In this episode of the Steve K. Bannon War Room, host Steve Kamb talks with Republican Rep. Rob Portman and Democratic Rep. Adam Kinzler about the $1.15 trillion debt deal between the House and Senate.
00:02:51.000They just said every piece of legislation of the $8 trillion he passed that caused the inflation in the first place, none of it is touched.
00:03:18.000I'm for the pipeline, even though I think this pipeline was inserted just to buy Senator Joe Manchin's vote.
00:03:24.000So, I mean, just the timing of that is a little awkward.
00:03:27.000But all it does is fast-track these Green New Deal subsidies.
00:03:32.000So we are incentivizing all of this unreliable energy and further harming our energy security here in America with good legislation tied to a bad piece of legislation that doesn't do anything to rescind that IRA money.
00:03:50.000Congressman Biggs, walk us through the strategy here.
00:04:07.000Well, we're hanging over the cliff trying to grab onto something, right, because that's the box we've been put into here.
00:04:16.000So what the key thing that we have to do is we have to, in my opinion, try to get as many Republicans to vote no on this as we possibly can.
00:04:26.000And to get them to vote no, we have to expose what's in this horrific bill.
00:04:30.000And if you get over half the Republicans to vote no, I'm talking you get to about 115.
00:04:36.000That's where we really would need to get.
00:04:38.000Then you demonstrate Kevin's fecklessness and the need for a change to be made, in my humble opinion.
00:04:47.000But the other side of it is you have to understand, Steve and Lauren knows this.
00:04:52.000I'm predicting between 100 and 150 Democrats will vote for this bill.
00:04:57.000And that should tell you everything you need to know.
00:05:00.000When you get the White House economic advisor saying today that this bill, this deal with Kevin McCarthy, protects every progressive program.
00:05:11.000That's what what it is. I mean, you actually you protect everything that Biden has done and you further it along.
00:05:19.000So for our strategy, we have to make sure Republicans know that.
00:05:24.000And we need the help of your supporters, the people who follow you to let their congressmen and women know, especially if they're Republicans, that they need to be voting no on this because that's how we do it.
00:05:38.000But it's going to take this is going to have to take a grassroots push because we are fighting now the uniparty, the swamp.
00:05:46.000And that's that's the way I view this. This is an absolute product to support, sustain the uniparty.
00:05:53.000What what possessed them? I'll start with Congressman Bogart and come right to you, Congressman Biggs.
00:05:59.000Congressman Biggs. What possessed them to give them the second year uncapped?
00:06:03.000This thing could go to six trillion dollars. Yes.
00:06:05.000And it dumps right into. First off, takes the conversation.
00:06:08.000It takes it out of the conversation, the general election, which was what we want.
00:06:11.000We know the American people are more knowledgeable about this.
00:06:14.000CNN's polling shows us they come our way.
00:06:16.000Also, they're going to lead economic catastrophe for a Republican president, Congressman Bova.
00:06:22.000Yes. So it was very Washington, D.C. to extend this even further and then to put to put false caps, no caps and an unlimited debt ceiling.
00:06:34.000There's not even a number associated with this. It's a date.
00:06:37.000And and it does put any Republican presidential candidate, you know, at risk here because Joe Biden's completely off the hook and he gets a blank check to spend whatever he wants.
00:06:50.000Chairman Biggs, he said that this was like a train wreck, you know, and I feel like we've just been taking advice and tips from Mayor Pete.
00:06:59.000And man, we nailed it. Congressman Biggs, your thoughts?
00:07:02.000Yeah, I'm with Lauren on this. This is this is about as bad a bill as you can get.
00:07:08.000So so and it's all smoke and mirrors. I mean, it's all ephemeral.
00:07:12.000Steve, this this blows away with the wind. So so when they when CBO scores two point one trillion dollars in savings, everybody needs to know that that is false, that the one point five trillion dollars in savings is based on this administrative pay go thing.
00:07:27.000That can be the first of all, that sunsets after one year.
00:07:31.000Second of all, the director of OMB, who is a Biden appointee, hard lefty attorney.
00:07:39.000She can come in and say, no, we're going to do it anyway.
