America's Talking - Episode 80: McCarthy Continues Losing Streak in Bid to Lead House of Representatives

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss that after four days and 11 failed attempts to elect a Speaker of the House on Thursday, many political pundits demanded that roughly 20 Republican members give in and elect U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as House Speaker, arguing not doing so was creating a “crisis". Gunfire erupted between the Mexican Defense Forces and the Sinaloa Cartel after the cartel leader's son was arrested and shortly after President Joe Biden announced he was meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador next week. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Support Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, this is our first America in Focus podcast of 2023. Happy New Year, and how are you? Happy New Year, Dan. I'm excited about a good year of, I think we can already see that it's going to be a pretty fast-paced new cycle. So it's going to be something to follow.

That's right. We start 2023. You're essentially on the House speakership beat. Lots of votes for House Speaker, but still no speaker. Tell us what's going on. I should say we're recording this on Friday, January 6th. There have been, what, 11 votes now for Speaker with no one getting the majority that's needed to win the office. Probably more votes today, maybe more votes today? What do you think? Yeah, I mean, you're right. As of Friday morning, it's been 11 votes, 11 consecutive losses for McCarthy. Akeem Jeffries, the kind of chosen one replacement for Nancy Pelosi, who announced last

year she's stepping down. He's getting all the Democratic votes, but of course, Republicans have a slim majority in Congress, 222 Republicans. So Democrats can't really get their speaker, but that is not meant it's a slam dunk for Republicans. Republican, whoever wins the speakership can only afford to lose four votes of Republicans. And right now, depending on which vote, there's about 20 Republicans who have voted against, really it's against McCarthy. Their votes have been scattered across several different candidates, including Andy Biggs, a lawmaker from Arizona, Byron Donald's, another Republican, Jim Jordan got some votes as well for some of these. Even Donald Trump got a vote, and you may, you know, someone may laugh at that, but technically,

the Speaker of the House does not have to be a lawmaker. So anything can happen. I think right now what we're seeing. And as you said, they're going to, they're supposed to kick, kick back off at noon and have some more votes. They are, you know, negotiating behind the scenes constantly. Media reports indicate that Kevin McCarthy has made some concessions, but it still hasn't been enough. Even basically saying that they can just kick him out anytime. He's saying, hey, you can break up with me later. Let's just go out now. Let's get this cross-finish line. You can change your mind later and remove me. But they've been. pretty steadfast. The more conservative wing of the party sees him as a, you know, he's a California Republican. He's in their mind. He's little too, too moderate. I think they were, are really frustrated with how no matter, regardless of when Republicans win the majority or not, there's never any big changes. The big conservative ideas don't really get votes. Even when Republicans, you know, had the House and the Senate under Donald Trump, they didn't really pass any, like, radical. conservative legislation, they passed tax reform. But that's, I mean, that's actually pretty

moderate. And there's some, you know, liberal Democrats who don't like tax reform. But it's a general rule. That's kind of the low bar for conservative policy. Some of the conservative ideas that these opposing lawmakers are talking about and want votes on that are being ignored persistently by Republican leadership are things like a balanced budget amendment, are things like, you know, getting rid of income tax, right, and replacing it with, you know, larger federal sales tax and things like that. So they want more big-picture conservative changes. And I think they think Kevin McCarthy will be more of the congressional status quo, which hasn't really served the conservative wing of the party very well in the last few decades. I think that's why we still have rise to Trump, because

although Trump wasn't the true conservative, he appealed to a lot of frustration within the Republican party that whoever's in charge never seems to get anything done. Now, I think Trump had his own troubles getting things done. So, you know, he didn't really scratch that itch. per se, but there's a lot of frustration within the Republican Party. You're seeing that manifest now. It's really up in the air. McCarthy could have wrangle the votes with some incredible concessions in the late hours in the halls of Capitol Hill last night, or he could be in for another string of defeats. At a certain point, he's either going to get the votes or he's going to have to give up. I don't know. I mean, it's really a game of chicken on who is more

determined to stick it out. Who can undergo the media scrutiny longer? Who's the last to balk or who last to flinch in this contest? But we could have a resolution today. It's just something that we'll be following really closely at the Cedar Square.com. And as I understand it, this is the most votes without successfully selecting a speaker in more than 100 years. But with a divided government, Democrats control the Senate and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, of course, is in charge of the executive branch. Does it really matter if it's a conservative or a moderate Republican who is Speaker of the House? Because anything that they pass that's conservative leaning is probably not going to get through the Senate. And even if a war to get through the Senate, it would be vetoed by President Biden.

