Jeffries says he has ‘no idea’ about McCarthy’s remark on lack of Dem support on debt deal

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) responded to remarks made by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier Sunday about the lack of Democratic support on the debt ceiling agreement made Saturday night.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about, particularly because I have not been able to review the actual legislative text. All that we’ve reached is an agreement in principle,” Jeffries told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

Jeffries was responding to comments made by McCarthy earlier on “Fox News Sunday,” where he said the House minority leader told him that Democrats do not see “one thing” in the debt ceiling deal in their favor as both sides take aim at the agreement made in principle late Saturday to cap spending and raise the debt ceiling.

“Right now the Democrats are very upset,” McCarthy told anchor Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “But one thing Hakeem told me: there’s nothing in the bill for them. There’s not one thing in the bill for Democrats.”

Jeffries also added that he has not spoken to McCarthy since yesterday afternoon – before a deal was announced later that evening. Jeffries also noted that the proposals backed by conservative GOP members in the House were not consistent with Democratic values.

“What I’ve consistently said, however, privately and publicly, was that the extreme MAGA Republican negotiating position, and that the extreme bill that they passed on April 26, to The Default on America Act, contained nothing that was consistent with Democratic values or American values,” he said.

The act, dubbed as the Default on America Act by the White House, was passed by the House GOP last month. It proposed raising the debt ceiling while also cut spending, a move that the White House blasted at the time.

“And it was unreasonable to think that that negotiating position was gonna be able to result in a resolution that would make sense for the American people when he understood and everyone understood that a bipartisan resolution was the only way forward to avoid a catastrophic default,” he added.

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