The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 73 LIVE： Inappropriations (feat. Mike Robertson) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 You ever watch this guy on television? It's like a machine. Matt Gaetz.

00:00:38.060 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet. Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:00:45.980 They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you. I'm just in the way.

00:00:51.020 Welcome back to Firebrand. We are live in room 1721 of the Longworth Office Building here in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C.

00:01:02.980 I've got very important information that you need regarding a government funding bill that Nancy Pelosi was able to pass with a lot of Republican support.

00:01:14.080 Shameful, really bad for the country, going to exacerbate the border crisis, the inflation crisis,

00:01:20.180 and it's even going to allow Nancy Pelosi to rule with a dead hand after she's no longer likely to be Speaker of the House. 1.00

00:01:29.240 My Legislative Director, Mike Robertson, will be joining us in just a moment to go over that

00:01:33.660 and to go into some of the real bad funding decisions that are reflected in the continuing resolution that was passed in the Congress today.

00:01:41.140 We're also going to talk about some of the anti-big tech legislation that we also were able to pass.

00:01:47.240 I voted for that. I think these large technology platforms have too much power,

00:01:52.220 should not be able to engage in some of the mergers and acquisitions that give them the ability to stifle thought and speech.

00:01:59.580 Certainly something critically important.

00:02:02.300 We're on Twitch now. That's new news.

00:02:05.100 A lot of folks are commenting.

00:02:07.580 I look caloric on Twitch, gives a shout out to the MAGA nation and says that it is time to rise up, rise up indeed.

00:02:15.460 I kind of think this new press secretary for Joe Biden is obsessed with me.

00:02:20.820 She keeps tweeting at me.

00:02:22.360 Go ahead and put up this tweet, guys.

00:02:24.700 Here's Corrine Jean-Pierre tweeting,

00:02:26.720 While we're focused on Hurricane Ian, at GOP leader, just said his top priority is repealing the Inflation Reduction Act,

00:02:36.040 meaning that it's a commitment to raising drug prices, hiking energy bills, a tax giveaway for corporations.

00:02:42.780 And then she writes,

00:02:44.220 Even Matt Gaetz says it's about helping lobbyists.

00:02:48.280 No.

00:02:48.920 What I said is that when you engage in a legislative agenda that is not driven by the needs of the people,

00:02:54.820 but by the needs of the donor class inside of Washington, D.C.,

00:02:59.760 that that inevitably benefits those lobbying groups.

00:03:04.320 It gives them more power.

00:03:05.980 It gives them more access.

00:03:07.720 That's why I've opposed it.

00:03:09.900 But to hear Corrine Jean-Pierre lecture us about hiking energy bills,

00:03:15.760 because the Joe Biden presidency has been the worst presidency for energy consumption,

00:03:23.620 certainly in my lifetime, probably going all the way back to Jimmy Carter.

00:03:28.360 So to be lectured by the Biden administration on energy is quite something.

00:03:33.140 And when they talk about tax giveaways for corporations, give me a break.

00:03:37.480 When we passed the Trump tax cuts, we were able to repatriate dollars back to our country.

00:03:43.220 You see, the complicated tax system that offshores money,

00:03:48.580 that's not available for regular working class people.

00:03:52.040 That's something that the powerful use to avoid paying their fair share.

00:03:55.860 Well, when Trump lowered those rates, then actually we got more taxes.

00:04:00.320 Lower rates, more taxes, and more taxpayers,

00:04:03.340 because it was an invitation for broader participation in the American economy.

00:04:08.020 Lifting people out of poverty, giving people opportunities for jobs, careers, and better lives.

00:04:13.160 But, you know, Corrine Jean-Pierre, obsessed as she is.

00:04:17.340 And I guess I understand why it's a challenging time to work at the White House right now.

00:04:22.580 Joe Biden this week demonstrated just such a bizarre lack of self-awareness or factual awareness.

00:04:33.000 Take a look.

00:04:33.780 And I want to thank all of you here for including bipartisan elected officials like Representative Gover and Senator Braun,

00:04:43.380 Senator Booker, Representative Jackie, are you here?

