Judging Freedom - Stopping Government Spending w/Rep Any Biggs (R-AZ)

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 2nd, 2023. It's about 925 or so in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Our guest is Congressman Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, leader of the constitutional wing, the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, and one of the rebels that I and many of you who watch this show were cheering on during the votes for Speaker of the House of Representatives a few weeks ago. Congressman Biggs, I know it's a busy day. Thanks for sharing your time with us. My pleasure, Judge. It's always good to be with you. Thank you. When Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives,

it only happened, I think, because of agreements that he made with your group, with the more, in my view, the more principled constitutional Republicans in the House. Has Speaker McCarthy upheld his end of those bargains? I would say I'd give him a pretty solid A grade at doing that judge he's uh you know there's been a couple things that have been uh uh you know raggedy on the edge but everything else by and large has been pretty solid you know so if i was to take an inventory of what uh he said he would do you know the rules package is good you saw evidence of it. I mean, just last week, for the first time in seven years, more than seven years, you actually had members be able to go to the floor, judge, and actually offer amendments and debate amendments. And you had, I think, somewhere 80, 100 individuals came

down and offered amendments from both sides of the aisle and had the debate. And we actually voted, had a lot of votes on it. And some people were like, well, this is a waste of time. And I said, that is legislating. That is actually opening up the process. It sounds like even though this new procedure, which allows members the opportunity to offer amendments and actually debate the merits or the constitutionality of something on the floor, which came about by your group negotiating, Republicans negotiating with McCarthy, is now being lauded by both sides of the aisle, because both sides want to be able of the aisle because both sides want to be able to offer amendments and both sides want to be able to bait to debate like your friends on the senate do

yeah i mean that was it was really interesting because uh poulone who was the guy managing the democrats side he was complaining he felt like he didn't get a fair shake and then when it was all sudden done he stood up and said you know we appreciate this because we were able to offer 60 some or whatever it was amendments and debate them. And he said, we haven't been able to do that. We're glad we were able to do it. So good thing. That's a good thing. Okay. Where do you think things will go with the debt ceiling? Where do Republicans want cuts to be made? What of negotiations did speaker mccarthy have with the president yesterday on this subject matter so i'll start with the last first because we haven't received a full report um from mr mccarthy about um how that went with his meeting

with president biden i saw the same thing there. I think everybody's seeing the reports and he's saying that he can work a deal, but he's also said some good things. You know, for Kevin, I thought that was pretty good for him to talk about the debt to GDP ratio being something where I think he said 120%, which is probably about right, and how dangerous it is to the republic for us to have that kind of debt load.

So that's important. So I think he's willing to be there, and we're trying to weigh in with him and give him ideas. I mean, you've got to have some ideas on how you're going to do this. You can't, quite frankly, politically, probably even on a moral basis, you cannot touch Social Security or Medicare benefits. You just can't do that because promises have been made to these people, no matter what you think about those promises. So where you got to go is you've got to identify other places

that you can reduce and freeze. Is it realistic to expect the Congress of the United States of America to spend within its means? I'm laughing at my own question. I apologize. Yeah, you know the answer to that. I mean, the reality is there is, I truly believe there is a sizable, here's the problem. It's a sizable plurality that says we should spend within our means, right?

So we could go through and start reducing this stuff here and freeze it. I mean, that's what you would do. You'd freeze it. But Judge, right now, I think people will be shocked by this. I know every time I think about it, I'm shocked by it. The monthly structural deficit, that is to say the amount of money this federal government spends more than what it brings in, averages around $100 billion. So in December, it was $82 billion because you had around a hundred billion dollars so it's between so in december is 82 billion dollars because you had a better revenue month but it's going to be between 80 and 100 and 10 15 billion dollars of a deficit every month and and so when we start talking about the debt ceiling uh and they won't give us the number. I have asked multiple groups, multiple people, and I've said, what is the amount of money trillion dollars to kick the debt ceiling down can down the

road for two years and and i'm just going to saddle future generations with so much debt one wonders if the federal government would collapse right Right. And that is the problem because you have to have realistic a goal, a realistic goal. And I was talking to a guy who's left Congress now, but when he came in, he said they would always tell us our budget plan is to balance within seven years. And he said after three years of this, and he voted for the budget every year because he said,

they tell me it's going to balance within seven years. So then they came to him and said, okay, now this year's budget will balance within 10 years. And he said, wait, for three years, you've told me, we should be balancing now within four years. It's all, when you bet on the come with Congress, you will lose every time because they're never going to get there i've actually heard people say they're going to they want to do a balance of budget within 20 years and i'm like this the the first step is to recognize that

you've got a problem you're addicted to spending more than you have and and we actually have probably some republicans who believe in modern monetary theory as well you know uh the democrats believe it but i think that there's some republicans who believe in that as well um so that's where we are judge i mean and so we there's a group of us and i've been meeting with a group of senators uh with with some of us and we're trying to put together a an actual real budget plan to take this down and when I told these guys last night I said the rumor I'm hearing I just said what are you guys hearing on the number because they couldn't tell me last week I said because the room I've been out digging around and the rumor I'm hearing is 2.6 trillion dollars everybody throws up their hands they're like well well how can any of us ever support that?

