Kevin McCarthy, Republican Representative from California and House Minority Leader, is getting his own past words thrown back at him as he refuses to vote on raising the debt ceiling.
Katherine Clark, Assistant Speaker of the House and Democratic Representative from Massachusetts, tweeted a screenshot of one of McCarthy's own tweets from 2015.
"When the United States makes promises, it keeps them, which is why the House voted today to avoid the threat of a debt default."
Twitter users were quick to call out McCarthy's hypocrisy.
Many also criticized McCarthy and House Republicans.
When McCarthy originally tweeted that statement, Congress had just voted to raise the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on debt incurred by the federal government.
The debt ceiling serves as an upper limit to the amount of money the US is allowed to borrow, but not on the amount it is allowed to spend. If spending were to exceed the debt ceiling, the country would default on money already borrowed and spent.
Thus, congress has regularly raised the debt ceiling to avoid that default and the utter chaos it could cause the country's—and the world's—economy.
McCarthy and other congressional Republicans vowed to block attempts by Democrats to raise the debt ceiling again, however, despite GOP members voting to raise it 3 times while Donald J. Trump was President to cover massive tax breaks given to corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers.