00:04:47.120 Where's Jackie?

00:04:48.200 I didn't think she was going to be here.

00:04:50.740 What happened in the Hunger event today?

00:04:52.340 The President appeared to look around the room for an audience member,

00:04:56.500 a member of Congress who passed away last month.

00:04:58.580 He seemed to indicate she might be in the room.

00:05:00.400 What happened?

00:05:01.160 So the President was, as you all know, you guys were watching today's event,

00:05:05.460 a very important event on food insecurity.

00:05:08.640 The President was naming the congressional champions on this issue

00:05:12.120 and was acknowledging her incredible work.

00:05:15.120 He had already planned to welcome the Congresswoman's family to the White House on Friday.

00:05:22.040 There will be a bill signing in her honor this coming Friday.

00:05:25.980 So, of course, she was on his mind.

00:05:28.680 She was of top of mind for the President. 0.97

00:05:31.220 He very much looks forward to discussing her remarkable legacy of public service with them

00:05:37.960 when he sees her family this coming Friday.

00:05:40.440 He said, Jackie, are you here?

00:05:41.840 Where's Jackie?

00:05:42.560 She must not be here.

00:05:43.560 I totally understand.

00:05:44.860 And I just explained.

00:05:46.200 She was on top of mind.

00:05:49.780 You know, this was what we were able to witness today

00:05:53.960 and what the President was able to lift up at this conference, at this event,

00:05:59.980 was how her focus on wanting to deal with, combat food insecurity in America. 0.94

00:06:09.260 And this is something that he was lifting up and honoring.

00:06:12.020 And, again, he knows that he's going to see her family this coming Friday.

00:06:16.700 There is a bill signing that's going to happen in renaming a VA clinic in Indiana after the late Congresswoman.

00:06:24.360 He knows that he is going to see her family.

00:06:27.000 And she was a top of mind.

00:06:28.360 If you ever look up secondhand embarrassment, I think that's probably what you would get.

00:06:36.980 It is painful to watch Corrine Jean-Pierre have to explain that when Joe Biden was asking whether or not someone who had tragically and very publicly passed away months earlier when he was calling that person's name and asking if they were there,

00:06:52.540 she is now trying to spin that as to some sort of recognition as to what's on the top of Joe Biden's mind.

00:06:59.300 I mean, is it a mind left at all, one has to ask at this point, with Joe Biden often not knowing where he is, where he's going, who he's talking to,

00:07:10.760 or even who is dead or alive in the United States Congress.

00:07:16.780 And then it just should have been acknowledged.

00:07:19.360 Like, you know, everybody can make an embarrassing mistake behind a microphone a time or two.

00:07:24.320 But when you do that, you should just say, oh, look, that was a really embarrassing mistake.

00:07:27.600 I'm sorry.

00:07:28.580 And I'll try to be more focused next time.

00:07:31.000 But instead, he sends out the press secretary to act as though, like, oh, just top of mind.

00:07:39.520 Very strange.

00:07:41.000 That brings us to a segment we like to call Today in Congress.

00:07:49.640 Today in Congress.

00:07:54.180 Today in Congress, we reflect on the passage of critical legislation regarding big tech.

00:07:59.240 That's right, we passed a bill that was sponsored by Ken Buck and David Cicilline that gives us the chance to raise filing fees on mergers over a billion dollars.

00:08:09.380 Doing that will limit the ability of big tech to engage in the anti-competitive practices where if there is a potential competitor,

00:08:17.120 if there is another technology, if there is another vector or plug-in, they just go and gobble them up and acquire them.

00:08:24.700 And you know how we know that?

00:08:25.560 In the House Judiciary Committee, we conducted a two-year bipartisan investigation into big tech.

00:08:32.200 And we saw the emails and the messages and the strategy slides where Mark Zuckerberg himself is directing these acquisitions explicitly to harm the marketplace and to limit consumer choice.

