Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 78 LIVE: Congress Is Broken (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:43.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.

00:04:50.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.

00:04:53.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.

00:04:56.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.

00:05:00.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!

00:05:09.000 You are in the right place!

00:05:10.000 This is the movement for you!

00:05:12.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:05:15.000 It's like a machine.

00:05:16.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:17.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.

00:05:20.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:05:25.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:05:27.000 They're coming for you.

00:05:29.000 I'm just in the way.

00:05:35.000 We have the great one, Mark Levin.

00:05:37.000 Let's go ahead and play this for a second.

00:05:38.000 I would like to have your observations on this.

00:05:40.000 Congressman Gates.

00:05:42.000 Andy Biggs is part of the Freedom Caucus.

00:05:45.000 Andy Biggs is on TV all the time promoting himself as a conservative.

00:05:50.000 But a guy like that today parading around as Mr. Conservative Mr. Conservative with the Freedom Caucus, that he's going to bring conservatism to the House of Representatives is a joke.

00:06:02.000 He doesn't even fundamentally understand the Constitution.

00:06:06.000 I've called out Andy Biggs and four others in the House of Representatives who are trying to sabotage the election of a speaker in a what will be a Republican House where the Republicans have maybe a four or five vote majority.

00:06:23.000 Now what does that mean?

00:06:24.000 That means that these individuals can block the Republicans from choosing their speaker.

00:06:31.000 Which means it could go to the floor of the House, and there's already talk about this in the press, where liberal Republicans, moderate Republicans, could join with Democrats and wind up choosing a speaker who's quite liberal.

00:06:47.000 They talk about Fred Upton.

00:06:49.000 Fred Upton is a rhino.

00:06:53.000 Okay.

00:06:53.000 Hang on, the vitriol got a little worse after that.

00:06:57.000 The great one, Mark Levin.

00:06:59.000 And we understand Mark's got a lot of problems with us populist nationalists, but Mark's a good guy, super guy, and he knows the Constitution.

00:07:06.000 Why is he wrong there, Matt Gaetz?

00:07:09.000 Well, it's interesting to see Mark Levin follow the...

00:07:14.000 Flashy lures that are strung out by the mainstream press, like this notion that Fred Upton was going to be speaker.

00:07:20.000 Oh, yeah, everybody wrote articles about that and got all worked up about it.

00:07:23.000 And then they went and asked Fred Upton, are you a candidate for speaker?

00:07:26.000 And he said, no, I'm taking my wife skiing that weekend.

00:07:29.000 So it just shows you kind of how harebrained some of those red herrings are. 0.82

00:07:33.000 Keep in mind about Mark Levin.

00:07:36.000 Mark Levin was against Kevin McCarthy before he was for Kevin McCarthy, just like Mark Levin was against Donald Trump before he was for Donald Trump.

00:07:46.000 So who knows?

00:07:47.000 Being against Andy Biggs might be just like the first Mark Levin step to being Andy Biggs's campaign manager in the next election cycle.

00:07:56.000 Mark Levin said that Kevin McCarthy was a creature of the establishment and thus could never be speaker.

00:08:03.000 Those were his own words.

00:08:08.000 Welcome back to Firebrand.

00:08:09.000 We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building on the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. We have a lot of breaking news on the Hill this Monday.

00:08:20.000 We're going to get a key update regarding the growing effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

00:08:28.000 I've got just the guy here.

00:08:29.000 To chat about that.

00:08:30.000 Our reaction to the latest dump of the Twitter files.

00:08:33.000 We've just got breaking news regarding the Democrats being unable to get the votes together for their government funding bill.

00:08:41.000 So we'll talk about what that means for the country and potentially an omnibus that would steal Republicans coming into control of the House of the opportunity to have a big spending fight.

00:08:51.000 But what everyone's talking about right now is the speaker's race because Kevin McCarthy does not have 218 votes to be speaker.

00:08:59.000 My colleague Andy Biggs, who has just been reelected to his fourth term, has announced that he is still a candidate for Speaker of the House.

00:09:07.000 I intend to vote for him and he joins us again on Firebrand now.

00:09:10.000 Andy, thanks so much for being here.

00:09:13.000 When we hear these scenarios like, oh no, we could have a Democrat speaker if Andy Biggs continues his candidacy, do you think that's something that ought to concern folks?

00:09:26.000 No, I don't.

00:09:27.000 I think that is a red herring.

00:09:29.000 I think that is a threat. 0.86

00:09:30.000 I think that's the McCarthy machine and the establishment machine working to try to scare the crap out of people.

00:09:37.000 And the reality is that would require a bunch of Republicans to say, you know what, we're really not Republicans.

00:09:44.000 We're going to vote for Democrat.

00:09:45.000 And it also is pregnant with this thought.

00:09:48.000 There is nobody in the Republican conference who can be the speaker other than Kevin McCarthy.

00:09:53.000 He's the only guy. 0.71

00:09:54.000 I find that to be absolutely ludicrous and actually condescending.

00:10:00.000 You wrote a recent piece where you talked about your candidacy functioning as a mechanism to break up the establishment, to bust up this DC cartel.

00:10:10.000 Talk to people in the country about the power centers that really exist in Washington.

