The Daily Signal - #548: New House Freedom Caucus Chairman Shares Vision for Road Ahead

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers in the House, has new leadership: Arizona Republican Andy Biggs. Biggs joins the podcast to discuss Rep. Justin Amash's departure from the House Freedom Caucus, how the group can be effective in a Democrat-controlled House, and what policies he intends to prioritize. Biggs also shares about his trips to the border, and why he's concerned illegal immigrants are bring diseases like mumps and measles to the United States. We also cover these stories: • Benjamin Netanyahu’s time a leader of Israel may soon be at an end. • Vice President Mike Pence gives a speech on USMCA trade policy at The Heritage Foundation. • Arizona Supreme Court sides with Christian artists in 4-3 ruling. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet,iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Release date: 16 September 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, September 18th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judas. And I'm Daniel Davis. The House Freedom Caucus has new leadership. Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs now leads the conservative group, and today he'll join Rachel for an exclusive interview. They'll discuss border security and impeachment threats, as well as the recent dust-up involving Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the New York Times.

Stay tuned for the interview. One more thing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Benjamin Netanyahu's time as leader of Israel may soon be at an end. Exit polls on Tuesday showed the Prime Minister's Lakud Party trailing slightly behind the centrist's blue and white party. If those numbers hold, it's a slightly worse showing for Lakud than the elections this passed to April when the two parties tied each other and couldn't form a governing coalition. It remains to be seen how these

numbers shake out. The election this time saw higher turnout than in April, and in the final hours of voting, Netanyahu accused the Palestinian authority of election interference, a claim that they deny. We'll provide updates in the days ahead as the final numbers solidify. Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, voicing support for President Trump's developing trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. The USMCA also levels the playing field for American workers and American jobs. Under the USMCA, 75% of auto parts in duty-free cars must be made right here in North America. And a significant portion of these parts must be made by workers making a base wage of at least $16 per hour.

We believe that this will eliminate the historic incentive to move manufacturing jobs out of the United States of America. President Donald Trump is putting American jobs and American workers first. He also had some fierce words regarding Saturday's attacks on Saudi oil facilities. The truth is, as President Trump has observed, our active duty personnel are now the best equipped, best trained, and most technologically advanced fighting force in the history of the world. And in the wake of this weekend's unprovoked attack on several oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, I promise you, we're ready. As the president said, we don't want war with anybody,

but the United States is prepared. We're locked and loaded, and we're ready to defend our interests and our allies in the region. Make no mistake about it. Add this to the string of victories for the First Amendment, two Christian artists have won their case at the Arizona Supreme Court after being sued by the city of Phoenix. The two women make wedding invitations for a living, but they declined to make custom invitations for a same-sex wedding. That prompted a lawsuit from the city, which has an ordinance on the book's banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the city cannot force the two women to make same-sex wedding invitations, saying that that would violate their free speech rights and freedom of religion under the First Amendment. Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the two women, said, regardless of one's view on marriage, this is a win for all citizens of Arizona, because a government that can crush Joanna and Brianna can crush any one of us. The ruling comes just weeks after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a Christian filmmaking couple in a similar case out of Minnesota. Well, House Democrats are not letting go of their goal to impeach President Donald Trump.

The House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing Tuesday on ousting the president, with Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, serving as the witness. According to the Associated Press, Lewandowski heeded advice from White House counsel and refused to discuss private conversations that were not included in the Mueller report. Lewandowski also requested a copy of the Mueller report and then started reading from it during the hearing, which prompted House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York to say that Lewandowski was, quote, filibustering. Well, yet another House Republican is hanging.

up the gloves. California Congressman Paul Cook announced on Tuesday he will not seek re-election to his seat and instead will run for local office. In a statement, Cook said, quote, after 26 years in the Marine Corps, my attention turned first to local government. And while I've been called to serve in other capacities such as Congress, my focus has always been on empowering communities and making sure local residents have the strongest voice in decisions that affect them. End quote. Cook is the 18th House Republican to announce retirement. this Congress. Famed broadcast icon, Koki Roberts, has passed away at the age of 75 due to complications

with breast cancer. The former ABC journalist earned three Emmys and was also inducted into the broadcasting and cable hall of fame and mentioned by the American women in radio and television as one of the 50 greatest women in the history of broadcasting, according to ABC. James Goldston, president of ABC News, mourned her passing, saying, quote, Cookie Roberts will be dearly missed. Koki's kindness, generosity, sharp intellect, and thoughtful take on the big issues of the day made ABC a better place and all of us better journalists.

