In this episode of Firebrand, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) takes aim at the continuing resolution that passed the House of Representatives on a party-line vote. Rep. Gaetz is joined by other conservative members of Congress to speak out against the Continuing Resolution, and to call on Speaker McCarthy to step down from the chair of the committee responsible for oversight of the House Budget Committee. Firebrand is a production of Native Creative Commons and is produced by Kalila Vellian and produced in partnership with Firebrand Media. The opinions expressed here are our own, not those of our corporations, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our parent companies, the White House, the Department of Education, the Justice Department, the FBI, Homeland Security, or any other government agency. We do not own the rights to any of the music used in this episode. If you like what you hear here, please consider becoming a patron patron of the show or share it on your social media platforms! Subscribe to our new podcast, Firebrand! and leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast! Timestamps: 5:00 - What's your favorite moment of the week? 6:30 - What do you think of the new episode? 7:15 - What would you like to see in the next one? 8:40 - What are you looking forward to in 2020? 9: What is your biggest takeaway from the new Firebrand podcast? 10:20 - How do you want to see the future of the future? 11:00 13: What are your thoughts on the next episode of the Firebrand Podcast? 15:00- What is the next? 16:10 - Who's your biggest challenge? 17:15- What's the biggest thing you're most excited about? 18:30- What are the most important thing that you would like to hear from me? 19:20- What do I hope you re watching? 21:10- What s your biggest surprise? 22:00 +16:00+17:40- How do I m going to do in the fall? 23: What s the best thing you re going to get out of this podcast in 2020 and what s your response? 25:00 | What s going to happen in the coming weeks?
00:05:33.000Mr. Speaker, I'm not voting for a continuing resolution.
00:05:42.000I'm not voting to continue the failure and the waste and the corruption and the election interference, and in some cases, the efforts that could lead this country into World War III. I oppose the CR authored by my friend and colleague from Florida, Byron Donalds.
00:05:59.000The Donald CR continues the Ukraine policy negotiated by Speaker Pelosi and Mitch McConnell in the omnibus that conservatives were against.
00:06:09.000The Donald CR is a permission slip for Jack Smith to continue his election interference as they are trying to gag the former president of the United States and the leading contender for the Republican nomination.
00:06:21.000And the Donald CR abandons the principle that it is only a review of single subject spending bills that will save this country and allow us to tweeze through these programs and force these agencies to stand up and defend their budget.
00:06:35.000My friends, we are approaching the days where we're facing $2 trillion annual deficits atop a $33 trillion debt.
00:06:44.000And just to continue things with some facial 8% cut over 30 days that will lead to no programmatic reform is an insult to the principles we fought for in January.
00:07:03.000That was my debate on the House floor against the continuing resolution that I think would really have put the country back and would have limited the momentum we have to cut spending.
00:07:12.000But I am here to tell you that our efforts were successful thanks to the advocacy of people all over this country.
00:07:20.000The votes were not there to pass this continuing resolution.
00:07:24.000And just as I said on the floor, the only path forward, Single subject spending bills.
00:07:30.000And by the way, The media, the establishment Republicans, they call me some crazy right-winger.
00:07:39.000Because I am demanding a vote on term limits, a vote on a balanced budget amendment, single subject spending bills, a release of the January 6th tapes.
00:07:50.000And if we're going to do oversight, if we're going to have a robust effort against the corrupt Biden family, I don't know, maybe send Hunter Biden a subpoena.
00:08:02.000All Speaker McCarthy has to do is date and sign it.
00:08:05.000Many of you are fired up in the live stream.
00:08:08.000Kim is watching on Facebook from Pensacola.
00:08:11.000I always love it when my bosses and my constituents tune in.
00:08:14.000Wayne on Facebook is offering a sentiment that we're seeing from a lot of folks.
00:08:19.000You're wanting the motion to vacate the chair.
00:08:22.000I'm going to have an update on the motion to vacate and really how some of the politics of that could play out a little bit later in this update.
00:08:30.000But before we do that, Our efforts against this continuing resolution and really against all continuing resolutions are rooted in the theory that you shouldn't be taking these disparate votes on agencies that have nothing to do with each other all at once.
00:08:48.000Even the greatest continuing resolution, even God's gift to continuing resolutions, still surrenders the premise that the funding of an entire agency of government is not a question worthy of its own dignity.
00:09:02.000It's why we are in the mess we are in.
00:09:08.000And I am going to fight with everything I can muster to bust up the D.C. cartel and to stop the Uniparty from running roughshod over the needs of the American people.
