As Congress wrestles with a debt deal package pushed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and backed by Donald Trump, conservative commentator and American Spectator senior editor Scott McKay joined Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson to unpack the political dynamics at play. The conversation focused on intra-party conflict, the narrow GOP House majority, and Trump’s attempt to whip votes amid growing frustration on the right.
McKay addressed Trump’s pointed criticism of Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscal hawk and frequent critic of federal spending. Trump dismissed Massie as a grandstander who “doesn’t understand government,” illustrating how the former president is focused on passing the current bill—even if it means steamrolling fellow Republicans who want deeper cuts.
But McKay cautioned that blaming Massie and others in the Freedom Caucus misses the broader issue. The real bottleneck, he said, is structural: the GOP’s razor-thin House majority and the complete absence of crossover votes from Democrats make legislating nearly impossible.
“When you’re sitting at 220 seats, you can’t afford to lose a single vote,” McKay explained. “You get jammed up not just by the Freedom Caucus, but also by blue state Republicans holding out for special interest goodies like an increased SALT deduction.”
He emphasized that today’s Congress is locked in a zero-sum game with little room for negotiation. Unlike in previous decades when conservative Democrats might cross the aisle, modern polarization has made bipartisan compromise virtually extinct. That leaves Republican leadership forced to satisfy every ideological wing of their own party to get anything passed.
McKay argued the solution isn’t to criticize individual lawmakers but to create the conditions for a real governing majority. That means electoral reforms like voter ID laws, counting only citizens for congressional apportionment, and ultimately electing more Republicans willing to shrink government.
Proft proposed that the GOP should be honest with the American people: the current bill may add trillions to the debt over a decade, but it’s the best that can be achieved under the current balance of power. McKay agreed—and went further.
“If I’m Trump, I’m saying, ‘I’ll impound every dollar I can from this bloated budget,’” McKay said. “Call me a dictator, sue me—I don’t care. I’m doing it because this country is running off a cliff.”
He pointed out that the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, passed during the Watergate era, limits a president’s ability to withhold spending. But McKay believes that law is unconstitutional and ripe for a challenge. Trump, if re-elected, should take a stand by refusing to spend funds he believes are wasteful.
McKay also endorsed the idea of a “rescission bill”—a follow-up package that would claw back some of the spending passed in the initial deal. Such a bill would only require a simple majority and couldn’t be filibustered in the Senate, offering a potential second bite at the fiscal apple.
Beyond budget politics, the conversation veered into media criticism. McKay took aim at CNN’s Jake Tapper, who recently co-authored a book exposing the Biden administration’s concealment of the president’s declining health. McKay wasn’t impressed.
“Tapper was one of the people defending Biden’s mental capacity for years,” he said. “Now he wants credit for telling the truth when it no longer matters. It’s too little, too late.”
McKay argued that the real scandal isn’t Biden’s cognitive decline—it’s the coordinated effort to cover it up by political allies and media figures alike. He called Biden “one of the biggest scumbags in American politics over the last half-century,” and said that while the president may now be a “sympathetic figure,” the lies told on his behalf are unforgivable.
Ultimately, McKay’s message was clear: political gridlock, runaway debt, and media complicity are all symptoms of a larger systemic failure. The way forward, he said, requires a restructured electoral system, a stronger Republican majority, and a willingness to fight entrenched interests with bold, often unpopular tactics.
Whether that means Trump threatening to impound funds or House leadership muscling through legislation one vote at a time, McKay believes the stakes are too high for half-measures.
“This is the Congress voters elected,” he said. “If they want better outcomes, they need to elect better people.”