Is that simple thinking there? That's true. I think it doesn't matter in the short term, but in the long term, it does matter because whoever wins this, you know, whoever becomes speaker now is very likely to be the next speaker. And once somebody gets cement to that speaker spot, we saw from Nancy Pelosi that, you know, she was there for decades. I mean, once you kind of cement yourself as a speaker, it's really hard to get unseated. So I think if you're thinking long term, if Kevin McCarthy can secure this now, he could be, you know, speaker for the next time. 30 years if he does well. Now, Republicans are, it is kind of a different Republican party. You could say he could be unseeded, but it's pretty hard to remove someone to get the kind

of political momentum and political cloud to do it. So I think they see that like this is their chance. If they don't stop him now, we could have, you know, 25, 30 years of California Republican moderate leadership, which, which just kind of does these giant omnibus bills, never has real debates, never, you know, they want things like they want to debate with all the members present, should we be sending this money to Ukraine versus just kind of signing off on whatever the Biden administration asked for without real debate and shoving it in a, you know, one or two trillion dollar omnibus. They want to return to more regular order. There's just a lot of things that

the speaker does control that, you know, even just what gets a vote. I think people, a lot of people don't realize that that if the speaker doesn't want to vote on something like they can stop it from even getting voted on, let alone whether it's going to pass or, you. not. I mean, there's ways to pressure the speaker and force their hand. But, you know, the speaker has so much power over what even legislation gets voted on, when it gets voted on, how it's voted on, whether it's debated, whether, what kind of amendments are offered, how many amendments, do those amendments get up and down vote? I mean, they have, they have a ton of power. And so I think when you think long term, it does matter for that reason. So I put you on the spot here.

Of course, as our listeners are listening to this, the story, this, this, this story could be resolved by the end of the day or by the time this podcast gets published. But, I mean, is McCarthy going to win this or is someone else going to step in and they're going to have to pick somebody else? Yeah, well, all right. You have put me on the spot here. I would say 70% chance McCarthy wins it. That's what the odds.

If you're betting on it, I don't know if they have a betting website for this right now. I'd say 70% chance McCarthy wins it. 30% chance the House descends into absolute chaos. You know, congressional Republicans have done it before. You know, they shut down the government. They've had their moments where they were not afraid to descend into chaos. I say 70% McCarthy wins. All right.

Well, we'll follow your reporting at the center square.com. But enough with the House Speaker. Let's move on. Some other big news this week first for the first time in his presidency. Joe Biden is visiting the southern border in El Paso, Texas on Sunday. Yeah, it's pronounced El Paso. Thanks, you know. I said El Paso.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, for the first time his presidency, he's acknowledging that they're, he didn't use the word border crisis, but he's acknowledging that immigration is a problem, illegal immigration is a problem. He's going to visit the border in El Paso, Texas on Sunday. And he also gave a speech yesterday, Thursday, where he promised more border security and pushed for increased legal immigration. Tell us about this.

Yeah, this has been, you know, one of the big stories of the week on Wednesday. Biden hinted at this. He told reporters that his intention was to visit the border when he was, you know, this is when he was boarding and de-planning Air Force One, which sent really a news flurry. A lot of Republicans were reacting quickly. The general Republican response was, oh, wow, it's too little too late. And by the way, if you don't actually do anything substantive, a border visit doesn't mean much. But they have been pressuring him. And, you know, Vice President Kamala Harris, who was sort of in charge of the border,

but then deflected that responsibility, which once it totally became a mess, I think she is thinking long term for her political future. And does it want to be blamed for every border crisis? I mean, that'd be kind of like a year ago if Biden asked you to be in charge, the inflations are. You know, it's like there's not too much you can do about it. It's going to be bad for a couple of years. You're going to take the blame. And he gets to kind of sidestep it.

So I think, you know, it's this parallel. But he, I think he maybe raised some hopes that maybe something would happen on the immigration front. Even a lot of moderate Democrats have really been wanting Biden to go down there because they're getting crushed on this immigration issue. And, I mean, illegal immigration has absolutely soared since Biden took office. Part of that is because Biden's made some executive changes that have made it a more favorable climate for migrants. So legal immigrants include in that where they're more likely to get in. They're much less likely to get deported when they're here. It's almost, you know, there's a very, very little chance.

