In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NJ) join me in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to discuss the continuing resolution, the border wall, and the farm bill. We also talk about the lack of progress on funding the government, and whether or not Speaker Mike Johnson should continue to lead the effort to get a bill through the House of Representatives, or if he should go with a clean CR (Continuing Resolution) or a short-term continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through September 2019. We also discuss the impact of a continuing resolution on the border security situation, and why a CR should not be used as a substitute for a long-term solution to the border funding crisis. Tweet Me! with your thoughts and reactions to this episode! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What should Speaker Johnson do next? 4:30 - Is a CR a good idea or a bad idea? 6:15 - How should the House approach a CR? 8:00- What should the Speaker do? 9:30- What would you do if a CR isn t passed? 11:40 - What s the best way to keep government funded? 13:00 14:00 -- What should be the Speaker's strategy? 15:00-- What should we do with a CR 16:20 - What are we looking for? 17:30 -- What's the best approach? 18:15 -- What is the best option? 19: What would the Speaker s strategy for getting a CR passed 21:30-- What would be the best solution? 22:15- What are you looking for from Speaker Johnson? 23:40 -- How would you vote on a CR ? 26:30 27:10 -- Is there a better way to get across the aisle? 25:10 - Is there any chance of getting a bill passed in the House? 26 - How would Speaker McCarthy willing to compromise on a single-subject bill? 29: Does Speaker McCarthy have a chance to get something done? 30:15-- Is Speaker McCarthy more likely to get the votes he needs to pass a CR or not? 31:40- What kind of CR that s going to happen? 32:10 -- Is Speaker Johnson willing to take the votes needed?
00:05:54.000There's been an injunction issued against the pistol brace rule.
00:05:58.000And Washington, D.C. has gotten so crazy, even the Secret Service is having to endure the scourge of crime and carjackings because there are no consequences in Washington for criminal behavior.
00:06:11.000But first, let's get to this concept of the latter CR. You may have heard House Speaker Mike Johnson talk about it, folks report on it.
00:08:20.000If the Speaker goes a different route, what would you do?
00:08:22.000So, the concept that we discussed today with the Speaker is exciting because it breaks us from this theory that you have to take one vote on all of government To extend every agency for precisely the same duration of time.
00:08:37.000I think we can be more specific in the timelines and in the approaches.
00:08:41.000That's why I'm for single subject spending bills.
00:08:43.000If we're able to get these bills we're working on this week passed, you're looking at around 80% of the federal budget that the House has approved funding for.
00:08:54.000But the Senate wants to always take up everything all at once for the same duration of time.
00:08:59.000The laddered approach that Speaker Johnson was socializing with members today, I think, gives us a lot of innovative opportunity to put downward pressure on spending.
00:09:08.000If it goes with a clean CR, then what?
00:09:10.000I'm not voting for a clean CR. Will it cost him the speakership if he does that?
00:09:15.000Well, he never promised me he would, unlike the last guy.
00:09:18.000And remember, there's a big difference, right?
00:09:19.000Kevin McCarthy never wanted to get to single subject spending bills.
00:09:23.000You know how your viewers can take great confidence in that?
00:09:26.000He only passed one in the first seven months.
00:09:28.000Mike Johnson passed one in the first 36 hours, and we've been rolling through them.
00:09:33.000So I think there is a willingness to give a little more grace to Speaker Johnson than to Speaker McCarthy, because he was fiddling as Rome was burning.
00:09:42.000I think Mike Johnson is trying to build us on a path to more fiscal sanity, and we want to support him in those efforts.
00:09:51.000We are back live and the overwhelming sentiment from the comments on the live stream is that we should not have a government funding bill that does not secure the border.
00:10:01.000It should be either secure the border or shut down the government according to the overwhelming sentiment that we are receiving.
00:10:08.000But follow me here on the ladder concept.
00:10:11.000So a ladder concept that is clean is a bad idea because it doesn't sufficiently do the border work that we've been talking about and it doesn't sufficiently cut spending.
00:10:24.000You see, The concept that we are fighting against is this notion that all of government gets voted on all at once for one big up or down vote.
00:10:36.000To extend every agency for the same duration of time.
00:10:40.000With a ladder, the good news is that you're able to cleave the important stuff that we all agree on that's bipartisan.
00:10:50.000Ensuring that people still get their IRS refunds and their Social Security checks.
00:10:54.000You do that and then you set on shorter ladders different features of government that have to have itemized review.
00:11:01.000I'm thinking notably the DOJ, a lot of the parts of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State.
