DeSantis voted to raise the debt ceiling before he was against it

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized Republicans for supporting the deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt, saying in an interview with Fox News that those Republicans are merely looking out for their own electoral interests.

“Obviously, in Washington, D.C., they do these cycles to just get them through the next election, and that’s ultimately one of the reasons why they continue to fail,” DeSantis said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

DeSantis also said that the Biden-McCarthy deal, which would raise the debt ceiling through January 2025 in exchange for cuts to IRS funding and additional work requirements for some social safety net programs, is “totally inadequate” and will send the United States “careening toward bankruptcy.”

In 2018, however, when DeSantis was a member of the House and running for governor of Florida, he voted along with 166 other Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. At the time, Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, and could have faced blame from voters had they allowed the country to plunge into default by failing to raise the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling bill DeSantis voted for in 2018 added $418 billion to the national debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Republican lawmakers and officials are divided in their responses to the deal.

According to Mediaite, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told Fox News on May 24: “The vast majority of Americans feel like we’re not heading in the right track. And then you look at this debt ceiling crisis. You look at us about to default, and you see that president took 90 days out from negotiating. … This is a president that is failing the American people. So I think that bodes very well for the Republican field.”

DeSantis, who declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, is one of a few Republican presidential contenders who have commented on the deal so far.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman running a longshot bid for the GOP nomination, said he wouldn’t vote for the deal if he had the chance.

“We need to think on the timescales of history, not two-year election cycles or quarterly earnings reports,” he tweeted on Tuesday with a clip of his own Fox News appearance. “We should stand for principles, not incrementalism or window-dressing. I would vote against the debt ceiling deal.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is mulling a presidential bid but has yet to formally announce, trashed the deal without encouraging members of Congress to vote against it, releasing a statement that said in part, “President Biden and the Washington establishment continue to pile the burden of debt onto the back of our grandchildren, and the American people deserve better.”

Former President Donald Trump, who signed three bills raising the debt ceiling when he was in office, has been quiet since the deal was announced on Saturday. However, earlier in May, Trump had urged Republicans not to raise the debt ceiling “unless they get everything they want.”

Congress has yet to vote on the compromise measure.

More than a dozen House Republicans have already come out against the agreement. Because Republicans have such a narrow majority, that means the bill would fail if it does not get Democratic votes, meaning it will likely be up to Democrats to get the legislation over the finish line.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.