Up next, Rachel's exclusive interview with Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Andy Biggs. Well, before we move any further, I want to mention a terrific podcast produced right here by our colleagues at the Daily Signal called Problematic Women. Podcast is put out every Thursday morning and is hosted by Kelsey Bowler and Lauren Evans. These two ladies shine the spotlight on stories that are of particular interest to conservative-leaning women, aka women that the so-called feminist left usually consider problematic. It covers everything from pop culture to policy and D.C. politics. It's a super enjoyable podcast and I hope you will subscribe. Just search problematic women on whatever podcast app you prefer.

We're joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona, who was recently elected as the new chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Congressman, congratulations. Thank you. It's going to be with you. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. And to start off, last week you were elected the new chairman of the House Freedom of Caucus, the most conservative caucus in the House. What was your initial reaction to finding out that you were elected chairman? My initial reaction was, I voted for the other guy.

I'm just teasing you. I'm overwhelmed, quite frankly. We've got, this is the most conservative wing of the Republican conference. It's filled with very capable, articulate, intelligent men and women who have had great success in the private sector. They have had great success here in Congress. Many of them are on important committees. They do good work. They're bright.

And so it's really awesome to work with them on a regular basis. It's the only place, quite frankly, that I've been in Congress where we actually debate the bills in detail and actually infuse constitutional principles and discuss how this impacts the Constitution as well. So it's an awesome group to be with. And then you consider who we had before. You have Jim Jordan, who is the first chairman and Mark Meadows. And then my own predecessor in Congress, Matt Sam, was one of the original. founders. There's just so many great people who've done some great things and it's,

these are big shoes to fill and broad shoulders to try to stand on. You know, and then one more thing, Rachel, as long as we're talking about stuff, is the Democrats have gone so far to the left. You look at the presidential nominees. And we see that, that's reflected actually in Congress, this notion of whether it's socialism, which, let's define it, what it is. It is an authoritarian brand of government where they want to get in control virtually every aspect of your life. That's really where they are. And we have got to stand in the breach against them and fight back and remind people the reason that we are, an exception to the world is the ability to make choices and be accountable for those choices.

And that's why you see the economy booming today is because President Trump and the, and the Congress, Republicans, when we had the House, we changed the tax code to let people keep more of their money. In this instance, businesses. We've deregulated, and this administration is deregulated. That has allowed people to feel freer and actually become freer. If we can get the House back, we've got, we can do some more tax relief, which would actually explode this economy, take it way over the top. I mean, I'm talking about repeal of capital gains. I'm talking about lowered the tax rate on the middle class and make sure that they're participating fully in the economy. I'm talking about making sure that small businesses get the pass-through type of benefits

that we gave big business. These types of things would really make this economy grow. It would lead to further deregulation. You know, we would become, in fact, once again, the juggernaut of the world economically. In fact, we're the only economy growing. in the world today, but we would be what people thought the Chinese economy was 20 years ago, except for ours would be built on a foundation that would last and be solid. Well, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that there are lawmakers, especially Democrats in the House, that want to oust Trump, and they're continuing on that drumbeat. And Congressman Justin Amash, he made headlines a few months ago earlier this year

you're saying that he was leaving the HFC over his disagreements with President Trump. Do you think that changed the House Freedom of Caucus at all? And what would you say is the relationship between House Freedom Caucus members and the president? Well, Justin is a good friend, and I was sad to see him go. I'm sad to see that he's basically taken on the president and has been so critical. My big belief is there's so many people on the other side that are critical of everything this president does. We don't really need to jump in on that. We need to find the commonalities and emphasize that.

Then I would say that the Freedom Caucus has a great relationship with the president. It was solid when he was campaigning. Then that initial health bill, if you remember, was a horrible bill. He was getting bad advice from people that he has now come to call out, like former Speaker Ryan. But they wanted him to sign on to just a horrifically bad bill. The Freedom Caucus said no and took a stand and we did it with respect, understanding he wanted to keep his promise. But we just articulated the facts.