00:10:15.000 You know, folks back home that want to be really engaged or informed, they may look at the roll call votes and see, were you on one side or the other?

00:10:22.000 And that certainly does matter.

00:10:23.000 It's why you've called for a number of those votes to be taken publicly.

00:10:27.000 But in terms of who really decides the agenda and the focus and the impact of this place, where do you see that playing out and why is that wrong?

00:10:37.000 So where the power is centered is there's four people in Congress, two in the Senate, two in the House, that really kind of control everything.

00:10:44.000 In fact, they call it, they have the audacity to call it a four-corners bill.

00:10:47.000 That means that the minority leader in the House, and the Speaker, and the majority leader and minority leader in the Senate, they've agreed to it, and they expect everybody else to respond.

00:10:56.000 So that's one power center.

00:10:57.000 So let me just pause you right there.

00:10:59.000 So when they talk about a four-corners agreement, I mean, it used to be in the Congress, I guess, we're currently in, That you could get two of those corners without even leaving the state of California.

00:11:12.000 Because you had Pelosi and McCarthy representing the House of Representatives, but really, I think, coming from a place with a particular worldview.

00:11:21.000 So this notion of top-down leadership, that's one power center.

00:11:25.000 What else?

00:11:26.000 Yeah, so then you also have two other power centers that that four corners place to.

00:11:31.000 It's the lobbyists, the K Street, the big moneyed interests, the special interests that are out there, and a lot of them like big tech, you know, you just name it, any big major interest, big pharma, those types of things.

00:11:44.000 They're going to respond to that because it's big money because if you're in the Four Corners group, you've got to raise a bunch of money.

00:11:51.000 So you're delivering on that.

00:11:53.000 The other one is, a lot of people don't talk about this, but it's big bureaucracy.

00:11:58.000 So you've got big government married to big money married to tight controlled power.

00:12:04.000 And we used to call that type of thing fascism.

00:12:08.000 Well, and those big moneyed interests want the bureaucratic system to be as complicated as possible because if you've got the armies of lawyers and lobbyists and accountants and consultants, you can attack that bureaucratic system and you can actually bend it to your will.

00:12:23.000 And so that's not free market.

00:12:26.000 That's not giving everybody an opportunity to get ahead.

00:12:29.000 That is a system in Washington that is weaponized against the American people, Often, no matter which party is in charge.

00:12:37.000 But the McCarthy team has been out there pushing hard.

00:12:39.000 This doomsday scenario where a Democrat might be elected speaker.

00:12:43.000 And there was a great piece in Politico.

00:12:46.000 Rachel Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.

00:12:48.000 Politico playbook.

00:12:49.000 Busting the unity speaker bubble.

00:12:52.000 And it goes through a list of reasons why this will never happen.

00:12:56.000 The first of which, the most obvious...

00:12:59.000 Any strategy that would have a more moderate Republican elected would require every Democrat to vote for a Republican. 0.63

00:13:09.000 Now, you've got Democrats that don't even want to vote for other Democrats someday, but Andy, how likely is it that every single Democrat, all 212 of them, would vote for any Republican?

00:13:19.000 It's impossible.

00:13:20.000 They just elected Hakeem Jeffries.

00:13:23.000 Hakeem Jeffries is the Congressional Black Caucus' leader.

00:13:28.000 He is the guy that, for decades, that CBC has been trying to get someone in leadership.

00:13:33.000 Now they have this guy.

00:13:34.000 And CBC is basically going to say, if you're going to take away our guy, And to vote for a Republican, we're going to burn the place down.

00:13:45.000 And if you think what the squad did was bad, or if you think holding out and trying to leverage what votes we have on this is bad, you watch what happens if the Democrats reject Hakeem Jeffries for a Republican.

00:13:57.000 Yeah, hear us now.

00:13:59.000 You know, Andy Biggs is telling you, I'm telling you, there is no way that Hakeem Jeffries does not have every vote of every Democrat on every ballot.

00:14:07.000 And it's not us just saying this.

00:14:09.000 It's listed as the number one reason why some notion of a moderate Republican would never be accepted.

00:14:16.000 The second reason that this piece identifies is that there is no negotiation or back channel even happening right now Between moderate Republicans and Democrats.

00:14:26.000 Now, we heard Don Bacon go out and say, well, we could reach across the aisle.

00:14:31.000 Have you seen any evidence that that's happened?

00:14:33.000 No, no evidence.

00:14:34.000 If there was evidence there'd be somebody besides Don Bacon saying how mad he is at us, there would be people from the Democrats saying, oh, yeah, maybe so.

00:14:43.000 But just yesterday, even on CNN, you had a Democrat saying that, oh, well, it's not going to happen.

00:14:49.000 Because it's not going to happen.

00:14:52.000 The Republicans, and they're not the moderate, they're the kind of more liberal Republicans, they're on the other side of the spectrum of you and I, but they would have to basically manipulate a whole host, literally dozens and dozens of Democrats and Republicans in order to make that happen.

00:15:11.000 There are no secrets in Washington, D.C. None at all.

00:15:15.000 And so if there was some actual coalition of multiple members working together, everyone in this town would know about it.

00:15:22.000 And by the way, every reporter would be dying to get the scoop on the next one.

