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Dec. 13, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
25:07
The Log Jam on the Hill
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.
Well, this week in Washington, you know, for those of us who grew up in the old news days, I'm not one to believe that everything was rosy and gray back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and 80s.
Everybody, I mean, look, news was news.
They gave their own perspective.
But you know, you do miss some of the salinity, I guess it was, of, you know, this is Walter, that's the way it is.
You know, Wednesday, December the 13th.
I wish in some moments we could go back to where Washington was normal.
Where Washington had some rhythm to it that got stuff done without either dramatic Endings or dramatic speeches that went nowhere.
Instead, we continue to stay in this cycle of basically nothing getting done.
And this past Monday, of course, we had Senator Ron Johnson on there.
Great episode.
If you didn't miss it, go back and get the Doug Collins podcast.
Hit subscribe.
You can always go back and get the older episodes wherever you get your podcasts on there.
But, you know, it is just amazing to me, as Senator said, about how the dysfunction is forcing Congress into a more irrelevant role.
Well, it can't be any more true than what's going on right now in the political nature in Washington.
So on this Wednesday, in honor of what will be the last week of 2023 for the House and more than likely the Senate, and for many of us, we can just say thank God it's over.
We're going to discuss what they've got going on here after the break.
We'll touch it on the points, what will happen, what won't happen, and at least do a little crystal ball here on this Wednesday.
So right after the break, we'll be right back.
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We're back on this one.
Let's just break this down.
It's not going to take a long episode, but I want to break down some interesting episodes that we've got going on.
First off, yesterday you had Zelensky in from Ukraine begging for money.
And for those who say, well, this is sort of unprecedented, yes and no.
For those also would need to read history books to realize that Churchill basically did the same thing for the first few years of what we now know as World War II. When England and some rebels in France and some other places were the only ones fighting the Germans and Italians at the time before Japan got involved in this.
And he was in regular contact with Roosevelt.
Roosevelt at the time was bending to the wishes of the populace, which was stay out of this war.
They were 30, you know, a little over 25 years removed from...
Yeah, about 20, 25 years removed from the First World War when Germany started its progression across Europe, Hitler's rise in Germany, the consolidation of power, the breaking of the Versailles treaties, all of this was happening.
And you had luminaries in the U.S. such as Charles Lindbergh, who was a legitimate national and international hero for flying across the Atlantic and other things, was saying, you know, look, we don't need to be fighting anybody else's battles.
We need to stay out of it.
Roosevelt, since that, and not only his own Democratic Party, but it was also the Republican Party, was very isolationist.
Probably the last, up until recently, the last real pure forms of isolationism that we've seen in the United States for a while, and if you don't understand what I'm talking about there, let me break it down simply, is that it believes that America can operate and live in isolation from the issues of the rest of the world.
I'm not sure that's a legitimate way to look at the brightest freedom star in the planet, is not being able to deal in certain issues across seas and across timelines.
However, I do agree that we do not need to be involving ourselves every time something happens and putting our resources, our treasure, and our people in harm's way.
This brings us to the situation in which we're in now with Zelensky, who is Made everything over the past two and a half years seemingly an endless request for funds or endless request for resources, an endless request for help, not only from the United States, who has been one of the main benefactors to the Ukraine during this war with Putin, but also encouraging other countries around it.
And it's hard to really fathom the length in which we have been in this So, as we look at this moving forward, it is...
Concerning that they still, in Ukraine, have not made the progress that was at least intended.
The monies that are going there do not seem to have a logical or a valid warfighting plan to either bring this to a peace negotiation or to defeat the Russian army, who has thrown countless resources, countless people, and countless money toward just defending what little bit, what gains that they have had.
I say all this in context to what's going on in Capitol Hill with Lulinski being up here again asking for money.
But we've run into a headstrong Congress, especially Republicans, who see this, and rightfully so, as a pivoting point for dealing with an issue that the Democrats have basically all but forgotten, at least in public life, and that is immigration at our southern border.
Quick reminder, when Donald Trump left office, the borders were secure.
We had low levels of those trying to get into the country illegally.
