Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., said on Sunday that he is for a balanced budget, but not if it means cutting defense spending.
Speaking to Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, the retired Green Beret said, "I am all for a balanced budget, but we need to get this spending [under] control."
"The agreement" new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., "made with some of these folks is that we would go back to '22 numbers as a starting point; my problem with that is if we keep them the same as they were in '22, that would be a $75 billion cut to defense spending.
"Now, even if we try to keep it level, then that means we would have to cut nondefense spending by 30%. OK, I'm for that. But the Senate never will be. There will be tremendous pressure on defense spending ... we will not do this on the backs of our troops, as we're facing a — the most rapid military buildup from the Chinese Communist Party in modern history, including tripling their nuclear arsenal.
"Not to mention Iran, North Korea, the global war on terrorism that hasn't gone away just because Biden wished it away."
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who also appeared on Fox News on Sunday, said cuts to military spending should be "on the table" and that money going into "woke" military policies, as well as expenditures for Ukraine, should be looked into by Congress.
In responding to a question about defense spending, Jordan said, "We got a $32 trillion debt. Everything has to be on the table."
"We are on pace to spend $500 [billion], $600 billion in debt payments just to deal with interest payments on servicing that debt. Everything has to be on the table. And frankly, maybe if we would focus our military spending on the soldiers," Jordan said, instead of the number of generals compared to enlisted troops, which is "so out of whack" compared to what it was.
"Maybe if we focused on that, helping the troops who do so much of the work out there for our great country, and maybe focus on getting rid of all the woke policies in our military, we'd have the money we need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve.
"We have the weapons systems and the training that needs to be done, so we're ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet. That's what we want to focus on."
"And frankly," Jordan continued, "we'd better look at the money we send to Ukraine as well, and say, How can we best spend the money to protect America?"
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