00:15:26.000 And here you have Politico saying, we've searched everywhere and there's no real evidence this is happening.

00:15:31.000 And you know what that proves?

00:15:33.000 That Don Bacon's statements are nothing more than a McCarthy op.

00:15:38.000 And I know Don Bacon.

00:15:40.000 I like Don Bacon.

00:15:41.000 We sit next to each other on the Armed Services Committee, care a lot about national defense together.

00:15:45.000 But what Don Bacon is saying is not sincere.

00:15:49.000 It is just an operation being run on behalf of the McCarthy coalition to try to scare those of us who are trying to actually change Congress Into accepting just kind of the next iteration of swamp-controlled decision-making.

00:16:05.000 Am I too aggressive to call the bacon thing just a McCarthy op?

00:16:11.000 No, that's exactly what it is.

00:16:13.000 You know, Matt, everything we're talking about, what you're going to bring up next, they all point to one thing.

00:16:18.000 The establishment is in control.

00:16:20.000 The establishment doesn't matter what party it is.

00:16:23.000 Its purpose is to maintain control and power.

00:16:28.000 And so you're going to see these rather macabre ops that are coming out there like, oh, we're going to come together.

00:16:36.000 Hillary might be Speaker. 1.00

00:16:38.000 Liz Cheney's the Speaker.

00:16:40.000 This is crazy talk.

00:16:42.000 Yeah, and the next reason that Politico outlines is that in any sort of hypothetical deal, Democrats would want something in return, and if Republicans were to surrender that, that would be the death of those candidacies in any upcoming primary.

00:16:58.000 They say that it is a surefire recipe for a primary challenge to any centrist Republican.

00:17:03.000 Now, if you're a frontline Republican, a centrist Republican, you don't want to be challenged in the primary because you We likely already have a general election that is very costly and requires a lot of effort.

00:17:15.000 And so the notion that centrist Republicans are going to go surrender away the powers of the House of Representatives to Democrats and then have to explain that to primary voters down the road defies every feature of political physics.

00:17:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:17:32.000 And the final one...

00:17:35.000 Is that Democrats frankly don't mind watching the GOP squirm.

00:17:40.000 And look, I wish that making the demands that we are making for a better Congress, a more honest institution, a more transparent institution, I wish that didn't require discomfort in our caucus.

00:17:53.000 I wish that every single person held the views that you and I frequently hold about the need To transform Congress.

00:17:59.000 But sometimes you have to make even members of your own team a little uncomfortable.

00:18:05.000 And real leadership is not just always giving the rah-rah speech at halftime, right?

00:18:11.000 You know, we underperformed.

00:18:14.000 In the lead up to this election.

00:18:15.000 And sometimes we have to have that discomfort to say, you know what, maybe if we like embrace better policies and have better leaders, more inspirational figures guiding our decision making, maybe we won't need 12 to 15 million dollars, you know, for every frontline seat that we have to go raise from lobbyists and special interests.

00:18:32.000 Maybe we'll just do what we said we would do for the people.

00:18:34.000 Yeah, I mean, amen to that.

00:18:36.000 And, you know, I want to add one other thing here that I think is just important to say.

00:18:40.000 We were told when we were in the minority, oh, you can't have a change in leadership.

00:18:44.000 By the way, Kevin's been in leadership for 12 years.

00:18:46.000 So we were told you can't have a change in leadership because we're in the minority.

00:18:49.000 That would be bad.

00:18:50.000 And then we were told that we were going to get 20 to 40 seats and we'd have this massive majority.

00:18:55.000 And we couldn't change the trajectory of Congress because Kevin would have deserved it.

00:19:01.000 And now we're being told, It's just too doggone close.

00:19:05.000 In other words, what they're saying is, you can never change The direction of this Congress, this congressional body, because, well, it'd be uncomfortable, it'd be awful, it'd be awkward, it'd be...

00:19:17.000 And the reality is, it's because they never want to lose the establishment.

00:19:21.000 They never want to lose the control and power.

00:19:24.000 And I'm grateful for you because that's what we're trying to do here, is break down that power structure so that people can actually, members of Congress can actually represent their districts.

00:19:34.000 And we...

00:19:36.000 We can't even go down and amend the bills on the floor.

00:19:40.000 You have a $2 trillion bill, and you can't go down and have a meaningful debate or offer amendments.

00:19:48.000 It's out of control, except for those four people.

00:19:54.000 Several of our colleagues, seven of them, in fact, have prepared a memorandum regarding the important requirements of leadership of anyone who would want to be Speaker of the House.

00:20:05.000 Those in the press have really categorized it as a sort of, you know, Message to McCarthy that he doesn't have their vote in the absence of these things, but let's go over the goals of this movement.

00:20:17.000 What are the goals of the people who are trying to maybe shake up the leadership race and not have everything be a coronation?

00:20:25.000 And one of the first ones is to have 72 hours to read the bill text That is unwaivable.

00:20:32.000 Now, that just seems like something both parties should support, that every American would support, and sometimes you're dealing with bills that are thousands of pages, so really 72 hours isn't enough for these complex bills, but what kind of pushback have you gotten as we've presented this to even our Republican colleagues?

00:20:51.000 I've been told that there's just no way that we're going to have to go.

