Freedom Caucus Members Issue Warning To Speaker Johnson About Spending Bills Transcript

…first. You can, but I wanted to let the print recorders get some time.

All right, so you saw, today, that the rule for CJS failed to garner the votes to pass. We want the message to be clear to the American people and to our leadership. We are done with the failure theater here. We’re not going to pass bills that don’t address the problems that America faces. Nothing in here to defund the new FBI headquarters, nothing to defund the unconstitutional gun registry. The bill is very, very weak and, also, I must say, the closed rule on Iran, with the President out there offering Iran $10 billion, in the light of what just happened in Israel, is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to have a closed rule where we can’t actually get the legislation that will deny the President’s ability to send that money to Iran and embolden our enemies and have American citizens paying both sides of that war.

(01:03)
We’ve had enough. We’re sending a shot across the bow. We do this in good faith. We want to see these bills move. We want to see good righteous policy, but we’re not going to be part of the failure theater anymore. I want to turn to Andy Biggs if he’s here and then chip away.

Yeah. Thanks. Ditto with what the Chairman said, and I would also throw in continued funding for the FBI headquarters, killing that amendment was ridiculous, but I want to talk about something else. We had an amendment on the floor today to defund the office that has misplaced over 100,000 unaccompanied children. We don’t know where they are, but we do know many of them have been placed with pedophiles. There’s been no vetting, inadequate vetting, because this administration changed the vetting and Republicans killed that amendment. That is unacceptable. We have got to hold this administration accountable, we have to hold our fellow Republicans, who allow this kind of tyranny to go forward, and we should not be funding that. I’m going to turn it over to Chip Roy.

Yeah, look, I agree with Scott and I agree with Andy. Let’s be very clear about what’s going on. We set out this year to change the way this place works. We wanted to change the rules. We wanted to restore regular order. We wanted to get to the place where the people’s voice could be heard, regardless of whether you’re in leadership or not. Our election certificates are every bit as valuable as somebody who has the title Speaker or Chairman.

(02:24)
The fact of the matter is what we saw yesterday unfold, by suspension of the rules, $400 billion of continuing resolution of Pelosi’s priorities and Pelosi’s spending levels. That is unacceptable. Today, they tried to pass a closed rule on Iran, which, while it was a bill that was targeted towards the $6 billion it paled in comparison to amendments that we had that would’ve actually checked Iran the way they need to be checked, by getting rid of the waiver authority that this administration is abusing. To side with Iran over Israel. What on earth is going on?

(02:56)
Israel is under attack and we’re funding, through the CR yesterday, Hamas, through dollars that go to the United Nations through UNRRA. That is unacceptable. We can’t do that. We can’t have a closed rule and not have a full throated debate about checking Iran. This is not why Republican voters send Republicans to Washington, so we’re standing up and we said no today. And Speaker has, now, 10 days to work it out and get Republicans to actually stand up and fight when we get back, he’s promising a fight, so we’re sending a message right now. We expect that fight.

(03:26)
When we get back from Thanksgiving, we need a plan to reduce spending overall from ’23 to ’24, pay for any supplemental spending, stop spending blank check money to Ukraine, stand with Israel, hold the Senate in check and do what we need to do to secure the southern border. That’s what the voters expect us to do and that’s the message we wanted to send today, going home for Thanksgiving.

I would just add, on the heels of this CR that kept in place all the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer policies and spending levels that are destroying the country, if any bill we should be cutting spending on it would be this bill, a rogue department of justice, a rogue FBI, and we’re actually increasing that spending and doing very little in the way of correcting a federal government’s weaponize against its citizens, abusing its power. And so, we sent a major statement to that effect today and we’re not going to continue to do business as usual here in Washington. We want to support our speaker and bring in the change that needs to be brought on behalf of the American people.

I was just going to say, going back to what representative Biggs said, if it was these members’ children, I can guarantee you they wouldn’t have supported that bill. To put it in perspective, we’re up here, there is a moral aspect to this fight and, frankly, to include what happened with the FBI and the weaponized DOJ, we have the ability to make change. A lot of people will go on television and tell you one thing, but they’re doing another thing when it comes to votes and behind closed doors, and we’re going to be holding them accountable, to include this speaker. We like him a lot. He’s a nice guy, but we’re going to make sure that he follows through on what he said he was going to do.

Michael, hold on.

