Meet the Press: Matt Gaetz
Interview
Nobody trusts Kevin Mccarthy. Getting 200 Republicans to trust you isn't enough to stay speaker.
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Well, thanks so much for having me, Kristen.
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Well, I don't think that other countries think about Kevin McCarthy's speakership quite as much as Kevin McCarthy does. We'll have a new speaker next week, and we'll be prepared to do our work. Kevin McCarthy was removed because he made multiple contradictory promises to people that ultimately could not be reconciled. The Democrats didn't trust him. House Republicans on the conservative side of our caucus didn't trust him. And that ultimately led to us making a decision to move forward with someone new. Fortunately, we've got two great men running for speaker, Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. I reject the premise that this is going to drag on for weeks. My colleague, Kevin Hern, was contemplating a run. But I received a message from him recently that he won't be mounting that campaign precisely because in a two-man race it's going to be pretty clear who gets the most votes. I do want to say, based on what's going on in Israel right now, it is horrifying. We stand with the people of Israel. Israel has a right to defend itself. I get the sense that Israel's going to be larger, not smaller, at the end of this conflict. And you have to take note that every place, whether it's Gaza or Judea and Samaria, where Israel has given back territory, life has gotten worse for the people who live in those places. And I think Israel's actions right now are justified, though we certainly hope that the carnage and the death comes to an end as soon as possible.
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Well, you just heard the secretary of state reject that premise. We have a ten-year ongoing memorandum of understanding that sends Israel almost $4 billion --
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Hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me get a word in here, Kristen. Yeah, but what he said was there was no need in Israel that we're not going to be able to meet, based on the funding that we've already approved for Israel. And the reason we have this multi-billion-dollar commitment each and every year to Israel is because we want Israel to have a qualitative military edge over everyone in the region. They have that edge. Israel has air superiority now. We are -- we are seeing their armored vehicles in the north. I'm very concerned about what Hezbollah might do, what Lebanon might do there to try to create more instability. But there is no ask from Israel that we are unable to meet because it's going to take us a few days to pick a new speaker. I was very critical of the pro tem's decision to send us home for a week. I thought upon McCarthy's ouster we should've stayed on the job, stayed in Washington. And if McHenry had not made that decision, we would have a speaker right now. He made one that was regrettable. But I think we're going to be back on track quite soon.
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Not only do we have a clear replacement, we have two. We have two men who are incredibly respected --
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Well, I think that in a two-man race, it's a lot easier to get someone to 50% plus one than in a race where you have three, four, five, seven people. So the fact that it's been a constrained race, you are watching the play in, play out. And by the way, if we have a Speaker Jim Jordan or a Speaker Steve Scalise at the end of the coming week, there won't be a single Republican, sans maybe Kevin McCarthy, who doesn't believe that we have upgraded the position. This is about ensuring long-term stability financially for our country from a leadership standpoint. And with either Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan, we will undeniably have an upgrade, and I'm looking forward to it.
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If we take Paul Ryan off the field right now, instead of being able to finish strong in the 115th Congress, we will shatter into a bunch of factions fighting against each other for power. We got enough of that in Washington already.
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Unfortunately, we're in a very different position today than we were back then. Also, I don't know that that was 2008. I think it was 2018. You may have missed a decade. In 2008 I was in state legislature in Florida.
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Okay. No problem. We've caught up. But now that we have the circumstances we're faced with, we had a leader who had made multiple contradictory promises that nobody could trust. So there was no way to move forward. Paul Ryan was in a quite different position in 2018. And where you're not seeing factions divide. Matter of fact, you saw Brian Fitzpatrick just the other day, someone who doesn't hold my view on a lot of things, a more moderate Republican, endorse Jim Jordan, my hero and mentor and judiciary chairman. So I think we're actually going to come together quite soon. I think we've got two great choices. And I think that you're going to really see an invigorated Republican party. We were in the doldrums with Kevin McCarthy. We had no budget. We have not had a budget in this country for decades. So I think that it's about time we follow the law. We have single-subject spending bills, and then we work with the Senate and the president and divided government to meet our priorities.
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Well, I -- I disagree with that. We had the numbers to pass appropriations bills to fund over 70% of the government. And for all of the criticism that I'm an agent of chaos, I voted for all of those appropriations bills for our military, for our veterans, for our Department of Agriculture and our food security, and for our Department of Homeland Security and our border. The question isn't whether or not we believe in a budget. The question is what is the responsible budgeting process. Now, the McCarthy strategy was to utilize omnibus bills, continuing resolutions, and to have one up-or-down vote on the funding of the entire government all at once. I believe that the manner of budgeting is best served, in divided government or not, with single-subject spending bills that are individually negotiated so that you have a programmatic review on how the federal government spends money. We haven't done that, even though it is the law, since 1996. And by the way, we can do it in divided government. The last time it happened was divided government.
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Well, the voters of Florida's First Congressional District sent me here with about 70% of the vote. So I think that anyone trying to kick me out of Congress because they didn't like me would have a bone to pick with them. But think about what we're saying. I'm the guy saying we need a budget. That we need to follow the Budget Control Act of 1974. And because merely I wanted to hold Kevin McCarthy to his own word that he would follow the law. They want to expel me from Congress?
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-- That's crazy.
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Absolutely. Look, I am here to fight for my constituents. And I'm here to ensure that America's not on a path to financial ruin. Your average American family right now is spending $700 more each and every month for the same household goods and services. We are about to refinance $8 trillion in debt from the low interest rates to high interest rates. That's going to mean that the APR on every American credit card is about to go up. People are going to be crushed. And debt and inflation are driven by government spending that cannot continue. We're spending $7 trillion a year and only taking in five. So to me, people who are willing to drive $2 trillion annual deficits are the agents of chaos. The people who want budgets are actually agents of regular order.
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No, I voted against ten continuing resolutions during the Trump era --
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And I actually voted against the budget that created the platform for the reconciliation of those tax cuts because it didn't balance. I agreed with Senator Rand Paul at the time that we should do the tax cuts with offsets and balanced budgets. There is a key distinction, though. In the Trump years, the economy was growing. Wages were growing. Capital was coming back to our country. GDP was growing in a far faster rate than it is now. So it's different when the economy is growing and people are doing better. Now there's more debt, more inflation. There's no plan. People are doing worse. And that's why I think we need a better track.
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I want to hear both of their specific plans on spending and on single-subject appropriations bills. I am heartened.
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Yes.
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Yes, if either of those men get the most support in the conference, I'm eager to vote for them on the floor. Thank you, Kristen.
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