 Hello and welcome back to Radio Rothbard. I'm Ryan McMacon. I'm a senior editor with the Mises Institute and with me as always as though Bishop, my associate editor. Let's talk about Congress a little bit today. It's 2023. The new year begins. The new members of Congress showed up. They're trying to elect a Speaker of the House. And we're going to talk a little bit about what they should actually do this year. And we're even going to try and focus on things that could actually happen. And at least that there's like some conceivable way they might occur. But first, let's just talk about what the House is doing today. It's the 5th of January. The House is currently on its 7th ballot to try and elect a Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who just assumed he would sail in as speakers had to submit to multiple ballots. So apparently this hasn't happened since 1923, 100 years ago. But I wanted to just first of all oppose the narrative that this shows that Congress is broken. And there's the claims that, oh, it's embarrassing. They should have just picked somebody ahead of time. How crazy that you would have to actually have votes on things in Congress to elect the leadership. But of course, in reality, well-functioning legislatures, they have dissent, they have debates, they have multiple votes on things that require concessions and working out of compromises. This whole idea that everything that happens in Congress should be scripted ahead of time, that we should do it like the Democrats do it and just do everything by acclamation and have the leadership completely dictate everything. That's not how a good legislature should run. There should be disagreements. There should be what's going on now. And the fact that we so rarely seize it is a sign that there's something wrong with Congress. So I'm happy to see it, even though I don't personally really have a very strong opinion about whether McCarthy becomes Speaker or not. I think you could make arguments on both sides of that. But it's good that this is happening. So I'm happy to see that here we are several days later and the House is having to actually publicly debate, as is the role of the House of Representatives, their leadership positions. And you'd expect a battle on this in particular after such an underperforming midterm with all the problems the Republicans had. It is interesting to see the difference in the power that a Mitch McConnell has where he was able to kind of easily skate through the Senate majority battle there after a very brief, quickly ended rebellion by Rick Scott and a few allies there. Then you actually had someone who was actively trying to become Speaker. Here, there is no main candidate of leading the opposition. You have Brian and Donald's right now of Florida. Right now, as we're recording this, where we're on the seventh vote, I have no reason to think that this one's going to do it. So we have a young congressman who I don't think anyone really expects to be a serious candidate who has become the centralizing figure right now of the opposition. They try to get Jim Jordan, who is kind of a unique figure in this, where he has. He kind of checks those different boxes that you would need to have that position of Speaker. He's a good fundraiser. He's got respect, Yada. But again, it's just it's good to see that there is still a spark of some degree of rebellion here. You had 20 members is more than people were predicting just last week. There are still plenty of people. Plenty of the Republicans who are not particularly big Kevin McCarthy fans. Thomas Massey, for example, a friend of the Institute, he has voted with Kevin McCarthy so far through these seven ballots there. But yeah, it's the people freaking out about this is comical. The other side of it, though, is it's a very interesting reflection on the role that Donald Trump still has within the Republican Party, because he has been doubling down on his support of Kevin McCarthy. You have a lot of kind of the generic pop conservative Trump voices out there like your Sean Hannity's like your Mark Levin's and this crowd of conservative grifters that have been trying to beat over the head and mocking the Matt Gaetzes of the world. You have Dan Crenshaw, who was using nothing short of calling these people terrorists and, you know, evoking George W. Bush, you know, you're either with this or against this sort of mentality here. And again, kudos to, again, a time where there's very little in national Republican politics that is genuinely surprising with the legislative body. I mean, props to get 20 members willing to stand up. Because again, the process, the procedure of the operations of the House have changed significantly in recent years. You know, for all the problems that we've had in a very long time in this country for all of the, you know, the the pork and excesses of 20th century spending, the mechanics of how the House has been operating its business is something that Justin Amash has been very good at articulating for quite a while. He actually showed up in Congress yesterday trying to pitch himself as a nonpartisan speaker. Surprise, surprise. I don't think he got much traction on that. But he's been talking about the breakdown and procedure that really amplified during the Bainer years, particularly Paul Ryan, who replaced Bainer after Kevin McCarthy shot himself in the foot back in the day on that. So again, it's the fact that there's genuine uncertainty is a good thing. We like a little chaos. Best of all, it means that there's no House business going on. So as far as I'm concerned, I mean, they should be voting on speakers the