The third party waiting in Mexico plan, the other issues that were designed to keep the immigrants from knowing that there was a free walk across the border waiting for them if they could just pay the coyotes and get mugged or raped or beaten while they're coming.
They could then get across into the United States, plead asylum, That now they can get in.
They didn't have that under Donald Trump.
Donald Trump turned off the welcome mat to those wanting to come illegally.
To those coming legally, there was always a path.
And this is something that I, you know, look, I actually will agree with both Republicans and Democrats who say that our immigration system is broken.
I don't disagree with you, but you don't fix it by just opening the borders and letting everybody come across.
It's just not a valid way to address immigration, although I have seen my Democratic colleagues address it that way for the last few years.
They don't want to touch anything that would stem the flow of those coming across.
Fast forward, after Joe Biden came in, he revoked all of the Trump era provisions.
Title 42 is gone.
We see now a progression almost every month of new records being set for those coming across the border.
And two to three million gotaways.
In other words, we know they're coming in, but we have no way to know where they went because we don't have the personnel on ground.
And that is, I mean, think about that for a second.
The state of Georgia in perspective has about 11 million people, between 10 and 11 million people in it.
Almost a third of Georgia's population would be filled with those who crossed our border illegally and that we don't even know about, have not been processed, have not come through the system.
And that's not counting the millions that have come through the system asking for asylum or seeking asylum.
This has become the political touchpoint of isolationism versus the reality of our border.
And this week in Congress, you're going to see the supplemental package.
You hear this talked about all the time.
And part of that supplemental right now is for Ukraine to fight its war against Russia and also the money that would be set aside for Israel in their war with Hamas.
And the other Iranian-backed militia groups that are constantly firing at them and keeping them in a state of caution and war, given the fact that they don't even believe, these groups don't believe in Israel's right to preemingly exist.
Both of these have gotten tied up.
The interesting part was Senator, I mean, Congressman, who's now Speaker, Mike Johnson, first put the Israel aid on the floor with an offset to pay for it, and Democrats didn't like that.
The Senate would never take it up.
Again, simply looking at it here, saying you're spending money in the middle of the year without providing any offset of cuts in spending.
You're just spending on top of spending.
That was the argument.
You can understand why people are tired of seeing dollars go out the door without any regard to the debt or deficits of this country.
Then you have the Ukrainian spending, which is twofold.
Number one, you have a lot of folks now who are just believing, why are we in Ukraine?
Why are we continuing to do this when there doesn't seem to be a path to victory?
And there's a lot of legitimate concerns about the government in Ukraine and the conditions in which our aid is being used, a lot of which has been gone to humanitarian purposes and not military purposes, which, again, we could argue the efficacy of that or not is being something to deal with.
So you have the sort of, let's not keep our troops in these areas.
And Joe Biden has absolutely no credibility to stand on, especially given his...
Abandonment of Afghanistan in the early part of his administration in which we actually lost soldiers and Marines lives in.
When you just abandon a country with some very poor military, it seems, division and plans and that.
So the administration has no plan.
Seemingly coming forward.
Now, that's why they get Zelensky over here.
That's why they get the Prime Minister over here.
They get others to try and say, yes, there is a plan.
The problem is right now no one on Capitol Hill is buying it.
So, I tell you, all of that then to bring up the contrast in the sense of now with the Ukrainian monies is a decision by Republicans both in the House and the Senate to deal with our southern border.
And I've dealt with that issue here multiple times on the podcast.
Right now, the ones who are coming across for asylum, which are most of the ones coming across, they've been coached, they've been prepped through their coyotes, and just the ones bringing them across and the aid organizations to say, here, you've got to say these words, these are the magic words, you're looking for asylum.
95% of those who come here seeking asylum will not get asylum after going before a court and who examines the evidence.
That's just the plain and simple truth.
So how you have an administration such as this one with Mayorkas, who is completely inept at HHS, Homeland Security, and not HHS, but Department of Homeland Security, and then backed up by other secretaries and cabinets and the Saying that we're going to take care of these people,
we're going to bring them in, and we're going to bring them in legally through their gates and ports of entry to take away from what's happening at the illegal ports of entry.
