Pence won’t say how he’s voting on the debt ceiling bill

Photo by The Daily Journal Greg Pence, an incumbent Republican running for Indiana’s 6th Congressional District, speaks during an interview at the Daily Journal on Oct. 3 in Franklin.

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Rep. Greg Pence, R-Indiana, has so far remained silent on his views of debt ceiling and budget deal brokered by the House GOP leadership and the White House that has been criticized by some Republicans who say that it falls short of the spending cuts they demand.

The deal, reached on Sunday after negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, would suspend the nation’s debt limit through 2025 to avoid a federal default while limiting government spending, The Associated Press reported. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the bill would reduce budget deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Since reaching a deal, Biden and McCarthy have been pushing to sell Congress on the 99-page bill, according to wire reports. The Democratic president and Republican speaker have to win their respective parties’ support for the plan in time to avert a default that would shake the global economy.

McCarthy pledged that the House would vote on the legislation Wednesday, giving the Senate time to consider it before June 5, the date when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States could default on its debt obligations if lawmakers did not act in time.

But passage of the bill could be a heavy lift, according to wire reports. A growing number of hardline conservatives have already expressed early concerns that the compromise does not cut future deficits enough, while Democrats have been worried about proposed changes to work requirements in programs such as food stamps.

In the 435-member House, 218 votes are needed for passage.

Pence did not respond to a request seeking comment on how he planned to vote and why. The third-term congressman from Columbus voted in favor of some of the spending that would be cut in the debt limit deal, congressional records show.

Last month, Pence also voted in favor of a proposal that would raise the government’s legal debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for steep spending restrictions. The proposal, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would cut reduce federal deficits by $4.8 trillion over the decade, narrowly passed the House in a mostly party-line 217-215 vote.

“We already passed a bill,” Pence said in an interview with Fox59 on May 21, before the debt limit deal was reached. “It was passed unanimously with the Republicans. As far as I’m concerned, that was the first move, if you will. I don’t know why the Senate isn’t coming up with something. I’m not real sure why they haven’t passed something or debated something and why they’re just pushing it back to the House of Representatives.”

At the same time, senators, who have remained largely on the sidelines during much of the negotiations between the president and the House speaker, have started inserting themselves more forcefully into the debate, including Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, who said Wednesday that the deal is “setting us further down the path to financial ruin.”

“This deal makes our current bloated spending levels the new baseline going forward, setting us further down the path to financial ruin,” Braun said in the statement. “We need deep spending cuts, and Congress shouldn’t get paid until we deliver a real budget that seriously addresses our massive debt. There’s more drama here than usual but sadly the play is going to end the same way: the big spenders in both parties getting together to increase the size of the federal government.”

Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, does not currently have any comment on the debt limit deal, staff told The Republic on Wednesday.

The debt limit is a roughly century-old artificial cap that Congress placed on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow, according to wire reports. Congress has raised, extended or lifted the debt limit 78 times since 1960, including three times during the Trump administration, according to the Treasury Department.

Raising the debt limit does not authorize new spending but rather allows the federal government to pay its bills. Because the government spends more than it takes in through taxes and other revenue, it has to borrow money to pay its obligations.

In recent years, the borrowing limit has been the subject of deepening partisan standoffs, with lawmakers from both parties using debt ceiling votes as leverage for other priorities.

Pence was one of 65 House Republicans who voted to suspend the debt limit in 2019 when President Donald Trump was in the White House, congressional records show.

Data from the Treasury Department shows that U.S. national debt rose by $7.8 trillion during the Trump administration and has increased so far by $3.7 trillion during the Biden administration.