00:20:56.000 And as a prime example, the bill that we just did, 4,408 pages with a 36-hour window to look at it.

00:21:04.000 A complex bill filled with all kinds of interesting things.

00:21:07.000 But I've been told that if that happens, we will stultify, we will stop this.

00:21:14.000 Stop the process of Congress.

00:21:17.000 And I'm like, stop the process.

00:21:20.000 Why can't we just at least read the bill?

00:21:23.000 Why can't we have debate?

00:21:24.000 But you know the real reason.

00:21:26.000 Yes.

00:21:27.000 The real reason is that they don't want us to have the chance to really see what the operative effects are of the legislation because then we would have stronger critique of bills that don't always serve the interests of the folks who send us here to work for them.

00:21:41.000 I had a very powerful committee chairman tell me once, Well, Gates, the reason we don't give you guys the bills in advance is legislation's a lot like roadkill.

00:21:49.000 It gets picked after too much after about 48 hours in the sun.

00:21:52.000 And, you know, that is supposed to be the deliberative process that our fellow Americans deserve.

00:21:58.000 So know this, as Andy and I are fighting with the seven certainly who've signed this memo and many others to try to open that up, there are people in this town who think that the only way this town can work is if we don't really know the operative effects of the legislation when we're required to vote on it.

00:22:15.000 Another demand in this memorandum is single subject.

00:22:18.000 The requirement that every bill address a single subject and that the appropriations bills be considered separately, not just as one up or down votes.

00:22:27.000 So you've got to vote for the troops and keeping our military funded right alongside funding some of these woke agencies.

00:22:35.000 Walk through your vision on single subject.

00:22:38.000 So single subject would, I mean, even that's probably too broad because you can just kind of morph a bunch of things into subject.

00:22:46.000 But what that would do, ostensibly, that would be the first step to letting us actually have control.

00:22:52.000 So where you don't see, you know, this is the first thing that comes to mind is like, let's say like a DACA amnesty bill in a National Defense Authorization Act.

00:23:03.000 It's where you wouldn't see something like a safe banking act, which is the marijuana banking act, whether you're for it or against it, in the National Defense Authorization Act because it has nothing to do with that.

00:23:13.000 You would actually silo some of these votes So the American people could see what we're voting on, members would see what we're voting on, and you would not have the leverage that the leadership uses, because they use this as leverage.

00:23:30.000 I mean, that's what it's all about.

00:23:31.000 Yeah, I mean, if you want to know the nitty-gritty, if you're watching and wondering, well, why would you ever have to vote on water infrastructure at the same time as the defense authorization?

00:23:41.000 Why would you have to vote on an issue regarding the war powers...

00:23:45.000 In Yemen and the Farm Bill.

00:23:47.000 The reason is that as the leadership is trying to construct a way to 218 votes on something, they realize that some of these ideas cannot get the votes on their own merit.

00:23:59.000 And so they have to hang ornaments onto the tree, hoping that that will become a payoff to get two or three votes here, or an incentive to get four or five votes there.

00:24:09.000 And so it's not...

00:24:11.000 Worthy of the greatest country on the planet Earth to sit there and legislate like you're building a Mr. Potato Head doll, right?

00:24:20.000 And that's ultimately what a lot of these bills look like and it's one of the principal demands being made.

00:24:25.000 Conservative representation on committees is another demand in the memo.

00:24:30.000 Explain to people why this need is not currently being met.

00:24:34.000 It's not currently being met because, like on the Appropriations Committee, leadership does not want to have people in there that are going to say, we're going to vote no on this because it's going to bust our spending and increase our deficit, which will in turn increase the national debt.

00:24:51.000 They want to have control of the committees.

00:24:54.000 So most conservatives are kind of funneled into two or three committees.

00:25:00.000 We're on natural resources, we're on judiciary, and we're on oversight.

00:25:07.000 But you're not going to find us on appropriations.

00:25:09.000 You're not going to find too many of us on house armed services.

00:25:13.000 You're not going to find us on anything That the leadership wants to have control of, and you're definitely not going to find this on rules committee in any kind of significant ratio.

00:25:22.000 The appropriate ratio would mean that the chairman or chairwoman is going to have to deal with It's almost like if you want to be on the War Committee, you've got to be for the wars.

00:25:40.000 If you want to be on the Appropriations Committee, you have to be for all of the appropriations.

00:25:45.000 If you want to be on the Foreign Affairs Committee, you have to be for more foreign affairs.

00:25:49.000 You know, if you want to be on the Committees that oversee banking and insurance, you have to be captive to those lobbying interests.

00:25:57.000 And what we're saying is that, look, we've got a cross-section of ideologies in this conference, and I don't purport to say that every committee should just have folks that are in the Freedom Caucus or Freedom Caucus-aligned.

00:26:10.000 I think that every committee needs to reflect the ideological sort of bandwidth of our conference.

00:26:15.000 That way, if there are issues with bills where maybe, you know, there's something that the moderates will not vote for that you and I want, I'd rather sort that out in committee working on those matters rather than have it come to the floor and say, well, we don't have the votes for it, so we have to bootstrap some other crazy legislation to try to force it over the finish line.

00:26:34.000 Well, that's what a committee's for.

