7 posts from Monday, May 29, 2023

It's a true honor to be standing here endorsed by the President of the United States. (Applause) I appreciate your support, Mr. President, but I appreciate more the leadership you're showing for our great country. (Applause) We have the strongest economy we've had in years. We are standing four square behind our ally, the State of Israel. (Applause) We have strong constitutionalists being put on our courts, including the Supreme Court. (Applause) We have ended the disastrous Iran deal. (Applause) And under the President's leadership, we are standing against socialist dictatorships in Latin America like Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua. (Applause) So, Mr. President, thank you for your support. Thank you for what you're doing for the State of Florida. I ask for your vote in the August primary. Ron DeSantis beating out Adam Putnam, and what we specifically saw is a dramatic turnaround. In mid-June, Mason Dixon polling had Putnam beating DeSantis by 15 points. Then about a week later, June 22nd, you see the President tweeted his endorsement of DeSantis. Well, I can tell you by late July, DeSantis was up by 12 points, a 27-point swing.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

Congressman, what is the latest on the debt ceiling? Kevin McCarthy's driving a hard bargain. Joe Biden says we're still very, very far away from a deal. One minute, what can you share? Well, they're still in there. They're pushing hard right now as we speak. My attitude is if Joe Biden can't be serious, it might be time to start talking to senators. Senate is not even in this week, so you could tell how serious they look at this situation. It's an existential threat. Don't bother my vacation, right? Yeah, but they're not here. But it might be time to start talking to the U.S. senators and saying maybe they come up with a deal, pass something out of the Senate, and then we sit down and talk through that deal because Joe Biden is not leading the country, surprise, surprise. We're going to talk about this after the break, Congressman, of some of the specifics. Joe Biden wants more revenue. He wants, of course, tax increases. But I don't think Joe Biden is negotiating in good faith because all of his proxies, they're singing in harmony. You have sweatshirt Shrek, Fetterman, and you have all these other people talking about the 14th amendment. They don't want to work through you guys, which is completely unconstitutional. My fear, though, and maybe you can help walk us through this, is there might be a catastrophic move by Republican leadership to say, hey, we're going to get enough of kind of our more moderate members and Democrats and get this hiked. So what I'm saying, though, is we should ask for serious cuts, but we don't control everything. Is that fair to say that we have to take a good deal when we have it? I don't think we have a good deal yet. But I don't think somebody said earlier, oh, we control all the cards. No, no, that's not true. They'll get enough Democrats and enough more moderate Republicans to hike the debt ceiling with very little concessions. Is that correct? Yeah, that is correct. And that's one of the concerns. I'd spend time talking to some members and stuff like that. And so a lot of members are in different places, depending on where you are in the country. You've got some who are basically like, look, I just need a deal to just go ahead and get this thing done and get it over with. And so that's a real concern. I think from the conservative side of the conference, what we've been saying is hold firm. We're the only game in town in terms of where a deal actually has been passed that's actually alive to get to the president's desk. So we have a strong position. We don't hold all the cards, but I think we have a good number of cards. Yes, we do. If we manage just right, we will actually end up getting a very good deal for the American people. So let's talk some specifics. If you're comfortable, what would you think some of those concessions would be that are realistic? What do you think? It's tough, Charlie. You know, it's really tough to put this out here. And typically, I don't like doing that. But now when they're in the room negotiating this stuff, I don't really want to put anything and peel it off the table because my position is clear. To raise the debt ceiling about one and a half to two trillion dollars, we should be cutting about 4.8 to 5 trillion. That's easy stuff. And then the other thing that we should definitely be doing is pulling back these Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, because that stuff, all it is, is tax cuts for the rich who believe in this crazy Green New Deal stuff, which is going to set back our energy matrix in the United States. So why would we subsidize these Solyndra type companies to make billions of dollars doing business with China and the American people fall behind? Makes no sense at all of me. And so, you know, it's funny, you have the White House and you have the Democrats, they're the ones who now support these quote unquote tax cuts for the rich. That's a great point. And by the way, just so everyone understands, there's still tens of billions, and by some estimates, hundreds of billions of unspent money. We're talking, I mean, we're talking about employee retention credits, we're talking about COVID relief stuff. And this is a different show that we'll do at a different time. But the amount of fraud and abuse, Congressman, as you all know, that came to the COVID money surge was in the tens of billions of dollars, right? DOJ is having a field day going after scam artists and all this. So Congressman, let me just paint not so much of a hypothetical, but I want your position. Joe Biden's a trader to the country, I've said it before, but let's, Joe Biden, let's say he's negotiating in good faith. And he says, okay, I'll give you domestic if you do some foreign is there any wiggle room in the Republican caucus to say, hey, we'll cut some of the woke military will cut or because some Republicans are saying you're not going to get a dollar out of the defense budget. Where do you stand on that? Look, if you're talking about the woke programming and DoD, as far as I'm concerned, that can go immediately. I'll be the first one to support those cuts. Secondarily, I think and it's just something we were talking about, with dealing with the National Defense Authorization Act, that's to come later this year, is is procurement reform, actually beginning that work. Because we have a situation where we have defense contractors who, you know, whether they deliver or not, the money gets spent. That's a problem. So we shouldn't be doing that at all. So I think if you would get get rid of those woke programming, yep, dealing with procurement reform to really help DoD be a lean meat fighting machine, we should definitely do that as well. Yeah, so this is what you just articulated is super reasonable. And that shows that Republicans want to get a deal done. Look, you can't get everything that you want. But the Democrats are saying, you know, again, Joe Biden, he's so disingenuous and his puppet people, the puppet masters, and they say, Oh, really, what do you guys want to do on foreign policy? And they always go after the military, right? But you just articulated, look, there, there's some, okay, you know, we'll come to some meat. But hey, Joe, why don't we cut this ridiculous explosion of trillions of dollars of spending, hundreds of billions of dollars of unspent money, the crony green energy subsidies, you got to give a little. And that's why they like the 14th Amendment idea so much congressman is because they don't want to deal with you. They think you're an annoyance. They think the American people are irritating to their regime aims and ambitions. And so they're you can't push too far in Congress when you've been super prudent on this. And our audience agrees, but some people say, Oh, Charlie, we have all the cards. No, we have most of the cards. There is a scenario where leadership could go to Democrats to raise the ceiling and we get nothing. So we got to strike it right at the crescendo, right at the proper climax, sell at a high mark, and then move towards the spending bill.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.