00:11:07.000You set those on shorter ladders and then you're able to really zero in on what those entities of government are doing.
00:11:15.000So a ladder is good, a ladder without the spending cuts, without the border stuff, without defanging the weaponization of government, not sufficient at this time.
00:11:25.000And certainly the addition of the farm bill extender puts us in, I think, a real bad stead when trying to get to single-subject spending bills.
00:11:36.000One reason this is so important, we've just gotten fresh off of a report from House Budget Committee Chairman Jody Arrington, A ratings change from Moody's Investor Services.
00:11:52.000Moody's today has changed the outlook on the government of the United States of America's rating to negative from stable and affirmed the long-term issuer of senior unsecured ratings at AAA. The key driver of the outlook change to negative is Moody's assessment that the downside risks to the U.S. fiscal strength have increased significantly We're good
00:12:39.000The sharp rise in U.S. Treasury bond yields this year has increased the pre-existing pressure on U.S. debt affordability.
00:12:45.000In the absence of policy action, Moody's expects the U.S. debt affordability to decline further, steadily, and significantly to very weak levels compared to other highly rated sovereigns.
00:13:20.000We're under $900 billion for the whole Department of Defense budget.
00:13:27.000These are devastating consequences at a time when, of this $33 trillion in debt, we're going to have to refinance that debt at higher and higher interest rates because of the government spending, because of the Biden inflation, because of the decisions from the Fed.
00:13:49.000When America as a whole is seeing this downgrade as a consequence of our inability to constrain spending, Mr. Speaker, we must cut spending.
00:13:58.000It is not enough to slow the rate of growth.
00:14:00.000We have to cut spending and we see that we will pass along a diminished America if we're unable to achieve that.
00:14:08.000There's another story that I have to reflect on.
00:14:12.000Over the weekend, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had a therapy session with CNN reporter Manu Raju that was videotaped and then published on CNN's Sunday program.
00:14:25.000And like in many therapy sessions, the former speaker had a lot of things to say about people who he thought were mean to him.
00:15:00.000I think Congress is too important and the issues are too big.
00:15:04.000To focus on such small things that Matt tries to.
00:15:07.000It's more a division, and it's focused on himself.
00:15:10.000That was former Speaker McCarthy, who has done considerably more television interviews than I have.
00:15:19.000Matter of fact, he was the TV speaker in the absence of substance.
00:15:22.000And you will recall, on this program, time and again, I said that whether or not McCarthy faced removal was entirely within his hands.
00:15:29.000All he had to do was comply with the agreement that he made with House conservatives in January.
00:15:34.000He chose not to do that and now believes that his removal was a consequence of television, Or worse, take a listen to this alt-explanation from the removed former Speaker.
00:15:49.000Those eight members who you referred to as the Crazy Eights and the like, after you, they elected Speaker Johnson, they were crowing about this.
00:16:30.000If the ethics committee never does anything to Gates, then Gates was successful in stopping probably what rightfully should come to him.
00:16:37.000But going through the three weeks and then taking down Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Tom Emmer, all people who are really prepared to do the job, that was frustrating for me.
00:16:52.000We are back live and it is hard to ever present to you a clip that would have more projection than what we just showed from Speaker McCarthy.
00:17:01.000Let's start with this assessment that it was the conference that took down Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer.
00:17:09.000Steve Scalise knows that it was Kevin McCarthy who blocked him.
00:17:14.000That's why Steve Scalise did so much, to ensure that we were able to elect Mike Johnson, even though Kevin McCarthy was attempting a comeback.
00:17:23.000So, Emmer, Jordan, Scalise, you see, it didn't matter who it was, and it didn't matter what the ideology was, conservative, moderate, liberal, conservative.
00:17:33.000McCarthy was just working to try to sabotage everyone, and he couldn't figure out a way to sabotage Mike Johnson.
00:17:40.000And then he says this is all about some sort of ethics issue that I have.
00:17:45.000I'm just an ethically challenged person.
00:17:46.000It's not that Kevin couldn't keep his deal.
00:17:49.000Well, what's the explanation for everyone else then?
00:17:52.000Did the seven other people who voted with me also have ethics problems when we removed McCarthy?
00:18:01.000Before Mike Johnson was ultimately designated.
00:18:05.000When Kevin McCarthy had done everything to summon his lieutenants and marshal the last bit of loyalty people might feel to him for all the special interest money he distributed to them.
00:19:17.000There's big news for gun owners that I want to report to you, and as you recall, we've been fighting against this unlawful, unconstitutional pistol-brace ban that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has put into place in the absence of any Law passed by the representatives and signed by the executive.