00:26:37.000 The committee is for the hot debate, the push-me-pull-you that's supposed to come in legislating.

00:26:44.000 And then everybody else should say, well, we trust it because it's come out of this committee.

00:26:48.000 We know that they've fought hard over this thing, but that isn't the way it happens today.

00:26:52.000 The only thing I trust when a bill comes out of committee in Congress now is that the lobbyists who lobby that committee are okay with the bill.

00:27:00.000 Not that it's actually good for my constituents.

00:27:02.000 And so you have to think about the committees now as totally captive creatures to the interests that lobby those committees.

00:27:09.000 That's how you get on those committees.

00:27:11.000 That's how you fundraise off those committees.

00:27:13.000 And what we're saying is if you had ideological diversity And not just Freedom Caucus and Freedom Caucus-aligned people, also folks from the more centrist groups, then it would be about something more and something meaningful.

00:27:25.000 Fran on Rumble says you also have her vote for speaker, so I don't know which congressional district she represents, but a lot of folks saying we need to fight hard, that these are valuable, and Star on Instagram saying that the power needs to be with the people.

00:27:40.000 And that's really what this drives at.

00:27:43.000 The people do feel like the government has been weaponized against them.

00:27:47.000 And there is an organizational demand about the House of Representatives in this memo our colleagues have signed for a church commission.

00:27:54.000 And you and I are on the Judiciary Committee.

00:27:58.000 We're going to be focused a lot there on the FBI and the national security apparatus being weaponized against people.

00:28:06.000 But then on the Armed Services Committee, I'm going to be looking at DOD and its weaponization against troops.

00:28:11.000 And then on oversight, you're going to be looking at these foreign entanglements of the Biden family and how that's shaped China policy.

00:28:17.000 And the argument in this memo is that...

00:28:20.000 All of those committees need to do that work, but at the end of the day, this has to crystallize in a church commission-style report.

00:28:27.000 Do you agree with that analysis?

00:28:29.000 Yeah, I do, and I'll tell you why, because I do think the committees have the bandwidth to handle certain things, but the church-style commission would basically say things like, okay, what we have found is this interlocking weaponization of the federal government.

00:28:47.000 And what we're going to do is we need to stop that.

00:28:49.000 And they can provide prescriptions.

00:28:51.000 They can subpoena people.

00:28:53.000 And they can give due process, unlike the phony January 6th committee.

00:28:58.000 You're actually trying to get to the root of the problem.

00:29:01.000 You're trying to find out what has happened.

00:29:04.000 You're trying to find it out in a proper, due process way.

00:29:08.000 And it'll take a long time.

00:29:10.000 But when you get to the bottom of it, you have to do that to clear out the underbrush that's been going on.

00:29:16.000 And we're finding out more and more with these Twitter dumps that are coming out that Elon Musk is providing.

00:29:20.000 You're going to find that most of what we thought, what we were saying, and everybody said, oh, you bunch of conspiracy theorists.

00:29:27.000 It turns out that there really was a conspiracy.

00:29:29.000 Yeah, indeed.

00:29:31.000 Well, for those of you watching the speaker's race closely, there were 36 votes that Kevin McCarthy did not capture when Republicans got together to make a speaker designation choice.

00:29:42.000 Of those 36, zero have come out publicly saying their mind has been changed and now all of a sudden they intend to vote for Kevin McCarthy.

00:29:51.000 Zero of them.

00:29:53.000 Five of us have come out to say that we really can't envision a circumstance voting for Kevin McCarthy given his recalcitrant to some of these goals we have for the House of Representatives to be more transparent, open, and just available for lawmakers to be able to serve the needs of our constituents.

00:30:11.000 And now an additional seven Including Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Representative-elect Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Chip Roy of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Representative-elect Eli Crane of Arizona.

00:30:27.000 These additional seven are coming out and saying...

00:30:31.000 This isn't about a person to us.

00:30:33.000 This is about a series of policy goals.

00:30:36.000 And the number one thing that was listed is the motion to vacate.

00:30:40.000 And the motion to vacate being really the enforcement mechanism for these other goals.

00:30:45.000 And I know this sounds like inside baseball, but I mean, this is how power and who wields it is going to get crafted in Washington, D.C. So it's very important for people to understand that for 200-ish years, A single member of the body could call for a no-confidence vote, essentially, on the presiding officer.

00:31:03.000 And it was rarely, if ever, used.

00:31:05.000 I think you could count on one hand the number of times it was used in over 100 years.

00:31:10.000 And really, the goal is to never use the motion to vacate, to never have to use the motion to vacate.

00:31:15.000 And you know what?

00:31:16.000 If the Democrats want to do it every single day, we can do the prayer, the pledge, and vote.

00:31:21.000 To keep our speaker intact.

00:31:23.000 But what it ensures is that when we agree to these rules, that there will be accountability.

00:31:28.000 Is that your vision for the motion to vacate?

00:31:31.000 Yeah, I mean, the key word is accountability, as you say.

00:31:34.000 I mean, I think I know where you are.

00:31:37.000 I know where I am.

00:31:38.000 You know, when I look at Mr. McCarthy, I have a certain reticence because I think he needs I think he'd be willing to say, yeah, I'll give you everything, but I'm not going to give you the motion to vacate.

