DeSantis blasts McCarthy debt deal as inadequate when country ‘careening towards bankruptcy’

Fresh to the 2024 presidential race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday blasted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling deal with the White House, declaring it was “totally inadequate” when America is on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Prior to this deal, our country was careening towards bankruptcy, and after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy,” DeSantis told the morning news show “Fox & Friends.” 

“And to say you can do 4 trillion of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending,” he added.

McCarthy and Biden announce the deal Saturday that holds federal funding flat for the next two years, claws back tens of billions of dollars in unspent COVID aid  and requires some food stamp and welfare recipients to work to keep their benefits.

The deal came under immediate assault by  members of the House Freedom Caucus, and conservative senators like Rand Paul of Kentucky. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) called the compromise a “turd sandwich” while Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said passing it would be “insanity.”

DeSantis said the problem with the deal is it did little to reverse the massive amounts of spending that got added to the federal budget during the pandemic, making only minor reductions to trillions of annual new spending since 2020. 

“I think that we’ve gotten ourselves on a trajectory here, really, since March of 2020 with some of the Covid spending and totally reset the budget, and they’re sticking with that, and I think that’s just going to be totally inadequate to get us in a better spot,” he explained.