North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Walker joined several fiscal hawks including Kentucky Senator Rand Paul in calling Trump’s “real compromise” on the budget a “huge mistake.” Walker tweeted a GIF of the psychopathic Joker character from 2008’s The Dark Knight pouring gasoline out on a tower of money before setting all of the cash on fire: “Budget Deal,” Walker quipped. The deal between Senate and House leaders announced Monday would suspend the debt ceiling and allow more federal government borrowing until July 31, 2021—months after the upcoming presidential election.
“All of Washington is the Joker. Unfortunately, the joke is on American taxpayers,” Walker tweeted Tuesday.
The Joker character portrayed by late actor Heath Ledger chastises his fellow villains, “All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class of criminal. And I’m going to give it to them.”
Walker appeared on CNN Monday, where he called out the hypocrisy of so-called fiscal conservatives who keep agreeing to allow the government to borrow more and more money. He rejected Trump or other Republicans labeling the compromise a “victory” and said his children and grandchildren are being condemned to eternal debt.
“Republicans can’t keep continue to be talking about monitoring our spending and still continue to vote for every spending bill that comes down the pipe,” Walker cautioned.
“We have to be focused on fiscal responsibility,” Walker continued. “It’s one thing for Republicans to talk about it, but we’ve got to live up with $22 trillion in debt and the deficits that have been out of control. We’ve got to find some things, maybe even on the mandatory side, to make sure we’re curbing that and not leaving our children and grandchildren debt that they cannot pay.”
Walker said he is “not advocating for a government shutdown,” but that the details of the deal require significant changes. On Twitter Monday, Trump touted the potential budget deal as a “real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!”
Other top Republicans and war hawks including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma took the complete opposite view of Walker and fiscal conservatives. Inhofe issued a statement Tuesday saying he’s “disappointed” the military budget wasn’t $12 billion higher, matching a $750 billion topline total for defense funding. Republican House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mac Thornberry of Texas agreed with Inhofe, demanding billion in “more funding” for the military.
Kentucky Senator Paul, who recently was criticized by members of both parties for rejecting a 9/11 First Responders bill over spending concerns, told Fox News that his fellow GOP congressional members are making a “huge mistake” with the bloated budget compromise.
“It scraps the sequester, which is a huge mistake,” Paul told Fox News. “It would be a huge mistake if the Republican leadership agrees to this.”
Writing in the conservative National Review Monday, Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl declared Trump’s budget deal “puts the final nail in the tea party coffin.”