00:09:20.000And in that battle, I seem to have found an unlikely ally in the New York Times.
00:09:26.000New piece coming out from Michelle Cottle.
00:10:36.000You see, the things I am fighting for I honestly hope exist well beyond my time in Congress.
00:10:44.000And even well beyond Republican control.
00:10:47.000Because even when Democrats control this place, which at some point they invariably will, I would hope their members too would want to consider these spending bills separately and not just do continuing resolutions.
00:10:59.000Though I will say, my friend and colleague from Montana, Matt Rosendale, had an interesting point.
00:11:04.000Nancy Pelosi could have gotten us to a continuing resolution.
00:11:08.000So the fact that Kevin McCarthy is getting us there is hardly a deliverable on all the work that Americans did to ensure that the majority changed hands.
00:11:18.000On this very point, on the criticality of single-subject spending bills and on the utility of Of my strategy to root out the woke and weaponized government, we heard President Trump's former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vogt, recently on Bannon's War Room with just really crystal clear analysis.
00:12:26.000And that is what we have seen since the debt limit deal.
00:12:30.000And he's using this CR as part of that effort to be able to just push this on and hope that the crisis In their minds of a government shutdown will compel House conservatives to go away.
00:12:44.000And I just think they need to have a fundamental reset and go back to what they agreed to in January with the speaker and that the entirety of the conference got on board with to get Kevin McCarthy, who I didn't want as a speaker and many others in America didn't want as a speaker, And go back to that debate.
00:13:02.000That would have led to a huge cut to woke and weaponized government bureaucracy.
00:13:07.000And if you don't feel like you can do all the bills in one week, okay, let's start with the one that funds the Department of Justice, the one that funds the FBI. Let's start there.
00:13:18.000And then we'll go to the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services and make sure...
00:13:22.000That CDC and the NIH are not continuing to fund COVID bureaucracy, so we're not funding the Wuhan Institute.
00:13:30.000We don't have the ability to fund gay pride events in Prague and our foreign aid.
00:13:35.000How about we do that one week after another instead of this charade where we push things on into holidays and later in the year and nothing ever occurs?
00:13:49.000That's exactly the play they are running.
00:13:52.000And the defense to that play is to not surrender the frame by supporting or endorsing or lending our name to any continuing resolution.
00:14:00.000We have to roll up our sleeves, get to work.
00:14:27.000Now, to set the stage, Kevin McCarthy has tried to subjugate my legitimate concerns that no less than the New York Times says are valid, valid, So
00:15:28.000So yeah, pardon me for not taking my time to go rename post offices and parts of highways.
00:15:34.000I'm working on saving the country and the dollar and the government and sometimes from itself when it becomes weaponized against people like President Trump.
00:15:45.000I think speaking on the big issues matters, but it's also not just the work, but who you're doing the work for.
00:15:53.000Undeniably, I work directly for the American people.
00:15:56.000I'm the only Republican in Congress who doesn't take any money from lobbyists or PACs or special interests.
00:16:02.000This is a policy that would cost Dave Joyce dearly because Dave Joyce has taken $6.8 million in lobbyist and special interest money.
00:16:14.000And in this little video I'm about to play you, he actually has the nerve To attack me and my donors who might give $10 or $25 to a political campaign.
00:16:25.000And he tries to say that my substantive work here in the Congress is somehow lashed to my desire to get people to give small dollar donations.
00:16:35.000When people give $10 or $25 to a candidate, they just want you to be at your best.
00:16:58.000The shiny object tending to get the most noise and then all of a sudden you see that that amounts to somebody like Gates, all these personal contributions in small ways and it's like you think that's crazy, hold my beer.
00:17:09.000The next one will get in line and say even crazier things and I think we need to stay focused on those people who are getting the job done.
00:17:15.000I just think that there's sometimes you get personalities in here who just don't like Kevin and want to create issues for him and you know you have to get beyond that.
00:17:24.000I mean your constituents all hate Kevin too?
00:17:26.000You've got to do what's best for our country or best for your district in our country.
00:17:32.000This isn't about whether or not we love or hate Kevin.
00:17:35.000Frankly, I don't have either of those emotions directed at Kevin McCarthy.
00:17:39.000I do hate where we are from a fiscal posture.
00:17:43.000I do hate the debt that we've built up.
00:17:45.000I do blame Kevin McCarthy for where we currently stand on those matters, but it's not a personal hatred.
00:17:52.000The Bible says that we judge a tree by its fruit.
00:17:56.000You can judge McCarthy's speakership by what it has produced, very nominally.
