Freedom Caucus chair fires back at Biden: ‘Smear-and-fear campaign’

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) hit back at President Biden for going after his hard-line group’s spending demands that it announced Friday, accusing the president of misrepresenting its proposals for reducing spending as a condition of raising the debt limit.

“I didn’t realize the President was now going on his comedy tour, because yesterday was the joke of his budget, and we thought that was as nonserious as anything,” Perry told The Hill.

“For him to mention things like firefighters, police officers and health care — obviously, either he didn’t watch the press conference, he can’t read, or someone is, you know, got their hand up his back and they’re speaking for him, because those are just abject lies,” Perry said. “It’s the same old, you know, smear-and-fear campaign by the Biden administration.”

Biden, who released his own budget blueprint on Thursday, charged that the Freedom Caucus demands include cutting all spending other than defense by 25 percent.

“No additional taxes on the wealthy — matter of fact reducing taxes — and in addition to that, on top of that, they’re going to say we have to cut 25 percent of every program across the broad,” Biden said on Friday. “I don’t know what there’s much to negotiate on.”

“That means cops, firefighters; it means health care,” Biden said.

The Freedom Caucus on Friday proposed capping overall discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels for 10 years while allowing for 1 percent growth per year, which would be a $131 billion cut from current levels. Perry said it would aim to keep defense spending at current levels.

“What we’re talking about is going back to pre-pandemic levels of spending,” Perry said. “And he essentially said we went from four-and-a-half trillion in pre-pandemic to six-and-a-half trillion, and now he just wants to save six-and-a-half trillion, even though he acknowledges, you know, I guess under pressure, that the pandemic is over. If the pandemic’s over, why are we spending the pandemic levels?”

Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget released on Thursday plans to reduce the nation’s debt by $3 trillion over 10 years. It includes tax hikes on the wealthy as a means for reducing the budget deficit.

The Freedom Caucus also called for an end to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program; to rescind unspent COVID-19 and Inflation Reduction Act funds; to enact the REINS Act, a bill that would broaden congressional input on agency regulations; and to loosen domestic energy production regulations. 

The group also wants to restore “Clinton-era work requirements on welfare programs” like Medicaid and pass a preemptive continuing resolution to set non-defense discretionary spending at fiscal 2019 levels in order to pressure Congress to pass appropriations.