In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZETTE) is back in Washington, D.C. to speak at the Armed Services Committee hearing. He is joined by his own Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark McConville, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
00:00:56.000This is Congressman Matt Gaetz broadcasting live out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building
00:01:03.000here in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C.
00:01:06.000And you will not leave the program today without a full update as to what's going on in major litigation
00:01:13.000regarding D.A., Alvin Bragg, and the House Judiciary Committee on which I serve.
00:01:19.000Jim Jordan and I have been working hard reviewing the briefs and the rulings,
00:01:23.000and I'm going to get you all caught up to date on that.
00:01:25.000Also, there have been very serious negotiations ongoing regarding the debt limit.
00:01:30.000A lot of people think we shouldn't raise the debt limit, that we should have cuts.
00:01:33.000Some folks believing we should send a blended plan to the United States Senate that has cuts and an increase in the debt limit.
00:01:41.000I'm going to go through where those negotiations currently stand to get something potentially off the floor of the House of Representatives next week.
00:01:49.000Remember, they said it couldn't be done.
00:01:51.000We'll see, and I'll show you the key deal points.
00:01:54.000Also, there is a lot of discussion on the Hill regarding what's going on with China right now.
00:01:59.000And that's because some of the leaked information that was put out on Discord and other social media platforms contained key analysis regarding how we view the China hypersonic capability.
00:02:13.000I asked about that in committee, had a very interesting exchange with some of the lead uniformed military leaders in the Indo-Pacific theater.
00:02:24.000Work requirements, I'm going to be going over that, how that fits into the budget and the debt limit.
00:02:30.000But first, all of you know, those of you watching today, and thank you for tuning in from New York to Arizona, Georgia, Florida, even viewers from Colorado today.
00:02:41.000What you know about my work is that I'm not afraid to ask tough questions of the generals who come before the Armed Services Committee.
00:02:49.000And that is because I admire and respect our military so much.
00:02:55.000And I want the decision makers to be worthy of the patriotism reflected by our troops.
00:03:02.000So it boils my blood when we see a Department of Defense leaning into these diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that do nothing but divide and exclude.
00:03:14.000And sometimes I feel like they all think I'm crazy and I think they're crazy because there is this disconnect between the recruiting challenges, the retention challenges we face and the embrace of woke ideology.
00:03:29.000And that was on full display during my questioning of army leadership.
00:03:34.000Now, what you're going to see in this clip is my questioning of the lead civilian, the secretary of the army and the chief of staff of the army.
00:03:42.000So the lady is a senior Biden administration official.
00:03:45.000The gentleman is the general who is the chief of staff of the army, General McConville.
00:03:50.000So take a watch. We'll talk about it on the other side.
00:03:55.000When Secretary Austin was here, neither he nor General Milley could defend some of the bizarre DEI activities that were going on at the DOA.
00:04:04.000And then promptly after my questioning, they shut down the DEI entity at the DOA.
00:04:10.000And so maybe we can make similar progress today.
00:04:12.000Ms. Wormuth, do you acknowledge that some of the strange manifestations of this DEI embrace have put negative pressures on the army's recruiting?
00:04:22.000Congressman, I'm not sure exactly what specifically you're referring to, but when we've done surveys...
00:04:27.000Okay, so if you could put that slide up on the screen, I'll give you one. I thought that might be where this was going.
00:04:34.000So this is a vignette aid. It's an army training, and it's regarding the use of showers.
00:04:40.000The vignette reads, a soldier transition from male to female, as indicated in DEARS.
00:04:46.000The soldier did not have sex reassignment surgery.
00:04:49.000The transgender service member is using the female showers and has expressed privacy concerns regarding the open bay shower configuration.
00:04:57.000Similarly, other soldiers have expressed discomfort showering with a female who has male genitalia.
00:05:04.000And then if you look over at Subpart 3 regarding the considerations, it just says,
00:05:09.000all soldiers will use the billeting, bathroom, and shower facilities associated with their gender marker in DEARS.
