The Daily Signal - Rep. Bob Good: No Security, No Funding

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

With the clock ticking closer to the Sept. 30 government funding deadline, the conservative House Freedom Caucus this week outlined its official position on Washington’s latest spending debate. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., a member of the Freedom Caucus, spoke to The Daily Signal about why conservatives are insisting House Republicans honor their promise to reduce government spending while also enacting three policies: 1)   Securing the border 2)   Ending the weaponization of DOJ and FBi 3)   Stoping the Pentagon woke agenda Good, who represents Virginia’s 5th District, explains what’s at stake and why conservatives should make this their priority. A transcript is available at DailySignal.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So we're saying we've got to get a win for the American people. Number one would be securing the border, implementing HR2, the bill we passed out of the House. We also would like to attack the weaponization of the federal government against its citizens and the emasculating or the weakening, or I call the wissifying of our military at the hands of this administration. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 25th. I'm Rob Blewey. And those were the words of Congressman Bob Good of Virginia. He's a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which just this week really,

least its official position on the government spending debate playing out in Washington. Conservatives are insisting that House Republicans honor their promise to reduce government spending will also enacting three policies. First, securing our border to stop fentanyl and human trafficking. Second, refocusing the Justice Department on real criminals instead of political enemies. And third, ending the woke policies undermining the U.S. military. I spoke to Congressman Good about what's at stake and why conservatives should make this their top priority. But before we get to today's interview, let me first tell you about another great Heritage Foundation podcast. Let's face it, it's happened to all of us. You're out at dinner or

the bowling alley, and somebody is talking about the news. They know that you're the conservative. Somebody looks at you and says, well, what do you think? Energy, the border, China, Ukraine, school choice, big tech. These topics are not simple, and heavy media bias does not make things easier. Fortunately, the Heritage Foundation has developed a podcast to help. Through the creative use of stories and the knowledge of our passionate experts, Heritage Explains breaks down the most important and complex policy issues of the day. So whether you're standing up for American values at work, at school, or at dinner, you'll have the Heritage Foundation behind you. Check out Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. We are joined in the Daily Signal by

Congressman Bob Good representing Virginia's fifth congressional district. He's also a member of the House Freedom Caucus, that group of conservative lawmakers who are out this week with a new statement related to the continuing resolution and the government funding deadline of September 30th. Congressman, thanks for joining us. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. You bet. Well, let's start with the big question on people's minds, which is, will the government shut down after September 30th? The Freedom Caucus put out a list of principles, which I think to most conservatives will be reasonable things that they expect Washington.

to accomplish? Can you walk us through what those are? Yes, Freedom Caucus, we put out a position essentially saying we are committed to the spending cuts that were part of limit save grow, which as you might know originated as shrink Washington, grow America. That was the Freedom Caucus position we put out before. It was largely adopted by the House, which was a reasonable bill that had significant cuts and reforms to take a significant step towards fiscal stability that was passed with 217 votes out of the House. was a strong Republican coalition, but as you also know, most of that was discarded or set aside or jettisoned for the terrible, what I called the failed Responsibility Act that was struck

between House and Senate and White House leadership, or lack thereof, perhaps you might say. So we are committed to going back to the pre-COVID spending level for non-defense discretionary that the Speaker agreed to in order to become Speaker back in January. And also, as you know, after the debt ceiling caught so much criticism from conservatives, some of us in the House, and conservatives like yourself across the country, the speaker said, well, the debt ceiling levels, or of course it was an unlimited increase of debt ceiling, but the spending levels and the debt ceiling agreement, that was a, that was a ceiling, not a floor. We can co-lower in the appropriations process. So we intend to hold him to that or to use every amount of leverage that we

have to do that. But we're also saying, you know, we're recognizing the House failed once again to do its job, and we passed one out of 12 appropriations bills, primarily because we would not go along without having a total spending cut plan. In other words, we didn't want to pass a handful of them up front, not knowing what the spending cuts were on the back end and how the whole puzzle fits together. So we passed one out of 12. We've only got, I think it's 11 or legislative days when we get back unless we come back early, certainly I'm ready to go back early to get our work done. But if we don't do that, the calendar is really challenging. So what we were saying in response to the speaker telling the conference, hey, maybe we need

to have to do a CR or continuing resolution, is that if we're going to do that, we've got to get a win for the American people to do it. We can't just kick the can down the road 30 or 60 days. And really, we think 60 would be terrible to kick it to December 1. And then the members on both sides are, oh, Christmas, we've got to leave. because of Christmas, let's just do an omnibus. We've seen that play before, as you know. So we're saying we've got to get a win for the American people. Number one would be securing the border, implementing HR2, the bill we passed out of the House. We also would like to attack