And it's just not working.
When you give people In other countries, the path to say, if you just come, then we'll deal with your cases individually.
We won't start screening you as we should early on and keeping you detained until we get a ruling on whether you should stay here or not, then people are going to come.
And when people come, they're going to stay.
We can't get them back.
They rarely show back up for their immigration hearing or deportation hearings because they don't need to.
They're in an underground economy here in the United States.
And the Biden administration, along with the liberal progressives in Congress who don't like ICE, who is the enforcement arm of our border protection folks, have been basically neutered into not doing their job.
Under Joe Biden.
This presents us in a very difficult situation.
So this week, Zelensky's coming.
They're hoping that they can get money.
They're not going to get the money.
So as we look at this, that lays you out.
So if you hear in these arguments about supplemental and why it's not being spent or why it is being spent, what the arguments for and against are very simple.
Republicans are simply saying, Democrats, you've got to come to the table and put legitimate kind of deterrence at the border, both money and policies that will keep people from coming over here.
That's a very legitimate request.
It's not an illegitimate request, given the nature of what's happening at our invasion at our southern borders.
And if you have to hold this aid hostage to that, then hopefully that would signal the administration needs to engage in finding a solution.
However, as I said, when we first started this podcast in the introduction, that was back when Congress actually worked.
Congress is not working right now.
Democrats are viewing this as a political stunt.
Republicans are viewing it as, hey, let's try to get something done.
And frankly, even some Republicans who can get most of everything they want may not vote for it anyway.
So this is the problem with the aid.
Let's move forward to FISA. FISA is the other issue that is now looking to get punted in the United States House.
And FISA authorization, 702 reauthorization is on the looking, it is designed for To ensure that our intelligence community has the necessary needs to track and keep our country safe through tracking of terrorists and those who want to harm us here and abroad.
It should have adequate protections for American citizens, which it currently does not have.
Does it need to gut those protections, those surveillance requirements, to the point that they're not useful in the United States?
Probably not.
Can it be done through a warrant requirement?
Yes, it can.
That's the two bills that are competing in the House right now.
You have the Intelligence Committee bill, which basically protects the current intelligence community, and maybe even, depending on how you want to interpret some of the passages, actually give...
More leeway to the FBI and to the intelligence community to conduct surveillance, even on American citizens.
I would reject that.
I worked on this in Congress three or four years ago when we tried the last update on this, and we pointed out the problems that we've seen with the FBI and the intel community and what happened through the Russia gate, what happened through the collusion episodes with Donald Trump and people around the Trump campaign and the administration, and we saw it happening.
And unfortunately, the scare tactics of those on the intel side, again, I think we need to have robust intelligence.
I'm not saying that we don't need to have the ability to spy.
I don't believe we should not have the ability to go after terrorists and even go after Americans who are helping those terrorists.
But there's ways to do it that ensures that the process is valid.
Now, some will argue that it is.
Others of us will argue it can always get better.
And I think from the abuses at the FISA court and not turning over information, not disclosing information to the FISA court, even the courts implemented that said this is not something that can continue.
Speaker Johnson, who's having some issues trying to get his footing, which is not unusual, and I think he's doing the very best job that he possibly can under the circumstances he has, has abandoned this month appropriations bills, in which we had just passed a CR a month ago that get a two-step appropriations process, one for January, one for February.
And the...
This process has not even been worked on for the most part in the month of December.
So you're going to come back in on the first of January with 10 days to get another package of spending bills done in which you have a house that has been very much divided on how to do that.
On top of this, you're now adding a National Defense Authorization Act on top of FISA. And let me get back to FISA for a second.
The Speaker was going to put both the Intel bill and the Judiciary Committee bill on the floor and basically saw which one got more votes and that was going to be the one that was passed over to the Senate.
After much fighting internally in the conference, the House GOP conference, they're now not going to put either one on the floor and they're going to let the four A month extension of FISA go into effect through the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a conference committee between the House and the Senate.
Many Republicans do not like the compromise.