00:18:03.000And you can certainly judge it for what it has failed to produce, especially when you're able to lash that to the promises that were made on the January 6th tapes, on term limits, on balanced budget amendments, on single-subject spending bills.
00:18:15.000The guy fundamentally hasn't done the job.
00:18:18.000And so that brings us to the number one subject that all of you are talking about on the live stream right now, the motion to vacate.
00:18:26.000So the motion to vacate is not a complicated matter to introduce, but the vote itself could take some very interesting contours.
00:18:34.000I could tell you right now that the opposition to Kevin McCarthy in the Republican conference has certainly grown since January when 20 stood against him.
00:18:47.000But we could count on the Democrats in January to act like Democrats and vote against McCarthy.
00:18:56.000It's the Uniparty that actually runs this town.
00:19:00.000And it's my concern and even my expectation that upon a motion to vacate, Hakeem Jeffries and House Democrats would bail out their guy, Kevin McCarthy.
00:19:12.000And I base that view in part on what I heard from Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday, ABC's This Week.
00:19:24.000You and McCarthy both talked about working together when he became Speaker.
00:19:28.000If it comes to this motion to vacate, and you hear Matt Gaetz and other McCarthy critics saying that they are moving in that direction, they're going to try to remove him as Speaker.
00:19:38.000Will you, will Democrats help bail McCarthy out?
00:19:41.000Are you going to be there to help him, or are you going to go along with the effort to oust him?
00:19:48.000Well, we haven't given it any thought one way or the other because, John, as I've indicated, we're going to continue to focus on solving problems for the American people.
00:19:57.000Now, if that moment presents itself, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
00:20:01.000But what we should be focused on right now is avoiding an unnecessary government shutdown that will hurt the ability of our economy to continue to recover, which President Biden has led a tremendous recovery to date, And that shouldn't be interrupted because of partisan political gamesmanship.
00:20:24.000We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
00:20:27.000In that answer, Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries gives himself the maximum amount of operational flexibility to bail Kevin out or not bail Kevin out.
00:20:37.000Now, whether or not McCarthy faces a motion to vacate is still entirely within his own hands.
00:20:42.000If Tonight, he scheduled term limits, balanced budgets for votes.
00:20:49.000If he committed that there wouldn't be a lumping of all these matters together, but indeed individual review of single-subject bills, even through a shutdown, if he did those things, I think he might, could save his speakership.
00:21:01.000Unfortunately, what we've seen is a very rattled person who has been recalcitrant Naive and certainly in denial about the political circumstances that we face.
00:21:12.000Now, I don't want to join Kevin McCarthy in that sense of denial and naivety.
00:21:17.000And so when many of you are clamoring for the motion to vacate as you are, just think about that answer you just heard from Jeffries.
00:21:27.000And if indeed I had to file a motion to vacate and the Democrats showed up to bail out Kevin McCarthy, I can assure you this.
00:21:35.000I will let the country know every day that it is the Biden-McCarthy-Hakim Jeffries coalition that governs them.
00:21:43.000And I will stand as the opposition to that uniparty and to that really, I think, dirty deal.
00:21:52.000But I think we know that Kevin McCarthy is willing to make any deal to keep power.
00:21:56.000And that's one of the things that's become deeply frustrating.
00:22:01.000There's been this issue of the missile explosion in Ukraine.
00:22:07.000Now, the war in Ukraine can best be characterized as a tragic yet totally avoidable mess.
00:22:14.000And currently there's no end in sight.
00:22:16.000The United States and NATO in their typically unserious fashion are now slow stumbling headfirst into one of the most serious geopolitical disasters of the 21st century.
00:22:32.000President Biden's guide to navigating foreign relations.
00:22:36.000We've discussed at length the cost of this war, the burden it places on the backs of the American taxpayer, but there is a human cost.
00:22:44.000This human cost is never discussed in DC circles, certainly not by the military-industrial complex or the journalists that play cover for the Washington regime.
00:22:54.000But as President Trump recently stated on CNN, A foreseeable consequence to America's involvement in prolonged and failing endeavors here would certainly try to drive us to prevent this war, but At a minimum, we should try to get out of it.
00:23:18.000This is not a view held by Samantha Power, the current director of USAID, who famously said when referring to all of the foreign policy blunders she's been involved in throughout her career, quote, What a fool.
00:24:03.000The New York Times reported yesterday that 15 civilians were killed and 30 others were injured when a missile struck a Ukrainian marketplace in eastern Ukraine, rendering some of the victims beyond recognition.
00:24:16.000President Zelensky and his propaganda arm quickly labeled this as a Russian terror attack.
