Judging Freedom - Debt Ceiling bill, Who Loses_ Rep Andy Biggs 2_00p est

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 2, 2023. It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My dear friend and one of the finest defenders of the Constitution in the House of Representatives today, Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona joins us today. Congressman, it's always a pleasure. I know you've had an exhausting week. Thank you for finding the time to chat with us about what happened this week. So how bad was this legislation enacted by a coalition of liberal and moderate Republicans and Democrats to allow the president and his people to borrow without limit until 2025? You know, Judge, it's good to be with you. I would be hard-pressed to find a

piece of legislation that does more damage to the country than this particular piece of legislation. It really covers a broad swath of damage. It causes a broad swath of damage to the country. And so it truly may be the worst piece of legislation that come down the pike. I think back to things like Obamacare, which is we're still dealing with the fallout from that. And that's going to be a multigengenerational negative impact. What happened here also has the potential to catalyze the path that we've been on, just harden it even further and make it almost, you know, it's almost irretrievable to come back from the brink of economic disaster that we're seeing here. When Speaker McCarthy negotiated this with the president, I guess most of the negotiation was done with their staffs rather than directly,

didn't he pretty much violate, A, whatever the Republican Party stands for today and B, what he promised many of your colleagues, including you personally, in order to secure your votes for him for Speaker of the House. Yeah, so I'm going to start the second part first. He never promised me anything personally because I told him I would never vote for him and And I never did. So I just know I want that. You have the courage of a hundred tigers. God bless you. So so so people would say to me, what do you what do you want from Mr. McCarthy to vote? What could he do? What could he give you? And I'd say, I don't want anything more than him not to be the Speaker of the House, because this is what I thought would happen. I mean, really, when you look at it, I predicted this a year ago, because a year ago in the Freedom Caucus, we were talking already about the debt ceiling, that we're going to whether it's budget or debt ceiling every time literally judge for 13

years that he's been in leadership he was the point guy that would go over and cut the deal with the democrats and um we would be sold down the river and i said we just cannot tolerate that so that's that's why i say i didn't want anything. But having said that, he did violate the deal that he made with everybody else. And the most basic fundamental one was he said that they were going to be at 2022 spending levels. Okay, let's just think about that. They're going to be at 2022 spending levels. Well, that's not where they start. They start actually north of 2022. They don't get to the full 2023 levels, but they're between the two. And that's where he ended up. And yet, you know, and did you start talking about

what else did he violate? He said he was going to do open rules. Well, this didn't get open rules. It's got closed rules. What does open rules mean, Congressman? Open rules means everybody gets a shot to go down and try to make a case for amendments. So you can amend the bill on the floor if you can get the votes. And they didn't want that. I had, in fact, I just actually pulled my amendments because it was obvious to me that the fix was in on the rules deal. I had five amendments. And the other aspect too, is I told my staff, why do we want to make a really horrific bill just less horrific? I mean, but anyway, so those are just a couple of things where he violated the rules or his deal with the-

Didn't he also promise that no legislation would come to the floor of the House if Republicans in the Rules Committee opposed it? Yeah. As a matter of fact, that was another one. And, you know, Chip Roy and Ralph Norman both said no. And so they went with they got seven R's for it, four D's against and two R's against the bill. So it passed out of the Rules Committee 7-6. Here's Chip Roy, exhausted, exasperated, not resigned, but exhausted and exasperated, I think, right before that vote of the Rules Committee was taken. This doesn't represent any material change in the direction of where this country is going in terms of spending. Massive increase of debt was sort of

a blip on the radar. But even the Limit Safe Grow Act is just nibbling around the edges of what needs to be done. I don't understand how my colleagues should go to the steps of the Capitol and have all these groups from their middle school and elementary school and high school and talk to them about all the future of this country and where we're headed, when each and every one of them has a $100,000 debt payment attached to them. Each and every one of them has a $100,000 debt payment attached to them. He's right that they're not going to mention that to the schoolchildren. Let me ask you a big picture.

What does the Republican Party stand for today congressman biggs with respect to fiscal sanity that's a great question and i you know my wife and i actually were talking about this and and it was like what where are we where are we as a party so you look at and you you go, what keeps us together as a party? Pat Buchanan actually wrote a paper, an essay on this before he retired called, you know, what unites us anymore? And I ask that question because the Freedom Caucus was born out of the notion of you have got to, you have to bring the spending down. Because that's what it is. We always we always have enough revenue. And when you reduce taxes and regulation, you have even more revenue. But but there's always deficit spending.

So when I look at it, I say, well, how is it that the Republican Party platform is so good, but the people who get elected to Washington, D.C. don't adhere to that platform? And I've come to the conclusion that the Republican Party platform is drawn up and written and voted on by grassroots organizers in the national party. But when you get to Washington, D.C., these aren't grassroots organizers anymore.

