SC’s Tim Scott won’t back debt ceiling deal, arguing it gives Biden an ‘open checkbook’

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, who is seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2024, said he plans to vote against the debt ceiling deal negotiated by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Scott voiced his opposition Wednesday in an interview with Axios News, saying the country’s budget deficit has grown too high during Biden’s administration.

The U.S. House is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the debt ceiling deal, brokered by Biden and McCarthy, a California Republican.

“(McCarthy) did a good job negotiating with someone who did not want to negotiate,” Scott, R-S.C., said. “The question I asked myself is at the end of the negotiation, is it in our best interest as a nation to allow Joe Biden, someone we cannot trust on spending, to have an open checkbook, no limit on the credit card until the end of his term? My answer is no.”

South Carolina Republican U.S. Reps. Russell Fry, Nancy Mace, Ralph Norman and Williams Timmons voted against the bill. U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s lone Democrat in Congress, and Republicans Jeff Duncan and Joe Wilson supported the agreement.

“You have to know that you won’t get 100% of what you want in a compromise,” Clyburn said Tuesday on Twitter. “But I think (Biden) and his team have negotiated a pretty good deal that prevents a default, preserves Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare and expands access to critical programs.”

The Treasury Department says the the country will default on its debts Monday if the deal isn’t signed into law.

The deal suspends the debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025, moving the question about whether to raise the limit again until after the presidential election in 2024. It also includes spending caps for two years, and claws back $28 billion in unspent COVID-19 money, eliminates $1.4 billion in IRS funding and shifts $20 billion from the IRS to defense spending.

Student loan payments that were put on pause because of the pandemic would have to restart, and work requirements for people on food assistance programs would be increased to anyone up to 55 years old, an increase from 50, according to NBC News.

Scott isn’t the only presidential candidate weighing in on the debt ceiling deal.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley criticized former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who previously served in Congress, for supporting increases to the debt ceiling in 2018.

“The best way to fix D.C.’s spending addiction is to elect people who have not been part of the problem,” Haley said in a statement. “Adding at least $4 trillion to America’s $31 trillion national debt over two years is no way to run our country’s fiscal affairs. Business as usual won’t get the job done.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham also has expressed concerns about the deal because it limits defense spending, and indicated he would vote against the bill, saying it echoed the 2011 sequestration.

“I’m not going to do a deal that marginally reduces the number of IRS agents in the future at the expense of the Navy,” Graham told Fox News.