00:07:42.000So that one point five trillion won't happen.
00:07:44.000Then the other six hundred billion dollars of that two two point one trillion dollars.
00:07:48.000That's that's coming on the caps on spending, which, by the way, is there's six years of these caps, supposedly with small growth.
00:07:58.000Four years of those are are optional and they're still going ahead and scoring it.
00:08:03.000That means it's in the tank. It was in the tank.
00:08:07.000It was coordinated here, but in my opinion, by the White House, OMB, CBO and and, you know, our leadership.
00:08:16.000And that all of this is going to come away and leave us with a massive national debt growth in our national debt with no structural reforms really at all.
00:08:28.000Oh, don't bury the lead. You just said you thought there was coordination over the weekend because people are kind of surprised how CBO, which normally doesn't turn on a dime, all of a sudden came out with the scoring.
00:08:39.000That was so it was so into the white. I mean, it's basically the White House dictated the assumptions you make.
00:08:44.000Are you saying you think leadership coordinated with the White House and with the Democrat leadership to get this CB, this phony CBO scoring?
00:08:52.000I think the whole thing is kind of coordinated. Think about it.
00:08:55.000Yeah. And what I'm talking about is I believe that they had a deal a week ago and that they were just delaying releasing it until they had had wrapped their bow around it, you know, and so they delayed it.
00:09:06.000And what happened? White House let Kevin McCarthy go out and try to sell this to the Republican conference first and go on.
00:09:12.000And then what happened is is Biden's team goes in and talking to Democrats. Democrats are being called and told, hey, you can't bash this deal too much because we're getting a good deal and we don't want to drive Republicans off.
00:09:28.000So, yeah, don't gloat. Right. Don't gloat that you got wins, but go ahead and cry your crocodile tears and and then vote.
00:09:36.000People that came out at first said the Democrats hate this. I go, where's the hate when they hate? They know how to hate. They know how to review.
00:09:42.000One last thing. People are saying, oh, we get it into the we're going to take the appropriations process and that's going to get it.
00:09:49.000I want to walk through why that is nonsense. The appropriation process is not going to make up for this catastrophe, sir.
00:09:54.000Just walk through why that's not going to happen. Well, so what you would happen have happened is you'd have 12 bills that would go through the process.
00:10:04.000And we said how we're going to spend our money. But what happens now is there's a disincentive to do that because we're going to go to an automatic continuing resolution.
00:10:14.000In other words, we're going to keep the spending levels. However, the spending levels, we actually have a slight growth in spending and we're going at higher post or covid relief levels.
00:10:25.000And so when we when we get three months into the next year, it's supposed to trigger a percent reduction.
00:10:33.000However, I don't believe that reduction is going to take place.
00:10:37.000So when we start talking about the 12 appropriations bills, I I just don't see us actually delivering on that.
00:10:46.000And we're going to the CR. And let me just tell you the other thing.
00:10:49.000Even if you go to that, that those 12 appropriations bills and they were to pass, they will reflect a growth in spending and not a reduction in spending.
00:11:00.000According to my reading of what we have here.
00:11:14.000I don't mean a year. I mean, three months into the next.
00:11:17.000Chairman Biggs, let me let me ask you about the automatic CR.
00:11:20.000Now, if it was, in fact, the way Congressman Massey had already presented it originally and if it was automatic when it was supposed to be, there wasn't this three month delay and there was a one percent decrease, then would that be OK?
00:11:35.000That would that would be better. That would be better because what would happen is.
00:11:40.000Yeah. What would happen is you would actually take your your your your spending number, your high number, and you'd be reducing it by one percent.
00:11:47.000But the rumor that's just discretionary side.
00:11:50.000Don't forget that they've moved money off the discretionary side into the mandatory side to try to avoid some of this as well.
00:11:56.000But the whole thing, Representative Boebert and Steve, that I look at is what's the incentive?
00:12:03.000The incentive we want. We want to make sure that that we can get this thing done on time.
00:12:10.000It would be significantly better for one other reason. And I think you're probably alluding to this.