You've got the K Street lobbyists that are influencing influencing him you do have a uniparty judge i i you know uh donald trump said the swamp is deeper than he ever thought it was it is a real uh soul-sucking swamp and and and and so when we say what does the republican party stand for well the i think most people in the republican party say you got to pay your bills you got you've got our lower taxes you have to give us freedom back and and and really the polling is pretty clear no 75 of all americans regardless of of ideological where they're on the ideological spectrum, said you cannot raise the debt ceiling, you can't spend more money, raise your debt limit, unless you cut the spending. And so that's why you're getting this bogus lying narrative going

out from some of my colleagues who know better that are going out there saying, well, we cut a massive amount of money in spending. They didn't cut any money in spending. So, Judge, I'm ranting here, but I'll just tell you that when you say, what do we stand for? I look back at the party platform and say, that's what we're supposed to stand for. I'm just not sure that in Washington, D.C., it's being enacted. You know, you've heard me say this before. You and I have discussed it on air, and we've also discussed it privately. There's one party running Congress. It's the big government party.

It's the pro-welfare state, pro-national security state, pro-war, pro-debt. And look at the coalition that Speaker McCarthy put together. There it is. Because the Republicans that voted for this obviously don't stand for any fiscal sanity. I don't want to make your day worse. But here's Kevin McCarthy boasting and gloating. See how many lies you can count, he tells in this clip. I've been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker, because I knew the debt ceiling was coming. I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship.

For the first time in quite some time, we'd spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight, we all made history because this is the biggest cut and savings this Congress has ever voted for. That simply can't be true, Congressman Biggs. Yeah, no. Okay, so let's start where he was. I believe he did think about this from beforehand because I had started thinking about this a year ago. We both knew it was going to come. His view of making history is right. He has made history. He has made history because he's actually, but Judge, he not only misrepresents everything that's in this bill. Most people don't realize this.

We didn't raise the debt ceiling. It wasn't like he had a credit card limit of $5,000 and we raised it to $7,500. They took the cap completely off. The cap is completely off. Even Mrs. Pelosi insisted on a numerical cap when she presided over the last increase in the debt ceiling. No cap lets Janet Yellen go out and borrow all the money she can get. Yeah. And it's not tied to your spending deficit either, Judge. That's the other she can get. Yeah. And it's, and it's not tied to your spending deficit either judge. That's, that's the other mind blower. That's the other mind blower. I mean,

but when he starts talking about lowering the spending, you, we already have the high bloated COVID relief baseline, and they lifted it up a little bit. And so, so just so everybody understands this earlier in the week the cbo came out and said okay we're going to score this as a 2.1 trillion dollar uh uh spending reduction right but 1.5 of that was in the so-called administrative pay go provision provision of the bill. Well, the administrative pay-go provision, once everybody actually examined it, it did multiple things. Number one, it allowed the bureaucracy, all they had to do was to request a waiver. It allowed the lefty head of OMB, Office of Budget and Management, Management and Budget, to waive the PAYGO requirements.

So they don't have to say, okay, we're going to have a new program that's going to be based on this. It also, it had the same RAINS Act limit. So if it was below $100 million in spending or impact, then they didn't even have to worry about PAYGO at all. So, and then the third thing is, that was really ridiculous, is they excluded judicial review. So anybody questioning whether they had a legitimate reason to be excluded from PAYGO, well, you couldn't even take it to court. There was no remedy for you.

So as the week went on, CBO took that out and said, okay, they didn't include that in their final score, right? I mean, so you immediately walked $1.5 trillion back. And then they came up with the $1.3 trillion based on this freeze, this ostensible freeze with a slight bump up. Now, that was supposed to last six years, but then you find out, judge, it's only imposed for two years, it's targets for four years, and then after that, there's no targets even. All right. So as I hear you, A, this is so complex, it's difficult even to grasp what it accomplishes in the 99 pages. B, it doesn't cut spending the way the speaker said. C, there are so many tricks and gimmicks in it, it's even worse

than it appears on its face. Are those fair takeaways? Judge, that's why you're the judge and I'm just a congressman, because you succinctly say exactly what I'm saying. That's right. I mean, I could go through point by point and tell you how bad it is, but that's it. It's dishonest to say what they're saying. And that's why I'm saying some of these people are my friends. They're good people, but they know what they're saying and selling is not true what about uh speaker mccarthy himself is there a provision in the house rules

that would allow any member for any reason to trigger a new vote for Speaker, a single member on his or her own? Yes, it's called a motion to vacate. Anybody can do it. It's a privileged motion. In operation, would you let me tell you in operation how it works, Judge? Yes, please. And I hope it happens, but you'll tell me if you think it's going to happen, because this is a betrayal if ever there was one. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you see a motion to vacate. But here's the reality. Leadership will know it's coming.

