George Santos, who lied about his own employment history, wants to make the GOP's new work requirements even tougher

• George Santos has threatened to vote against the GOP's new debt ceiling bill — and every vote counts.
• He has proposed an amendment that would increase new work requirements from 20 to 30 hours per week.

Rep. George Santos is threatening to vote against the House GOP's new bill to raise the debt ceiling, risking a sweeping economic crisis.

The scandal-plagued New York Republican has not been super clear about what, exactly, his objections are to the 320-page "Limit, Save, Grow, Act of 2023" — fueling speculation that he's using his vote as a way to secure establishment Republican backing for his recently-launched re-election bid.

Asked recently whether he supports Santos' re-election bid, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy laughed.

Santos has told reporters that he objects to the bill's proposed repeal of tax credits passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. He has also submitted an amendment to the bill that would block wind turbine development in Long Island sound.

But perhaps the most notable demand made by Santos is for a steep increase to new Medicaid work requirements included in the bill.

As written, the sprawling legislation would change existing law to require individuals to work at least 20 hours per week in order to receive health insurance through the program.

Santos has proposed an amendment that would increase that requirement to 30 hours per week. As of mid-day Friday, he's the only Republican to have formally submitted an amendment to the bill.

That emphasis on ensuring the completion of a requisite amount of work comes despite the congressman's own well-documented lies about his employment history — during his campaign he claimed to have worked for both Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

He later owned up to those lies — but blamed it on the "expectations" and "negative connotations" from "elitist organizations" like the New York Times.

Asked whether adoption of the amendment might be enough for Santos to support the bill, his congressional office did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

McCarthy, operating with a razor-thin majority, can only lose a handful of votes on the bill. Failure to pass the sprawling legislation would represent a significant political loss for House Republicans, who have pushed President Joe Biden to negotiate over budget cuts in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling.

The Republican-proposed legislation, as written, would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, or until March 31, 2024 — whichever comes first.

Democrats, meanwhile, have long argued that the debt ceiling should simply be raised without any changes to the federal budget. On Tuesday, Biden said he would veto the Republican-led bill.