entire year. That would be an upgrade over your average business of the people's House. Well, that brings us a little to what these concessions are, right, that they're trying to get out of McCarthy. And I agree with a bit with Tucker Carlson. I mean, if these 20 get what they want out of the concessions, well, then fine, let McCarthy be speaker, whatever. But the concessions I do think are very important. And for those who don't pay close attention to this stuff, the sorts of changes that really took place over the last 20 years are changes that have really centralized power in Congress in leadership. So I remember I was shocked when I learned a lot more about how Congress functioned because even though I studied it in graduate school, it was all very academic. But then I went to work at a state legislature and the Colorado legislature functions much more closely the way a legislature supposed to function and that there they bring legislation you're in fact guaranteed to get a vote on every bill going forward because you're limited to the number of bills you can do per session. So you can you can put up five bills per session you're guaranteed at least a committee hearing on all those bills leadership can't just decide hey I don't like your bill it'll never get a hearing. That's how it works in Congress. Also, it can it can if it makes out of committee, if they can go to the floor where people were anybody can offer an amendment on it and then there's actual debate. Again, the leadership can't just say you'll never get a vote if I decide you can't get a vote. And so it's this much more fluid free process where all the members actually can represent their constituents offer amendments, oppose bills, call for floor votes, all of those so that you're on the record as to how you voted. The way Congress functions now is that's also tightly controlled by the leadership and so so much legislation never sees the light of day never gets a vote if leadership doesn't like it. And what they do then is cram all of the legislation that leadership likes into these huge omnibus bills that then you're not allowed to amend on the floor and so that's just 20 years ago. That was very different and if we look back to the 90s like when it was the Republican Congress after 95 with Clinton, boy by today's standards like a free for all. And that was back in the day when Ron Paul would attempt to control a bit how the executive branch would spend money by affecting and amending where this money would go. That was through the appropriations bills. Ridiculously, the quote unquote libertarians thought this was a reason to oppose Ron Paul because he was trying to direct funding instead of just letting the president decide where every dime went. It's absurd that that Paul was criticized for for that sort of thing, but that's how Congress was functioning 25 years ago and the way it should be functioning now in fact much more free and easy than even in the 90s. And so they're trying to get some concessions from McCarthy to allow some actual floor amendments on these big omnibus bills as well as making it easier to call for vacating the chair for the speaker. And that's a couple of the concessions they want. It's all to the best that these sorts of things are happening and I hope they get success. I mean, if McCarthy gets in that fine, but those those concessions I think are pretty essential. When it's also great just to see how blunt the rhetoric about Kevin McCarthy is. I mean, you have Matt Gaetz out there who had been delays is a little more taste for the theatrical than many of his colleagues. But, you know, he's out there saying that Kevin McCarthy has no ideology. He has sold his soul throughout his entire congressional career. The need for having, you know, that that a one of the hold ups in brokering a deal is the lack of faith that they have and Kevin McCarthy's integrity to hold up these things. All of this is obviously true. It's just very unusual to see it said so explicitly, which which is nice and refreshing. And there there are. I think there's there's two kind of different camps, I think as well going on here and I think both are very positive. One is it's it's the Matt Gaetz group. And he kind of has his followers and a plane of Luna, who is a young congresswoman from Florida that just got elected replaced Charlie Christ in the district down in the Tampa area. You have again, Byron Daniels, who's relatively new Florida congressman. You have Lauren Boebert, who squeaked through her election over in your neck of the woods in Colorado. Their focus is again, really trying to give teeth to the investigative deep state sort of of Trump era sort of rhetoric that the right has. And then the other side, you have people like Chip Roy, who are very serious. I think mainly motivated by the absurdities of the omnibus bills that you were talking about earlier, the gigantic spending bill that it just went through DC last month. And part of the point, you know, one of their arguments is that what difference does it really make here? You know, if if if, you know, when the majority of the Republican caucus has no problem deciding with Democrats to get this, you know, your typical uniparty sort of legislation in here. Then why shouldn't we, you know, we give away all of our leverage if we hold this up right now. And so again, it is a very interesting way where the little minor things, the procedure and really the rules writing process, you know, can really make some dense into how this body theoretically functions. Again, having that that potential out there, because that that's the other side of it is that the out to