Leadership will immediately do what we call a motion to table. In other words, set aside that privileged motion. And it's not privileged if it can be tabled. It's not privileged. That's right. That's right. When I say privileged, it means you're going to get, ostensibly, you're going to get a vote, but they're going to come in and table it, and they're going to get the votes to table it. Why is that? Because people say, well, Andy, the Democrats don't want McCarthy. And I said, that's true. Democrats don't want McCarthy, but they would prefer Hakeem Jeffries. They know

they're not going to get Hakeem Jeffries because nobody, including me, I'm not going to vote for Hakeem Jeffries because as bad as this deal was, Hakeem would give you worse. But it's hard to imagine, Judge, but you can't go there. So they know they're not going to get Hakeem. So I actually have had several Democrats tell me, Andy, we would never support a motion to vacate. And I said, why? And they said, because the next best thing to Hakeem Jeffries being speaker, which we'll never get, is to have Kevin McCarthy as speaker. He has just demonstrated that we can get our way and get what we want. And so you'll get some votes to remove him, I believe, if it goes. And it'll be in the form of against tabling the motion.

So the first thing we would do is we'd vote against the table. I think the tabling would pass. And I hate to be pessimistic, but I also believe in being realistic and explaining exactly the way the procedure works. But that's what it would look like, Judge. So there will be effectively no repercussion for Mr. McCarthy for his betrayal of promises made in order to become speaker and his betrayal of what used to be. the Reagan days, which were formative for you and me, basic principles that Republicans in Congress and in the rank and file stood for. Kevin McCarthy can vacate those principles and construct any deal he wants with liberals who want to spend money like there's no tomorrow and there's no consequence to him. The consequence is if filing a motion to

vacate is for him is politically embarrassing. So he has some modest amount of embarrassment that, but I'm not sure that he senses that. I mean, he thinks this is just a few people that are outraged. I don't think so. But where the real outrage and the real comeuppance is, is when the rank and file of America come out and say, no, no more for you, Mr. McCarthy. But Judge, this is my biggest concern, is that he's formed a new coalition. It was with the liberal Democrats, and that he's going to stay with those guys, because those of us who are trying to put forward the real Republican agenda, which is consistent with the Republican platform,

oppose him because he's not- Wouldn't it be unthinkable for Democrats to vote for, in the House, to vote for a Republican for Speaker? Yeah, absolutely. That's why they'll couch it as a motion to table. They'll say, oh, yeah, we want to set that motion aside. It's too disruptive. It's too conflictual, whatever, however you want to phrase it. But let's say the motion came to the floor. Mr. McCarthy would lose. He'd be removed, would he not? No. You mean if you actually have the vote on the motion to vacate?

I don't think so. I don't think so, and here's why. Well, it only takes five of you, right? I don't know if Santos is still in the Congress or not, but it only takes five Republicans, right? Oh, there's know if Santos is still in the Congress or not, Jayapal, AOC, Jamal Bowman, those, they might join us in voting. But it would look, quite frankly, an awful lot, and this is why I'm so concerned. It would look an awful lot like the vote tally judge of this horrific deal. Right. By the way, there's... Where Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul voted the same way.

Yeah, that's right. Wow. Well, Congressman Biggs, have a glass of scotch. Have a nice weekend. I don't know what to tell you. This is your life. You are the conscience of the Constitution in the House of Representatives today. This is your life. Yeah, I know. And that's, see, that's the other

thing we were talking about this. There's a few of us that are fighting this out. By the way, we got more than we thought would join us in that vote. We had 71, I think, join us. We did not anticipate. I predicted 50 to 60. And so we picked up an additional 20. I think, Judge, by continually being out there telling the truth and exposing this, I think we can get more. But I'm a big believer it's past the time for incrementalism. I really don't think, I don't think you can dilly-dally and cut around the edges anymore. I mean, it's like Chip was saying in that clip, he said, even that other bill that I voted against, he said, that was just cutting around the edges, not really bending the spending curve down. But somebody's got to be the conscience of the body and the question. And just so you know, I'm, I've been receiving just what I would call passive aggressive treatment from some in leadership since, since the January fight. I mean, they're taking my bills.

And next thing I know it's got somebody else's name on it and it's a good bill. So it's going somebody else's name on it and it's a good bill so it's going through right uh they're taking my bill and ken buck's bill on on on policing and they're putting in something they're letting an amendment go on that basically federalizes local police officers and they don't even bother to tell us they're going to do that and of course we vote no on it but they don't tell anybody but the the point is, they're passively, aggressively. They put out words around the grapevine. You know, you can't donate to Andy Biggs. I mean, this is what you face when you stand up to the Uniparty.

And I'm willing to do it, Judge, because somebody's got to do it. And my close friends in Congress, they're doing it too. The Eli Cranes, the Rosendales, the Bob Goodes, the Chip Roy's, many in the Freedom Caucus. We're in there in that fight trying to turn it around. But every one of us has a target on our back by the Unipart. Congressman Biggs, Judging Freedom has a million and a half viewers a week. We are with you. Thank you.

You are the voice of constitutional government in the Congress. It doesn't take a majority to win, but a determined minority, I'm quoting Sam Adams, as you know, you're a historian, to light the brush fires of freedom. Thank you for keeping those brush fires of freedom aflame. And you too. Thank you for all you do. Thank you. God bless you. Have a great weekend. Thanks. That's a great send off on the weekend, Judge. Thank you. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.