00:24:25.000But it turns out, as the New York Times reports, this was a Ukrainian air defense missile.
00:24:31.000Certainly unintentional and maybe just the type of inadvertent collateral damage that we have come to too easily accept in modern wars.
00:24:39.000The evidence is clear, and the reports on the ground confirm the direction of the missile, the blast radius, the shrapnel size, the eyewitness accounts from the site, as well as where the missile was launched from, mean only one thing.
00:24:55.000And if this country doesn't get serious, and we don't work to put an end to this disastrous war, then the future tragedies will belong to us.
00:25:04.000And maybe the next accident isn't a market in Ukraine, but a nuclear escalation involving the United States.
00:25:13.000Never has the world needed strong, rational leadership like it does now.
00:25:18.000And until President Trump is back in office, it looks like we aren't going to get it.
00:25:23.000I want everyone to have the full benefit and context of where things stand in the disputes we're currently having with Speaker McCarthy.
00:25:33.000Recently I took to the House floor and I gave remarks that have certainly gotten a great deal of reach, but I wanted the podcast episode to have the benefit of those remarks and arguments as well.
00:25:44.000So we will send you out with five good minutes of my remarks.
00:25:50.000And how to save the country, reverse the failed course of the House of Representatives, and put Speaker McCarthy on notice.
00:26:11.000Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role.
00:26:18.000The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair.
00:26:30.000We have had no vote on term limits or on balanced budgets as the agreement demanded and required.
00:26:36.000There's been no full release of the January 6th tapes.
00:26:39.000As you promised, there has been insufficient accountability for the Biden crime family.
00:26:44.000And instead of cutting spending to raise the debt limit, you relied on budgetary gimmicks and rescissions.
00:26:51.000So that you ultimately ended up serving as the valet to underwrite Biden's debt and advance his spending agenda.
00:26:58.000Mr. Speaker, you boasted in January that we would use the power of the subpoena and the power of the purse.
00:27:05.000But here we are, eight months later, and we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden.
00:27:10.000That's how you know that the rushed and, you know, somewhat rattled performance you just saw from the speaker isn't real.
00:27:18.000At this point, during Democrat control over the House of Representatives, they had already brought in Don Jr. three times.
00:27:25.000And we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden.
00:27:29.000And power of the purse, only thing the 118th Congress is known for at this point is electing Kevin McCarthy speaker and underwriting Biden's debt.
00:27:37.000And unfortunately, there's only one of those things we can remediate at this time.
00:27:43.000Our leadership right now is asking us to vote for a continuing resolution.
00:27:47.000A vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the Green New Deal, a vote to continue inflationary spending, and in the most troubling of fashions, a vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the election interference of Jack Smith.
00:28:03.000Mr. Speaker, we told you how to use the power of the purse.
00:28:06.000Individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis, and that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump, or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.
00:28:25.000September 30th is rapidly approaching and you have not put us in a position to succeed.
00:28:30.000There is no way to pass all the individual appropriations bills now.
00:28:33.000And it's not like we didn't know when September 30th was going to show up on the calendar.
00:28:37.000I must be better, you must be better, and this House must be better, for it is the last best hope for tens of millions of Republicans.
00:28:46.000We demand real oversight against this weaponized government.
00:28:52.000If tens of millions of dollars flowing from foreign corrupt people into the bank accounts of the Biden family wasn't enough for actual impeachment, why were we even looking?
00:29:04.000Joe Biden deserves impeachment for converting the Vice Presidency into an ATM machine for virtually his entire family.
00:29:30.000Now, I will concede that the votes I have called for will likely fail.
00:29:34.000Term limits, balanced budgets, maybe even impeachment.
00:29:37.000I am prepared for that eventuality because at least if we take votes, the American people get to see who's fighting for them and who's willing to tolerate more corruption and business as usual.
00:29:48.000Mr. Speaker, dust off our written January agreement.
00:30:06.000Votes on balanced budgets and term limits.
00:30:09.000Subpoenas for Hunter Biden and the members of the Biden family who've been grifting off of this country and the impeachment for Joe Biden that he so richly deserves.
00:30:19.000Do these things or face a motion to vacate the chair.
00:30:26.000A motion to vacate might not pass at first, but it might before the 15th vote.
00:30:30.000And if Democrats bail out McCarthy, as they may do, then I will lead the resistance to this Uniparty and the Biden-McCarthy-Jeffreys government that they are attempting to build.
00:30:45.000I know that Washington isn't a town where people are known for keeping their word.
00:30:50.000Well, Speaker McCarthy, I'm here to hold you to yours.