House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) previewed a new commission to tackle the broader scope of the federal budget once the debt ceiling battle settles down.

Dozens of Republicans have come out in opposition to the debt limit deal, citing concerns over the lack of spending cuts, but McCarthy insists the agreement was merely the opening salvo in his budgetary aspirations, citing the commission as a next step.

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"This isn't the end. This doesn't solve all the problems. This is the first step. I'm going to announce a commission coming forward from the speaker, bipartisan, on both sides of the aisle. We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget," McCarthy told Fox News's Faulkner Focus.

Typically, Congress deals with appropriations for non-discretionary expenditures. Mandatory outlays such as Social Security and Medicare generally go untouched in the traditional budgetary process, despite accounting for roughly two-thirds of the federal budget.

"The president walled off all the others. The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It's Medicare ... interest on the debt. So you only have 11% to look at in this budget," McCarty explained. "I've got a commission ... Republicans and Democrats alike that will look at every single department in America so we can find the waste."

Notably, McCarthy himself publicly ruled out the pursuit of reforms to entitlement programs as part of his debt ceiling discussions in late January.

Leadership in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus pitched convening a commission to tackle the budgeting problems as part of their debt ceiling framework last month.

Already, Congress has multiple committees and subcommittees that pour over wide swaths of the nation's budget, including the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee.

McCarthy likened the commission to Base Realignment and Closure, BRAC, which strove to enhance the efficiency of military base structures. In the early 2010s, Congress established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which produced the Bowles-Simpson plan to address the deficit. Not all of its proposals went into effect.

The move appears to double as an overture to a growing chorus of House Republicans who have criticized the debt ceiling agreement.

"To govern is not easy, but I don't want to be on the wrong side of history. Every single one of those members who vote 'no' will miss the opportunity to vote for the largest cut in American history," McCarthy added.

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Congress is expected to vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 on Wednesday after it narrowly cleared the House Rules Committee in a 7-6 vote Tuesday evening. The package suspends the debt ceiling until January 2025 in exchange for reductions in the growth of nondefense and nonveteran discretionary spending.

In all, the bill is projected to slash the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.