The Daily Signal - Lawmakers Call for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's Removal, Spending Deal Conflict, Hunter Biden Contempt of Congress | Jan. 8

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Congress reaches an agreement on a $1.6 trillion spending bill for 2024.  Multiple GOP lawmakers called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to resign after he was hospitalized and senior defense officials and the White House were informed for days.  The House Oversight and Accountability Committee released its resolution recommending Congress hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress.  President Joe Biden is interrupted by Pro-Palestine protesters in the middle of a speech in South Carolina.  Relevant Links Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Monday, January 8th. Here are today's headlines. Democrat and Republican leaders in Congress have reached an agreement over spending. On Sunday, we learned that Congress had reached an agreement on a 1.6, about a $1.6 trillion spending bill for 2024. 886 billion is for defense spending, and 704 is for non-defense. spending. In a letter to his colleagues, House Speaker Mike Johnson called the spending bill the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade. But most conservatives, or at least some conservatives, are expressing concerns over this spending bill.

And specifically, the House Freedom Congress has come out in opposition to the bill. So what is exactly in this spending bill? And should conservatives be concerned about it? Here with us to answer that question is the Heritage Foundation's Richard Stern. Richard serves as the director of the Grover M. Herman Center for the federal budget. Richard, it's good to have you back. Always a pleasure to be here. Thank you. All right. Well, go ahead and let us know what is included in this about roughly $1.6 trillion spending bill.

So this would be a, quote, full year spending bill for all of the normal base discretionary appropriations. So this is those 12 appropriations bills you've been hearing about for month after month after month that we don't pass. It isn't in law. So that's what this would be. Now, I had a little of a misnomer there. I said a full year probes bill. We are actually several months late passing this bill.

It's supposed to run from October 1st through September. We're already almost halfway into January at this point. And this is what we'd be talking about. So, you know, this would take over after the CR. expires. So it would take over after January 19th for four of the bills. And then it would take over after February 2nd for the other eight bills. So it's really much closer to a half year spending bill. In fact, we would immediately go back into the FY25 or props negotiations the minute they pass this bill. So it's never ended in appropriations in D.C. Fascinating. Now, one of the things on the

minds of many conservatives is border security. And we've seen that some Republicans in the House have said they won't back any spending measure that doesn't include significant policies that will secure the border and provide for border security specifically along our southern border. Does this package have those measures to address what's happening in our southern border? It does not, not one bit of it. So you make a great point there. But, you know, part of this is when we talk about the power of the purse, what we are talking about is not just the federal government's ability to steal your money, the money you've worked hard to make,

but it's then to use it to push forward the agenda of bureaucrats and politicians. So this $1.6 trillion would in many ways be a blank check to the Biden administration and to all of those bureaucrats in the federal government, and it would have nothing in there, nothing whatsoever to make sure that our border laws are followed, that our border would be secure. We have drugs, terrorists, arms, human trafficking going out through the border. an unprecedented migrant crisis, not to mention, like I said, all the other kind of issues from drugs and crime and trafficking, what the cartels are taking advantage of. And there's not one thing in this deal that deals with that. That's an absolute shame. Interesting. Okay. So we're hearing a

little bit about so-called sidecar deals related to this spending package. What exactly are these sidecar deals and what would negotiations look like in order to get the support needed for this to pass? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. So sidecar deals is fancy DC speak for gimmicks. That's all these really are. So, you know, you were talking earlier, you know, that the number that's being reported is $1.59 trillion. So about $1.6 trillion. Truthfully, that's not really what the price tag is. That is the formal price tag number. So that's a little bit like if you said, you know, I'm going to be on a budget. I can only spend $100 on food for the month. So you go to the grocery. story, you spend $100 and then you say, you know what, though, I want to go get a steak dinner tonight. So you spend another hundred bucks just on the steak dinner. That's the sidecar deals. So what's happening here is that that's how they get it to be an increase in spending. So nowhere near the most conservative budget in 10 years. And that's what's going to make Democrats happy. That's where they picked up Democrats support from, as well as a few of these so-called

moderate Republicans that want to increase spending. And the idea is that these sidecar deals are tradeoffs for a few other little things. Mostly these are gimmicks. So kind of the short story on that is there are accounts of money that never get spent that Democrats gave to themselves through budget reconciliation, some of these other kind of shady things. And so Democrats are giving up money they were never going to spend to instead get money that they are definitely going to spend.

So on paper, it looks like you've kept the money the same. But in reality, you went from money that wasn't getting spent. spent to money that is absolutely getting spent and now is going to get spent on DEI and woke agenda items for the Biden administration. So if nothing were to be changed in this spending package, it stays as is, it's voted in. How would this bill affect things like inflation and the cost of mortgages? So, you know, right now we're having really, you know, a second time in U.S. history level of inflation. The truth is, the U.S. almost never has had inflation. We've had interest rates that have actually been easy for most of our history. The 1970s is the huge blip on that

radar screen. I'm sure many people are saying live through that. We're going through something that mirrors that. In fact, we're actually, we've had faster-paced inflation now than we did at the beginning of the 70s. So we'll see where this goes. And you might ask yourself, where did this come from? Government spending. When the government spends money, it chokes the production of real stuff and floods cash into the system. It's the classic case of more dollars chasing fewer goods and services. That's why you're feeling prices go up. That's why you're feeling like your wages aren't keeping up, let alone the cost of housing