More likely to be released in the U.S. with a court date. And we know the vast majority of those, them don't show up. that court date. So who knows where they are? Right. And even more importantly, ICE agents are really not pursuing them and like trying to track them down to deport them. And I think the word's gotten out on that. Unless you have a criminal record, ICE is for the most part not knocking on your door to deport you under the Biden administration. That is a Biden administration change that is pretty substantive. And it's kind of bad. I mean, El Paso where Biden is visiting has declared, they declared a state of emergency in December. I mean, they are literally having thousands and thousands of

migrants a week just pouring over their borders. You see the pictures of these camps that are set up tents on the street. People are, of course, many of them are coming over having spent their last time giving it to a coyote to get them there. So they're coming over, many of them were destitute. Some are coming from really poor countries like Venezuela, which has been absolutely destroyed by, you know, socialism and some people were starving over there. So they barely make it across totally poor. And so, you know, I think people, you know, have compassion and sympathy on those who are fleeing places like Venezuela, but it creates a really big social safety net problem. It's like a safety issue where people are going to sleep is a huge logistical

challenge. And so these are all the things that are kind of swirling. Also, you know, we've had some good reporting at the Soonersquare.com about all these Texas counties have declared there's actually an invasion at the southern border, right? That the numbers, are so high at this point that they're saying they're being invaded, which may sound like a silly political ploy. But the number of migrants, you know, I think we had about two million getaways last year, if that's right, somewhere in that neighborhood. We had more than three million, three point two million encounters, including gotaways. Godaways is the term that border agents used to call people who cross the border illegally between poor,

of entry with the intention of evading capture and trying to get into the U.S. without U.S. officials knowing about it. So it's more than 3.2 million encounters, including Gadaways. Gotcha. I think maybe it was closer to $2 million a year before. So that's just in one year, right? So you compare that. I mean, the population of Houston, which is the biggest city in Texas, is like $2.3 million, I believe. Right. So you had more people come across the world. And that's not just in Texas, but it's just perspective. In one year, then the whole population of Houston, El Paso is around 700,000 people. And you're just having, you know, that's when you're having thousands of people come,

just that's the perspective, you know, a million may not sound like a lot. Three million may not. It's a big number. But, you know, when you think about the whole population of the U.S., you're like, well, you know, it's like a few percentage points. But they're not just in, they're not equally spread across the U.S. You know, they're not equally in Michigan and New England, right? They're concentrated in a certain area.

And those border states are really feeling it. So Biden's going down there. He announced, he sparked really a lot of criticism in controversy because he said he did a couple of things that really I was surprised by. One, you know, I watched his speech. And one thing that he did, he announced $23 million in additional humanitarian aid to Mexico and Central America. And he went at length, basically made the case that this humanitarian aid is going to make,

I mean, I think it's going to sound like I'm simplifying it or trying to make you look bad, but I'm really being true to what he said, which is we need to improve these countries so that people don't want to leave and migrate to the U.S. And if we spend more money on humanitarian aid in Mexico and Central America, the countries will be so nice that people won't want to leave and come here. That was his basic argument, which... I think the number was $23 million, and that's, of course, American taxpayer dollars. One, to me and you, $23 million is a lot of money.

But when you're talking about entire countries, $23 million is a pittance. But also, how do we know how those countries are going to use that money? How do we know that money is going to get to the poorest, the neediest residents and citizens of those countries? We know it's not. I mean, we know it's not. The cartels are going to get their hands of some of that money almost certainly. I mean, it's got to filter through 100 corrupt government officials, cartel sources. And by the way, it's just not very much money when you're talking about rebuilding whole countries.

And you can't even give everybody a snow cone in these countries for $23 million. I mean, it's, and I think we've shown in recent history that nation building is really difficult. And we spent, you know, billion, you know, we've spent a lot of money, billions of dollars overseas trying to nation building. to very little effect. So that was one that was a little bit hard to swallow, I think, that point. And then the other was he basically announced an expansion of legal migration. He wanted to expand legal pathways for migrants to come here, which is already facing some legal challenges. But I think, you know, the idea of, hey, illegal immigration is out of control. We've got a, well, he didn't really say that. But the idea of the border is really needs to be a priority.

