At today's House Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stated that he will not vote for a continuing resolution.
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00:00 I'm going to ask my good friend, the Ranking Member,
00:01 for any questions he may have for the panel.
00:02 Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me welcome the panel.
00:05 Finally, a panel that includes people
00:06 who are in charge around here.
00:08 And, you know, Dr. Burgess just went through wistfully
00:14 all the things that used to be
00:17 and things that he wished were in place today.
00:20 You all have as well, but I'll remind you, you're in charge.
00:24 I mean, you can't blame Nancy Pelosi for this.
00:27 You can't blame Joe Biden for this.
00:29 You know, the Republicans control the House of Representatives.
00:33 You can have as many open or closed rules as you want.
00:37 I mean, not only has the appropriations process
00:40 been a complete mess, but the process in general has.
00:45 I mean, and this is not slight to my friend, Mr. Cole,
00:49 because I know he is on the side of more openness,
00:53 but there have been 37 completely closed rules this year.
00:55 That's more closed rules to date than the previous two Congresses.
01:00 On amendments, this Congress,
01:02 73 percent of amendments have been blocked.
01:05 Over 61 percent of Republican amendments have been blocked.
01:09 And so, you know, I just -- I point that out.
01:14 But what I'm trying to figure out here
01:18 is like where we are and where are we going.
01:20 So these appropriation bills are being brought up one by one,
01:26 which I think is the way they should be brought up.
01:28 But there are still a couple of --
01:30 I think it's two appropriation bills
01:32 that haven't been reported out of committee yet.
01:34 Okay? So we're not going to get to all 12,
01:36 no matter how fast we move next week.
01:38 So -- and if you were here earlier,
01:43 I mean, obviously there is disagreement
01:47 with the White House on the substance of some of these bills.
01:50 There's disagreement with Senate Democrats
01:52 on some of these bills.
01:52 There's disagreement with Senate Republicans
01:54 on some of these bills.
01:55 So there is going to have to be this kind of give and take.
01:58 And I don't think under any scenario
02:01 do we pass 12 appropriation bills next week.
02:04 The Senate does the same.
02:06 We reconcile the differences.
02:08 And, you know, we have our product.
02:11 The government shuts down a week from tomorrow
02:15 if we don't do anything.
02:17 And we've had a couple of attempts
02:21 at a continuing resolution
02:23 that have been brought before the Rules Committee.
02:25 Continuing resolutions that are --
02:26 that in my opinion don't reflect my values.
02:28 I couldn't vote for them because of the deep cuts.
02:31 But nonetheless, they were brought up here
02:33 and then they were pulled.
02:34 So I'm just trying to figure out,
02:36 given the realities that we're dealing with
02:39 and the moment of time we're in,
02:41 are all of you going to vote for a continuing resolution?
02:46 >> I'll tell you, if you don't mind dealing --
02:48 >> Yes, no, I -- yeah.
02:49 >> Yeah, Mr. McGovern, I'm not going to vote
02:50 for a continuing resolution. We got to break the fever.
02:53 We got to kick the habit.
02:55 We got to -- the reality we face is a $33 trillion debt
02:59 that both parties have contributed to,
03:01 that neither party has developed a process to constrain
03:05 since the mid-'90s.
03:06 But I would point to the fact that in the mid-'90s
03:08 when we had divided government,
03:10 when we had a President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich,
03:13 we were able to go through this process.
03:15 And I would observe that even if we had to endure
03:21 a small shutdown, a week,
03:23 that the work that we could do to get these individual bills
03:27 out and negotiated in divided government would be worth it.
03:31 And I don't favor a shutdown.
03:33 I want to move as fast as possible.
03:35 We may even have bipartisan agreement
03:37 to move faster than we have in the past.
03:40 There's no question that you're right,
03:42 that there is no one that we can blame
03:44 the lack of the production of these bills on but ourselves.
03:47 And I own that as a Republican,
03:49 but as I think Mr. Cole correctly observed,
03:52 we've been following a bipartisan tradition.
03:55 And I think that this system,
03:57 that this rule that the committee I hope passes,
04:01 and I hope the House passes,
04:03 gets us back on a track where we negotiate these things
04:06 in the way that Mr. Burgess reflected on,
04:09 not negotiating what feature of a continuing resolution
04:13 is or is not going to be part of that calculus.