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Carl: Both sides ’embarrassed’ to talk about debt ceiling

According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, The U.S. will reach its debt limit today. Yellen said “extraordinary measures” will be used to prevent default until the summer.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has called on Democrats to negotiate a spending plan that would cut spending and also raise the debt ceiling limit, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we are not going to be negotiating over the debt ceiling.”

Wednesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Mobile) expressed frustration over debt ceiling fight.

“The debt ceiling is something that we’re all embarrassed to even talk about,” Carl said. “And I say Republicans and Democrats. No one really wants to address it until the last minute, and that’s the thing that frustrates me the most, I know it’s frustrating McCarthy too. McCarthy’s already told them he doesn’t want to wait until May to get started on it.”

Carl is one of 10 new Republicans appointed to the House Appropriation Committee, and said they are already addressing the country’s deficits.

“We’ve already been told to start looking at ways that we can cut spending, not increase it, but cut it,” he said. “If we want to increase money for anything in our budget we have to show where it actually came from, we took it away from something else.

“So we’re going to have a flat line budget here, we hope, if not better.”

The congressman said his party won’t just address current deficits, but has a “long term plan” to get a handle on the national debt.

“We’re in a position right now where we can negotiate a little bit,” he said, “so we have to use that to our advantage as much as we can … We’ve got a long term plan. Now the problem with long term plans in Congress is every time somebody takes over they change the plan and go into a different direction.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee

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