I'm going to address this. And by the way, I'm going to increase immigration, I think is not necessarily the message to have when we're at these record record numbers. But we'll see how it plays out politically. I don't know. It's kind of a, it's a very risky thing to take on, but it's also risky to ignore when the problem is so bad. Well, and as a matter of fact, in response to President Biden's speech on immigration

and announcing that he's going to visit El Paso on Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas officials. Texas, of course, is bearing the brunt of the border crisis. He blasted the president both for saying he's going to visit the border finally on Sunday. Abbott told the Center Square our Texas correspondent, essentially, if this is just a photo op, don't even bother, just stay in D.C., but also criticism over everything you just talked about. increasing legal immigration into the country because there's, you know, so many people who are already in the country illegally, spending taxpayer dollars on these foreign countries. Bethany Blankly, our correspondent in Texas, got an interview with Governor Texas yesterday,

and he's not happy. Yeah, well, I mean, he's been demanding action on this for years. he's shipped illegal immigrants all around the country to, you know, all these, him and DeSantis, you know, Martha's Vineyard in D.C. And he's been crying out for help and really. New York City and Philadelphia. He's faced wide criticism for that. The mayors of those, those are all sanctuary cities, by the way.

The mayors of those cities have declared states of emergencies. Chicago mayor of Lori Lightfoot yesterday just asked for something like 40. more million dollars from the state to help her deal with the immigrants who have been bused there. But this has been going on in Texas for more than two years. And the thousand or a couple thousand or so people that have been bused to these cities, that's nothing compared to what Texas is facing. Right.

And really this, yeah, the explosion or surge has been happening for a couple years. But this is really like a decades old problem. Even under like George W. Bush's administration, there was, you know, the lawmakers I've heard said there was really going to be an effort to address the border crisis. And then the kind of the war on terror took over precedent when, when 9-11 happened and all that. But this is something that Republicans, especially border Republicans, have been trying to get resolution on some kind of real border security. I mean, all nations all around the world secure their borders and pretty. I don't know, which is way better than we do. And I think you can see that you saw how it propelled Trump to his victory in 2016. I think his fight for a border wall, although it was kind of mocked by many on the left, I think that a lot of Republicans in the base interpreted that as, hey, somebody who's finally serious enough to do something really dramatic on this issue. Because just sending more agents and more drones and whatever, it hasn't worked.

You know, all the experts in D.C. will tell you that walls are stupid and that you need to just have more high-tech surveillance and drones and agents. But I think the average person is like, hey, aren't we already doing that and it's not working? I know that if there was a wall in front of me right now, I wouldn't be able to climb it. So maybe we should do that. I think the wall is a symbol of the desperation on how nothing has worked on this. And Trump was able to tap into that politically. So this has been going on for even longer, but you're right that since Biden took office, it's surge. even more. We've talked a lot on this podcast about Title 42, which is a Trump era provision

that allowed border agents to expel migrants more quickly in the name of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The Supreme Court is going to decide on that case in the next few months whether that policy can stay in place or not. And Biden took a shot at that, and he really attacked Title 42 in his speech yesterday. this, you know, we talk about this issue a lot, but there's never really big answers. There's just big problems. And I guess it's going to be another, the story is going to continue throughout 2023. Follow our coverage at the center square got dot com.

Casey, we just have a couple minutes left time for one more story. The economy, 40-year high inflation was another big story in 2022. It looks like Americans at least think it's going to be another big story. this year, a new poll that you reported about this week shows that Americans have significant concerns about the economy and their financial well-being in 2023. Tell us about the poll. Yeah, that's right. We just looked at some year-end data as we were heading into 2023.

We're looking at how did Americans feel about 2022 and how are they feeling about 2023? And regardless of some slide improvements in inflation, some better jobs numbers that we're we've seen lately, Americans are still really pessimistic. This poll found that 80% of those surveyed expect higher taxes, a higher deficit, and a worse economy in 2023. So those are issues we care about. And of course, Americans aren't optimistic. More than six and 10, think prices will rise at a high rate and the stock market will fall in the year ahead. So lower stock market, more inflation, higher deficit, higher taxes, and a worse economy overall. They also predict unemployment

will increase, which is interesting because unemployment has actually been a bright spot in the Biden economy. The latest job numbers, I believe, showed it went down to 3.5%, which is really the pre-pandemic level. So unemployment has been a better part of this Biden economy. But overall, Americans I think they're just generally pessimistic about the economy and they figure this unemployment will go the way that most of the rest of the economy is going in there. Right. And of course, the stock market had a brutal 2022. If that continues throughout 2023, Casey, I'm never going to be able to retire.

So you're stuck with me for a couple of decades. Well, my big question is when you're your house speaker, how are you going to tackle these challenges facing the American people? End with jokes, Casey. Well, that's all the time we had this week. Thank you, Casey, for your insight. reminder to our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McAulip. We'll talk to you next week.