PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Covering a plethora of topics, Congressman Darin LaHood (R-Illinois) joined WMBD’s Matt Sheehan for On the Record.
Thursday morning, the U.S. reached its debt limit, also known as the legal borrowing limit.
The current debt limit stands at $31.4 trillion. The Treasury Department has given Congress and President Joe Biden until June to come to a compromise on how to raise the debt ceiling.
Rep. Darin LaHood said Congress will need to act quickly to address the debt ceiling.
“We cannot default on our credit for the United States, that’s not an option. We need to look at bringing down spending in this country. We’re close to $32 trillion in debt that we’ve built up. I’ll say, it’s been a problem with both Republicans and Democrats,” LaHood said. “Now we have to figure out, how do we put in fiscal responsibility that we haven’t been able to do for the last 4–5 years. With COVID, we spent an awful lot of money that was deficit spending. Now that we’re through COVID, and we’ve got beyond that, we have to look at bringing down spending in this country. If you go back over the last 14 years, when President Obama came in 2008, our debt was at about $9 trillion. Today, it’s about $32 trillion. Simply not acceptable.”
For the first time publicly, Rep. LaHood also called on freshman GOP Congressman George Santos (R-New York) to resign. You can find that full article below.
For months, we heard about documents found in President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Now, President Biden is facing similar scrutiny. LaHood said it appears the investigations into Trump and Biden haven’t been given the same urgency.
“I serve on the House Intelligence Committee. Day one, when I started on there, if you bring classified documents outside the secure location, you’re going to be criminally prosecuted and held accountable for that. You’re going to get kicked off the Intelligence Committee. That ought to apply to anybody. When I look at the facts and evidence that have occurred so far, with President Biden. It appears to me that we have a two-tiered system of justice. Democrats are treated differently than Republicans. I have to tell ya, I’m really concerned about why these classified, unsecured documents were in the Biden office for almost 6 years after he left the Vice Presidency. We don’t have accurate facts on that. Why they were held in his garage, in Wilmington, Delaware for as long as they were. Unprotected. Who had access to those?” LaHood said.
Rep. LaHood said these documents contain information that could put national security at risk.
“We know already that those secured, classified documents pertain to Ukraine, Iran, to a number of our adversaries around the world. Thirdly, why wasn’t the FBI involved in a raid here? It appears that Biden’s lawyers found out about this November 2. We didn’t know about this before the election. It was only because of a leak two weeks ago that we found out about it. There’s a disturbing pattern here that we need to get to the bottom of,” LaHood said. “I’m glad the Attorney General has put a Special Counsel in place. But I go back to when I talk to people in my District. It’s the hypocrisy of a two-tiered system of justice that treats Democrats different than Republicans. I think that’s what we need to get to the bottom of.”
