Moore: We can’t ‘continue to spend off a cliff’

As the fight over the debt ceiling between the White House and members of Congress continues, both sides seem to holding strong to their positions.

The U.S. reached its debt ceiling limit last week, forcing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to enact “extortionary measures” to continue paying the nation’s bills. Republican members of Congress believe any raising of the debt ceiling should go along with spending cuts, but President Joe Biden is still refusing to negotiate.

Thursday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Rep. Barry Moore (R-Enterprise) criticized Biden for not taking the national debt seriously.

“The entire representative Republican party voted against $1.7 trillion just about a month ago in spending,” Moore said, “and President Biden is not available, he’s not responsive, he’s not giving us an opportunity to negotiate this process. So we’ll get there, but there’s going to be some things that we need to make sure that we put guardrails on this process and don’t just continue to spend off a cliff.”

The congressman said Republicans are discussing different ideas to help cut spending.

“There are a lot of things we’re looking at right now as far as how we manage going forward,” he said. “Maybe claw back on a lot of COVID money that’s out there that hasn’t been spent, rather than just printing money here in D.C.

“I think it’s important for us to go ahead and claw back what has not been spent and apply it toward the debt itself and towards our spending for this coming year. Otherwise we just continue off the cliff.”

Moore, who is also a member of the Congressional Freedom Caucus, emphasized not only the need for spending cuts, but also a plan to grow the economy.

“There’s things that we can do, not just in the sense of cutting spending, but reducing regulations that allow the economy to expand and grow,” he said. “And certainly domestic energy would be a big part of that process because in some ways as you reduce taxes and regulations you see an increase in revenues to the treasury.

“You can’t certainly grow yourself completely out of it, but if you’ll cut spending and start managing the resources better, you’ve got a much better chance of getting to the goal, which is to balance the budget and to cut the debt.”

The lawmaker reiterated his belief that reducing the power and size of government helps the economy grow in the long run.

“The average American understands that,” he said. “The business owners understand that, small business, large business. If we cut those taxes and regulations the first things entrepreneurs do by nature is reinvest into their businesses, into their people, they expand their workforces, they invest in infrastructure, things that actually produce jobs and create something, rather than the government just printing money up here, and claiming that ‘yeah we need more of your money, more IRS agents because we can’t manage what we’re collecting right now.'”

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