The Dispatch Podcast - Rep. Buck: No Moral Fortitude in Speaker’s Race

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

In between voting for House speaker, Representative Ken Buck joins Steve and Declan to talk about House politics, GOP reluctance to acknowledge who won the 2020 election, and whether an honest speaker can yet be found. Plus: -Buck’s relationship with GOP colleagues -Scalise not wanting to bring wrath of MAGA base -Jordan and Scalise voted to decertify elections -Why Buck voted for McCarthy in the 15-round melee in January -Will colleagues support reform? (Spoiler: no) Show Notes: -Watch this episode on YouTube -Sarah Isgur: It's Time to Amend the Constitution Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes, and today I'm joined by Declan Garvey as we interviewed Congressman Ken Buck from Colorado. We talked to Representative Buck about his vote last week to boot Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. We talked to him about the goings-on in the House Republican Conference, the chaos that we've seen over the past week, the coming vote for a new Speaker of the House, and generally about the Republican Party in spending.

with Donald Trump and its future. Congressman Ken Buck from Colorado. Welcome to This Patch podcast. Thank you, Steve. Good to be with you. We're recording this at 2.30 on Wednesday afternoon. House Republicans have just completed a vote to decide the Congress. conference's nominee to be Speaker of the House. In that vote, Steve Scalise, the current majority whip, defeated Jim Jordan, longtime member of the House Freedom Caucus. And shortly after we finish recording, Representative Buck will head to the House floor to participate in the vote

for Speaker with all members of the House. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on what's likely to happen there, because we don't want this to have been overtaken by events when it's released later this afternoon. But briefly, Congressman, who will you support and what do you believe will happen? So in the vote between Steve and Jim, I voted present because I asked a question last night and then listened to some other answers that were given last night. I wasn't satisfied. Right now, Steve is meeting with a group of folks who did not vote for him in the vote in conference, and he's trying to convince them to vote for him on the floor, and I will go join that meeting shortly. But I am strongly undecided if that's possible, not an oxymor.

And I want to hear more from Steve in a more definitive way. The problem that I've seen is that Kevin made a number of promises to a number of different groups in Congress on the Republican side. And as a result, when all those checks came due for the continuing resolution, there was no way Kevin was going to make good on his promises. And I want to make sure that we have a very clear expectation when we leave the floor. with a speaker for the Republican Party. Let me ask you about the question that you put, as I gather, rather directly, both to Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan last night. What was that question and what was the response?

I asked, would you unequivocally and publicly state that the 2020 election was not stolen? Neither of them answered the question. They both had, well, the second. Secretary of State in Pennsylvania did this, and Steve Scalice talked about a former Secretary of State in Louisiana who was indicted and convicted, and neither of them came forward and said, yes or no. And it's really a yes or no question. You either believe the election was stolen or you believe the election wasn't stolen. There's not a lot of middle ground there. And then after I asked the question, another member came up and posed a similar question because he was upset that they

hadn't answered my question. And so the other member came up and said, did Donald Trump win the election? And again, talk about the Louisiana Secretary of State being in prison, talk about the Secretary of State in Pennsylvania, changing the rules, did not acknowledge that Donald Trump won or did not win the 2020 election. And so when it came time for me to vote for a speaker today, I just couldn't vote for you to one of them. If you don't have the moral fortitude to clearly state your position and either take grief from Donald Trump or take grief from the other side, then you don't deserve to be a speaker in my mind. You don't deserve a job that you have to build coalitions and find ways to honor people and what's occurred.

Let's dwell on that for just a second because I think it's a pretty important question. speaks to a number of sort of bigger issues with Republicans in the House and Republicans in general right now. How would you describe the cause of the reluctance of either of those would-be leaders to answer a very simple, straightforward question that, you know, to be clear, has been settled for a long time? Well, I think it's pretty clear also that Donald Trump endorsed Jim Jordan, that Donald Trump has an expectation that Jim Jordan will, follow the party line, or at least the Trump party line. And a statement by Jim Jordan that the election was not stolen would be detrimental to that endorsement. And I think Jim relies to a certain

extent on that endorsement and that identity, frankly. I also think that Steve Scalese did not want to bring the wrath of the MAGA conservatives, the MAGA base, down on him. And so he didn't want to answer. And Steve, one of the things that I think is really telling here, I voted to certify the election on January 6th of 2021. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan voted to decertify the electors on that day. And the political equation on that day was pretty straightforward. A group of Republicans will vote to decertify and Donald Trump will thank them and a group will vote to certify and Donald Trump will attack them. And the Democrats have the votes anyway. We were in the minority. So the Democrats had the votes to certify the election.