And since that point, he understands he trusts us. We trust him and there's a really good relationship between the Freedom Caucus and President Trump. And he understands that the Freedom Caucus is the body that has stood in the well against these guys that are trying. to take him out. And if we hadn't, I mean, just think about this. They wanted to impeach him. They've been trying to impeach him. They have nothing to impeach on. It was the Freedom Caucus that basically came in and defended his position and defended him against these attacks. So looking forward, what kind of legislation do you see the House Freedom of Caucus pursuing during the next year?

Well, we're going to continue to do things on everything from immigration and And, you know, we've come up with ways to fund the wall and we're going to continue to try to advance those. Our problem is in the House, we don't have the majority. So the majority is always going to be against us. But we're going to continue to advance this because I think one of the things the Freedom Caucus needs to do now. And if we had the people that were forward thinking doing this, we need to put some policy positions in place, articulate and narrate. those positions for when we take the house back. We want to make sure that we're ready. So it's immigration, whether it's the tax policies, which I've previously iterated, whether it's

balancing the budget and attacking this relentless spending problem that we have that's growing like crazy, moving us back to the, and talking about the procedures and the processes that need to be in place. For instance, there's no reason, and I'm going to keep beating this drum on this, that we should be having two committees, the budget committee, and Appropriations Committee. The Budget Committee comes in and says, okay, you need to do this, and we're going to balance 10 years ago, it's in five years. Anyway, we've never balanced, according to their plan, because the Appropriations Committee doesn't adhere to that plan. So it's just ridiculous and gives needless work and actually diffuses power where, in this instance,

we would be better served having this in one committee where they can actually step in and start balancing the budget. So we're going to advance those positions. everything from process to policy and be ready, but we're also going to recruit and we're going to campaign for people to get them elected to the House. So you just mentioned spending in the budget. The House of the Congress opposed the huge spending deal that happened over this summer. What do you all plan to do on spending going forward as Congress is continuing to look at resolutions and individual appropriations bills? Well, we're going to, well, first of all, we're going to scour these bills to make sure there's no poison pills and point them out. For instance,

I would be surprised if the Democrats didn't insist that there's no money in this continuing resolution they're going to propose to go to the border wall. I mean, this is just not going to happen. So we have to acknowledge that that's the case. We're going to talk about whether we're still funding abortions anywhere with federal dollars. And we've got to take, so those are some examples of poison pills. But at this other time, we are going to continue to fight to to balance the budget. I mean, this is just ridiculous that we can't get together and and pass budget bills that work and and and we don't. So House Democrats, among many other things they're pushing, we mentioned their dissatisfaction with

the president. They're continuing to push as well for gun control measures in the wake of the mass shootings we've seen. What do you think of? this drum beat, and what do you think lawmakers should do on this issue? Okay, so here I'm not going to speak as, you know, I'm not speaking today from the Freedom Caucus because these are all Andy Biggs's ideas and thoughts, and we haven't voted on these things, and I should get that disclaimer. I'm not used to having to give that disclaimer. Okay, so what the problem is, is all of the bills and policies and legislation that Democrats are introducing and those that want to do gun control, they would have have no effect whatsoever on any

of these three shootings that are really they're using as the catalyst to go forward. I'm talking to the two in Texas and the Dayton. The reality is we have a second amendment to protect us from a tyrannical government. And they want to turn our government to a tyrannical government. And at the same time that they want to take away your guns. And they really do want to take away their guns. Beto O'Rourke has been very clear on this. And nobody else popped up and said, oh, no, no, no, we disagree with Beto.

We don't want to take those. They do want to take those. Sheila Jackson Lee gave a pretty strong indication of that last week in our hearing in Judiciary Committee. And the bottom line is they're going to create a narrative. So she's going to start calling these weapons of war. Nobody's going to use an AR-15 in war because why? they don't have a range, right? And they're not shooting the right ammunition.

So she said she held one once. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is who you have making policy on gun laws. This is someone who's obviously afraid of a gun, to hold a gun. And you should have a healthy respect for a weapon, but you should also come to understand it. So leaving that aside, we also have to bring up the narrative which I was trying to bring up in the Judiciary Committee of how many times people use firearms to protect themselves.