00:19:39.000I pointed out how pistol braces were not in any way dangerous to regular folks in this recent hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
00:20:10.000Does it concern you that the witness that the Democrats brought would make such a claim that is obviously disproven by any utilization of those arm braces?
00:20:20.000I hope that my testimony today can help everyone here understand that the brace does nothing to make the weapon any more dangerous than it already is.
00:20:31.000And so, when you've got the ATF going beyond their authority, collecting 252 million records that they have to destroy, well, that can just be explained because they're doing their best.
00:20:42.000But when Americans get inadvertently converted to felons because the ATF has exceeded their authority, there is no such grace for them as their miswear.
00:20:52.000That would seem to be the case under the recent policy change to zero tolerance.
00:20:57.000Zero tolerance for our fellow Americans when they're trying to exercise their rights and protect their liberties, but all the tolerance in the world for a corrupt bureaucracy that is violating the law, exceeding their authority, and collecting records that they have no business collecting.
00:21:37.000One of the plaintiffs in the case is Gabriel Chouster, who deployed overseas in the War on Terror, was ambushed in Minneapolis and shot 15 times, then spent 85 days in the hospital.
00:21:50.000He uses a stabilizer brace to help him shoot his gun.
00:21:53.000Another plaintiff, Sean Kroll, is big into recreation and self-defense.
00:21:58.000He uses a stabilizing brace because it makes his firearm safer.
00:22:03.000This case is Brito, B-R-I-T-T-O, versus ATF.
00:22:08.000It is currently in the Northern District of Texas.
00:22:11.000The temporary injunction means that the plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.
00:22:18.000It means that they will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of this injunction being issued, that there is no adequate remedy that they could ever get back in terms of money damages, and that it serves public policy interests.
00:22:30.000Those are the elements to get temporary injunctive relief at this stage of the litigation.
00:22:35.000I'm sure that will be on appeal, but the fact that we've got this Texas federal judge saying that this is an unlawful application of this pistol brace rule against these particular plaintiffs, great news, and hopefully that jurisprudence will persist as our oversight work persists on this very issue.
00:22:54.000We also have an interesting story about our nation's capital.
00:22:58.000We've been detailing to you the decaying conditions here, the rampant homelessness and crime and just debauchery that seems to be at the envelope of this great celebration of America that our capital ought to be.
00:23:15.000But we now know that Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden's granddaughter had to open fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle here in Washington, D.C. So the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Naomi Biden were out with her in a Georgetown neighborhood Late on Sunday night.
00:23:38.000And again, Georgetown is like the nicest part of Washington.
00:24:52.000There's a lot of news right now about how some of these abortion referendums have been faring unfavorably.
00:25:00.000I discussed that with Manu Raju, Sienna, and take a listen.
00:25:06.000Ohio, this vote tonight, affirming abortion rights, the seventh state now to do that post-Roe.
00:25:13.000Does that concern you about this issue and the saliency of this issue come 2024?
00:25:18.000I think you're seeing voters react in the way a lot of legal scholars expected, by weighing in on the issue.
00:25:25.000The fundamental problem with Roe, in addition to the science being wrong, is that this notion that you were going to have judges ultimately make that decision was...
00:25:35.000So, look, it's not the way I would have voted.
00:25:37.000It's not the policy choice I would personally make, but I have no doubt that lawmakers in Ohio will respect the decision of the voters, just like in Kansas and in the other places where they've had these ballot provisions.
00:25:50.000I guess politically, are you concerned about being on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue?
00:25:55.000The voters I represent are pretty pro-life.
00:25:57.000And I think that's true for a lot of Republican congressmen.
00:26:01.000But I do think that we've got members in swing districts who are going to have to really refine their thinking on this.
00:26:09.000And for some, that means federal floor.
00:26:14.000And then flexibility for states to be able to react and for others it's entirely a state issue.
00:26:20.000For me, I think it's pretty fundamental for the federal government to respect life in all forms and that's why I'm a pro-life congressman.
00:26:32.000We're back live and indeed the people of northwest Florida are pro-life.
00:26:36.000It says a lot about our nation, how we stand for the liberty interests of the unborn and I will continue to do that.
00:26:44.000Whenever Firebrand is mentioned in the mainstream media, even the liberal media outlets that hate us, I like to sometimes give you a perspective on how they write about the show and think about the show as we give you direct updates regarding what's going on in Washington, D.C. and why it's happening.
