Judging Freedom - Rep. Andy Biggs takes on Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, December 9th, 2022. It's about 9.30 in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States. My guest today is Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, a person whose work I've admired for many years. And this is his maiden appearance and hopefully not the last on judging freedom. Congressman Biggs, a pleasure, sir. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Judge. Good to be with you. Thank you. I have to start by telling you something you probably already know, which is that if I were in the House of Representatives today, an unlikely prospect from my home state in New Jersey, but if I were in the House of Representatives today, I would be a member of the House Freedom Caucus and I would be supporting you for Speaker of the House of Representatives. Yet, how much of a chance do you stand in your quest to lead the Republicans and to lead the House?

Well, you know, it's going to take lightning to strike. It's a bit of a chaotic quest, but we will, I think, deny the speakership to Mr. McCarthy. And I think hopefully we get somebody who's more center right and who's going to stand up for the principles of freedom and liberty that we need. And so it's a long shot. I know that. But I could not sit there and let him be by unanimous consent to be elected Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy has voted for every big government expanding the size of government piece of legislation that has come before his desk including the 860 billion dollar monstrosity which is likely to become law on the next day

called the National Defense Authorization Act. I don't think there's a small government bone in his body, in his political body. Do you? I don't, and I agree with you. I mean, most people think, oh, just McCarthy, he's just on the scene. Judge, he's been at or near the apex of the Republican Party in Congress for 12 years. From 2014 to 2018, he was the majority leader. And as you say, every big spending, big government bill, not only did he vote for, but he advocated for. And he put together coalitions with the Democrats when they couldn't get enough votes and the majority party Republicans. So to me, what you say is 100% accurate. I don't see where he's going to reduce

the size and scope of government. I don't see where he's going to diffuse power away from the center back to the states. And I just think that's furthering the same trajectory, same suboptimal path that we've been on. whatever number of votes he needs, which I think is 218, in order to be elected Speaker, what will happen? Will a Democrat be elected? Can Democrats vote for you? Would there be another Republican like you or somebody else offered as the Speaker? What will happen mechanically? So the way it works is you get 50% plus one of the people who actually vote so so let's just say 435 you got to get 218 right hakeem jeffries is the democrat he's not gonna he's gonna get 213 that's where he is so kevin can't lose more than five or six people if he does he doesn't get it but that does not mean the

Democrat gets it because you still have to get to 218. And so let's say I get 20 votes and somebody else gets 10 and Kevin gets 185. It's still not a Democrat. What would happen at that point is the clerk is in charge and the clerk typically would probably, we've asked, we've inquired, trying to find out, but odds are that the clerk will grant a recess. We'll go back in the Republican conference. It'll be a closed-door conference and people will be in denial. They'll be in anger, even though we're telling them, we've been telling him for weeks, he doesn't have the votes.

And somebody else, if it's not me, it will be somebody else. And believe me, there are several people that have reached out to me or my colleagues in the Freedom Caucus saying, you know, I'd be interested, but I'm not going to put myself out there until we know that Kevin really isn't going to be it. Then you have another ballot. And you'll, one time there was over a hundred ballots. Now that was a, that was like 150 years ago, but you can have more than one ballot, and that's what would happen. Are the ballots secret ballots?

No, you stand up on a roll call, and you have to use the surname. If you don't say the surname, you are considered a non-voter. So if I stood up and said, Andrew, they would say that's a non-voter. So if I stood up and said, Andrew, they would say that's a non-vote. I would have to say Napolitano for that to be a vote. Okay. Got it. Got it. How bad, I watched your statement to your constituents, which I thought was terrific on the National Defense Authorization Act. But aside from the fact that it's 4,400 pages long, that's 1,500 pages longer than Obamacare. Aside from the fact that it's that long and you only have 30 hours to read it, how much of a monstrosity is it? Well, it's hugely bad because

you're giving more money to Ukraine that's not accountable. We just don't even know where all that money is going. We don't know all the weaponry. So the Ukraine issue is bad. You also have the woke policies that are still there. You didn't get rid of any of the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. You have the Green New Deal. Judge, we're talking about putting electric armored vehicles on the field of battle.

