Republicans are “holding together” and are going to “force a negotiation” on the debt ceiling fight, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
Hagerty, one of many Senate Republicans who demanded serious spending reforms before agreeing to increase the debt ceiling, spoke about how Republicans can learn to win this fight, pointing to his success in challenging the D.C. crime bill in the past.
“I’ve been a business person my entire career. I’ve had to negotiate at a negotiating table for real, and what this is is a negotiation,” he said, explaining that the D.C. crime bill, which would have lowered penalties for major felonies, would have simply invited more crime.
Hagerty said he was determined to block it despite the White House promising a veto, and he held fast, predicting that President Joe Biden would “realize that defund the police and soft-on-crime hasn’t worked.”
“And lo and behold, we get to the endpoint, and they did capitulate. They did turn. I held my ground, and this has not been used; this tool hasn’t been used since the 1990s,” he said, turning to the debt ceiling issue.
Both Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said they would not negotiate, according to Hagerty, because “they didn’t think Kevin McCarthy could get a bill passed out of the House of Representatives on his own.”
“He didn’t think there would be enough Republicans to support raising the debt ceiling, but they found a set of terms that Republicans could get behind. And now the only bill available, the only piece of legislation available to raise the debt ceiling, is the one that Kevin McCarthy has passed, and the reason you saw that letter come out last night—with what’s on that letter—we’re demonstrating to Chuck Schumer that he can’t just stand there and argue that he wants a blank check,” he said, making it clear that Schumer now has to negotiate.
“So we’re just making it very, very clear. We’re narrowing the box. We’re narrowing the timeline, and we’re gonna force a negotiation. That’s what business people do: you know how to negotiate. You got to be cool-headed about it,” he said, adding that “Republicans are holding together on this.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the senator added, has been able to “galvanize the Republicans in the House.”
“And I think that it puts Biden and Schumer in a very, very tough spot. They’re gonna have to negotiate,” he added.
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