00:08:44.640 And when that power concentrates in big tech, we see the results, censorship, shadow banning conservatives,

00:08:52.160 getting to a world in which the terms of service on Twitter feel like they're more important than the values that undergird the United States Constitution.

00:08:59.680 So we need more enforcement of our antitrust laws.

00:09:03.640 And to engage in that enforcement, we are going to raise filing fees on the 13% of mergers and acquisitions that occur over a billion dollars each and every year.

00:09:13.700 So this is not companies with an acquisition, a merger, valued at less than a billion dollars.

00:09:19.400 That's 87% of them.

00:09:21.280 And actually for those, we are able to lower the filing fees.

00:09:25.940 This is something that big tech lobbied heavily against.

00:09:30.260 There were some who said, oh, well, this isn't really anti-big tech.

00:09:33.480 It might help big tech.

00:09:34.800 But the reality is big tech descended their lobbyists on Capitol Hill like a swarm of locusts to try to kill these bills.

00:09:44.540 And the reality is we got them passed anyway.

00:09:46.600 We also passed legislation that will allow every attorney general in America to be a part of the infrastructure legally to hold big tech accountable.

00:09:57.200 Used to be big tech could always get home venue in California where they're likely to get friendly judges, friendly juries.

00:10:06.380 Now with the venue bills that we passed, big tech operating everywhere can be sued everywhere.

00:10:12.400 And I hope that we get some really bright, aggressive attorneys general who are able to assemble the human talent to build the cases that these companies are committing fraud in some circumstances, violating their own terms of service.

00:10:26.480 They may be involved in RICO in some events with predicate criminal acts.

00:10:32.540 So I'm glad that that power is now being vested in the states where it should be.

00:10:36.820 One thing that did happen in Congress today was also the passage of legislation that harms our federalist system, deprives states of the ability to innovate, and it continues the failures of the federal government on a continuing resolution into December.

00:10:51.500 Now, why December?

00:10:54.400 Well, everyone expects the Democrats are going to lose the House in November.

00:10:57.740 And so after losing the House, Nancy Pelosi still wants the opportunity to dictate budget terms into potential Republican control. 1.00

00:11:09.480 And some Republicans were so dumb, they went along with this. 0.98

00:11:13.420 And it's not just that it empowers Nancy Pelosi, it includes bad policy as well. 0.99

00:11:17.680 Joining me now is my legislative director, Mike Robertson.

00:11:20.580 And Mike, you have been going through this continuing resolution.

00:11:24.000 Share with folks what's in it that's got you concerned.

00:11:26.160 You've got to get the mic right up to you.

00:11:29.140 Right up here.

00:11:30.120 Well, first with the December 16th, this is a symptom of what are our legislators on the right side of the aisle actually here for?

00:11:36.580 We can't meet today, by the way, you know, 930, September 30th is the end of the fiscal quarter, end of the fiscal year.

00:11:43.360 And by kicking the can down the road, we are not really making any progress as a party or as a country because we're allowing the same exact appropriators that couldn't meet a deadline on September 30th to get another strike at this.

00:11:55.820 And a lot of these members are retiring.

00:11:57.720 They've got their coffers lined up for some earmarks, and they've got everything lined up on this.

00:12:02.640 Another thing to look at, let's begin, this was conducted on a shell bill for a price control on insulin.

00:12:07.640 This isn't a standalone budget bill.

00:12:09.940 And that's just a symptom of some people on the right and a lot of people on the left are of this doctrine of price controls and evading the traditional budget process in this country.

00:12:19.220 We're supposed to have 12 separate appropriations bills.

00:12:22.320 We thought we were close.

00:12:23.420 We have six of the 12 passed.

00:12:25.180 But instead, we're going to buy some time.

00:12:27.560 And the reality is it's more than buying time and keeping funding levels the same.

00:12:31.640 We've got all sorts of bad spending tucked into here, starting with Ukraine.

00:12:35.340 Over $12 billion of more funding for Ukraine.

00:12:38.820 And it's ironic because I thought we were trying to fund the United States government.

00:12:42.560 Of this $12-plus billion, we have $4.5 billion for economic assistance to support government operations in Ukraine.