propose a vacate the chair motion that was used. That's how they got rid of John Boehner in the first place back in 2016. That's what was the first amendment happened in 100 years. When you have the margins of this narrow, even if Kevin McCarthy is able to squeak through, there is very much a very real possibility to bring this as a specter in the future. I mean, Boehner had survived similar motions leading up to that successful, you know, outing ousting there. So this is a this is a something that it could linger over this Congress going through to 2024. And so again, that's that's it will be interesting to see where do these individuals finalize in the stand that can get support. And I know we're going to be discussing certain things that we might be able to help help crowdsource. Just in case Matt Gates is out here watching this. So some lines in the sand that would be worth taking on over the next couple of years. Well, let's look at a few things that maybe Congress once they get their speaker should get to just because, you know, we get off. We get questions all the time. Well, what what should we do now? These are very moderate picks, right? Obviously, we have plenty more radical views about what needs to happen in terms of radical decentralization and major defunding of military operations and stuff. But this is all just stuff chipping away at at the problem. So they should be viewed as viewed as all just the steps in the right direction, not as like our ideal legislative agenda. But the first that just has to be covered is Congress, the House, they got to stop central bank digital currencies. That's going to be my number one here today, which is this is a terrible, terrible idea. And Neil Kashkari actually, I don't know misspoke was mistakenly honest talking about digital currencies last year when asked about it and noted that the only advantages you really get from digital currencies is they allow the central government to monitor people to impose negative interest rates to really control people spending and to really help set up a spy state. And he was saying that people who want digital currencies, they say, oh, look, China's doing it. He said and he said, well, I could see why China would want to do it because China wants to monitor and control all of its people. And that's what digital currencies are good for. Very weird that Kashkari was just sounding all libertarian on this, but he's, of course, absolutely correct. And he was saying, well, what can you do with digital currencies that I can't do with Venmo right now, right? And with PayPal, I can send money across state across international lines to you without incurring huge fees or anything like that. And so how does digital currencies improve that what you're seeing now is now claims and I've seen in the Wall Street Journal and in other mainstream stuff that oh, we need digital currencies or else the Chinese will be able to take over the world and prevent the dollar from continuing to be the world's reserve currency. And so this is a narrative and a line that's getting out there. And that was really pushed by a committee that Maxine Waters had where she had a bunch of speakers from these center left think tank type places. And they all agreed we all need digital currencies or China's going to be able to become more powerful geopolitically. So here we are yet again with Washington people telling us that we need to adopt basically a totalitarian sort of money that can be controlled from the center or else our international enemies win. It's the same usual Cold War garbage about how we need to put freedom on hold or else foreign enemies will conquer us. And so boy, we need to reject that in the house just needs to do everything as it can to prevent the Fed from moving forward on any sort of digital currency. You're right. The committee in the house that deals with this financial services committee. It's the same committee that Ron Paul was on. I served as a staffer on there for a few years. And this is something where there's been a lot of traction in the past for various types of kind of Fed reform things on the Republican side. Out of the Fed has passed several times through the House, never gotten through the Senate. They've tried some attempts at rules based monetary policy, all of which is, in my opinion, a waste of time. And again, it's never gotten through the Senate because the powers that be have a lot of stronger grasp on our stronger hold on keeping anything that infringes upon the independence, that sacred independence of the Fed. But I do think that this is something that can gain some real traction. And the civil liberties aspect of it is concerning when you do have, again, relatively, you know, institutional powers like Neil Cache-Carrie, you know, warning about, you know, what this can do. It's also ties into, I mean, one of the top priorities Republicans have claimed to have going into this cycle has been trying to reverse the, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of new IRS agents to go over the Venmo, Cash App, you know, trying to crack down on transactions of, you know, over $600 or so. There's already sort of a running message that Republicans have had kind of touching on this issue, trying to really make this one of the lines of the stand to attach to, you know, next time they have to pass through some sort of bloated, absurd, you know, insane spending bill. This is precisely one of the things that they can try to get stapled into it. I'm talking to Peter Sainange, former Mises fellow, who is doing some great work with heritage now on this issue. Because, you know, this is one of the