Yeah, I sit on the Approps Committee, too, and one of the big issues I had is that this bill really skipped the approps process. And so, there are a number of conservative amendments that we wanted to offer that did not get into the bill. There were two amendments that I had offered that had to deal with how DOJ collects information. And so, they’re not supposed to be able to get this kind of information on American citizens or financial data, other kind of data, without getting a warrant. And so, what they’ve done, instead of going through the due diligence of getting a warrant, they just go ahead and go to data aggregators and purchase this kind of information to build their databases. One of the big issues that the Chairman mentioned was the ATF database, that we found out there’s over a billion gun records that they’ve collected on American citizens. Now, that’s supposed to be illegal and they know it’s supposed to be illegal. They just call it something else other than a gun registry.

(05:37)
There’s a number of other issues. One, we found out, through a whistleblower, they’re giving bonuses to agents based on domestic violent extremist cases. And so, the issue with that, of course, is what we’ve seen the DOJ label people ask. We’ve had parents at school board meetings, we’ve seen traditional Catholics targeted. These are not the people that agents should be incentivized, financially, to go after. We want proper due diligence. And so, if amendments like that aren’t going to make it into basic conservative bills, then we need to stop this and rethink about the process.

They wouldn’t even let them be heard, right?

Yeah. And so, the process got usurped in this process, and so we need to make sure we’re doing what’s right for the American people.

Part of what happened, too, in January, was to not have closed rules, as they mentioned, to be able to have amendments. This didn’t happen on this bill. And the only way we’re going to change the culture here is cut the money off. That’s the only way we’re going to do it. And everybody made a big deal of it. And this isn’t against Mike Johnson. He’s been on the job 20 days. He’s a good man, so it’s not about Mike Johnson. But this country’s in financial trouble. The only way we’re going to change it is start cutting the funding and this is the only process that we have.

(06:53)
But the closed rule was not right. The amendments that Michael, and everybody else, talked about was not right. We should have been able to offer that. And talking about Iran, that Chip talked about, we funded them through oil money. We’re funding them through the oil money. This is a pittance. The 10 billion or the six billion. This is the first of a lot of them that we’re going to do this on.

What makes you all confident that you can actually be able to pass a number of appropriation bills, given the fact that you all obviously have certain concerns of on spending. Some of your own Republican colleagues are saying, no, we’re already cutting way too much. We shouldn’t be cutting anymore. They’re also already being critical of you all saying that you all are holding hostage your own appropriation process.

No, the appropriators are holding the process hostage. The appropriators. They are ganging up against the amendments, the amendments that are allowed on the floor, it’s essentially a kill list. They put them on the floor to act like you’re getting your voice, knowing that they’re all going to vote against them. That is what I characterize as failure theater. It looks like it’s supposed to be good. You’re supposed to be having a voice speaking on behalf of your constituents. Each one of us, three quarters of a million people, that’s designed to fail. We’re done with that.

Hold on a second. This is important. We’ve passed seven appropriations bills. When was the last time any of these Chambers did that on an individual basis? We have three that are sitting there ready to be passed, including with the one we’re working through right now in Labor H, and we can work through some of the issues that you rightly recognize. That would be 10. There’s a couple more that I have issues that we’re trying to work through. Obviously, CJS got caught up in what happened today with the rule. We can bring it back up the week after.

(08:31)
The issue here is what is going to be the top line spending level? Appropriators don’t want to adhere to the FRA. They want to adhere to what you saw in the exchange with me and Congresswoman DeLauro and the Rules Committee, night before last, where what you saw her admit were side deals where they could plus up all the spending using the kinds of slush funds sitting in the commerce department right now that they’ve set up because the appropriators want to keep spending money to increase programs. They want to tell the American people one thing and then do something different. That’s got to change.

Are you confident that you all will be able to avoid a government shutdown down, fund a number of those bills by that first deadline, January 19th?

We’re not going to shut the government down. If the Senate chooses to do that because we send something over to them that is reasonable, the American people can understand, that actually gets our funding towards a trajectory that doesn’t bankrupt America. That’s going to be on them, not us.

The Speaker has said he won’t do another CR. We’re going to hold him to that. We’re going to take him at his word to that effect. That means we got to pass the remaining five bills, as my colleagues have said. That puts us in the strongest negotiating position, but then the conference needs to support the speaker in the negotiations with the Senate and we cannot fear a government shut down above all else. What we’ve got to fear is exacerbating our debt situation, which is the greatest fiscal crisis the country has ever faced. The Republican Party needs to meet the moment and support the speaker.

Are there any tenable differences between Speaker Johnson and ousted speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in terms of the policy that they’re actually putting on the floor?

What the difference is is that the timeframe… Speaker Johnson came in, if you characterize it as a football game, at the end of overtime down three touchdowns. That’s when Johnson came in and you’re trying to say, do you hold this quarterback to the same standard as the quarterback that got us to that point? No, we do not.

But if passes another CR, would you hold it to that standard?

Julie? They’re heading to the step. They’re heading to the step.