So why would anybody vote to decerter? Why would anybody vote to certify the election when the only real change was you're going to get blasted by Donald Trump? Now, that changed as a result of the riot in the capital building. And some people actually moved from announcing publicly that they would decertify to certifying after the, after the riot. But before that, they were very much set on decertified. So a majority of the Republicans in the House voted to decertified election, even though we had no constitutional basis to do so. How many of your colleagues, if we were to ask them that direct question, did Donald Trump win the 2020 presidential election on a secret ballot, how many of them would say Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election? How many of

them really believe that? Well, those are two different questions. How many would say it on a secret ballot and how many of them actually believe it? I think very few actually believe it. I think a number of them because of cognitive dissonance would say on a secret ballot, I'm not sure. I just don't know. There's so many questions out there. There's this Dinesh D'Souza, you know, a video, and there's this recount in Maricopa County and there were all these questions that came up. And there's all this stuff going on on the internet and social media, I just don't know. And I think that's what you would get on the secret ballot. I think most of those folks know when secretaries of state, when county clerk from reporters certified election, it is the best we could do in this country.

And while there is some fraud in every election, there wasn't enough fraud in six separate states to overturn the results of this election. As a member of Congress, I think you're obviously used to disagreeing with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but also disagreeing with your colleagues within the Republican conference here on many issues. I think you're more conservative than where the average member of the House Republicans are. But has it taken on a different valence to disagree with your colleagues on this issue, in particular on something as fundamental as whether or not the election was stolen? Have you had difficulty relating to your colleagues or kind of seen relationships fracture over this?

Can you continue to work with them? You both like to ask me five questions. I've got to sort of parse with all these questions. But is it hard to work with my colleagues? No. I've been here nine years almost now. And I have great relationships with most of my colleagues. And frankly, my Democrat colleagues also.

I work a lot across the aisle and get a good legislation passed. But my Republican colleagues, I am absolutely willing to work with and have shown them that I'm a man of my word. When I tell you, I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it, and that's what they know. They also know that I am a constitutional conservative. I just had four members come up to me while we were before the vote. Talley was delivered today and say, you know, I may disagree with you, but I know that your opinion is grounded in the Constitution.

And I appreciate that. So while my colleagues may disagree with me and have often, you know, there's a issue of Biden impeachment. And I have come out more cautious than others on that impeachment. And again, they say, I disagree with you on that, but I'd love to learn what your thoughts are based on your constitutional analysis. So I think I have a good relationship because of my consistency on a lot of these issues. You, last week you voted with Matt Gates and seven other Republicans along with Democrats to effectively boot Kevin McCarthy. as speaker. There were a lot of people who were very critical of that group of Republicans,

including in our pages. I mean, the dispatch is sort of known for not, for avoiding ad hominem attacks, for trying to avoid labels. But I think we called the group nihilists and goblins and all these others. You've offered a bit of a different explanation for that vote than Matt Gates and some of the others. Why did you vote the way you did on that? Well, First of all, I voted for Kevin in the 15-vote series that was held in January for Speaker. And I voted for him consistently in that. And the reason was that he had made a promise. And the promise was that we would appropriate money at the $1.47 trillion figure.

So when it comes to discretionary spending, it will not exceed $1.47 trillion, which was the 22 number. So it's not even a pre-COVID number. Post-COVID spending has just gone off the charts. That wasn't even the deal. It was a post-COVID number, but it wasn't the typical 8% increase that the discretionary budget gets every year. So then he goes to the White House

and he negotiates in the debt ceiling deal a $1.66 trillion figure with President Biden. So $200 billion difference between what he promised conservatives and what he promised President Biden. Then he starts meeting with moderate groups, and he got to 1.52, he got to 1.59. He got to all kinds of numbers. And then all of a sudden, we get to the CR. And he puts a CR on the floor, and it loses because 22 Republicans didn't vote for it.

And then he negotiates with the Democrats, which is fine if he's going to negotiate less spending, but he didn't. He negotiated a deal that was consistent with the current spending level that would get us to that 1.66 that he deal that he made with the president. So the inconsistency of his approach concern me. When I look back at where Kevin McCarthy was in the past, he was one of the people leading the charge for decertifying the election results on January 6th. When I spoke to Kevin McCarthy about kicking Ilhan Omar off of her committee assignments, I said, I can't vote for that because this is just going to be a series of retributions from one Congress to the next. I'm not interested in that. He said, Ken, within 30 days, we will form a working group.