00:31:54.000 Now, why is the motion to vacate important?

00:31:56.000 Because when he violates these rules or attempts to waive these rules, which we haven't even talked about the waiver, that happens on every bill, they waive the rules of the House, then We can go to him and say, wait a second, you just waived these rules that you negotiated to put in there, and we're going to hold you accountable.

00:32:16.000 But if you can't hold him accountable, I'm going to just predict right now.

00:32:20.000 He's going to waive these rules as often as the conference lets him, and by the way, the conference is going to probably let him do it a lot.

00:32:29.000 Our goal is to ensure that principled conservatives do not trade the cow for the magic beans.

00:32:36.000 And this entire negotiation, this entire process, will be wholly fruitless if rules changes to the institution are not undergirded with a motion to vacate that any one member can execute.

00:32:52.000 It is the principle enforcement mechanism It is a total deal breaker, it seems, not only for my seven colleagues who spoke through their own words in the memo, but for many others who I've chatted with inside conversations these last several weeks.

00:33:07.000 And, I mean, isn't the reason we need the motion to vacate because we don't trust Kevin McCarthy To deliver on any changes to the rules that he promises.

00:33:16.000 Yeah, no, that is exactly right.

00:33:18.000 And by the way, you had for literally 150 plus years a motion to vacate, actually since the early 1800s.

00:33:27.000 You know who changed it was Nancy Pelosi.

00:33:29.000 And we're not asking for anything that's historically outrageous.

00:33:34.000 We're actually asking for what has been the norm in the United States Congress.

00:33:39.000 And there is an amazing red line reticence on the part of Kevin because he doesn't want to be held accountable.

00:33:44.000 He wants to be able to make these promises and say, yeah, I'll do anything, anything you want.

00:33:49.000 And then that's betting on the come.

00:33:52.000 That's betting against yourself, in my opinion.

00:33:55.000 What I want to know is, is there a mechanism to hold you accountable?

00:34:00.000 I'm glad you mentioned that because you watch some of the coverage of all of this and folks are like, well, the right-wing conservatives are making crazy demands.

00:34:08.000 And like, what?

00:34:09.000 The crazy demand that seems to be hanging up McCarthy the most is to return to something that we've had for, you know...

00:34:15.000 More than a century.

00:34:16.000 And then he prefers to defend something more akin to the Pelosi rule.

00:34:21.000 I don't think that that makes us outrageous in our demands.

00:34:24.000 But my plan is to vote for Andy Biggs.

00:34:27.000 Andy has been a presiding officer in the Arizona Senate where he led a majority that was how many seats?

00:34:33.000 Two seats.

00:34:33.000 Two-seat majority in the Senate and still got a lot of stuff done for conservatives.

00:34:38.000 And I think that the size of this majority dictates the type of leader we need.

00:34:42.000 We need a leader with broad trust and confidence across the various groups within the Republican majority.

00:34:49.000 And just the fact that we have to enforce these rules Based on something other than trust shows you, I think, all you need to know about the McCarthy candidacy and its ultimate destiny.

00:35:01.000 Andy, there is breaking news in the Congress now I want to get to.

00:35:05.000 But first, you have a great podcast.

00:35:07.000 What's the Biggs Idea?

00:35:08.000 How can folks find your podcast?

00:35:09.000 And how can folks follow you on social media before we go to the government funding?

00:35:12.000 You can find me on Twitter at RepAndyBiggsAZ.

00:35:15.000 You can go to What's the Biggs Idea on Apple and...

00:35:22.000 Every other good, your neighborhood podcasting distribution center.

00:35:28.000 You had a good conversation with Bob Good regarding a lot of these issues.

00:35:31.000 Yes.

00:35:32.000 That if you want to get deeper into some of the rationale and some of the currents that are running through this leadership race, I strongly recommend that episode.

00:35:41.000 So, breaking today.

00:35:43.000 Democrats were supposed to release their funding package.

00:35:47.000 And we get this from Bloomberg government.

00:35:50.000 Democrats put off plan to release funding package.

00:35:53.000 They are abandoning the release of this bill.

00:35:55.000 They are extending us to the 23rd of December.

00:35:59.000 They don't have Republican support for this omnibus spending legislation.

00:36:03.000 Your thoughts?

00:36:05.000 Yeah, so I saw Leahy was giving it a different spin this morning when I was watching him.

00:36:10.000 He was like, well, you know, I'm so confident we're going to put it off.

00:36:13.000 Well, that's exactly not what happens when you are confident you've got the votes.

00:36:18.000 So they don't have the votes.

00:36:19.000 And this is a very good thing for us because we need the Senate to kill the omnibus bill, which is this big, massive spending package we've been talking about.

00:36:28.000 Because if that passes, Matt, it's going to fund the government all the way through next September.

00:36:34.000 And what that does is that takes away 95% of the leverage that we will have against the Biden administration.

00:36:40.000 And what most people forget is we will be moving into the fall of 2023, which is the kickoff of the presidential cycle and this place will basically shut down.

00:36:51.000 I hate to tell you American people, but this place kind of shuts down for the presidential campaign.

00:36:55.000 We'll just do one or two things along the way to make it look like we're doing.

00:36:59.000 That's performance art, but the reality is We have got to stop the omnibus.