00:06:30.000And what I talk about is our job is build cohesive teams that are highly trained, they're disciplined, they're fit, and they're ready to fight and win.
00:06:41.000Right, but I am positing that when there is a focus on how biological men are going to shower with women and on unconscious bias training, which you require, and on mandatory gender sensitivity training, that like the call is coming from inside the house at DOD on some of these problems.
00:07:03.000And the proof's in the pudding that there seems to be a cognitive dissonance between your recruiting nightmare that we are living through, the nation's recruiting nightmare at the Army, and this kind of stuff.
00:07:15.000Because I don't think it's going to be a big like positive recruiting pitch to women that when someone shows up with male genitalia in their shower stall that we tell them that we're trying to build a cohesive team.
00:07:26.000I would posit to you that that probably makes the team a little less cohesive.
00:07:31.000Will you allow for even that possibility?
00:07:34.000Congressman, what we've seen in our surveys is that basically women are more worried about being sexually harassed in the Army than they are about the kinds of things that you're bringing up.
00:07:44.000Well, don't you think that someone might get sexually harassed if they're showering with a biological male?
00:07:48.000Don't you think that that environment could potentially increase the likelihood of that?
00:07:52.000We're all concerned about sexual harassment.
00:07:54.000We've grappled with these challenges about how to have it in the chain of command or outside the chain of command.
00:07:59.000It seems a little silly to sit here and have discussions about the flow chart of a sexual harassment complaint when you've got people with male genitalia showering with your female soldiers.
00:08:10.000I want to recruit talented women into our Army, and I'm concerned that this weird stuff that you guys are doing is not going to make it more likely that those people are going to sign up.
00:08:21.000You and I spoke yesterday about the fact that the Army has to recruit extensively men from the American South, that that makes up a wide variety of who's coming into the United States Army.
00:08:34.000You think you're going to recruit more of them with this kind of stuff?
00:09:01.000Probably not, General McConville says, when asked whether or not the embrace of women showering with biological men would result in more women wanting to join the Army.
00:09:12.000Can you imagine that recruiting pitch?
00:09:14.000Can you imagine going to tell American families, well, your daughter wants to be a soldier.
00:09:19.000She'll be showering with biological males.
00:09:21.000And the nerve of the Secretary of the Army to suggest that the way to combat sexual harassment is with your multi-gender shower scenario.
00:09:37.000And it's why we are facing some of the recruiting challenges we are.
00:09:40.000And it's actually why the Army is facing some of the largest deficits between their recruiting goals and what we need to be signing up and what we are, in fact, signing up.
00:09:53.000And we've got upcoming legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act to root out these vectors of wokeness, get them out of our military.
00:10:02.000So now I want to talk a little bit about where we are with the debt limit and work requirements, something that I've been fighting to get in the legislation.
00:10:13.000I've just come out of several meetings with Republicans from the cross-section of our conference.
00:10:18.000And here is how the Republican plan to raise the debt limit is being pitched.
00:10:25.000So I'm giving you the information the leadership's given us.
00:10:28.000And I'll tell you at the top, I have not decided how I am voting on this plan yet because there are a few areas of detail that we still need to work out.
00:10:36.000But initially, there is a 10-year budget window that saves $3.6 trillion by rolling back spending to pre-COVID levels and then only allowing 1% growth in that budget during that 10-year window.
00:10:55.000So that $3.6 trillion savings is a limitation on federal spending.
00:11:01.000Now, I wouldn't call it a cut except that the weird way Washington works, there's always these automatic escalators for inflation and the like.
00:11:10.000And so this is not 1% on top of inflation.
00:11:26.000First, clawing back unspent COVID funds.
00:11:30.000The budget estimation is that that's still about $50 to $60 billion.
00:11:34.000But frankly, it'll be less by the end of this podcast because entities know that we're interested in COVID clawbacks now that the national emergency has been ended.