They do. On a regular basis, the estimate is in the hundreds of thousands every year in this country. Well, leave that aside and say, well, what happens in Baltimore, for instance, where they have very strict gun laws? Well, the bad guys have guns, the good guys don't. And so they have these higher crime rates in Baltimore, in Detroit, and Chicago, where you have these tighter gun laws. Then you also, let's, I remember reading a few years ago in China where they have

absolute no gun ownership in private hands. So what do they do? A guy goes crazy on a train and stabs dozens of people with a knife and kills dozens of people. And we see that in Europe. We see the use of cars. We see the use of other weapons such as bombs even. So you represent a border state.

in April, I actually joined you on a trip to the border, which was really fun. And you were back at the border this summer, observing the realities of the humanitarian crisis that's happening right there right now. What are some of the things you witnessed on this latest trip? Okay, so I went to the border three different times, everywhere from McAllen to Yuma during the recent work period. And a couple things. Number one, you were there during the surge, right? So we had just an incredible humanitarian crisis as well as security crisis. We still have that problem because the actual number of everyone apprehended or interacting with the Border Patrol was 62,000 last month.

That's still three times what would be in a normal same time period. but we've got some new facilities that can house some of these people so the humanitarian site is not as dire as it was and we're preparing for another surge because we anticipate at any time the potential for another search so the humanitarian thing is is calms down a bit but it is still real and even with the lack of the surge we got to one place at a port of entry where they had had 250 people dropped off during the night for processing. This is one of the most remote ports of entry. And what happens is the only way to get there is to be bused in.

So the cartels were busing these people in. They do it a couple times a week. Those people get out. They go up. We have that port of entry is only open something like 9 to 4 or something like that. But we have a Border Patrol agent living on or near the facility. and they literally walk up to his house, call him by name, and say, we are here to surrender. That's still going on on the borders today.

And so, and the agent there, we were talking to the customs agent. I said, what can you tell? And we were told that he had seen in the last, oh, month or two, he'd been exposed to hepatitis, A, B, and C, of course, measles, of course mumps. And we start talking about measles and think about. about this nationwide, I think we have a thousand cases of measles, but we are getting exposed, our people are getting exposed and people are bringing measles over. Measals, mumps, lies, scabies, some of the others, which I can't remember, but the one that I do remember

is a flesh-eating bacteria that they had not been able to identify yet. So we are talking literally of disease coming across. We're talking groups of people still coming across. the drugs are coming across. You still have some places where you have groups of people surrendering, but you have other places like the Tucson sector and the southeast Arizona, very remote rural area where drug trafficking is picked back up. Wow. That is incredible that they know this Border Patrol officer by name.

They just come in. Yes. Yeah. Isn't that something? And I said, well, how does this work? And they said, well, sometimes whoever is kind of the leader of that group will have it all written down on a paper. Agent so-and-so, agent so-and-so, we claim asylum in the United States. We have credible fear.

And it'll be all written down and they'll say that on behalf of the 250 people that are there. Yeah, you never hear stories like this report it. No, you don't. And nobody goes, I mean, I think we surprised the heck out of them because we had notified them though we were coming, but it didn't get, didn't get passed on down. And then we, all of a sudden, you've got all these members of Congress and their staff pop in. Here we are. And I think they were surprised. But it was, it was good to be there and see this first time. Were there any other things you witnessed during any of these trips that essentially counter-riterics we see reported in the, the media or elsewhere about the conditions at the border or what happens where you're there in person and you can say, wow, this is actually not the case. Look, every time I've been down to the border, what I can tell you is the border patrol

facilities themselves are not designed to be holding facilities. They're processing facilities with some holding cells there. Even if there's some crowding in those cells, they leave the doors unlocked so people can come in and out. There are tables with water cans, you know, that are five or ten gallon water cans all over the place. They fill them up with ice and water as often as necessary. There's juice boxes. There's snacks. One of the places that now is a facility in El Paso. I mean, they've added these soft-sided tents. These are huge and they're wide open and there was virtually nobody in there when we went, they were just opening that facility.

There are food stations everywhere. There's hygiene products everywhere. There's supply rooms everywhere we go with clothing and hygiene products. So if somebody comes in, they've got torn and dirty, filthy clothing, they'll take them off. They'll give them new clothes after a shower. They will wash their old dirty, filthy clothing and return them to them. That is what's going on. It's just such a lie what we hear from the other side.