00:12:15.000And that is when we are in the election cycle and you're going to see an omnibus come in December again because they delayed it three months.
00:12:27.000And that's the key is because the reason that Thomas Massey did what he did is because he's trying to say, let's let's take away the incentive to just push it up to December and do this omnibus.
00:12:38.000Let's get our spending bill done when we're supposed to do it the way we're supposed to do it.
00:12:42.000And I think it would have been significantly better now that I walk through that a little bit.
00:12:46.000But but don't forget, by by delaying that impact for three months, you're going to get an omnibus, a cronibus spending bill in December of this year instead of taking care of it the appropriate way.
00:13:01.000We got we got we got two minutes. What is your word when people call two zero two two two five three one two one the house switchboard number?
00:13:09.000What is the message they should be giving their representative, sir?
00:13:12.000Vote no. I mean, it can be that simple.
00:13:17.000Look, we can also ramble on. Believe me, I could ramble on about how bad it is. But vote no.
00:13:58.000Well, it won't be hard on people like Lauren and me, because Robert and I have made our opinion known and we were pretty good at sticking to where we are.
00:14:07.000But they're going to go to people who they think that they can pick off first and they're going to remind them of all the benefits that they've given to them and the benefits that they're going to forego if they turn their back on on this.
00:14:23.000And there will be some. They're going to try to cut deals with some.
00:14:26.000You watched. There'll be deals promised, I guarantee you.
00:14:30.000Congressman Biggs, thank you. Honored to have you on here, sir.
00:14:33.000Thanks. Thanks. Always good to be with you.
00:24:13.000And then, you know, there, there are members who clearly did not read the legislation.
00:24:18.000They went on the news and they were given, they were saying the talking points given to leadership or given by leadership or what they heard on the conference call.
00:24:24.000Why would leadership, why would leadership give these talking points they gave were just factually, I mean, not even close.
00:24:30.000People can make mistakes all the time.
00:25:10.000And we'll let them, you're going to give them a debt increase, get through this crisis, get on top of better management, but the whole world will see how mismanaged.
00:25:16.000We'll have this discussion either in October, November, or no later than may at the railhead of the presidential.
00:25:21.000And we know the more information we get the American people, the more they say, no, you can't increase debt unless you have cuts in spending.
00:25:38.000What, when did you first get an inkling that the second year with no caps, which is pure insanity?
00:25:44.000Cause you could have 16 was the first indication that that was going to happen.
00:25:47.000I mean, in the legislation, when there's not an actual dollar amount to this debt ceiling increase, and it's simply just a date, you know, I mean, we all started throwing around numbers together and we're seeing $4 to $6 trillion.
00:25:58.000You know, we have heritage and club and all of these other groups scoring against it and diving into it and looking at these numbers.
00:26:04.000And it is astronomically worse than $1.5 trillion, $1.5 trillion that we didn't want to spend, but thought in this scenario, that seems fiscally responsible, you know, with, with the cuts that we're doing.
00:26:16.000We wanted to cut so much that we didn't have to raise the debt ceiling.
00:30:31.000And in a post COVID environment, we're now going to say we're freezing spending.
00:30:38.000We're, as some articles have said, bending, you know, the curve down.
00:30:43.000So we're bending the curve down off of the higher COVID levels of spending in order to extract an agreement to push the debt ceiling all the way to January 1st, 2025 in the middle of a lame duck, which by most accounts would amount to maybe four trillion ish of increase.
00:31:00.000And I'm trying to figure out how that's good for the American people.
00:31:08.000That's not exactly ratcheting back our spending.
00:31:11.000This is like watching the Indy 500 on Sunday and like you're going 240 down the stretch and you're going, oh, the curve's coming up and I'm just going to let my foot a little bit off the gas.
00:31:19.000She could go barreling right through the curve, right into the wall.
00:32:41.000So the $2 trillion is, you know, like most things in this town, a fiction.
00:32:48.000It's just saying, well, if you guys do something remotely responsible like this, you'll save $2 trillion.
00:33:03.000If I heard one of my colleagues correctly earlier about the defense spending, the defense spending, it was critical of increasing defense while decreasing non-defense.