00:27:06.000I would typically not trust them on any real fact.
00:27:13.000Indeed, this piece that I'm going to share with you is an opinion piece of theirs, and it is styled, The GOP Civil War is Apparently Now Cleaning Out Closets.
00:27:26.000But unlike most Republicans in the House, oh, I'm sorry, just for context, this is a piece that goes over the segment that we did about House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith when Congressman Smith was attacking me for lying.
00:27:42.000And I pointed out that Jason Smith is the last person in the world who should be attacking anyone for lying.
00:27:50.000Unlike most Republicans in the House, Smith is 44 and single.
00:27:55.000And one of his closest friends in Congress for years, someone he traveled with on lavish trips, was none other than Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock.
00:28:04.000The closeted gay House member who resigned in 2015 amid a scandal that focused on his outrageous misuse of government funds and eventually was indicted in 2016 for fraud and theft of government funds, among other charges.
00:28:19.000Attention was brought to their relationship when the spotlight focused on the luxurious trips Shock was taking, often spending taxpayer dollars.
00:28:29.000As reported by The Hill in 2018, Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, joined his close friend Aaron Schock on campaign and government trips and exotic vacations in 2014 that were begun by being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into the alleged spending abuses by the former congressman who resigned.
00:28:52.000Revelations that Smith accompanied Schock on the campaign trip Came as well.
00:28:59.000The Hill reported that Smith has hired Shock's former chief of staff, Mark Roman, who managed the congressman's office at the time of the spending scandal.
00:29:08.000There's no indication that federal prosecutors have questioned or sought records from Smith, but his participation on trips now under criminal investigation could drag one of Shock's closest friends in Congress into his legal mess and undermine Smith's political image as a humble, salt-of-the-earth fiscal conservative.
00:29:27.000The news has also led to chatter on Capitol Hill, where Romans hiring by Smith surprised many.
00:29:35.000The story also reported on a trip that Smith took with shock to Brazil, along with two other House members, most of which was paid for by the Brazilian government.
00:29:44.000But after the official business, the Hill reports, shock, Smith, and several of their male aides headed to the Brazilian beach town of Canoa, Cabedara, a gay-friendly resort spot.
00:29:58.000Smith and Schock also went to Argentina with their aides.
00:30:02.000The Hill now reported on how unusual it was for members to take their aides on lavish vacations.
00:30:09.000Later that December, Schock posted Instagram photos of himself, Smith, Roman, and Schock's photographer, Jonathan Link, hanging out at a vineyard in the famed Mendoza wine region of Argentina and whitewater rafting.
00:30:29.000Some GOP aides said it was odd for lawmakers to be taking their staff on exotic vacations.
00:30:35.000As one noted, one of the aides on both the Brazil trip and the Argentina trip was Roman, who as The Hill reports, many were surprised Smith hired as his chief of staff since he was managing shocks during the time of the spending scandal.
00:30:53.000Roman has now moved up from being Smith's chief of staff to being the staff director of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which Smith chairs.
00:31:06.000Raw story reporting on these two guys being buddies, shock having all these problems about how money was being spent, leaves They all went on vacation with their aides together to all these interesting places.
00:31:20.000And then Smith hires the guy who oversaw the office that had the spending problems, makes him his chief of staff, same guy he was in all these pictures with on all these exotic vacations, and then makes him staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee.
00:31:38.000We end our report to you today with sad news.
00:31:42.000Five service members have been killed in a training crash.
00:31:45.000The Department of Defense has identified the service members who passed away on November 10, 2023, in what the Pentagon has described as a helicopter refueling training exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean.
00:31:58.000And we want everyone to know that our condolences go out to the families of Chief Warrant Officer Stephen R. Dwyer of Clarksville, Tennessee.
00:32:10.000Chief Warrant Officer Shane Barnes, 34, of Sacramento, California.
00:32:16.000And Staff Sergeant Tanner W. Grone, 26, of New Hampshire.
00:32:21.000Also, Andrew Sutherland of Apache Junction, Arizona.
00:32:26.000Cade Wolf, 24, of Monotoco, Minnesota.
00:32:31.000Certainly never in the field of human conflict was so much owed so many to so few.
00:32:39.000That from Winston Churchill and certainly something on our minds as we think about those five patriots, those five heroes, their families, and all who cared about them and loved them.
00:32:49.000Make sure you're subscribed to our program with your notifications turned on so that you get news coming out as we proceed on these government funding battles, on these battles against Washington corruption, and certainly battles for our service members and those who enjoy their Second Amendment rights.