00:37:05.000 And quite frankly, this is where Kevin McCarthy could show he has leadership chops.

00:37:09.000 He's not doing so.

00:37:10.000 He needs to be out there talking about killing the omnibus bill, do a short-term spending bill so that the Republicans can be in control of the budget come January.

00:37:21.000 This is the swamp's play to keep control of spending for as long as possible before Republicans have even the opportunity or the platform or the vote to deliver on the promises we made on the campaign trail to rein in the spending.

00:37:36.000 The principal mandate that Republicans have after the midterm election in the House of Representatives is to curtail inflation.

00:37:43.000 And we won the argument that the driving factor of inflation wasn't Vladimir Putin.

00:37:48.000 It wasn't some global economic condition.

00:37:50.000 It was government spending.

00:37:51.000 And so here we are trying to present that fight to even have the opportunity to battle on it.

00:37:58.000 And the cards are being dealt from under the deck just away from us with Republicans in the Senate who are retiring and just want their earmarks and pork to bring them to their district, and Republicans in the House who might prefer to not have the fight and might be all too willing to allow the lobbyists in the swamp to win.

00:38:16.000 So we are fighting against this omnibus spending legislation for that reason.

00:38:21.000 Democrats don't seem to have the vote.

00:38:23.000 How does it end, Andy?

00:38:25.000 It's going to end.

00:38:26.000 We're going to do a short-term spending, and then they're going to come through with the omnibus.

00:38:30.000 I have bad news.

00:38:31.000 I think that the senators will cave, Republican senators will cave, and give it away.

00:38:37.000 Our people elected us to fight, and if the first opportunity we have to kill a massive spending bill, we don't take that opportunity, then...

00:38:48.000 It will be demoralizing to the people that were expecting more of us.

00:38:52.000 Exactly.

00:38:52.000 Exactly right.

00:38:53.000 And I just want to just comment on that.

00:38:54.000 The fight is in the Senate, but a lot of people forget we have a voice in the House even though the fight's in the Senate.

00:39:04.000 That is what leadership chops would do. 0.98

00:39:06.000 There should be a letter that we've all signed to Mitch McConnell.

00:39:09.000 There should be a press conference on the steps of the House.

00:39:12.000 There should be a meeting called between the appropriate chairs in the House and in the Senate.

00:39:19.000 There should be continuing pressure put on the Senators by the House leadership team.

00:39:24.000 But they're MIA right now.

00:39:27.000 Very disappointing and hopefully not a sign of things to come.

00:39:30.000 You are leading the fight on this effort to impeach Ali Mayorkas, and I want to get to that because you've got big news coming later in the week.

00:39:37.000 The movement is growing.

00:39:39.000 You are assembling more and more Republicans.

00:39:41.000 What are people seeing in the Congress now that are bringing more and more folks to this impeach Mayorkas effort?

00:39:49.000 Well, we still have an uphill climb with some of our colleagues, but the reality is you just look at the border.

00:39:55.000 Just look at the sheer numbers and then we can talk about the more granular effects.

00:40:02.000 So on the border, 73,000 plus known gotaways in November.

00:40:09.000 205,000 roughly encounters.

00:40:12.000 Unknown Godaway is estimated to be somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000.

00:40:17.000 Think about that.

00:40:18.000 Roughly 300,000 to 350,000 people illegally entered our country.

00:40:23.000 Title 42 is going away.

00:40:26.000 That will jump it up to about 18,000 people a day coming into this country.

00:40:31.000 The violence that is erupting.

00:40:33.000 We had a CBP agent killed last week.

00:40:36.000 The drugs that are coming, record amounts, but we still get the same percentage.

00:40:40.000 So you might be interdicting more, but you're still only getting 7% of what we estimate totally coming in.

00:40:47.000 The fentanyl deaths, the opioid crisis, the human and sex trafficking is permeating the country.

00:40:53.000 And right now, if you could get CBP intelligence to go on the record, they would tell you, There is not a community in this country that does not have a Mexican cartel presence in this country.

00:41:06.000 And all the time, you've got Alejandro Mayorkas saying, we're not going to remove people, the 1.25 million people who've been ordered to leave the country.

00:41:16.000 We're not going to remove them.

00:41:17.000 There's no plan to remove them.

00:41:18.000 There's no plan to remove them.

00:41:20.000 Instead, in fact, what they're talking about is amnesty.

00:41:24.000 To grant amnesty.

00:41:25.000 And every time they ring that amnesty bell, it just churns up those caravans.

00:41:29.000 Exactly right.

00:41:30.000 So when is the press conference that you're leading on the Impeach Mayorkas effort? 0.99

00:41:35.000 How can folks follow?

00:41:36.000 The press conference...

00:41:38.000 Oh, Matt, you asked me these specific questions.

00:41:40.000 The press conference is this week.

00:41:41.000 I want to say it's tomorrow afternoon.

00:41:43.000 Okay.

00:41:44.000 It'll be...

00:41:45.000 Are you streaming?

00:41:46.000 How can folks follow?

00:41:47.000 Yes, it will be live streamed.

00:41:48.000 You can go to my website, bigs.house.gov, and see the live stream there.

00:41:53.000 It will be live streamed by one of the networks.