00:12:50.940 So that's a little suspect to me.

00:12:53.560 So we can't fund our own government, but we've got broad bipartisan agreement to fund Ukraine's.

00:12:58.340 No problem.

00:12:59.060 $12 billion more.

00:12:59.800 Everybody always says in a $100 billion European war, it's always the last $12 billion that wins it for you.

00:13:05.220 Yeah, it really kicks in the door is what I heard.

00:13:07.120 So, well, again, CR, in the minority, it's really not a bad idea to keep stringing along to stop all this excessive spending.

00:13:15.520 But conservatives and Democrats alike have polluted this process by upping the spending in the billions of dollars.

00:13:22.080 And then on top of the $12 billion for another country, we've got $1.8 billion to keep the borders, the refugee assistance open in this country.

00:13:30.740 It's really going to backfire.

00:13:31.720 This is basically the federal government's human trafficking fund.

00:13:34.400 Yeah, essentially it is to the HHS.

00:13:36.200 That's what people have to realize.

00:13:37.820 When your members of Congress, when your senators vote for this continuing resolution, they are voting to fund the infrastructure that is turning our border into a turnstile.

00:13:48.680 It is not just releasing people in our country, but quite literally drawing them from across our border to the United States and then giving them transportation, education, health care, cell phone, you name it, all at the expense of the American taxpayer. 0.82

00:14:04.160 So, I really think, for me, the continuing failure at the border would be reason alone to vote against this $1.8 billion.

00:14:15.020 So, $12 billion for Ukraine, $1.8 billion to continue the Biden administration's failures on the border.

00:14:21.220 What else is in here that we don't like?

00:14:21.780 Yeah, and that's just scratching the surface.

00:14:23.280 So, those are the main moving items in terms of dollars and cents.

00:14:26.100 But I just have to keep going back to this is a continuing resolution.

00:14:29.780 We're supposed to, in an emergency situation, we didn't have a full year to pass a budget.

00:14:34.740 We're going to keep spending where it is, resume in December 16th.

00:14:38.020 We've got a half-a-billion-dollar increase on the cap for Social Security spending because the Democrats and some Republicans don't really want to fix that problem that's continually just keep kicking the can down the road, let the economy worsen, and they're just pointing on having some solution I haven't heard from leadership myself.

00:14:53.860 And one thing that really we must take note of is there are not a lot of people calling for balanced budgets anymore.

00:15:01.320 I mean, we used to at least have, you know, the stalwarts who would beat the table and demand balanced budgets.

00:15:08.500 Now, it is just about how far out you want to kick the can down the road, not even toward a resolution of these critical entitlement funds.

00:15:19.000 That's right, and I noticed that this extension kicking down the can happens to extend past election season before November, and, you know, everybody's out of pocket for November because it's really a symptom that a lot of politicians care more about getting reelected than a balanced budget in this country where we can be sustainable.

00:15:37.460 Well, and they love to have the budget run out in December because members of Congress always have their Christmas travel plans, their Christmas family plans, and the lobbyists and the swamp monsters in this town can get anything they want out of Congress when Congress is backed up against a Christmas break.

00:15:56.380 And, I mean, you know, it's shameful, really, because you think about George Washington crossing the Delaware River, you know, at a time when the German Hessians were celebrating holiday and having festivity, and it was that, like, raw patriotism that carved our country out of wilderness and won our freedoms.

00:16:14.700 And now you have a Congress that can't be bothered to actually go through appropriations, but that just sets up this cliff around Christmas that we all know will result in more of the same, more failure and more empowering the Biden administration.

00:16:29.020 Right, and in my heart, I don't think that George Washington would be very proud to say we're spending our December doubling the allocations for agriculture and FDA, suicide hotlines, and other things that may sound great in principle, and we do rely on those things, but this is not to be tucked away in an extension deadline bill.

00:16:48.000 That's for the budget, which we don't have yet.

00:16:50.160 So it's bad process.

00:16:51.600 You have to understand what Mike said.

