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Tag: andy biggs
Freedom Caucus Still Whining About Speaker McCarthy's 'Broken Promises'

Freedom Caucus Still Whining About Speaker McCarthy's 'Broken Promises'

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are still seething at Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for coming to an agreement with President Joe Biden that avoided a catastrophic default. They insist he broke promises made in order to secure that final, 15th round of balloting that put him in the speaker’s chair—promises McCarthy and his team insist didn’t happen.

The Freedom Caucus swear that McCarthy promised he would never let a bill pass with more Democratic votes than Republican. The debt ceiling agreement passed with 165 Democratic votes, and 149 from Republicans. “We were told they’d never put a bill on the floor that would take more Democrats than Rs to pass it. We were told that,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona whined last week. Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who extracted coveted seats on the powerful Rules Committee in their deal-making with McCarthy, also insist he promised them nothing would be allowed out of that committee and onto the floor unless it had the unanimous vote of all nine Republicans.

The rest of the Rules Committee and McCarthy’s team deny that he ever made those promises, and there isn’t any public evidence that he did. There is, however, that unresolved mystery of the secret documents that plenty of people said they saw circulating during that chaotic week in January, when McCarthy was wheeling and dealing his way to the gavel. Plenty of rank-and-file Republicans believed at the time that the secret addendum to the rules package governing this session existed, and felt sold out.

There is one promise that he’s not denying, and this one is most dangerous for the future stability of the government: McCarthy reportedly told the Freedom Caucus that he would roll back funding for the 2024 fiscal year to 2022 levels. Colorado Rep. Ken Buck repeated that claim on CNN last weekend. “He promised when he was running for speaker that we would use the 2022 baseline numbers as the appropriation numbers for this year, and then went back on that promise with this particular legislation, where he promised and signed into law the 2023 numbers.”

The danger in this claim, which again McCarthy isn’t denying, is in those 12 spending bills that Congress has to agree to before Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown and/or a one percent across-the-board cut to everything starting in January. The topline spending for the next fiscal year was set in this debt ceiling agreement at nearly $1.6 trillion. Where Biden and the Democrats are looking at that as $1.6 trillion in guaranteed spending, the Freedom Caucus and Republicans could very well be looking at that as a cap, with the intention of spending much less.

McCarthy, maybe in a bid to recapture the hearts and minds of the Freedom Caucus, hinted at spending fights to come in the next few months, including getting all the “wokeness” out of government. No. Really.

There’s no denying that members of the Freedom Caucus were the biggest losers in the debt ceiling agreement, but they could still regroup to make that appropriations process impossible and threaten a government shutdown if they don’t see the cuts they say McCarthy promised them. The ultimate threat they have over McCarthy—the motion to vacate the chair and boot him—completely fizzled out this time around. It does, however, still exist as a possibility, and the fight over the 12 appropriations bills is a likely place for it to bubble up again.

One of the negotiators in the debt ceiling deal for McCarthy, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, acknowledged that threat on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. "I'm not ruling out anything. It depends on how reasonable each side is, obviously, in the negotiations. It's very difficult to predict.”

Between now and October 1, when the new funding agreement has to kick in, the House is scheduled to work a grand total of 36 days. That’s subject to change—they can always cancel recess and work.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Debt Ceiling Poses Major Test For McCarthy's Tiny Majority

Debt Ceiling Poses Major Test For McCarthy's Tiny Majority

Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing a big test this week: marshaling his tiny majority to vote for his radical debt ceiling and budget cuts plan. He set an ambitious deadline for getting it done by the end of this week, which seems unlikely since the House doesn’t get to legislative work until Wednesday. While it’s a leadership test for him, it’s nearly as big of one for the supposed moderate Republicans, who will have this one chance to show they can—or want to—wield as much influence as the Freedom Caucus.

With his slim majority, McCarthy has just five votes to lose to try and force President Biden into his hostage-negotiating scheme. He’s threatening the full faith and credit of the nation, not to mention the global economy, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling limit without a massive set of budget cuts. Those budget cuts would hurt everyone: children, working families, veterans. That, in turn, could hurt the reelection prospects of a couple of dozen House Republicans who represent swing districts.

The debt ceiling is the congressionally imposed limit on how much the government can borrow to continue to pay the bills for money Congress has already appropriated. Those debts include paying for people in the military, Social Security and other federal pensions, and payments on foreign debt. The federal government needs to borrow money to pay its bills when its ongoing operations can’t be funded by tax and other federal revenues alone. The U.S. paying its bills—and making the payments on the debt it owes overseas—is essential.

McCarthy’s plan is the same as the one the Freedom Caucus put forward in March: Biden has to erase all the accomplishments of the past two years. As White House spokesman Andrew Bates told RealClearPolitics, “Their leadership has caved to the most extreme MAGA hardliners in their conference.”

Despite that, some of the maniacs are still holding out on McCarthy. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona says he’s “leaning no” on the bill because it would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion. Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz doesn’t think it punishes low-income working Americans enough. It should have “more rigor” on work requirements for recipients of Medicaid and other programs, he says, making them prove that they work 30 hours a week instead of 20 as is currently in the bill.

The MAGA team holding out on their votes should be giving the so-called moderates the opening they need to show they care more about responsibly governing the country rather than appeasing the extremists. They could, but they’re not.

Like Nebraska’s Don Bacon, the “center-right” guy the traditional media runs to for quotes. He’s completely on board. The “goal is to get this on the floor next week,” he told NBC last week. “[McCarthy’s] providing a simple plan. I think it’s good policy. I think the American people are gonna like it,” said Bacon.