Within 30 days, we will put an amendment to the rules on the floor, and we will amend that rule. So from this point forward, we will make sure that the Democrats would have to change that rule if they wanted to kick Republicans off in the future if they get the majority. I told the same thing to Nancy Mays from South Carolina. So that never happened. And there were enough of those types of promises that didn't happen. And I'm a spending hog. I want to make sure that we do our very best on spending to not go over the cliff any earlier than we have to.

And I just, I thought, here's an opportunity to send a very clear message. Obviously, Israel had not been invaded at that point in time, and it was sort of a different security situation around the world. And I voted for it, and I would vote for it again today, because I believe so strongly that we need different leadership to go in a different direction. We need to take federal spending more seriously. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take

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where you're managing so many different factions and need to make different promises to different groups? Do you think it's possible to handle it differently at this point? You're asking me if I think it's possible to find an honest speaker, and I do think it's possible to find an honest speaker, and you're asking me, do I think that honesty will prevail? Now, I have to tell you, It's always conservatives that get the blame for a shutdown. It's always conservatives that get the blame for a debt-sealing crisis. And it's always conservatives because we're the ones that want to spend less. It's about time we find a speaker who wants to spend less and then blame the moderates for holding

up a continuing resolution or an omnibus or some other piece of legislation because they want to spend more. Let's put that on the other side and change this dynamic for once. The Republican Party, I mean, for those of us who've argued pretty consistently in favor of limited government, in favor of reducing the size and scope of government, sounded the alarm on debt and deficits, as you have, as you did pretty consistently through the Trump years, it strikes us, it strikes me as a bit rich when I hear some of these other Republicans, some of your Republican colleagues, who are now all the sudden concern about. excessive spending. I mean, Donald Trump, we've mentioned this on this podcast before, we had Mick Mulvaney, as a member of the House Freedom Caucus, went on to be Donald Trump's budget chief, then was chief of staff, told us that Donald Trump spent more in the first, his first two years in office than Barack Obama did in his last two years in office. Where was this concern for spending from the Republican Party throughout the Trump years? And doesn't that make these calls for tightening our belts now from some of these same Republicans who supported that profligate spending, a little tough to take? Well, Steve, let me add a couple more facts that you're going to want to add in future questions, I think, because what happened...

Wait, I just simplified the question because you told me you wanted them simpler. I'm a simple-minded person, and I appreciate that. But what happened before Donald Trump took office was John Boehner cut a deal with Barack Obama that we would have spending caps. And that those spending caps applied when Barack Obama was in office. So when Donald Trump came in office and he wanted to increase military spending, all of a sudden Republicans didn't care about spending caps anymore. So now we have Joe Biden who is spending like a drunk sailor, and I don't mean to insult the Navy, but it is a situation where we can't with any sort of high ground

say, you know what, we need spending caps because when it was a Republican president, we just blew right through those spending caps. So I absolutely agree with you. The Republican Party has an identity crisis. We have a brand that is convenient. We'll spend on things we want, but not on things you want. And the Democrats do the same thing. And so you have this bipartisan bankruptcy that's going on in this country. And it's very difficult to expose without a lot of people saying that, and I think you used word goblin, but whatever word you want to use, I'll accept that. But it is, you know, I've been called a rhino and a traitor and all kinds of things because I want to reduce spending. And it's, it's crazy to sit here and think about every

Republican in this house, 222 or whatever the number is, go out and tell their constituents, they believe in limited government, they believe in less spending, they're going to vote for a balanced budget amendment and then they get here, they do the exact opposite. They tell their constituents, I want to drain the swamp. Send me to D.C. and I will drain the swamp. They get here and they think they're sitting in the hot tub and they're just loving every moment on it. The past two, three weeks, really the past two or three months, I think, have kind of made clear, you know, you're a little bit disillusioned with the way that the house is functioning right now, both, you know, with the rules that former Speaker McCarthy had to accept in order

to get the job, but also just kind of the conduct of some of your colleagues. What do you think are kind of the incentives that are driving, you know, these lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to reach for this performative politics or to tell their constituents one thing when they're on the campaign trail and do something else in Congress? Why aren't these incentives align? Well, it's a great question. And we have to figure out how to change the incentive structure in Congress. We make $174,000 in change, whether we balance the budget, whether we spend $2 trillion more than we take in.

