Republicans who came to Congress to fight the deficit face attacks for raising it under Trump

Washington – Republican representative Scott Perry, former president of the Hard -Right House Freedom Caucus, spent his 12 -year career in the national debt and national deficits – which he deplored like the “bankruptcy of America”.

But after having voted for the “Big Beau Bill” of President Donald Trump, who should increase deficits by more than 4 dollars of dollars in the next decade, Perry finds himself playing in defense on the question of the national debt.

“He claims that he is a tax curator, but it’s 4 billions of dollars of new debts,” said his probable democrat challenger, Janelle Stelson, a former local news presenter looking for a revenge match against Perry in 2026. “I mean, the next generation will really fight with that. We are mortgage with the future of our children with this Trillion.”

Perry is a “fraud”, added Stelson. “It’s a truly rotten vote that will really hurt people.”

Stelson is only one of a handful of democratic candidates who turn the tables on vulnerable Republicans this cycle on the issue of the increase in deficits – a question of campaign that helped to propel the Republicans of the House in power in the TEA Party 2010 wave and to which the GOP has always returned to more recent elections.

In the Wisconsin, the Democrat Challenger Rebecca Cooke attacks the GOP representative Derrick Van Orden to “plunge our indebted country to appease Trump and the billionaires”. In Iowa, Democrat Christina Bohannan said that republican representative Mary Miller-Meeks “had voted to explode the national debt of 3.4 billions of dollars” and that “Iowa cannot afford another MMM term to DC.”

And in New Jersey, Democrat Rebecca Bennett goes after the GOP representative Tom Kean Jr., saying that he “chose to make life more difficult for families by increasing costs, exploding the national debt and tearing the health care of 20,000 people in our district.”

Republicans argue that the estimate of $ 4 billions by the non -partisan congress budget office is largely overestimated and does not take into account that the income generated by the bills of the bill would strengthen economic growth and help to fulfill government chests.

“If you explain it in the right way, [Trump’s law] is actually intended to reduce the deficit over time, “said representative Young Kim, who frequently talked about the national debt, to NBC News.” We cannot do it overnight, but the fact [is] that we do it gradually.

Kim, a vulnerable republican representing the California County of Orange, faced criticism from one in a vast domain of Democrats in the hope of dislodging it, with the Democrat Esther Kim Varet, an art dealer from Los Angeles, calling it “hypocrite” to vote to “raise the national debt to $ 40,000,000.”

But Kim said the Democrats and the media covering the CBO score were wrong. “Contrary to what you point out, this actually helps reduce the deficit over time,” said Kim. “So people understand this.

And officials of the campaign of the Republicans of the Chamber declared that their operators operators would not be given by a Democratic Party who saw the national debt climb by billions of dollars during the Biden administration. At his confirmation audience of the Senate, Russell Vought, director of Trump’s budget choice, said the federal debt had climbed 8.4 dollars under Joe Biden, but also 7.8 billions of dollars during Trump’s first mandate.

“Democrats have spent years mastering the nation’s credit card on Biden’s reckless spending, and now they want to give conferences to the Republicans in tax liability?” Asked Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the GOP campaign operation, the National Committee of the Republican Congress. “Republicans offer tax lounges, economic growth and real reduction in deficit, while Democrats cannot erase their long general support record for endless expenses to push their crazy radical wishes list and endless opposition to tax reductions in the middle class.”

In two brief interviews at the Capitol, Perry admitted that he was not satisfied that Trump’s law adds to the deficit. “Obviously, I don’t like it,” he said. “Of course, Washington, DC, is often a question of compromise, and the things you don’t like in legislation that you have to accept for the things you want.”

But he argued that he and other members of the Freedom caucus helped to obtain changes to Trump legislation which reduced his cost by more than 1 dollars – imposing work requirements for the beneficiaries of Medicaid, restricting food aid for certain legal residents and the return of tax credits specific to the law on the reduction of Joe Biden.

The new law extended Trump 2017 tax reductions, which were to expire at the end of this year, and which prevails over one of the negative impacts of the bill, said Perry.

