Yavapai News

U.S. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) has responded to a recent news release from the White House that opposed the Republican spending bill he supports.

“Be grateful that there are people up here that are trying to stop this out-of-control, reckless spending from this Congress and from the federal government," Crane said in a video recently posted on Twitter. "Because there’s not a lot of people that even care about it, that are interested. You actually climb the ladder a lot higher as a politician doing the exact opposite—just saying yes to everybody, spending more money that we don’t have.”

The video discussed Crane’s thoughts on the White House’s news release concerning the Republican-supported spending bill that he and Speaker Kevin McCarthy were pushing through Congress. The release reported that Republicans want to set fiscal year (FY) 2024 spending at a level equal to FY2022 ($1.471 trillion), but they intend to keep the current defense budget stable and decrease domestic funding to achieve that. This would drop the domestic spending from $756 billion to $586 billion.

“The math is simple, but unforgiving," the White House release said. "At their proposed top line funding level—and with defense funding left untouched as Republicans have proposed—everything else is forced to suffer enormous cuts. In fact, their bill would force a cut of 22 percent—cuts that would grow deeper and deeper with each year of their plan.” The release also gave examples of how the cuts would affect programs across the country, including railroad inspections, school funding and childcare programs, nutrition and housing assistance, and funding for veterans programs and the VA.

Crane urged his constituents not to listen to the news release, calling it misrepresentation and mischaracterization. He said that his opponents continually lie to the American people and that falsehoods are “their native tongue.”

The congressman noted that the Republican spending plan makes cuts to federal spending programs, most of which are “woke and weaponized,” and to discretionary spending that would not have to be approved by Congress, listing student loan forgiveness, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Green New Deal as examples.

Crane asked his supporters to not be led astray by any further releases from the White House and to continue asking for cuts in federal spending.