00:11:43.000And they're obligating these funds as fast as they can.
00:11:46.000So that might not be as big a savings as we expect.
00:11:49.000Next bullet point, defund Biden's IRS army.
00:11:52.000You'll remember that House Republicans stood united against the 87,000 IRS agents weaponizing this government against fellow Americans.
00:12:01.000I would suspect against conservatives.
00:12:03.000That's what they did the last time they weaponized the IRS.
00:12:08.000So getting rid of those 87,000 IRS agents, a condition to this deal.
00:12:13.000Also, a repeal of all of the Green New Deal tax credits that are in the IRA.
00:12:20.000That could range anywhere between $271 billion and $1.2 trillion over the budget window.
00:12:28.000And that's because there's been this crazy over-utilization of some of those credits.
00:12:33.000And even Joe Manchin has come out and said that the Inflation Reduction Act, aptly named, inaptly named, it's not being implemented in accordance with legislative intent.
00:12:45.000So he's already saying that, so that's why there's such a big delta in the potential budgetary impact of the repealing of those Green New Deal tax credits.
00:12:55.000We would also prohibit Joe Biden's student loan giveaway.
00:12:59.000$465 billion savings we get a whole heck of a lot of in the first year.
00:13:07.000And also, we're working hard on ensuring that there's another bite at the apple here.
00:13:15.000As I've said, I have no problem using the debt limit to negotiate to get less spending.
00:13:22.000And if the debt limit comes up again more frequently, that gives us another opportunity to create downward pressure on spending.
00:13:31.000And so under this plan, the debt limit would not be raised $2 trillion.
00:13:36.000It would be raised $1.5 trillion or March 31st, 2024, whichever comes sooner.
00:13:43.000So if they do stuff like give Obamacare to illegal aliens, they're going to burn through that cash faster.
00:13:50.000And we're going to be right back at the table demanding even deeper spending cuts.
00:13:55.000There are also provisions here to grow the economy, lower energy costs, HR1.
00:14:00.000We've talked about that unleashing American energy, giving America power over the rare earth materials that will define who wins the future.
00:14:09.000Also, the REINS Act, R-E-I-N-S, the REINS Act.
00:14:14.000Now, I authored and passed the version of the REINS Act in Florida.
00:14:18.000And what it does is it limits any regulatory action that has compliance costs over a specific threshold.
00:14:25.000So it's really a way to rein in the bureaucrats.
00:14:28.000If you think about the mandate of the Republican majority in Congress right now, it's really the budgets, the bureaucrats, and I think that is reflected in the REINS Act certainly.
00:14:45.000That if you have a legislative action, regulatory action, springing out of legislative action where the bureaucrats are far exceeding the authority and it's costing taxpayers money, then there is an accelerated opportunity for someone impacted by those regulatory costs to demand a more responsive government.
00:15:05.000So that is a key piece of legislation.
00:15:07.420It's something Republicans in Congress have been fighting for for some time.
00:15:10.940But as we sit here now, what is being most intensely negotiated work requirements, I am a strong believer in work requirements.
00:15:22.860I believe they should apply in TANF, in SNAP, in certain circumstances, in Medicaid, certainly for able-bodied people who could make a contribution and choose not to.
00:15:34.100I have been fighting for work requirements so long, even when I was first elected in 2017.
00:15:41.520I'm going to give you a throwback clip from five years ago.
00:15:45.360Here was my take on WUWF interviewed by Dave Dunwoody, March of 2017.
00:15:53.940On Thursday, the House gets to vote on the Obamacare replacement bill.
00:15:58.560Talk a little bit about the bill, what you see in it.
00:16:01.420Well, Dave, the bill is getting better every hour.
00:16:04.740In the moments before I called you, I was on the phone with Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and I was stressing again that to make this legislation better, there need to be work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults.
00:16:18.500There needs to be an end to Medicaid expansion.