the weaponization of the federal government against its citizens and the emasculating or the weakening, or I call the wissifying of our military at the hands of this administration. So we've got to get some wins, not for the Republican Party, not for Speaker McCarthy or the Freedom caucus, but for the American people in exchange for extending the time period for us to get our work down to pass the population. Yeah, no, it all seems quite reasonable. It seems like there are issues that the American people care about. We consistently see border security and immigration as one of the top concerns on the minds of

not just conservatives, but Americans who see it affecting their communities all across this country. So let me go back, though. I'm glad you began with the issue of spending. You were one of the group that held out and made sure that you secured some. promises from Speaker McCarthy when he was running for election in January. So take us back to that moment and why it was so important for you to secure not only those commitments, but also reform to the process. You talked about the 12 appropriations bills. Conservatives have been frustrated for years that this gets wrapped up into a giant omnibus. It seems always days before

Christmas. And then there's no time to review it. We're always left with a bad deal at the end of the day. Well, to clarify, and I just don't want to misrepresent, I was part of the 20. That was part of the 15 vote process, but I was part of that final six who never switched our vote to yes. So I wasn't directly involved with the negotiations or the agreement that was made by my friends who were part of the 14. But I was involved in the discussions with them, but not direct on the speaker on that. But so I just want to clarify on that. I was one of those who wanted to see all the way through to ultimate leadership change. However, what it was January was about, was when Republicans have had majorities, let's say over the last 15 years or so, every major

spending, every major spending legislation, every major spending bill was passed with predominantly Democrat votes. And in addition to that, Nancy Pelosi had consolidated all power in the hands of the Speaker and her Select Rules Committee that she would personally sign all the majority members, of course. And our current speaker was seemingly on track to keep that same level of power. And he was, whether it was the majority whip or the majority leader, he wasn't the speaker back when we had control before, but we said we can't do what we've done before and expect we're going to get a different result. So we wanted to change how Congress worked, changed the rules of the House, some of the going back to the way it used to be regular order,

working through committees, not going straight to the Rules Committee, allowing amendments from the floor, amount of time to read legislation, single issue bills. The subject has to be germane, as we call it there in the House. And we also wanted some conservative representation on the Rules Committee and on the Spending or Appropriations Committee, and we accomplished those things, which gave us a fighting chance and a seat of the table. The Freedom Caucuses had a voice and had influence and has been in significant negotiations on every major piece of legislation except the failed Responsibility Act, the debt-sealing agreement, which shattered the conservative coalition in the House, the unified House that we had. So it was about not doing what we've always done

and expecting a different result. But I will tell you on the spending side, the debt-sealing agreement simply delayed what would have happened with a Democrat speaker or a Democrat majority. We passed that bill with Democrats voting for it four to one and Republicans voting for it two to one. I was, of course, part of that one-third of Republicans who didn't vote for it, but Democrats voted for about 80 percent. Did they suddenly become fiscal hawks and all of a sudden care about the national debt and care about the spending? That's what the Republican leadership would have had us believe when they called it a good bill, the Fiscal Responsibility Act. So that was a terrible mistake, that bill, and it violated the principles.

and the agreements that were part of my 14 colleagues who voted for the speaker to become speaker and allowed that to move forward. And so we're trying to return to that, most importantly, because American people cannot afford for us just to continue to recklessly spend their kids and their grandkids.

I get asked about shutting down the government a lot because I guess in our press conference a couple of weeks back, I said, I'm not afraid to shut down the government. Most of what we do up in Washington's bad anyway. And most Americans won't even miss it if we're shut down. I had a reporter, a local reporter, in my district asking the other day, what are you going to say if the government gets shut down to

those who are going to national parks from your district and they can't go to a park because the government has been shut down? And I said, you know, I've traveled the district over these last couple of weeks since we've been back from Washington. And the folks were asking about inflation and gas prices and grocery prices and housing and interest rates and the border invasion and the school system and rising crime. No one's yet asked me about the parks or told me the most important thing to them was to go to the national parks. So if you're asking me, am I afraid that we might temporarily stop bankrupting the country, borrowing from China, stealing from our kids and grandkids to fund the very government tyranny that we campaign against? I'm not afraid of that.