00:16:53.840 This was a piece of legislation regarding insulin prices, and they attached the entire funding of our government and Ukraine's to that bill so that these programs and these policy choices would not be subject to committee review and to hearings and to markups and amendments, because they don't want you to be able to amend what's part of their deal that enriches them at the expense of the people in this country.

00:17:20.480 And we have to do better.

00:17:23.320 We as Republicans have to be willing to grind this corrupt place to a halt if necessary to deliver wins for our people.

00:17:31.080 And here's one that I've been discussing with some of my colleagues, Mike.

00:17:34.420 Shutting it down over work requirements.

00:17:36.660 You want to talk about something that unites Republican, Democrat, independent business owners, people out in the workforce?

00:17:43.620 It's the notion that we shouldn't be paying people not to work if you've got a bunch of able-bodied, childless adults getting a whole lot of welfare programs.

00:17:50.840 So I actually think that we could unify a Republican caucus around the theory that we don't fund these entitlement programs anymore without work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults.

00:18:03.020 100% agree.

00:18:03.900 And maybe we wouldn't run out of money so quickly if people were back to work in this country. 0.59

00:18:07.440 Amen to that.

00:18:08.140 Well, thank you so much for that briefing about what's in the legislation, Mike.

00:18:11.280 And now we watch as Hurricane Ian barrels down on the Carolinas, having ripped across Florida.

00:18:17.720 We have got a lot of folks still out of power.

00:18:20.320 Remember that you've got to take notice of what local officials are putting out regarding boil notices for water.

00:18:27.280 We want to make sure if people are using generators that they've got the right ventilation.

00:18:31.140 We never want to see loss of life.

00:18:33.400 And there's a lot of trees falling.

00:18:36.080 There's a lot of debris around.

00:18:38.420 And there'll be a lot of chainsaws getting fired up in the state of Florida over the next 48 to 72 hours.

00:18:44.020 So please, please be safe.

00:18:46.320 After major hurricanes like this, we always end up with folks in our emergency rooms who were fine during the storm,

00:18:52.680 but who experienced some challenge or had some malady thereafter when working to rebuild.

00:18:57.420 And we do note that there is something special about Florida where we've got the muscle memory for this.

00:19:04.180 We're tough for hurricanes.

00:19:05.740 We are innovative.

00:19:07.020 We know how to take what is around us and put it to our uses to make sure we can still get the job done.

00:19:12.800 No better example of that than this local news anchor reporting during Hurricane Ian describing how she keeps her microphone operational.

00:19:23.380 Take a listen.

00:19:23.780 A lot of people are asking, what is on my microphone?

00:19:29.140 It is what you think it is.

00:19:30.660 It's a condom.

00:19:31.560 It helps protect the gear.

00:19:33.180 We can't get these mics wet.

00:19:34.640 There's a lot of wind.

00:19:35.740 There's a lot of rain.

00:19:36.940 So we've got to do what we've got to do.

00:19:38.820 And that is put a condom on the microphone. 1.00

00:19:41.120 There's always a little MacGyver element to everything that Florida man or Florida woman does. 0.99

00:19:49.040 And you know what?

00:19:50.300 I'm proud of Floridians for being tough and resolute and for helping each other in this time of need.

00:19:55.900 And there'll be a lot of folks who do need help rebuilding, getting their lives back together.

00:19:59.640 And we always want to be gracious and lend that helping hand to our fellow Floridians and to our fellow Americans.

00:20:05.920 Thank you so much for listening, for joining us today.

00:20:08.560 If you're listening on Apple iTunes, please do me a favor.

00:20:11.520 Give us that five-star rating.

00:20:13.120 Make sure you're subscribed.

00:20:14.340 And the only way you know every time we go live is if you hit that little bell, turn your notifications on,

00:20:21.060 and join us each and every day for Firebrand.

00:20:24.540 Let's roll the credits.

00:20:25.340 We'll see you next time.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - September 30, 2022

Episode 73 LIVE： Inappropriations (feat. Mike Robertson) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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