00:16:21.540You know, some of those states have one in every three of their citizens on Medicaid.
00:16:25.680Florida has been more responsible, one in every six.
00:16:28.380And we also need to make sure that we've got a tax credit system that really works for people and is going to create a competitive marketplace to drive down costs.
00:16:37.460So I was debating for work requirements with the Obamacare universe back in 2017.
00:16:45.880That very same universe exists right now.
00:16:48.680And I just think if people want the rest of us to pay for their health care and they could work, that they ought to.
00:16:53.520And you can even meet a work requirement with job training, with volunteering at a nonprofit or at one of our cities or counties or local parks.
00:17:13.780We as Republicans have to be willing to grind this corrupt place to a halt if necessary to deliver wins for our people.
00:17:21.880And here's one that I've been discussing with some of my colleagues, Mike.
00:17:25.240Shutting it down over work requirements.
00:17:26.980You want to talk about something that unites Republican, Democrat, independent business owners, people out in the workforce?
00:17:34.840It'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.
00:17:41.640So 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.
00:17:53.440I 100% agree, and maybe we wouldn't run out of money so quickly if people were back to work in this country.
00:18:13.020The rules we fought for at the beginning of the year during the speaker contest allow us to go and defund the salaries of specific bureaucrats.
00:18:21.360I wish we could have forced that on Fauci, but when you look at some of these people at the ATF, you look at some of these people pushing the wokeness at DOD, I believe we can take specific action against them.
00:18:34.260And that is a power that Congress has not had and wouldn't have had had we not stood up and demanded it as a consequence of the resolution of the speaker contest.
00:18:42.240So we will be on that very good piece of advice that you've given us on the live chat.
00:18:48.720As to these work requirements, even my critics acknowledged that before this debt limit debate, there wasn't really a thrust for work requirements as part of the discussion, and I demanded it.
00:19:02.060So I'm putting it up on the screen right now for those watching on Rumble, and we hope you subscribe and turn your notifications on regardless of how you're watching or listening.
00:19:10.140This is from the New Republic, March 23rd, Matt Gaetz's brilliant idea for the debt ceiling crisis, Medicaid work requirements.
00:19:19.120Now, I'll give you a little notice that they don't actually think it's a brilliant idea.
00:19:24.500They're quite critical of the idea, but I thought it was really important not to have a discussion about the debt limit untethered from policies that do two things.
00:19:33.660That limit cost and spending on one end, but that can increase growth and labor participation and productivity on the other end, and the right work requirements can do just that.
00:19:45.800Now, why is this a source of negotiation at this point?
00:19:52.320The work requirements that my Republican colleagues are currently advocating for are 20 hours a week.
00:19:58.980I just tend to think that we can be a little more rigorous.
00:20:02.680I would love to see a 40-hour-a-week work requirement, but certainly a 30-hour-a-week work requirement, something higher than 20.
00:20:12.40020 hours a week to get other people to pay for your health care, your cash payments.
00:20:22.740I just don't think that that is something that is unreasonable to ask for.
00:20:27.540And so we're pushing for stronger work requirements than just 20 hours a week.
00:20:32.420Some of my Republican colleagues want to keep it at 20 hours a week.
00:20:35.080The good news is we're all talking about work requirements.
00:20:38.740I was making the case just yesterday on the House floor.
00:20:46.280I rise to vindicate the most American of values, and that is work.
00:20:52.140When John Smith landed at Jamestown, he said, he who does not work, neither shall he eat.
00:20:58.260And we have drifted so far away of that, creating a social safety net that has been converted into a multi-generational hammock for far too many Americans.
00:21:08.100And so as we reach America's credit card limit, I am proud to stand with my many House Republican colleagues who believe there should be no increase in this debt limit absent rigorous work requirements.
00:21:20.760If you could see President Clinton and Newt Gingrich coming together for work requirements in the 90s, there's no reason we cannot do that in divided government now to cut spending where it is wasteful and to grow this economy where it is necessary.