Well, and thank you for holding firm on that. I was going to ask you what was on the mind of your constituents. So thank you for sharing a little bit about that. The thing that frustrates me is, and we know this with the dishonest and corrupt media, that they're going to always blame conservatives for shutting down the government. But let's face it here, Democrats are in control of the White House, Democrats have control of the Senate. And as you pointed out on Twitter in response to Hakeem Jeffries, they are the ones that are standing in the way of these common sense policy solutions. And so I'd like to get your thought preemptively thinking through the scenario where at the end of September, maybe there isn't yet an agreement. How do conservatives push back against that

narrative? Great point. The greatest reflection where the American people are, politically at a moment, or at least every two years, is the House. As you know, it's not the White House. It's every four years. We have an electoral college, which I obviously support what founders did with that. The Senate's not proportional by population. It's two per state. But the House is every two years. It's proportional by population. Everybody has, you know, essentially an equal voice. And the American people gave us the majority. We ran on fiscal responsibility. So the American people are behind us. I think people are unaware at unprecedented level that spending impacts their lives because they're feeling the 40-year high inflation.

They're seeing the Fed respond with the interest rate increases, which are crushing them. The average mortgage costs $1,000 a month more for interest than it did when this gentleman became president two and a half years ago. So the American people are suffering. And I think they're realizing we can't keep doing what we've done. So I think we're ready to withstand that. I think to your point, how do we handle that? We're going to get blamed by much of the media, of course.

But most Americans, unfortunately, are conditioned not to trust most of the media anymore. And that's why I do think it's important for us to get a win for the American people in exchange for kicking the can down the road. We can't be afraid of using the leverage of house control. We can't be afraid of shutting the government down. And I have been calling on the speaker. this led into the failed Responsibility Act, after Limits Save Grow to do this. I'm calling on them again to do this,

to stare down the Senate, to stare down the White House, to be a historic transformational speaker that for once in modern times I allowed Republicans to win because we forced Democrats to cave instead of Republicans gave. What would happen if the House simply said not?

The House simply said no to the Senate of the White House and you know however long it takes, we're going to cut spending, we're going to put fiscal reforms in place, we're going to change the policies that are hurting the country, which I will say, because I would argue most of the Freedom Caucus influence, but the policies that are in the spending bills that have been marked up are significantly reversing the harmful policies the American people are suffering under. So it's good policy in there. Now, we've got to hold the ground on those because the Senate's not like it, the White House not going to like it, but what if the House simply said no and refused? I think the Dems are more addicted to government and to spending than we are, and I think we could

outlast it. And you have to have walkaway leverage. You have to be willing to say no. You have to show them that you mean business, have nerves of steel, spine of steel, and we haven't shown that in many, many years. Yeah, no, the American people set you there, I think, to say no. We can't continue to go down the path that we have. We have uncontrollable debt. in this country. And frankly, it's up to conservatives to hold the line. Let's go through those three policy issues that you talked about earlier. So the first one is the Secure the Border Act, obviously a monumental piece of legislation that the House passed earlier this year. Walk us through what that legislation does. What can the American people expect to see change

as a result of that? Yeah. In simple terms, it codifies into law the effective policies and more that President Trump was applying. President Trump's actions that were largely securing the border. We had the most secure border in decades, and as you know, had largely reduced illegal immigration. But those were policies and actions by the administration where we're trying to codify those into law so that a future president could have just changed the policies. It would literally take another act of Congress. And what it would do is, in addition to completing the wall, which they critically

obvious common sense important piece of it, but it would also end catcher release. It would reinstate remain in Mexico. It would add, you know, surveillance security that we need, in addition to just the border wall itself. Because the border wall itself is not a stand-alone perfect policy, but it allows so many fewer officers to patrol the areas because of the enhancement that it has. So it would be a significant comprehensive border security bills, not an immigration bill. It's a border security bill focused on eliminating illegal immigration or largely eliminating illegal immigration, which, as we know, is an economic security issue, is a national security issue, critical. And it's an 80% issue for most Americans. Most Americans are concerned about the border invasion. They don't hear a lot

about it from much of the media, as you know, but they recognize it's a significant, significant problem. Untold irreparable harm has been intentionally done to this country by this president, even if we secured the board today because of the 1.5 million gotaways, in addition to the six million they have led into the country for all the free stuff. It's significant. I think the American people see it affecting their local communities, as I'm sure the residents in your district do as well. A second item you mentioned had to do with the weaponization of the Department of Justice and FBI. I, this is a concern not only because of what the American people see happening to people like Donald Trump, who is obviously the former president and somebody who's in a high profile position, but also individuals in their everyday lives. People who maybe protest outside of abortion clinics or people who go to school board meetings see the consequences of this administration's policy.