I mean, I don't know what they see when they're going down, but we've been down multiple times. And as I say, sometimes catching them off guard a little bit. And we don't see anything that they're talking about. That's so interesting. Thanks for sharing that. We were talking a few minutes ago about how Democrats are going to impeach the president. And this week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman from New York,

She's all on the drunk beat of wanting to impeach Justice Kavanaugh. This has come up in the news again. And I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on this. I don't know just in your own personal capacity or as speaking for HFC. Either way, I was just curious if you have any thoughts on this latest Kavanaugh situation. Well, my personal thoughts is with regard to Justice Kavanaugh, what a sham the New York Times is. I mean, they put out a story and then they'd forget. got or something that the alleged victim said, well, gee, I don't remember anything. I'm really

not a victim. I don't, this, I have no awareness of this. Well, good grief. I mean, when you think about that, that is, that is even for a public figure like Justice Kavanaugh is, that almost becomes libel per se. I mean, they have, they have shown a willingness, a willful mind. And I saw today that the same author there had tweeted out horrific things in the past. And so, so these, these people are, are unhinged. They've got Trump derangement syndrome. And you know what it is? I'll just, ultimately, the Supreme Court has too much power. And that's why you see these massive fights for Supreme Court nominations today. And we, they legislate from the bench. They overturned. They're not applying the law anymore.

They're trying to interpret in interpreting. They're creating law. And the Democrats know they cannot win on policy issues to the American public. American public doesn't want socialism. American public doesn't want the government in every aspect of their lives the way the Democrat leadership here in Congress wants. So they resort to the courts. And for them, abortion is the cause. And if they think that Roe v. Wade could be overturned.

If Roe v. Wade could be overturned, they're going to do anything they can. They're going to go after Justice Kavanaugh. I view this as blatant libel. And I think Ocasio-Cortez is, she's out there saying things. That seems slanderous to me. And so when you go forward like that, I just think they're unhinged and they're unhinged because in a rational way. They understand that they can't win on the policy debates.

They have to win in court. They understand with President Trump appointing these justices and these judges, 150 federal judges now, that they are losing some of their grip that they've held over the courts for 40 years. And Justice Kavanaugh, in my opinion, it's outrageous, and you're not going to see an impeachment go on, Justice Kavanaugh. It's just not going to happen, but they're going to continue to try to torment this guy. And in so doing, I think they're trying to deter any other conservative nominee in the future. They're basically, if you thought the Justice Kavanaugh thing was an outrage,

just imagine if President Trump is allowed to name another replacement for a Democrat held seat on the Supreme Court. And I'm just saying, just think about that. We're now talking the terms of left-wing, right-wing on the court. We talk in the terms of Democrat-Republican on the court. That is too much power in the court. But I'm just going to tell you the next nominee is going to go through a hell. If there's seven circles of hell, as Dante said, then Kavanaugh went through probably three or four of them. The next one will go through all seven.

Wow, that's true. So final question, how would you rate conservative lawmakers leadership and accomplishments this Congress this far? And how would you say we can do better? Well, I'd give us, you know, solid grades. I wouldn't give us an excellent, maybe we're a B, B minus. Because what we're doing, what the conservatives have got to do is we've got the narrative, we've got to get out.

We're doing okay at that, I think. I think we're working hard at protecting and preserving the promises we made and trying to keep those. And that means that in some instances you're going to have to support the president and make sure that he's protected because of what he's trying to get done on those promises. So that's good. I think what we need to do is we have to be better at getting our narrative out. We don't tell good stories. The Democrats always tell stories. So when I was trying to, in the Judiciary Committee, tell stories about how we've, you know, how we defended ourselves.

They bring in stories that, quite frankly, I think, are blatantly false sometimes. And we have got to bring in stories. And we have to revere and respect as we always do. And this is what conservative's best thing we do is the United States Constitution. And so when the Freedom Caucus says, we're going to. going to stand there in the breach and we're going to represent the unheard voices, people who feel they're not heard in Washington, D.C. We're going to defend the United States Constitution. And as we do that, people will be freer. Congressman Biggs, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thank you, Rachel. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. Well, that'll do it for us today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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