00:22:26.220Love getting the feedback on that very issue.
00:22:29.300Now we travel from the very near term and here at home and our domestic economic situation to the major pacing challenge that we face abroad, and that's China.
00:22:40.160Through my role in the Armed Services Committee, I regularly get to ask questions to people in command of different theaters.
00:22:45.560You saw my questioning of some of the leadership of the AFRICOM area of responsibility or Central Command, where we see a lot of the focus on the Middle East.
00:22:56.620I got to ask questions this week of the leadership of the Indo-Pacific Theater, and I got to ask specifically about this leak that came out and what it tells us about whether or not we are ahead or behind, whether or not we can successfully deter China.
00:23:13.400I am not one who believes we should be a nation eager to start war with anyone, but make no mistake, China seeks to dominate us, and rather than have a war with China, I prefer that we deter China.
00:23:27.540But the only way to have effective deterrence is to have the most effective capability, hard power.
00:23:34.920No one is going to be deterred by our economy alone or our diplomacy alone.
00:23:40.180That's why I think we need to have the most badass military capable of delivering lethality anywhere, anytime, if necessary, to protect the American people.
00:23:51.700Not foreign interests abroad, the American people.
00:23:54.700And we are impacted by this pacing challenge, by this adversary China.
00:24:00.080And we call them a near-peer adversary, but sometimes I wonder whether they're ahead or we are in some important areas.
00:24:07.920You've seen my questioning in this on AI, where I think China's ahead.
00:24:12.960But I've constantly grappled with some of our leaders on this issue of hypersonics, because a hypersonic delivery system that can send a nuclear warhead across continents in a matter of minutes
00:24:24.440is something very different regarding the decisions that leaders have to make in the event of direct kinetic conflict.
00:24:32.260Now, if global affairs isn't your thing, I think most folks would at least understand this dynamic.
00:24:39.940If you're in a race with someone, it's really important to understand during that race whether or not you are ahead or behind.
00:24:47.900You run the race differently if you're ahead than if you know you have to catch up.
00:24:53.600I think on the area of hypersonics, we need to catch up.
00:24:58.960And I think our leaders need to stop trying to mislead and obfuscate that fact.
00:25:13.460Days ago in the Washington Post, and Washington military planners are realizing that China has surpassed the United States in hypersonic military technology.
00:25:23.600Does anyone seated at the table disagree with that assessment?
00:25:29.360Congressman, I think in terms of assessments, we should probably take that to a classified discussion.
00:25:34.660Well, it's been sort of unclassified without our consent.
00:25:38.240We had this leak that showed that China could launch one of these hypersonic glide capabilities, 2,100 kilometers, that it could get there in 12 minutes.
00:25:51.320It can't be too classified because it was a year ago, Admiral, that you were before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
00:25:57.560And you seem to be giving the warning at that time that we saw manifest in this leak.
00:26:03.460You said, quote, the hypersonic glide vehicle threat poses a serious threat to the U.S. and allied forces in the region, and we require a near-term initial defense capability to meet this challenge.
00:26:16.240I read in between the lines of that to say you require the capability in the near term because you didn't have the capability when you gave this testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, not in a classified setting, but in open hearing.
00:26:30.340So I guess my question to you, because I sense you are the truth teller on a lot of these things, have you acquired the capability since this testimony?
00:26:39.900The department is working on the ability to do hypersonic defense, Congressman.
00:26:58.120And so what I observe about our posture in Indo-PACOM is that for the last 30 years, the United States has been building aircraft carriers that will never get into the fight.
00:27:10.700And we've spent years building littoral combat ships, Mr. Smith, that will never get into the fight.
00:27:18.060And while you have been giving us the accurate information, you gave it to us now, you gave it to the Senate a year ago,
00:27:24.220the truth is we have not made a sufficient investment in hypersonic defense in order to ensure that we have this credible deterrent threat.