash again, and that date now moves out by another month."
Congress is notorious for kicking the can down the road, according to Schweikert.
"In many ways, Congress is not capable of dealing with difficult things, you know, particularly discussions about our debt," he told Duchardt. "But I need to be careful on one thing because I want to say this nicely: If you hear someone saying default, default is when you do not make the payments on your interest on your sovereign debt. The United States today borrows about 30 cents on the dollar. That borrowing is unconscionable, but we have plenty of cash flow to cover the bond payments, so it's not default — still not a good thing, you can make the argument it's a technical default, but it's not default.
"We have plenty of cash flow to pay our bonds. It's just that other 30% of spending, that all of a sudden those checks don't go out the door."
Democrats are being disingenuous on the debt ceiling, according to Schweikert.
"They're not being sincere," he continued. "Do understand, Democrat after Democrat I see coming in front of cameras, saying they want to clean debt ceiling. But in 2019 with President [Donald] Trump, Nancy Pelosi would not provide a clean debt ceiling.
"Matter of fact they required about $324 billion new spending and the lifting of spending caps, which added about another $300 billion. So just even a couple of years ago, the Democrats in their passion they wanted more spending.
"In our side, we're desperately trying to get some fiscal constraints."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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