most important, I think, you know, this is one of the institutional changes of how the Fed could become even worse than it already is. And, you know, I think there really is the opportunity to make some actual positive advancement on this as a political issue. So correct me if I'm wrong, though, but the House could, by itself, obstruct the movement towards digital currencies by the Fed, or they need more than that? Unfortunately, I think ultimately this is something that's going to require active legislation to firmly rein in. You kind of set a firm fire line there that you can't do this. You know, the House has a lot of, you know, they have the ability to create some good, you know, c-span material by grilling, power, you know, various Fed people, you know, in a hearing or something like that. But the Fed currently is authorized to do, you know, and they've been doing test cases for CDC, or central bank digital currencies already. They're going to have to actively try to do something that prevents them from doing that. But it's something that can be stapled into, you know, sort of a larger, you know, pork laden spending bill. And I think that's, you know, getting traction for that is the only way we're going to get anything done of any significance anyway. Anything that actually looks like serious reform is going to be DOA if it, by the time it gets to the Democrats, send in nothing else. Okay. Well, let's move on to number two then. This one's just to defund the war in Ukraine, or just cut defense spending in general. Now, obviously you're not going to get much traction from that from the center, right? Both, center right and center left. They love it. They, I mean, McConnell's come out there and said the Ukraine war is one of our top concerns. I think as the economy worsens, Americans will see what a humongous waste of money this is. They'll figure out that Russia has no threat to the United States unless the U.S. provokes a nuclear war with them. And you can also leverage the issue of if people are going to go on and on about what a threat China is. Well, obviously wasting all your strategic energy in Ukraine is not going to help that at all. And I think maybe there's some potential for conservatives to ally with the far left on the Ukraine issue and to work their way around the center on this to at least get some concessions to scale back on that particular military operation. Obviously that's going to require opposing the White House. As we saw Bernie Sanders usual turncoat that he is backed off immediately with his attempt to limit spending and support for the Yemen starvation campaign by Saudi Arabia when just Biden asked him to stop. So he did that, so being the usual fake civil liberties guy that Bernie is, he folded on that. But I think there's probably some principled leftists maybe that she could be able to ally with this. And maybe at least ring some concessions out of the administration and congressional leadership on this issue. But boy, they really, if they want to be ahead of the curve, they need to start dealing with this now unless they just want to keep doubling down on just giving free money to Ukraine, expanding the U.S.'s strategic exposure worldwide just as the global economy is starting to turn south. Meanwhile, by the way, Russia, their trade balance is just improving for themselves. They're actually flush with cash in spite of all what you hear about how Russia is being hurt so badly by these sanctions. And yeah, they'd rather the sanctions not be there. It's not like they're not affecting them at all. But they're used to their standard of living being garbage. And so I wonder how much Americans are going to want to adopt more of that in order to stick it to the Russians. And so why not be ahead of the curve on that and start talking more sense on the Ukraine war now? And so just cut defense spending just overall. Okay, don't tie it to cutting welfare spending or something that. Just cut federal spending. And a good place to do that where you can get the left on board is on defense spending. Normally they play this game or will only allow some moderation and defense spending increase. If you allow us to cut welfare spending, stop that game. Just cut federal spending overall. A good place to start is with defense. And then sure, cut other types of spending later. But as inflation continues to be fueled by ongoing deficit spending, just stop. Just start reeling back on some of this federal spending and do it now. And if you got to do it with defense spending, great. Of course, one of the last things that Congress did last cycle and right before Christmas, in that gigantic almost $2 trillion omnibus bill was $45 billion, I believe, for Ukraine. It was higher than what the Biden administration was asking for, right? So Congress was going up and beyond the call of duty there. And of course, it's been very fun to see. One of the photos used the most to lampoon Kevin McCarthy during his continued failed run is the look of him with his Ukraine flag pin and blue and yellow handkerchief in his pocket. And that's been one of the very interesting actors within the House leadership battle has been Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been not only a voter in favor of Kevin McCarthy, a speaker, but a very outspoken defender and critic of the Matt Gaetz led rebellion. And part of that is her aim to try to collect these chips with the hope that it will pay off to increase at the very least oversight of future Ukrainian funds. If not outright, you know, start winding down the money being spent. Again, the problem is Matt Gaetz has repeatedly said as you can't