“Putting thousands and thousands of dollars in taxes on our citizens was not going to help them, the economy,” Perry told NBC News. “And remember, I am one of the guys who fought to withdraw him from $ 300 billion [in cuts over 10 years] at 1.6 billion of dollars. It is not enough, but it is a very good effort.

“People did not send me to Washington to increase their taxes, but they did not send me their country bankrupt either,” he added.

Said that Stelson had called him as a budgetary “fraud”, Perry suggested that it was an empty costume that recycles the discussion points of Democratic campaign agents.

“You should ask her to explain everything she just said, because she is fed by answers or quotes from the party that manages her campaign,” said Perry, “and she has no idea what she is talking about.”

The race for the 10th Pennsylvania district, based in the capital of the state of Harrisburg, will be one of the most closely looked at this cycle while the Democrats are trying to reconquer control of the lower chamber – and to guarantee control over Trump.

In 2024, Perry preceded Stelson, from 50.6% to 49.4%, or only 5,133 votes on more than 400,000 players.

Veteran of the war in Iraq and former state legislator, Perry arrived in Washington in 2013. Like many of his party at the time, he warned against the increase in deficits and debt following the adoption by the Democrats of the Act respecting affordable care. Later, he served a mandate as president of Freedom Caucus, created to attract the GOP conference to the right, in particular for expenses.

“It is total hypocrisy,” said his compatriot of Pennsylvania, Brendan Boyle, the best democrat of the Budget Committee. “In addition, this bill is the greatest loss of health care in American history, it is also the greatest increase in our national debt in American history. Each Republican, with the exception of two, voted completely unlike their principles and voted for what is really a debt bomb. ”

Other Republicans in in the process of swaying are confronted with similar attacks. In Arizona, Democrat Marlene Galán-Woods, who presents himself in primary school to face the vulnerable representative of the GOP, David Schweikert, in the rich suburb of Phoenix, described him as “chief hypocrite” on her support for the Trump bill.

“His hypocrisy is deafening while this” HAWK “of” Conservative fiscal “supports a bill which adds billions to the debt. He must go,” said Galán-Woods, a former broadcast journalist, published on X.

Schweikert set up the 2010 Tea Party wave in Washington and was one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus, but left the group in 2023. The wobbly president of the joint bicameral economic committee, Schweibert delivered countless speeches and interviews on the risk of deficit and national debt, accompanied by graphics and graphics.

In an interview, Schweikert said that the CBO score showing that Trump law will add billions of deficit “absolutely gives me stomach burns”.

He said the Republicans debated the legislation, he offered several amendments to pay his price, including one to reform the Medicare program Advantage by attacking waste and fraud.

“Guess how many sponsors I have? … Zero,” said Schweikert. “No member of the Congress will sponsor my bills. Why? There is the word Medicare, and you beat the living of them if they sponsor something that has the word medicary.”

In the end, he said, he voted for the bill to spare its voters from a horrible increase in tax.

“But it becomes my intense frustration: I will not let the taxes increase on my voters. You had no choice. In some parts of my district, it would have been $ 3,000 per year” in the tax increases, said Schweikert.

The officials of the National Committee of the Republican Congress replied that Galán-Woods congratulated the law on the reduction of inflation of Biden (IRA). The CBO initially estimated that the law would reduce the deficit of $ 58 billion, but the director of CBO, Phillip Swagel, told journalists this year that IRA’s own energy tax subsidies would increase the deficits of $ 825 billion over 10 years. A separate estimate of Goldman Sachs showed that these subsidies would cost $ 1.2 dollars over 10 years.

GOP officials also noted that Galán-Woods and Stelson firmly opposed the extension of Trump 2017 tax reductions.

Boyle, the classification democrat of the Budget Committee, defended the CBO against the GOP attacks. He noted that the congress watched this budget office, led by Swagel, an assistant Treasury secretary during the George W. Bush administration since 2019.

“The CBO is led by a republican man and endowed with 270 non -partisan government officials who simply work who simply call balls and strikes as they see them,” said Boyle.

“It is not only CBO who shows that the so-called major bill will add a massive quantity to the national debt-they are groups on the left, they are rights groups and they are non-partisan groups,” he said. “Their element of legislation has almost united all groups through the ideological spectrum that it is really a debt bomb.”