That's our set. So if you have a business and you go into debt $2 trillion, you're out of business, not the federal government. We just print more money and we keep riding along. so the incentive for a member of Congress isn't a personal wealth incentive it's to get more votes if i tell people bad news they're not going to vote for me so i need to tell people that everything's fine in dc you know this debt isn't going to be a problem and by the way this bridge that's named after me that's really going to be convenient for everybody to make sure we can cross that that expanded bridge and uh you know i save people a half hour in their in their commute

aren't I great? And what we need to do is we need to, if the incentive for Congress is to get re-elected, we need to make sure that that's the incentive that we take away. So if you don't balance the budget, and balancing the budget next year would be a ridiculous thought. I would love to do it economically would be disastrous for the entire world. But what we would say is in 10 years, you have to reduce the deficit by 10% every year, or 20 years by 5% every year. then we could say you didn't achieve that. You can't run for re-election. You are barred from running for re-election.

Or 20% of the House, Republicans, Democrats, can't run for re-election. Some incentive structure that goes to the heart of what politics is about as opposed to an incentive structure that you would use in business, because really government is so different than business. Can you imagine your colleagues supporting reforms like that? of course not they're in the hot tub steve they love it here where does this where does this come from that i mean is there is there you know a grassroots movement is that what this yes has to be and how do you start something like that i'm torn between this constitutional convention you know idea or something coming out of congress even if the house could pass something which i don't think we could it would die so quick in the senate it would it would be pitiful there's no way the senate

with their six-year terms and their long naps and their, you know, hip replacement exercises and all the stuff that they do over there, there's no way that they would want a system of accountability in place. And so I don't think it happens in Congress. Just like I don't think term limits happen in Congress. Nobody wants to limit themselves. So they're not going to pass term limits here. What we need is some outside group. And the founders gave us that, but everybody's concern, including me, that if we have a constitutional convention, the second amendment is gone. And the First Amendment is altered in a way that, you know, you can't have misinformation in speech and then who defines misinformation. So there's a very valid

concerns to a constitutional convention, but somehow we've got to change the incentive structure in Congress. Our colleague who sometimes hosts this podcast, Sarah Isger, wrote a piece probably about a year ago now, arguing that it was too difficult to amend the Constitution, that the bar was too high and that, as you were saying, that there are certain places where this stuff makes sense, but then you come up against concerns about the existing amendments and their sanctity. Do you have an opinion on that issue? Do you think that the current threshold is too high? Look, we amend the Constitution. It's called the Supreme Court. And I think we amended in a very thoughtful way. And the Supreme Court, you know, is, is a decade or two behind

the times, but changes with the times and how they interpret the language from the 1780s. And so I think that if you look at California, where it's fairly easy to amend the Constitution and pass propositions, it's a disaster. It's as beautiful as the state is, it's the last place on earth that I would want to live. I would choose Ukraine and Gaza right now before I would choose California. It is a messed up place. And I think that comes from being able to change the Constitution too easily. Well, we're grateful for the time you've given us, and we know you've got to run for votes. Let's end where we started here. Donald Trump offered a very strong endorsement of Jim Jordan in the race for a House Speaker. And there are reports that Trump

supporters were whipping on Jordan's behalf. Do you know anything about Trump's efforts, whether Trump himself made any calls, whether he had his lieutenants really pushing? Do you know how active he was in this race? I don't know. I obviously know the public endorsement. I know it was really very strong public endorsement, but not a milk toast endorsement. I also know that Kevin McCarthy and his allies, I shouldn't say Kevin, but certainly his allies and staff were reportedly working to help Jim Jordan out. I didn't get a call from either of them, and I'm not surprised by that, but I just, I don't have personal knowledge. And last question, Jordan lost that internal Republican vote 113 to 99. Should we read this as a step away from Trump from House

Republicans or are there too many other issues involved to look at this as some sort of proxy vote on Trump? Yeah, Steve, I was asked before the vote whether I thought Donald Trump's influence would be great and I don't. I've served with Jim Jordan on the Judiciary Committee for nine years. I know Jim Jordan. I've served with Steve Collise as one of the leaders of the conference for nine years. I know Steve's police. There's nothing that an outsider is going to tell me that's really going to influence. And I don't take that as a derogatory comment towards Donald Trump at all. Were there some freshmen who were influenced in some way who didn't know the two people very well? Maybe. But for most of us, it's a family issue and it's going to be settled

inside the family. Great. Congressman Ken Buck, thank you so much for joining us today. We know you've got to run off to a vote. We appreciate the time. Thank you. You know what I'm going to do.