Republicans who came to Congress to fight the deficit face attacks for raising it under Trump

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Scott Perry, a past chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, has spent his 12-year career in Congress railing about the ballooning national debt and deficits — what he’s bemoaned as the “bankrupting of America.”But after voting for President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which is estimated to hike deficits by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, Perry finds himself playing defense on the issue of the skyrocketing national debt.“He pretends he’s a fiscal conservative, but this is $4 trillion of new debt,” said his likely Democratic challenger, Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor who is seeking a rematch against Perry in 2026.

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Scott Perry, a past chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, has spent his 12-year career in Congress railing about the ballooning national debt and deficits — what he’s bemoaned as the “bankrupting of America.”

But after voting for President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which is estimated to hike deficits by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, Perry finds himself playing defense on the issue of the skyrocketing national debt.

“He pretends he’s a fiscal conservative, but this is $4 trillion of new debt,” said his likely Democratic challenger, Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor who is seeking a rematch against Perry in 2026. “I mean, the next generation is really going to struggle with this. We’re mortgaging our children’s future with that $4 trillion.”

Perry’s a “fraud,” Stelson added. “This is a really rotten vote that’s really going to hurt people.”

Stelson is just one of a handful of Democratic candidates turning the tables on vulnerable Republicans this cycle on the issue of rising deficits — a campaign issue that helped propel House Republicans to power in the 2010 Tea Party wave and which the GOP has consistently returned to in more recent elections.