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🔵NEW DOCUMENTARY: “Gotaways: The Hidden Border Crisis” 👉 https://ept.ms/3Kl9mTX “We never have a transparent, responsible funding of our government. This is why we're facing $33 trillion in national debt. And no one has taken this seriously for the last several decades.”
In a historic vote this week, the House of Representatives removed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House Speaker. Congressman Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) was one of 8 Republicans who voted Rep. McCarthy out of office.
“It was a culmination of the destruction and the loss of the trust and confidence of Speaker McCarthy,” says Rep. Rosendale. “It is the first time in history it has happened, and I will tell you that no one takes any pleasure in this taking place. I'm more than glad to compromise on policy. I won't compromise my principles, but I will compromise on policy. But what we cannot have is a Republican speaker with a majority, thin as it is … [who will] allow the Democrat minority to dictate the policies leaving the House. And that's what we witnessed.”
Despite high tensions and hot tempers, Rep. Rosendale is confident that the House appropriations bills will be completed before the deadline, and that a new speaker’s election will be held next week.
“We’ve also been working so hard to restore this legislative process, where we can bring those 12 appropriation bills forward and discuss them, debate them, amend them on the floor, and restore sanity, if you will, to this institution,” says Rep. Rosendale. “I think that we will close the 118th Congress out with a success.”
Why don't you just tell us, what was your thinking behind this rather unusual vote last night?
It was a culmination of the destruction and the loss of the trust and confidence
of Speaker McCarthy. After we had that tumultuous Speaker's battle at the beginning of the year,
a really big part of that, Jan, was that we had agreements about how the House was going
to conduct its affairs going forward. It was about the rules package. And what we had was
an agreement from Kevin McCarthy, not to deviate from the norms and ask for anything out of line
or radical, but basically a restoration of functions of the House. Things like a single
subject legislation requirement, 72 hours to review any legislation before we were asked to
vote upon it. A guarantee that we would abide by the Budget Act of 1974 and have the 12
appropriation bills to properly and transparently fund government presented by the June 30 deadline
that was stated within that act. And so we all held hands, we started moving forward,
and we were able to get some really good legislation passed. We passed H.R. 1,
which was the domestic energy legislation. We passed H.R. 2, which from what I am told,
is the most conservative and comprehensive budget security and immigration legislation
that has ever been passed up here. And we passed the NDAA, the National Defense Act,
with Republican votes, which has never been done, which included a five and a half percent
increase in compensation for our service members, biggest increase in 20 years.
But then we started dealing with the big financial challenges of the day. And instead
of having those appropriation bills come forward in June, and instead of addressing
the debt ceiling in a fashion that the Republicans had agreed upon, that's where Kevin McCarthy
failed to uphold his word. We passed, number one, a budget ceiling piece of legislation,
and 218 Republicans voted for that. And it contained clawbacks from residual money that
had not been spent yet from COVID. It also had clawbacks from like new Green Deal provisions.
It had a provision in there that froze spending at fiscal 22 levels, which is not crazy or radical.
And it also increased the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or March 11th of 24, whichever came
first. Before the ink was dry on that, we sent it over to the Senate and Kevin McCarthy started
negotiating with President Biden a whole separate deal. And he basically sold out the Republican
conference and negotiated a deal that extended that debt ceiling until January of 25, putting
no cap on it whatsoever, which basically exposes the American people to about a $4 trillion increase
in the national debt. That was unacceptable. We still had to move forward. June 30 came,
no appropriation bills. July 30 came, no appropriation bills. The appropriation
committees had done their work. Kevin McCarthy would not bring those bills to the floor.
August 30, no bills. So several of us got together and forced him to bring
several of the appropriation bills to the floor. And we were able to pass Department of Defense,
Homeland Security, State and Foreign Operations, appropriation bills, but it was so close to the
September 30 end of the fiscal year, the deadline that everyone heard about the shutdown of
government. This was completely orchestrated because the appropriation bills were ready for
us to be debating, discussing, amending, and putting through the floor. This was orchestrated
to try and push us up against that deadline so that a continual resolution could be utilized
instead of the proper appropriations process. That continued resolution was passed with 209
Democrat votes and only 125 Republican votes. And I will tell you that extended Nancy Pelosi's
spending levels and Joe Biden's policies. And then on top of that, we heard that he negotiated
a separate deal with the president to tie border security funding to Ukraine funding.
And that was it. That's when the member said, this trust has been broken. We are going to
have to remove him from speaker and put someone in that position that understands we cannot
continue down this path of financial ruin and not being forthright.
