Congressman Gregg Harper on the debt ceiling

Congressman Gregg Harper (R, MS) came on the Matt Friedeman Show today to discuss the debt ceiling.


I know you have the office across from Eric Cantor. Just symbolically, can you go across the hall and say, "Way to go Cantor!"?

Hey, let me tell you, Cantor has done a great job.

Yesterday the president walked out of the meeting.

What's Cantor doing that's so frustrating the president?

This is not really great, heavy rocket science. The fact is that you have to cut spending and get people back to work.

Unfortunately, they're determined to raise taxes, try to water down what's getting done.

The president is telling us to eat our peas and quit doing political posturing. But that's what the president is doing right now.

Would you guys vote with Cantor and Boehner if they compromised and raised taxes?

First of all, Cantor and Boehner would never do that, but I'll entertain your hypothetical.

No, our side of the aisle would never vote to raise taxes.

What is president Obama saying when he says "Don't call my bluff."?

It sounds like he's bluffing to me.

When he comes out the other day when he says, "Don't make me not send out your social security checks."

They're trying to take advantage of it in every way.

You'll get asked all the time, "What's going to be in this agreement?" There's no agreement right now.

It's been suggested that Congress pass a bill only enough to pay debt service. Is that a legitimate idea?

We've had discussions about what to do on that regard. We've had discussions about what to do with available funds.

Look, you and I, if we were sitting down would say, "There's not enough money."

Galllup said today only 22% of Americans want their member of Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling. Do the Republicans know this?

Yeah, I think that everybody knows on our side that this is something not everyone wants to have to go through, but look, we've got to do something.

We want to move towards a Balanced Budget constitution amendment. You'll see a vote on that by the end of next week.

McConnell seems to think that this is going nowhere, so he suggested that Obama could raise  the debt ceiling. What do you think?

I think there's something distasteful about this.

I get where McConnell's coming from.

Under his leadership over the last 21/2 years, we've increased the debt trillions of dollars.

We have found out that a lot of those stimulus funds, guess what, they're being used to pay unemployment benefits.

What they've done is they've run the spending through the roof. And now it's our  fault. And we're supposed to eat our peas and raise taxes.

What's your prediction?

Prediction at this point is I believe there will be a deal to look at. Whether there's enough votes, I don't know.

We have to move towards a balanced budget.