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Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, told Meet the Press NOW that he is disappointed in the White House’s handling of talks over raising the debt ceiling.
“We’d be in a stronger negotiating position right now if we had led the charge in saying, let’s sit down and negotiate about this starting now back in February,” Golden said.
Golden, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and one of just five House Democrats from districts President Joe Biden lost in 2020, said that he has wanted Democratic leadership to position themselves for debt negotiations from the "strongest position possible."
"It's been obvious since the last election, that this was gonna require a deal, either raising the debt ceiling or getting a spending package agreed to," Golden said.
He said that Democrats are now in a “weaker position” because their negotiation stance was always “tenable.”
Golden added that the deficit needs to be reduced but it cannot solely be defined by “cuts to important programs.”
“We can talk about taxes on the wealthiest Americans in this country,” Golden said. “We’re rolling back portions of the 2017 tax cut, which largely benefited a lot of very wealthy households and individuals, we can dedicate that to paying off this nation’s debt, to getting a handle on our budget.”
Golden said anyone that is “serious” about fiscal responsibility needs to make sure spending is both “thoughtful” and “well-targeted.”
“You cannot cut your way out of our budget deficit or out of the debt that we have and you cannot tax your way out of it,” Golden said. “It’s got to be all of the above.”