While some members of his party are upset about the President’s decision to side with Democrats and tie Hurricane Harvey aid to a three-month debt ceiling increase, one GOP representative said he’s “fine” with the President’s decision.
“He had to” do it, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) said Thursday.
Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” host Chris Cuomo asked Collins whether he viewed President Donald Trump’s decision as a move that gave Democrats too much leverage, or a decision that “cut out the partisan ‘BS’” in order to get something done.
Collins said he’s on “the latter side, that Donald Trump went to the source.”
“He had to. We have a filibuster issue when it comes to the debt ceiling, so he went to Sen. Schumer. We have 52 Republicans, we don’t have 60, so he went where he needed to go to find out what Sen. Schumer’s appetite was on the debt ceiling,” he said. “I think Trump did what he thought was best.”
Calling Trump the “CEO of the country,” Collins said he’s “fine” with Trump’s decision because it gives Congress more time to focus on “some of the other issues” like tax reform, health care and other big ticket items.
He said he hadn’t heard that other members of his party were upset about the cross-party deal.
“Yesterday in our conference we got the distinct impression this is exactly what we were going to see. And clearly, some people — and I’m one of the folks who would say why do we have a debt celling? It’s because we spend more than we bring in. We run deficits. We have to pay our bills,” he said, adding that he’s always been an advocate for an automatic increase in the debt ceiling when Congress runs out of money.
“We have to pay our bills,” he said. “So really, it’s a vote we have to take. We’ve always taken it, we always will.”
