Victoria Spartz has emerged as a House hero for the small number of Americans who actually worry about the national debt. On Monday, two days after Congress passed a stopgap budget agreement to avoid a government shutdown, the Republican congressman from Indiana issued a statement in which she stated that she had worked tirelessly to reduce federal spending.
At her breaking point following the debt-ceiling vote, Spartz said that she will resign if Congress doesn’t pass a “debt commission” to figure out how to cut the national debt and inflation. “I will not continue sacrificing my children for this circus with a complete absence of leadership, vision, and spine,” she wrote. “I cannot save the Republic alone.”
One must presume that she means giving up time with her children that she would otherwise spend with them, and that she is not handing them up to the Moloch of debt itself.
The congresswoman’s message is strong, but it may not be the most severe threat: Spartz said in February that she would not run for president in 2024 because she wanted to spend more time with her teenage daughters. Nonetheless, her warning may have some clout among the Republican House caucus. On Sunday, she declared that she is “open-minded” to Matt Gaetz’s proposal to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. And if she leaves in the final year of her term, the Republican majority in the House would be reduced even further, making McCarthy’s ability to keep the ranks in order even more critical.