and interest rates and all that. So this bill will increase spending. It will increase that government spending pressure that is driving up inflation, that is driving up mortgage rates. And, you know, even if we gave the speaker credit for the minuscule cuts he's claiming to have, it would be so small that it would have zero effect on the economy whatsoever. And so truth be told, the biggest outcome of this is it markets, investors, the globe over will look at this and say, shame, the U.S. government is committed to not addressing the problem, to leaving its head like an ostrich in the sand and letting the U.S. economy autopilot to oblivion. That's what they're going to take away for this. And why is that when you have, when you have Republicans in leadership in the House,

why aren't we seeing more of an aggressive approach to cutting spending? And when you have the House Freedom Caucus right away coming out in opposition to this bill, that makes me think, okay, we're likely maybe headed for a government shutdown because there's probably not going to be time to reach an agreement by the time we hit that first January deadline. Well, you had me at government shutdown. But to answer your question kind of more firmly, you know, I think part of the problem is there's a large group of Republicans in Congress that care about this, the care about government spending,

frankly, that ran on this issue of getting government out of your way, of letting you keep more of your own money of driving down inflation interest rates. But it's not all of them. And no Democrat cares about this. They all believe that your money would be better in their hands and their bureaucrats friends than your own pockets. So that's the fundamental problem. And so I will say this. You know, I know Johnson's people.

I know him. These are good people that have tried to push the ball on this. But the truth is, if you don't have the entire caucus behind you, you can't get too far. And so really at the end of the day, you know, I'm going to be honest here. The problem is people who pretend to be conservatives, who call themselves Republic, but are not, in fact, principal conservatives who don't care about this, who are willing to claim to be conservative, who put on the trappings of it. But when, you know, the rubber hits the road, they don't care if you keep your own money. They don't care if the government bloats in size.

And so, you know, at some level, what we're looking at right now is one more nail in that inflation coffin after, frankly, decades of so-called conservatives in Congress, just doing what the Democrats want, just slowly increasing the government. You know, we're now at a lot of, a place where the federal government is consuming nearly a quarter of everything Americans produce in a given year. I mean, that is absurd, frankly. Yeah. The Heritage Foundation's Richard Stern. Richard, thank you so much for your time. Want to direct all of our listeners to heritage.org to find all of Richard Stern's research. Thank you so much, Richard. Thank you as always. Multiple GOP lawmakers are calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to resign after he was

hospitalized and senior defense officials nor the White House were informed for multiple days. Representative Elise Stefonic said today that it is shocking and absolutely unacceptable that the Department of Defense waited multiple days to notify the president, the National Security Council, and the American people that Defense Secretary Austin was hospitalized and unable to perform his duties. She added that there must be full accountability, beginning with the immediate resignation of Secretary Austin and those that lied for him and a congressional investigation into this dangerous dereliction of duty. Austin was hospitalized last Monday, January 1st, following complications after he had an elective surgery. He even spent time in the ICU,

but the public and the press were not informed of his hospitalization until Friday. In fact, no one was informed outside the Defense Department, not even the press, president who was finally told on Thursday. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green posted on X that Austin isn't capable of leading the Department of Defense, and he just proved it again by keeping it a secret when he was very sick and in the ICU. And over the weekend, Representative Jim Banks told Axios that Austin has been a disaster since day one and should be replaced by someone who will focus on making the military ready to fight and win wars instead of advancing woke political causes of the Biden administration.

But the Pentagon says that Austin has no plans of resigning, and the White House has indicated that the president would not accept Austin's resignation. But the White House has said that they will review what happened and what policies and procedures were not followed upon Austin's hospitalization. National Security Council spokesman John. Kirby says that they will be looking at what changes need to be made to prevent a similar situation from taking place again. Austin is reportedly still in the hospital, but is backworking. Today, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released its resolution recommending Congress

hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress. The resolution is in response to Hunter Biden denying a request to testify before Congress in a closed-door session. The House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Hunter Biden last year. Hunter Biden said that he would testify publicly, but not in a closed-door session. This offer was rejected, so Hunter Biden didn't show up to the closed-door session.

The committee said it wanted to question Hunter Biden on the Biden family business dealings. The contempt of Congress resolution is 19 pages long, and in it, House Oversight and Accountability Committee writes, the committees have accumulated significant evidence suggesting that President Biden knew of, participated in, and profited from foreign business interests engaged in by his son about which the committees intended to question Mr. Biden during his deposition. However, Mr. Biden brazenly defied the committee's subpoenas.

Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden have denied any wrongdoing. On Wednesday, the oversight and House Judiciary panels will consider the contempt of Congress resolution. The resolution calls on House Speaker Mike Johnson to refer the contempt report to an appropriate United States attorney to the end that Mr. Biden be preceded against in the manner and form provided by law. President Joe Biden was interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters in the middle of a speech in South Carolina today. President Biden was delivering remarks in Charleston at Mother Emmanuel Church. That's the church where a gunman killed nine worshippers in 2015, citing racist motives for doing so. Biden was speaking about how truth is under attack in America when a protester in the church stood up and yelled, if you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost and call for a ceasefire in Palestine.

Take a listen per Fox News. The truth is under assault in America. As a consequence, so is our freedom, our democracy, our very country, because without the truth, there's no light. Without light, there's no path from this darkness. That's all right. That's all right. The shouting continued for about a minute as the protesters were escorted out, and their chance then were overtaken by the crowd shouting four more years. Biden held up his hands to quiet the crowd and said, I understand their passion, and I've quietly been working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.

With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for being with us here on the Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had the chance, make sure you check out our morning show. Tomorrow morning, I am sitting down with Heritage Foundation's Victoria Coates to talk all things Middle East and catch up on some of the latest escalations and conflict there and get a status on what we know regarding negotiations about the release of still about 100 hostages that are being held in Gaza. Also, take a minute to subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you like to listen to podcasts or across all podcast platforms.

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