That doesn’t seem likely, given the majority of American people don’t think games should be played with the debt ceiling. Republicans, however, are used to ignoring popular sentiment.

South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson chairs the Main Street Caucus, supposedly a moderate, business-friendly bunch. He’s on board with McCarthy’s plan to pass the bill “before the end of April,” and is bullish on the bill. “Kevin McCarthy’s gonna get 218 votes on this deal,” he told NBC. “These are really concepts that, I think, unify the conference rather than divide us.”

They’re generally not used to ignoring Wall Street, though, and Wall Street is getting increasingly jittery. They’re not raising hell about it yet, but they’re nervous. Last week, BlackRock Vice Chair Philipp Hildebrand warned that default would undermine “a basic anchor” of the world’s financial system and “must not happen.”

“All we can do is to pray that everyone in the United States understands how important the sanctity of the sovereign signature of the leading currency, of the leading bond market, of the leading economy in the world is,” Hildebrand said.

Of course they can do more than send thoughts and prayers. They can use their massive leverage—and campaign money—on Republicans, starting with the so-called moderates. Those guys might not listen to their constituents, but they will listen to their funders.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Andy Biggs

Far-Right Lawmaker Humbled By Fact-Check On His January 6 Claims (VIDEO)

A C-SPAN news anchor recently fact-checked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) during a phone discussion. According to HuffPost, the conversation took place on March 24 during the Washington Journal program.

During the segment, one of the callers expressed concern about former President Donald Trump's desire “to pardon the traitors ... convicted of seditious conspiracy” in connection with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“Come on. What the hell’s wrong with you Republicans?” the caller asked.

Biggs, who served as one of the organizers for Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally prior to the insurrection, argued that no one had been convicted of sedition in connection with the insurrection.

“Not all were convicted of seditious treason. In fact, none were. And so that’s important to understand,” he said. “The second thing I would say is many of them were convicted of misdemeanor trespass. And I think that’s important to understand as well.”

Following the first call, Brawner pivoted back to the initial answer Biggs provided and said, “Congressman, USA Today had this headline back in November of 2022 that Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder, was found guilty of seditious conspiracy.”

“Oh, OK,” Biggs replied. “Yeah, well, I didn’t follow that case.”

Watch the video below or at this link.


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Greene Told Trump That Her QAnon Cultists Would Join January 6 Protest

Greene Told Trump That Her QAnon Cultists Would Join January 6 Protest

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who pushed the debunked conspiracy theory that “Antifa,” not a pro-Trump mob, was behind the Capitol attack, informed former President Donald Trump that her supporters, including some QAnon cultists, would attend the January 6, 2021, rally that preceded the Capitol attack, ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House Select Committee.

The House panel’s latest release of full transcripts cache featured two more interviews with Hutchinson, its star witness, conducted last May and June that mentioned prominent Trumpworld figures including Greene, Trump himself, and his administration’s fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

As Hutchinson recalled in the June closed-door deposition, Greene had brought up QAnon in several conversations with then-President Trump and in private communications with Meadows, the Independent reported.

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene bringing QAnon up several times...in the presence of the president, privately with Mark,” Hutchinson testified.

“I remember Mark having a few conversations, too, about — more specific to QAnon stuff and more about the idea that they had with the election and, you know, not as much pertaining to the planning of the January 6 rally,” she added.

Hutchinson also testified that Greene broached the outlandish conspiracy theory on January 4, 2021, during a campaign rally in Georgia that Trump attended to stump for then-Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans.

“... We were on the ground in Georgia… Mr. Meadows and I were having a conversation,” Hutchinson said, “Ms Greene came up and began talking to us about QAnon and QAnon going to the rally, and she had a lot of constituents that are QAnon, and they’ll all be there.”

“And she was showing him pictures of them traveling up to Washington, DC, for the rally on the 6th,” she added.

When the select committee’s vice chair, outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) asked Hutchinson if she recalled Trump talking about QAnon, the former aide disclosed that Greene had lauded her QAnon-supporting constituents in a chat with the lame-duck president.

“I heard him talk on the plane that night because Ms. Taylor Greene gave him a very similar spiel: These are my constituents. Look, one of them had a Q shirt on. They are on the plane,” Hutchinson said. “And she showed him a picture of them, saying: Those are all my people.”

In the days preceding January 6, Greene falsely accused “Joe Biden and the Democrats” of stealing the election, claimed without evidence that “President Trump won by a landslide,” and urged supporters to “flood the Capitol building.”

Yet, Greene told Lindell-TV, a disinformation platform owned by pro-Trump conspiracist and MyPillow magnate Mike Lindell, that anti-fascists were behind the Capitol attack and “no one can convince me it was so-called Trump supporters.”

Hutchinson also told congressional investigators that she recalled other right-wing luminaries discussing QAnon and far-right militias — the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — including “several other members of Congress.”

Greene participated in these discussions with Trump and Meadows, said Hutchinson, and so far-right Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and former Trump White House adviser Peter K. Navarro.

“I remember Mr. Meadows and Mr. Perry talking about all of the groups [the Oath Keepers, QAnon, and the Proud Boys] and with several other members of Congress,” Hutchinson informed panel investigators.

“I remember Mr. Brooks mentioning some of the groups. Mr. Biggs, Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene… Mr. Navarro had talked about them a couple of times,” she added.