Heated Debate: Democrat, Republican Congressmen Argue Over Revenue and Spending Cuts
After managing to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for another round of debates. This time it’s over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Today on Fox News Sunday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) engaged in a heated debate over revenue and spending cuts.
Rep. Van Hollen, a Democrat, argued, “Yes, we have to do more cuts. And the president has been very clear, he put on the table $1.2 trillion dollars in cuts combined with $1.2 trillion in revenue. The only reason we weren’t able to go forward with that was you had House Republicans deciding not to follow Speaker Boehner
in that balanced approach.”
Republican Rep. Jordan shot back, “We’ve got to stop the madness. This is the 18-year-old kid on the credit card and they max out the credit card instead of cutting it up and putting them on a budget. Barack Obama says ‘give us a new credit card and oh by the way, Harry Reid, you don’t have to pass a budget in three years.’”
Their back-and-forth provided some insight on how lawmakers are, ahem, working together. Or as sit-in host John Roberts put it, “If this discussion this morning is any indication of how the next eight weeks are going to go, it’s going to be an interesting time.”