It doesn't do the things that they wanted to in the House version.
It's sort of funny to me to see some members who thought they would be on the conference committee and that they could have a lot of input into this, not realizing how that system works, and realizing that the Senate and the White House and the Senate negotiators with the House were going to pull out a lot of the very controversial stuff, which they did on abortion, transgender issues, on DEI stuff.
They got some victories in it, but not everything.
You know, is it probably the best that we could do?
I don't know.
I wasn't in on the negotiations, but was it better than where we started it?
Yes.
Because there are some victories in there.
Are there some defeats in there?
Yes, there are.
That's what comes with divided government.
So now they're having to take the National Defense Authorization Act this week, put it on the floor as a suspension, which means that they go straight to the floor and it has to get its two-thirds vote, 290 in a full house.
As opposed to putting it on a rule in which three or four Republicans could kill the rule and not let it be taken up.
I do look for this to pass.
I think it will pass on Thursday.
If it looks like this is where it's heading, maybe sooner.
And it'll pass on suspension Allowing, Thursday or Friday, allowing the bill to proceed, but it's gonna probably proceed with probably more Democrat votes than it does have House Republican votes.
And again, this will put Speaker Johnson in a little bit more of a hole trying to dig out of in his leadership role that he's trying to get accustomed to.
Again, I don't think he's in a position right now that is good for anybody.
I don't think there's a person in the House, given the current conditions in the House, that can make this happen.
He is the best we've got to try and make it work.
But I will say, as I've said before a few weeks ago on this podcast, when I say sometimes you just have to say it, Republicans have got to start using the majority for the majority.
And that means you're not going to get everything that you want, but you've got to do better than what you're getting now.
Because right now is a complete mess because you're not able to pass anything.
And the bills that you are passing on the floor have either no hope of becoming law or they're just fillers for time when you can't go back to the fact you're not getting appropriations done, you're not getting FISA done, you're not getting the National Defense Authorization Act, and you're not acting on Israel aid or Ukrainian aid, either to turn it down or accept it.
So as we look through these things, this is the chaos that is ensuing this last week before Christmas.
And as a member told me just today, it's time for everybody to go home.
It's time to pass what needs to be passed and then go home.
Because at this point in time, There's no solutions coming.
Hopefully a good two weeks out of Washington, D.C. with people looking at what they really want to get accomplished and not just talk about what they want to accomplish.
Maybe we can get that done.
I think also as a prediction here on the podcast, I think you're going to hear, you'll probably hear one or two more members who decide not to seek re-election.
You may hear more of that because they're going to get home, they're going to realize this is not a good place that we're in, and they don't possibly see a good outlet To make it happen or resolve itself.
So you may see some more retirements going into election year.
One last thought before we get into it.
By the first of the year, and we were already in the under-30 day countdown to Iowa, Donald Trump has a commanding lead.
And I mean, the last poll out of Florida, even in a primary in Florida, had Donald Trump in the high 50s.
You had Ron DeSantis, who is the governor, who just got reelected a little over a year ago now.
With wide margins in the state of Florida is under 20% in his own state.
This is not happening.
Donald Trump is going to be the nominee for the Republican Party.
I think you'll start seeing it in Iowa, you're going to see it in New Hampshire, and you'll definitely see it through Super Tuesday, South Carolina and going forward.
We'll have much more to say about the presidential campaign coming forward and also the fact that we know that it is getting serious because the investigations, Jack Smith in particular, is now going to the Supreme Court to try and make sure that his case is heard.
He thinks he can get a conviction before the election.
There's a lot of things going on after the first year.
But we're at the end of the year, and as I've just laid out to you, these are the problems.
That the Congress is facing, and in particular, the Republican members in the House have got to come together to be able to solve these issues, move forward on these issues as a majority.
Not everybody getting what they want.
But getting what they can from a conservative perspective and then going out winning more seats in this next election, winning the Senate back over and taking the presidency back so that we can actually get to conservative legislation.
With that, that's your Wednesday update.
Next up for us will be the Friday's Finest with James and Chip.
Can't wait to see you then.
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