“As the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”
An Op-Ed by Nicole Malliotakis. As published in the Staten Island Advance
“As the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”
That’s what happened in Washington this week. The United States needed to avert an economy-crippling default on our debt that would have stopped checks to our seniors, benefits for our veterans, and hurt the U.S. dollar and Americans’ retirement savings. We also desperately needed to change the fiscal trajectory of our nation, which was spending too much, too fast.
The legislation passed this week with overwhelming bipartisan support does BOTH by reducing inflationary spending with the largest cut in history, imposing spending caps, and adding checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
In January, House Republicans started from a place where President Biden and Senate Democrats demanded a clean debt ceiling increase and repeatedly refused to negotiate. We stood our ground and, six months later, ended with conservative wins that also include stopping Biden’s plan to hire IRS agents this year, clawing back tens of billions in unused COVID funds, implementing new work requirements to reduce dependency on public benefits, and cutting costly red tape that has slowed down critical infrastructure projects like the East Shore Seawall and Outerbridge Crossing.
On top of all this, we achieved the BIGGEST deficit reduction in American history.
While no deal is perfect, this is only the beginning. House Republicans have restored balance to government and put an end to Democrats’ massive inflationary spending sprees, and as we move forward to the budget and appropriations process, we will continue to fight for the American taxpayer and stop reckless policies that fuel inflation.
The federal government shamefully spent your money sending stimulus checks to citizens of other countries and inmates sitting in jail, on ridiculous things like drag queen shows in Ecuador, injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, and studying the fictional Marvel character Thanos. Perhaps the most egregious waste of tax dollars is the $400 billion lost to fraud during the pandemic, including $11 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments right here in New York State.
In the first six months Republicans have controlled the House, we’ve already begun delivering on our promise to reinstate checks, balances, and fiscal sanity in the halls of Congress. On our very first day, we hit the ground running by implementing sweeping rules changes that would prohibit massive omnibus spending bills, require any new spending to be offset by cuts, mandate a Congressional Budget Office score to analyze every bill’s impact on inflation and give members three days to review legislation before voting on it. Simply put, the days of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “we need to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” are over.
While, of course, I and other Republicans would have liked to see the Senate and White House support the initial debt limit and spending reduction bill we passed on April 26, we cannot allow perfect to be the enemy of good. The political reality is House Republicans only control one-third of our federal government. But there’s no doubt that because Americans entrusted us with control of the House and gave us a seat at the negotiating table, this legislation was made better.
Out of the past 10 debt limit deals in the last decade, this is the ONLY one that reduces the deficit and overall spending, and it’s the first time in history that Congress voted to spend less money than the year prior. Equally as important, we are protecting Medicare and Social Security, preventing President Biden from unilaterally spending trillions and rejecting his demand to raise $5 trillion in taxes.
When all is said and done, this deal shows that despite having many insurmountable differences, Democrats and Republicans can still come together in the most polarizing political environment to deliver what the majority of Americans wanted – the prevention of a default on our debt coupled with sensible spending cuts.
There’s a saying, “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.” That’s bound to happen in a split government in which Republicans control the House while Democrats maintain control of the White House and Senate.
But maybe, compromise shouldn’t be a dirty word, and both parties should take satisfaction in knowing that, despite our differences, we successfully did what the American people actually elected us to do… govern.