House Republicans have started downplaying their desire to cut spending in conjunction with lifting the debt limit, seeking to reframe their strategy as targeting “waste” and finding “efficiencies.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy delivered a speech Monday evening from a corridor outside his office known as the “speaker’s balcony hallway,” in which he described the national debt as “the greatest threat” to the nation’s future.
But not once did McCarthy say Republicans would “cut” spending. The only time he used that word specifically was to say: “Cuts to Medicare and Social Security, they’re off the table.”