So what does that second item accomplish? Yeah. And that was, as you know, in the statement, a little bit more generic and it's a little bit more. broad, if you will, in it. And what we're saying, we've got to do something for the American people on the issue that you could argue perhaps the most, the most harmful result of this administration in the last two and a half years, loss of faith and trust in our Department of Injustice, I call it now, our federal law enforcement, the blatant willingness of the Biden administration to use every lever of power to abuse their levers of power to go after political opponents,

those who would disagree with their leftist agenda, whether it's going after pro-life protests from Pennsylvania or Catholics of Richmond, Virginia, near me, or parents who show up in the school board meetings. So it's saying, what are we going to do to defund this DOJ? What are we going to do to defund the FBI? We certainly should be funding any headquarters expansion, bigger than the Pentagon.

And what are we going to do to hold Merrick Garland and Christopher Ray and those most responsible accountable for what? they're doing we are in danger as you know of becoming our think as you would agree of becoming a police state becoming a banana republic where disparate treatment based on political views disparate treatment based on who you support for president uh so we we're saying hey we've got to do something about that now i will tell you again in these spending bills there are some significant reductions in funding for some of these entities but we want to go after individuals use the homeland rule to go after Merrick Garland. He ought to be impeached. Christopher Ray ought to be impeached. We ought to at least have

inquiries to see what their responsibility is. They'll claim everything that you identify. Oh, this was a one-off. This was an action. This doesn't represent the department as a whole. Hey, we didn't know about this. And once we found out about it, we stopped it. So we want to use the power of the purse to limit their ability to harm the American. Let me ask you this. Third and finally on the woke Pentagon. I've done extensive reporting on Senator Tuberville's effort in the Senate. I know you are a big supporter of his holds on Pentagon nominees, those who are facing the prospect of a promotion. Just the Daily Signal has reported on not only the issues related to the Pentagon's abortion policy, but also their embrace of woke, D-E-I-C-R-T-related agenda. So tell us what is going on

at the Pentagon and why you are so concerned about the war fighting capabilities and readiness if they decide to keep going down this path? We have to have the stomach or the resolve to follow through and to not just slow things down and sort of hold the line and not allow the advancement of the radical leftist policies that have reflected the previous two years. But we've got to go on offense and reverse those policies. And so the Pentagon and the Defense Department is a great example of that. And once again, one of the terrible harms perpetrated on the American people is the weakening of the military.

And it begins with the commander-in-chief who has told the military, when he first became president, and repeated many times over that the greatest threat to the country is climate change, and that their focus should be climate change, and that everything's going to be viewed through a climate lens. And so we have defense policies that are impacted by the effects on the environment and climate. not force readiness, not lethality, not most effectiveness, but climate. Things like forcing our military vehicles to move towards electric vehicles, to have sustainable fuel for our planes. Can you just imagine China and Russia and Iran and North Korea doing that or what they might

think? Let's have a timeout in the conflict. We've got to recharge our vehicles because we've run out of power or the grid in the country that we're in won't sustain it. So we've got to eliminate the climate focus. We've got to eliminate diversity for the sake of diversity. We just need to have a colorblind policy. As you know, the military has been decades ahead of the country going back historically to being a merit-based system that focused again on readiness and effective. It's kind of like athletics. Athletics in the military were kind of out front on that. And, you know, there's a reason why Lloyd Austin and Colin

Powell and people like that have risen to the highest ranks of the military for decades. That's not new, but we also have to reverse these, this hyper focus on LGBDQ policies, funding for transgender surgery in the military, reversing, frankly, violating the law and reversing policy with funding of abortion in the military. Thank God for Senator Tubberville. You know, it's amazing with the NDAA, we took, that's an authorization bill, but a couple of months ago, we took a big step as a house with putting good policy in there, and the media, the left, the Democrats said, oh, you're making a culture issue of the military. No, we're ending the culture war that the left perpetrated over the last couple of years, and we're going back to the policies a couple of years

ago and to focus on readiness and effectiveness. There's a reason why recruitment is down. And what we also want to do is restore, not just end the policies of kicking out military members for not getting a vaccine, which we thought might be over for a while. It looks like it might be coming back with this new COVID claims. But kicking out members for getting a vaccine, we can't just end the policy, we've got to restore and make whole those who have been damaged in terms of retirement, benefits, back pay, and those sorts of things. And so we want to do that as well. We've got to get our recruitment up by changing the focus. Thank God for Tommy Tuberville separately, but related, as you know, for taking that stand, as you noted, on life.

