Jean-Pierre Repeats False Claim that Biden Lowered the Federal Deficit

>> Karine, a major elephant in the room, I guess, would be the debt ceiling. We heard from speaker McCarthy yesterday, who will be sitting behind the president now for the first time in this speech, offering a pre-buttle, suggesting, hey, this is something we should be negotiating over. The president has been very firm to this point, that’s not the case. What is his message tonight? Will he address McCarthy directly about a path forward?

>> I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, Jonathan, as you know. The president has, the White House has, the economic advisers have, when it comes to what you just laid out. I want to be very careful because I don’t wan to muddy the waters here. There is the debt ceiling, right, which is something that McCarthy was laying out, which is something that is the fundamental duty of Congress to work on. It’s been done thee times before in the last administration. It’s been done 78 times since 1962. Lift the debt ceiling in a bipartisan way. We should not put the full faith and credit of the United States and use it as chicken. We should not put it in a place where we’d put it in danger. That’s what we’re talking. This is literally their constitutional duty to do. Then there is the lowering the deficit. That’s where the president has said, okay, you know, I’ve been able to do it in a historic fashion. $1.7 trillion that he has been labeled to lower the deficit in the last two years. He is willing to have a conversation in good faith to continue to lower the deficit. The president was very clear last week, he said, okay, March 9th, I’m going to put forward my budget plan for fiscal year 2024. What is going to be the Republicans’ plan? What are they putting forward? Right now, as I mentioned earlier, we’re hearing about cutting social security. We’re hearing about cutting Medicare. But they haven’t put anything on paper yet. What does that look like if we’re going to have a real conversation on having fiscal responsibility?

>> Wow. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, we’ll be watching tonight. Appreciate your coming on this morning. Nice to see you. We really appreciate it.