trust Kevin McCarthy for any of this sort of stuff. But that's precisely why they moved up the timetable to try to get this Ukrainian funding through last cycle. So it'll be interesting to see next time, you know, does Zelensky come hat in hand asking for more money from the U.S. You know, but the problem is those that while there is there is a growing coalition on the right to address these issues. I mean, the beyond before the Bernie complete embarrassing surrender on the Yemen war resolution where we're getting. And that's that's something that in the past has been promoted as much by Mike Lee of Utah as Bernie Sanders from Vermont. But you had a coalition of, you know, the progressive squad types in the house, you know, starting saying, hey, look, we kind of need a wind down plan in Ukraine. And by the time that letter went out, I believe within 48 hours, not only had that been walked back by the members of Congress, but they threw the staffer under the bus. I mean, it was just, I mean, it was one of the most embarrassing turnabouts that I've seen in a long time, which again, it goes to kind of the very strong discipline the Democrats have in the ranks. Surprise, surprise with all these, these rhetorical radicals out there. It's funny how they never quite, you know, show the same sort of Mandel that you're seeing in the House rebellion right now. But unfortunately, I think this is something that the Uniparty is still strong on this issue, unfortunately. Yes, very much so. But yeah, so this is a long shot, but at least maybe rain in some of the increases in spending on this. Because yeah, things do get out of hand and let's, the United States can't afford it, right? Even though, well, the feds checking up on every 600 bucks you spent on Venmo, the Pentagon has lost trillions of dollars. And so that's just basically where we are right now. And it's funny, like, I mean, some of the scars that like still haunts, you know, that parasitic class of, you know, multi-decade DC staffer is the old sequestration, spending limitation that that was kind of the one big triumph of the Tea Party Age, where they kind of reined in both military and some social spending increases. And the idea at the time was, oh, well, we've created this pact, you know, it's never going to happen because neither side's happy with these cuts. And so that kind of forced us to the deal. You know, that was back in the day. It was very cute where Congress kept like creating these deadlines that like, oh, certainly no one wants this. We'll have to, they'll force us to sit in the table and act like grown-ups. And they would always fail at acting like grown-ups. And so the end result would come in. People are still terrified. They're still haunted by the memory of, again, these very slow, these very just these reductions in increases of military spending and so like, it's that, that's the scariest ghost in DC. Once again, just shows the absurdity of everything going on up there. All right. Well, number three is the GOP should just come out and say they're not going to offer any federal legislation on abortion. Now, of course, this has nothing to do with whether you like abortion or not. This just has to do with, are you committed to decentralization, the 10th amendment to recognizing that there's nothing in the Constitution that allows any federal legislation on abortion whatsoever. And also the political stupidity of Lindsey Graham's move right before the last election to start talking about how he was going to pass new legislation, imposing federal preemption on state governments as to what they could do in terms of their own abortion policy. So we had years of the better guys in the GOP saying, oh, it's a state matter. We need to get the federal government out of it, overturn Roe v. Wade, turn it back to the states as had always been the case before 1973. So you finally get that, finally, after 50 years. And then what do they do? You got Lindsey Graham up there saying, yep, I'm going to scare the bejesus out of sort of center left voters nationwide and tell them that no matter what state they live in, we're going to start passing federal legislation because it turns out it wasn't a state matter over after all. We just wanted Roe v. Wade so that we could start imposing our own legislation. So that's a terrible stupid idea, totally contrary to the Bill of Rights. And just stop, just say, it's a state matter. We mean it. We were serious and there's not going to be any federal legislation. Now, of course, obviously they should stop any federal funding of abortion or anything like that, but that's different from what they were talking about doing. That also just takes it away from being a federal issue. So when you get like voters in Illinois or whatever talking about how they're trying to try to take your rights away in Washington, actually that has nothing to do with it if you live in Illinois or California or whatever. It's up to your state legislature as to whether abortion is legal there or not. It just shouldn't even be a federal issue and they shouldn't allow the left to federalize the issue for the next election either. Right. And I think, unfortunately, it became very clear that there were a large percentage of Americans that just the specter of abortion access mattered more to them than $5 gasoline and real economic hardship. Taking that off the table as on the federal level, an attempt to de-escalate a little bit some of the cultural aspect. I do think it's something that have some, not only is it the proper thing to do and just in terms of more Washington interferes in the sort of stuff, the worst we all are, but