A funding deal has been reached between House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate leader Chuck Schumer—but can it pass both chambers of Congress?
NTD spoke to Richard Stern, director of the Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, to find out why such deals are so difficult to reach—and whether this one is likely to get through Congress.
“This is only kicking the can down the road by another month,” said Mr. Stern. He said Americans need to understand the conflicting goals that make it difficult to reach such a deal, and why spending cuts are in U.S. citizens’ interest.
“I think the important thing for Americans to realize is that the federal budget right now is close to a quarter of GDP,” he said. “So that means that close to a quarter of all of the work that Americans do, of all the money that Americans earn, is redirected through the federal government—is used by the federal government to distort the market, distort what we all produce, what the economy does for Americans.”
“The inflation you’re seeing—you know, prices are up 17 percent since Biden’s taken office, interest rates are at record highs, I mean, highs we haven’t seen in over a generation,” he said. “All of that is the result of more government spending, that drives prices, right, that bleeds your purchasing power into the hands of the federal government. That’s why they want spending cuts—and we need them.”
“There are too many people in D.C. who care about keeping spending high, because they don’t care, to be frank, about what it does to inflation and interest rates, what it does to most Americans,” said Mr. Stern. “They view the spending as a way of getting money to their friends, to their donors.”