And I'll just add one last thing. This bony false claims that is affecting readiness because of what he's doing. First of all, the Senate could confirm these appointments, one by one if they wanted to, but they don't want to do the work. They want to do them all together by unanimous consent. And secondly, it doesn't impact readiness. You've already got people in place who stay in place until the replacement comes. So there's no harm there. And then, and or you take individuals and you put them in place without, you know, they begin to do the job without the effect, the official increase in pay or the X, you got a two star doing a three star job. He hadn't gotten his three star yet because he hasn't been confirmed. It doesn't impact readiness. You're going to

tell me the military doesn't have the personnel in place to be ready right now without these promotions and these extra pay increases. And thank God for Senator Tuberville for standing strong. He's been supported by Senator Marshall and by Senator Lee, who stood beside him there. And a number of my house colleagues and I have went over to the Senate to cheer him on when he's given those speeches or that righteous position. Well, thank you for that. And the other thing to remember here is these are high-ranking military officers. There's approximately, I think, 300 of them. And the dishonesty, not only on the part of those on the left who make these outrageous claims, but then, again, my criticism of the media, which just carries it verbatim

and seems that their intent on undermining and attacking Senator Tuberville at every turn. I may add, sadly, many of them, too, are representative of what's wrong with the new military and the Biden administration. And these are hyper-woke, hyper-leftist individuals who are part of promoting and pushing and advancing the policies that are undermined the military. So I'm not a hurry to get them in place anyway. That's true. That's true. Congressman, one final question for you.

Two-parter, number one, what sort of reaction have you heard from House leadership, specifically Speaker McCarthy, on the Freedom Caucus's official position? And secondly, what can the American people, what can the conservatives who are listening to this interview do over the coming weeks as this debate heats up? Well, let me do the latter part first. what individuals can do is reach out to their member of Congress, especially if it's a Republican, especially if it's Republican, and demand that they cut back to pre-COVID level spending, demand that we don't do a unconditional CR that just kicks the can down the road without getting any wins for the American people,

demand that they not vote for an omnibus if that comes up in December, demand cuts in spending, demand they join what the Freedom Caucus is doing, As it relates to Speaker McCarthy, I think he wants to find a path forward. I think he wants to find a way to work together. But he has a binary choice. He's either going to have to work with the Democrats to get Democrat votes to maintain the status quo, or he's going to have to adopt the conservative position that we ran on as a House last fall and then stand strong and force the moderates who said that he had to be speaker,

and only he could be speaker, and they were behind him. he's got to tell then he needs their support so that he has our support too and pass a conservative bill. Conservative bills, I should say, with these 11 appropriations bills that do keep the commitments that were made back in January, keep the Republican coalition together in the House and force the Senate in the White House to adopt our position. Congressman, you reminded me of one thing. There's another proposal out there from the Biden administration to send $24 billion to Ukraine, and they're trying to tie that together with emergency disaster relief here in the United States. thoughts on this proposal?

Well, that represents what's wrong with Washington, as you know, that you're going to hold hostage one vote for another vote. As it relates to Hawaii, quite frankly, that's a reflection of climate policies that have caused those fires. People are literally dying because it's climate, environmental, is extremism that's going on, in the name of anti-reliable, affordable energy. And we ought to help the people in Hawaii, perhaps, but we ought to do it by taking away, maybe it's funding for the IRS or maybe some of the climate funding. So we ought to take it from not borrow the money, not further exacerbate our spending problem or our deficit, but take it from something else. Secondly, we ought not to be holding one vote hostage to another or one. Those are

not germane. There's, you know, the emergency funding for Hawaii has nothing to do with Ukraine. I'm against additional funding for Ukraine for a number of reasons. I don't think it's our national security issue. I don't think that we ought to be leading NATO in Europe and carrying the lion's of it. I don't know what the exit strategy. I don't know what the result looks like. I don't know what the limit of U.S. involvement is. We don't have accountability for the $113 billion or so that's already been sent there. We have to borrow the money that we do send there. We've got our own national security issues. We've got our own weakened military issues. Why would we continue to exacerbate our own problems by sending resources to Ukraine? Congressman Bob Good, thank you for your

leadership in Congress. You can follow him on Twitter or X at Rep Bob Good. Be sure to check out There, not only his stance on all of the conservative issues, but his leadership there at the Freedom Caucus, which put out this official position just this week. We appreciate you joining the Daily Signal, sir. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me again. Take care. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had a chance, be sure to check out our evening show right here in this podcast feed, where we bring you the top news of the day.

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