00:33:58.000So Chip right now is in the rules committee.
00:34:00.000They would love to kill this bill entirely.
00:34:03.000Speaker McCarthy still has an opportunity to pull the bill.
00:34:06.000But right now we're seeing Congressman Chip Roy and Ralph Norman.
00:34:11.000They're banded together being the only ones trying to take this down.
00:34:14.000And that's not enough to kill it to prevent it from actually going to the floor.
00:34:19.000So I have been working with them and our colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus and those in the 20 who stood up during the speakers fight.
00:34:26.000And I've said, well, since you're going to fail at preventing that bill from going to the floor, then open the rule up and allow us to add amendments to the bill so we could go to the House floor.
00:47:20.660If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation and you use Democrats to pass it,
00:47:26.240that would immediately be a black letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy and would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate.
00:47:34.360Dr. Peter Navarro, by uncapping this deal and giving two years in January 2025, when you come back in as either senior economic advisor or over at Treasury, you're going to have a smoking hole as an economy.
00:47:58.080Every person needs to read this Washington Times article.
00:48:01.640Kevin McCarthy had a chance to make history.
00:48:05.140Instead, he's just another footnote to history.
00:48:07.420And what I mean by that is he cut the typical uniparty deal, and it was a really bad negotiation because there's nothing in there.
00:48:16.140I think that the poster child in that was what Lauren Boebert mentioned, where it's like, hey, they're going to double the size of the IRS, and McCarthy clawed back like two IRS agents.
00:48:31.020But the big problem we're facing, Steve, is stagflation.
00:48:35.320Listen, I'm old enough to have gone through all 12 years of that.
00:48:41.920You know, it started in 68, didn't end until a deep recession in 1981 that was triggered by Volcker, just taken us into a horrible recession.
00:48:52.900And it was a series of political miscues all along the way by footnotes to history that took us through that.
00:49:01.560But McCarthy, I mean, look, he's like the Boston Celtics now of politics.
00:49:06.820It's like the Celtics fight back beautifully.
00:49:09.280Like McCarthy gets this really strong deal that Russ Vogt, but basically engineered, that would have solved at least some of the stagflation problem because it had a way to reduce the spending and deal with the strategic damage.
00:49:24.260I want to talk to something very close to your heart.
00:49:28.200But Kat Kamek on hers has said, since she worked on the RAINS Act, she said this whole thing on the EOs is all ephemeral.
00:49:59.020Well, I can tell you that there were all sorts of shenanigans constantly being played.
00:50:03.620In the words of the infamous Deborah Burke, there's workarounds that the deep administrative state uses basically to thwart the will of the American people.
00:50:14.140See, this deal effectively is a blank check.
00:50:17.220I mean, look, it was a stupid deal for McCarthy to cut, but I also think it was selfish.
00:50:22.240This needs to be put out on the table.
00:50:24.600Biden didn't want this thing to come up again in an election.
00:50:29.400He didn't want to have to be responsible for that, right?
00:50:41.680It's just so, I mean, if we want to take back the House and the Senate.
00:50:46.960Yeah, it's just, Steve, I can't tell you, you were in business school.
00:50:53.360You went through a course where they had the negotiating box, two people on either side of the table.
00:50:59.660And the place you wound up in the box that was based on your relative bargaining power, McCarthy should have got everything that Russ Vogt had because he was holding all the cards.
00:51:18.740I will vote no on increasing the debt on our children's grandchildren by $4 trillion because this deal does not contain anywhere near the cuts and policy changes we need in order to stop Joe Biden's war on the American people.
00:51:44.940The Washington Times is doing a great job in terms of putting once a week my best sub stack of the week up.
00:51:53.360This one is about why McCarthy surrender or sacrilege on Memorial Day weekend, a surrender, is going to institutionalize stakeflation for the next 10 years.
00:52:10.320Brother, you keep doing what you're doing.
00:52:11.660We've got to get that well over 100 Republicans to just say no on this.
00:52:16.460And that's going to trigger what Matt Gaetz rose with, and he's playing this like a chess master because he didn't immediately jump to that.
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