Bill Clinton: GOP, 'Tea Party People' Want to Take Food from Poor

Bill Clinton: GOP, 'Tea Party People' Want to Take Food from Poor

During the September 29 airing of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, former President Bill Clinton described proposed spending cuts as the product of the House GOP and “the Tea Party people” trying to dictate “draconian cuts that are going to take food off the table of low incoming, working people.”

He said just thinking about it was “chilling.”

Clinton told Stephanopoulos that the House GOP and “Tea Party People people” are not interested in negotiating over the debt limit. Rather, they want to “dictate over the Senate, over the House Democrats, over [House Speaker John Boehner], and over the president,” and tell us what “the course of the country” will be. 

Moreover, he said Obama should not negotiate the debt limit even if the GOP changes its mind. Adding that when he negotiated over it in 1996 it was only because he was saving the GOP from the mess they made for themselves, Clinton said: “The negotiations we had were extremely minor… It was more like [the GOP was saying], ‘we got out here on this ledge, please give us something.'”

Clinton claims the GOP spending cuts proposed right now would take away food from “low income, working people” while giving “agricultural subsidies to high income farmers, and everything else.” 

“It seems almost spiteful,” he said.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.

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