Boy, if the House votes for that, one of my viewers' messages to me and you, then there's really no difference between a Republican version of government and a Democrat version of government. If the House of Representatives votes to increase debt of that magnitude of any magnitude yeah no I agree with that I I found out when I came to DC that there really are there are two parties in Washington DC one is the cartel and they're the ones that want to just keep spending money it doesn't matter whether you're Democrat or Republican and then there's there's others who want to reduce and shrink the size and scope of government. And that turns out that the vast

majority belong to that first party. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. The last time the budget was balanced, truly balanced, was under, of all people, Bill Clinton. That's correct. And that's when he and Al Gore, I remember this because I was opining at Fox on the constitutionality of it, raised taxes retroactively, but they did balance the budget for about 12 months. They didn't borrow money. That's right. So I think that's 94, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Well, one of the reasons we spent so much money is waste. You pointed out yesterday, I can't believe this number, $560 billion stolen from the American taxpayer under the government COVID spending. That's half a trillion. Yeah. And, Judge, that's focusing on the unemployment insurance portion of the COVID relief package. I don't even think we're touching the PPP portion when we start saying that the the amount of money on the PPP waste and fraud and improper payments, I think is is north of $800 billion. And so, so there's so you went we went from government spending of $4.4 trillion roughly to $6.5 trillion in about a six-month period. So you were flooding, which is why you have inflation today, by the way.

You devalued your currency. And so that led to inflation. But when you flood the country, you know that the grifters and the fraudsters are out there, and they're going to find a way to rake off a portion of that money. Where is the outrage over this? I mean, this is theft on such a monumental scale, it's mind-boggling. When is the last time? I mean, this isn't Iraq or Iran. When is the last time

the United States government tolerated or ignored or failed to address, however you want to characterize it, theft of this magnitude, half a trillion? Outside of potentially a war scenario, I can't imagine it. But what I would say, Judge, I thought you were going to ask me this question. When is the last time the federal government tolerated corruption, fraud, and improper payments? And I would have told you last year and the year before that. Well, we certainly are tolerating it with everything we're giving away to Ukraine. I mean, when is that going to stop? When is Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin going to realize that they made a mistake?

We're not going to fight World War III. We can't and shouldn't be fighting the Russians. And every nickel we give the Ukrainians just extends the death and destruction there. Well, there's no facing rationality here in Congress. I mean, there are people on my side of the aisle who have said, as long as it takes and anything it takes. And you can go to the same people and say, well, what does victory look like to you? What does victory look like to you? does victory look like to you and they cannot describe what victory looks like correct they can't say they can't say ukraine's going to get crimea back they can't say that russia is going to leave the russian-speaking areas of ukraine which part of which is part of russia for 300 years they can't give you that answer no that's exactly right and so so when we start

talking ukraine um and so when you when you give m1 abrams tanks and i i mean the the ranker of of of the uh hasks house armed services committee said biggs is biggs didn't know what he's talking about because we tweeted out and said there will be u U.S. troops on the ground, of course. There will be U.S. troops on the ground because we have to train them. It takes 90 days to train. You've got to have support vehicles. You have to have mechanics because the M1 has a jet engine, for Pete's sakes. It takes highly specialized mechanics to do that. You can't just

train these people in 30 days and say, and so I said, there'll be troops on the ground, U.S. troops on the ground. He said, I don't know what I'm talking about. I do know what I'm talking about. I went to military personnel and said, what does this mean? And they said, there will be U.S. troops on the ground. There has to be. And so these guys are in denial. Our mutual friend, who's a big fan of yours, Colonel Douglas McGregor, says exactly what you've just said, that particularly with respect to this tank, it requires as much personnel and expertise to repair and maintain it as it does to operate. Now we're training these people in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. That war is going to be over before the training is completed and all the money will go down the drain. I know we have a time constraint. I want to go to one last topic because you're going to stir the pot with this. Secretary Mayorkas, What are you doing with him today? So I've introduced articles of impeachment.

I'll tell you why, Judge. I really am a believer in this, that what he has done is willful and it has been to destroy our boundaries, our border. And any view of history is if you're going to have a nation, dissolution, so if you can, there's a book called China and Disintegration. You can go look at that book. You can look at these books and these histories

and these studies, and what they'll tell you is one of the first things that happens when a nation disintegrates, and we've got three of them going right now, Judge, just so you know, is their border, their boundary, whether it's ancient Rome, ancient Greece, whether it's the Han Dynasty in China, their border gets disintegrated. It is obliterated. And our southern border is obliterated. I mean, it just is.

You know, I go down there often, and the cartel truly controls the border. Anybody coming in? But but Secretary Mayorkas, has he committed high crimes and misdemeanors or is he just doing what his boss, Joe Biden, wants him to do? Because Joe thinks this will gin up his base and the Democratic Party. That's a fair question. And I've got some of my colleagues who we debate this. And I say, look, my own opinion is, if you wanted to see whether Joe Biden understands what's going on the border and the policies that are being promulgated by this administration, by Alejandro Mayorkas, just go watch Joe Biden and the El Paso trip he took to the border. He doesn't know what's going on in the border. Alejandro Mayorkas does know what's going on

in the border. Alejandro Mayorkas is specifically told his CBP and ICE agents do not enforce the law. Wow. Will Speaker McCarthy allow your offered legislation on impeaching Secretary Mayorkas to make it to the floor of the House? I think he will assign it to the Judiciary Committee. And just getting it on the Judiciary Committee, Judge, will be an uphill battle in and of itself. Okay. Congressman Biggs, we promised we'd end at this hour, could talk to you all morning. I know you have very important work to do. It's so gracious of you to come on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for always having me. I appreciate it, Judge. Of course. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. freedom.