00:41:55.000 I can't tell you which one because I can't recall.

00:41:59.000 I'm just leading it.

00:42:00.000 That's all, Matt.

00:42:01.000 Very well.

00:42:02.000 Well, I'm glad you're leading the effort because I do believe that impeachment is the proper tool when people are violating their duty on purpose.

00:42:10.000 I'm not for political impeachment.

00:42:12.000 I'm not for reflexive impeachment.

00:42:14.000 I'm not for impeachment because people use bad judgment.

00:42:17.000 But this is not an issue of bad judgment.

00:42:19.000 They're doing this on purpose.

00:42:21.000 Everybody is talking about the shakeup in the Senate, driven by the Arizona delegation.

00:42:27.000 I heard on one of the Sunday shows someone say, well, you know, Kyrsten Sinema for a long time says she's friendly with Andy Biggs, that they actually have a working relationship.

00:42:35.000 So, I mean, this evolution of Kyrsten Sinema from, you know, almost Green Party activist to now not associating with the Democratic Party is quite the evolution.

00:42:45.000 And it seems you've had a front row seat to it.

00:42:47.000 Well, you know, she and I served together for a long time in the Arizona Legislature.

00:42:51.000 I will just say this about Kirsten.

00:42:53.000 I was sitting next to her on the plane going home, man.

00:42:56.000 So the flight was actually 520. So about six hours we're sitting there.

00:43:00.000 We're just talking back and forth periodically, you know, about life and everything else because we're friends.

00:43:05.000 She didn't tell me this was going to happen.

00:43:06.000 I get off the plane and I'm walking to my car and I'm like, what?

00:43:11.000 But the reality is she's going to vote with the Democrats most likely, but she's not going to caucus with them.

00:43:22.000 She is an independent-minded person.

00:43:25.000 Her mantra, and we have the same mantra, quite frankly, it's just we're on the other side.

00:43:32.000 It goes like this.

00:43:33.000 If you've got a good idea and a good policy that I think works for the country that's constitutional, I'll get on it.

00:43:39.000 And she's kind of that way, but she leans to the left far more than you may. 0.58

00:43:45.000 I wonder whether or not this was an act of true disassociation or whether she just looked at polling that showed she was going to lose a Democratic primary to Ruben Gallego.

00:43:53.000 And by her declaring that she's an independent now, the Democrats are Presented with this choice of whether or not to field a candidate against her.

00:44:01.000 And if she punches through to a general election, she's obviously a stronger general election candidate than she is a primary candidate, right?

00:44:08.000 Yeah, no, that's right.

00:44:09.000 So the Democrats in Arizona censured her.

00:44:12.000 They're ticked off at her because of the filibuster issue. 1.00

00:44:14.000 And by the way, she's held that for 20 years.

00:44:16.000 We've known each other 20 years.

00:44:18.000 She's had the same position.

00:44:19.000 So that wasn't a political expedience.

00:44:21.000 That was a deeply held belief.

00:44:23.000 Oh, yeah.

00:44:23.000 Yeah.

00:44:24.000 So the next thing happens is if...

00:44:27.000 So Rubin will probably be the Democrat candidate.

00:44:29.000 He's licking his chops because now he doesn't have a primary, probably.

00:44:33.000 Yeah, but good luck for him getting through a general if Sinema's in there. 1.00

00:44:37.000 Yeah, so Sinema will be in there because all she has to do in Arizona is you have to just get signatures. 1.00

00:44:42.000 So you don't have an election at all.

00:44:45.000 And then you're going to have a Republican.

00:44:46.000 Maybe it's Blake Masters again.

00:44:47.000 I don't know who it'll be.

00:44:49.000 So it's going to be a real...

00:44:53.000 Hobbs and Choice there in some ways because for Republicans, we like Kyrsten Sinema because she's open, she's transparent, she votes a lot of ways, and certainly the Chamber of Commerce. 0.96

00:45:07.000 Loves Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona.

00:45:09.000 So how does that shake out?

00:45:12.000 I don't know.

00:45:13.000 Everything weird in politics has some association with Arizona these days.

00:45:18.000 You guys were like a sleepy western state for so long where people went to escape the army from chasing them down.

00:45:25.000 But now, everything going on in Arizona is at the top of the political headline.

00:45:33.000 Andy, thanks for joining me.

00:45:34.000 Thanks for running for speaker.

00:45:35.000 Thanks for being in the fight.

00:45:37.000 Thank you.

00:45:38.000 I'm grateful for this discussion because as we have reporters hound us all week, we can point to the goals of this movement, the objectives that are not rooted in any personality conflict, but that are truly rooted in an opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, To change the way the House of Representatives works.

00:45:56.000 And if we accomplish that, it probably won't even matter who the speaker is because we'll have an open, honest place to serve and our constituents will be all the better for it.

00:46:04.000 What's the Biggs Ideas?

00:46:05.000 The podcast.

00:46:06.000 Follow him at RepAndyBiggs, right?

00:46:10.000 RepAndyBiggsAZ.

00:46:12.000 RepAndyBiggsAZ.

00:46:12.000 Thanks for joining me.

00:46:13.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - December 12, 2022

Episode 78 LIVE: Congress Is Broken (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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