I think it's also just political savvy at this point. So that's the sort of thing where I wouldn't be surprised at all if we end up seeing this going into the 2024 cycle. And moving on to number four, the church committee to investigate, to a new church committee to investigate the FBI. So for those of you who don't keep up with this sort of thing. So back in the mid-70s, in 1975, there was a Senate committee called the Church Committee and there was a House equivalent also where the mid-70s were actually a good time in that we were coming out of Watergate and the Vietnam War and it was starting to be recognized that the CIA and the FBI to a slightly lesser extent then had become very much involved in meddling in the affairs of domestic politics. And so you would hear about all these, all this stuff that you were told were conspiracy theories five or 10 years earlier, such as all these CIA experiments on people like MKUltra and then you had the co-intel pro program, which was all there to basically just control people to infiltrate private organizations with federal agents in order to spy on them. This was regarded by an earlier generation of Americans as a horrible thing. Now ever since 9-11 and Americans all thought USA Patriot Act was a great idea and domestic spying is wonderful, back then when you had the church committee going on it exposed the fact that you had telecommunications companies conspiring with the deep state to feed information about private citizens to the executive branch and people thought that was a bad thing back then. And I guess a lot of people still believe that stuff isn't that bad or isn't going on or that the CIA and the FBI have only your best interests at heart and so this country badly needs a new iteration of the church committee and there have been some suggestions then that something McCarthy should be forced to do as one of his concessions is then to allow one of these committees to be informed and that ideally even Thomas Massey be the chair of the committee at least in the house and so with their subpoena power then we would get to see finally all these FBI agents placed up there forced to take the fifth or I guess some will lie under oath and then just really talk about what the FBI has been doing to people and how much it's been interfering in elections how much it's been demanding information from companies like Facebook and Twitter and intervening in those organizations and doing all those things that you're told are conspiracy theories but which if the usual pattern follows everything that's a conspiracy theory today as far as the CIA goes ten years from now turns out to just be something that was happening and that seems to be accelerating and seems to be the truth more and more and so absolutely it would be wonderful to have a committee like that and to further disabuse people especially conservatives of this idea that intelligence agencies are on the side of the American people and just trying to help you absolutely and it was Tucker Carlson that explicitly suggested both this and Thomas Massey as a potential chair for this which again I just chose to agree to which has become I think a very very mainstream issue on the right it's something that again you're talking with members of my local party there's no trust at all for the FBI for such a thorough investigation and I think ultimately this is something that to me should be one of the easy easy outs here and again if they want to end up giving one of the if they need to broker a deal with some of these members let Matt Gates chair it even too if that will kind of help bring him in the fold I think there is the potential for if you combine that with subpoena powers that the House has if you have a serious investigation which itself is a larger question then getting one in the first place right after the Republicans in particular are very good at holding multi-year long hearings and investigations with nothing to show for it Trey Gowdy and the Benghazi hearings are a great example of that this is something that it is definitely needed in this country the faith in the feds is at a very very low point it has good politics at this point for the right and again this is something that should absolutely be on the table and something that I have some optimism that so long as you don't kind of get something going the complete other way where McCarthy ends up making a deal with Democrats or something that leads to the moderate's hand being strengthened I think this is something that very much could get done any sort of compromise at the leadership level I think all of that's a good start then for Congress in 2023 but some of it will depend on ringing these extra concessions out of McCarthy and also really just holding his feet to the fire as you say which is ironically helped a little bit by the fact that the GOP majority so slim because it limits the speaker's power significantly and maybe you could actually expect a little bit better behavior from the Dems side when they don't have the speakership and are less able to dole out favors to their members and impose party discipline with as much in terms of majority committee assignments and that sort of thing but we'll see and once now here in about five minutes after we wrap this up I'll go back and see if they're already in the midst of an eighth vote for the speaker and then we'll know more maybe we'll know more by tomorrow maybe by the time this thing posts we'll do a census and dole out all of these concessions but we shall see and so fourth though Bishop thank you very much for joining us today here on Radio Rothbard and we'll see you next time