You know, we haven't even perfected the battery process yet. So where some batteries are explodes still when they get wet. So you've got this massive amount of money, literally hundreds of billions of dollars going into the Green New Deal aspect of this. Then, you know, even the vaccine mandate that they got rid of, it is not a permanent vax mandate rescission. Does it bring back the troops that they kicked out and those from whom they withheld pay? Does it make them equal and even to where they would have been? No, it does not. It does not. And so all it does is it says, okay, from prospectively, we're not going to force you to get a vaccine mandate for a period of time. They give themselves some wiggle room and some out room in the future. But, you know, we've got,

I've got constituents in service that don't want to get the vaccine. And so they don't get, they don't let them participate in training or anything else. And they say, well, see, we didn't kick her out, but you've denied her the ability to train and work with her unit. And that was not corrected in this bill. Neither was the back pay and restoration of these. Does the bill address either of the AUMFs, the authorization to use military force of 01 or of 03,

the George Bush era legislation that every president since then has claimed is a blank check to start whatever war they want? Yeah, no, it does not. And that was part of the problem. They continue to to as you say these aumfs which i believe are unconstitutional to begin with um the aumfs are um being bastardized as we speak and they're being used in every which way and effectively you know i got i got to put it

this way we're fighting a proxy war with Russia today in the Ukraine. And there is absolutely no authority for that. And we're going to continue to fund that. Other things that are happening in that bill, too, is, you know, we continue to provide abortions contrary to the Dobbs decision, for instance. They don't have the authority to do that, but we're going to provide those, and we're going to take our woke programs overseas. We're going to try to teach those to other militaries how to be woke and crazy overseas with U.S. taxpayer dollars. So $860 billion for the Department of Defense is more than the next 12 countries' defense budgets combined, and that, of course, includes

Russia and China. Surely this didn't come about from some rational debate. Surely this was cobbled together by Democratic leadership and Republican leadership. Yeah, that's exactly right. In fact, in fact, even the House Armed Services Chair who works on these, they're on the edges. This is all negotiated primarily, quite frankly, between what they call the four corners, the House Speaker, the minority leader, and the Senate majority and minority leaders. And quite frankly, most of that's coming from the leadership in the Senate and it gets foisted back upon us. Do we get a chance to offer amendments? No. And this one, Judge, they went and they used a suspension bill because the Democrat Congressional Black Caucus

had said, look, if you're going to get rid of the VAX mandates prospectively, what we want is we want the John R. Lewis Memorial Voting Rights Act, H4, which would emasculate elections and federalize elections unconstitutionally. We want that to be in the NDAA. So in order to prevent that, because they didn't want to allow any amendments, they did what's called the suspension process, Judge. They put that on the floor. That could have passed with a voice vote of five people. Fortunately,

everybody is interested there and Freedom Caucus is down there and others were to demand a roll call vote. They could have passed that by voice vote. Does the House of Representatives have serious debates on these matters that materially affect the Constitution? Or does everybody just vote with the exception of the Freedom Caucus, just vote in lockstep with the way leadership tells them? Well, you don't have meaningful debate, in my opinion. Every state legislature is going to have better debate processes than the United States Congress. I guarantee you that. And so you don't have that meaningful debate. They'll get down there. They say each side gets an hour. This is a bill that's almost a trillion dollars. And it will impact everything that we do militarily and actually even foreign policy-wise and a lot of domestic policy. And you're going to get an hour debate.

And what that means is 40 people want to go down to debate, they're going to say you've got a minute to a minute and a half to debate. And nobody's asking questions. You're not getting to ask questions. And so, no, there's no real meaningful debate in the United States Congress. Let me bring you back to where we started, Congressman. And, of course, I wish you well. Who knows? Maybe lightning will strike in your quest to become Speaker of the House. When is this vote and when will all this come together? January 3rd is the vote. It's at noon

per the Constitution. We open up a new session. We'll do roll call first. We'll do the vote. My guess is it'll take two and a half to three hours to get through that. There'll be turmoil on the floor. There'll be a recess. And then we'll go back in these closed conferences and actually get to the nitty gritty. To be honest with you, if this were to be done right, I would, and I continue to do this, I call upon Representative McCarthy to count his votes

and understand he doesn't have the votes, step aside, let other people come forward, and let's get this done so that we can go forward on January 3rd in a more orderly fashion. But you know what? People say, oh, it's going to be chaotic. You know what? That may work now and then to have a little bit of chaos, a little bit of discussion, a little bit of self-reflection that requires some turmoil.

Congressman Biggs, my hat is off to you for your fidelity to first principles and your personal courage. I'm sure you're making some enemies there, but courage and fidelity of first principles are more important than temporary friendship. All the best to you. Thanks for joining us today. My pleasure. Thank you, Judge. Take care. Have a good holidays. Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Take care. Have a good holidays. Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.