 Of course, in a late night moment of high drama, people can have moments of frustration. As you all know by now, on Friday evening, things got heated on the House floor when Republican Mike Rogers was physically restrained after he tried to launch at Matt Gaetz during an altercation between Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy. But none of that ended up mattering in the end because McCarthy secured the votes needed to become the Speaker of the House. Now, in a moment, we're going to talk about their actual agenda because that's more important that's going to affect you, whereas all of this drama is nothing more than entertainment. But first, let's get to why that altercation became so heated. As the New York Times explains, just after 11 p.m. Friday night, Mr. McCarthy remained one vote short of what he needed to seal the deal. Representative Elect Eli Crane of Arizona and Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana, the two holdouts who seemed most likely to vote, both voted against him leaving his fate in the hands of his lead tormentor, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Mr. Gaetz initially did not vote when his name was called. Instead, he waited until the end of the roll call to vote present. Republicans cheered but it was not enough. Mr. McCarthy needed to vote directly in his favor. Mr. Gaetz refused to budge and Mr. McCarthy's allies moved to adjorn the House until Monday. Crest fallen after a defeat they had not anticipated. But while the vote was being tallied, there appeared to be a breakthrough. Republicans quickly switched their votes to oppose the adjornment and proceeded to a 15th speaker vote which ended well after midnight. So that's why things got so heated. They were this close to securing the speakership and Matt Gaetz would not budge. So that's why we saw that altercation that quickly went viral when it was posted to Twitter. Now we kind of see the end result is relatively boring and the end result of that altercation between Rogers and Matt Gaetz is even more boring because it's ending amicably, unfortunately. I was hoping that they would continue their beef but they're forgiving each other. Here's what Matt Gaetz said on Fox News. There was a tense moment late night, Friday night when congressman Mike Rogers expected to be the next chairman of House Armed Services confronted you. You guys both serve on the Armed Services Committee. What was that all about and are you guys going to be able to work together on armed services? Mike Rogers is going to be a terrific chairman of the Armed Services Committee and we share a deep commitment to our national defense, to our men and women in uniform. And of course in a late night moment of high drama people can have moments of frustration but Mike Rogers and I have a six year productive working relationship. We're going to work together wonderfully going forward and I don't think there should be any punishment or reprisal just because he had an animated moment. He has my forgiveness and certainly is someone who's done great things for our national defense and will continue to do those great things. That was an uncharacteristically mature response from Matt Gaetz and it's genuinely shocking to see these Republicans behave as grown-ups because typically they act like unhinged children but there we saw him kind of put aside his differences with Mike Rogers and simply say whatever I forgive him and it seems as if Mike Rogers is feeling the same exact way saying he regrets this via Twitter writing Matt Gaetz and I have a long and productive working relationship that I am sure will continue. I regret that I briefly lost my temper on the House floor Friday evening and appreciate Matt's kind understanding and like that their beef was squashed. And I'm disappointed admittedly because whenever these Republicans are going at each other that means they're not doing damage legislatively to the American people or attacking some marginalized community which is what they love to do. But I've got to just point out real quick before we move on to the substance here Mike Rogers is wearing the most conspicuous toupee I've ever seen in my entire life and he needs to be more convincing if he wants to convince people that that's real hair. Anyways that's neither here nor there. The question is how did McCarthy ultimately seal the deal? And that is an important question because what he agreed to is going to affect all of us and potentially everyone around the world. So he agreed to more conditions on raising the debt ceiling in order to essentially get his opponents to stand down. As Roll Call explains the deal between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his conservative detractors lays a foundation for the massive spending cuts that some want but also sets up a daunting challenge for GOP lawmakers who want to keep the government functioning after winning control of the House. By increasing the difficulty of reaching a bipartisan agreement on spending it could raise the risk of a market rattling battle over the debt limit and a partial government shutdown later this year. Now last year for months Republicans were pretty open about the fact that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare but now we're seeing a little bit of what I believe to be a ruse where they're saying actually we want to do some more altruistic cuts to the budget. Namely we want to cut military spending and to me if they were to accomplish that I would applaud them because that is an objectively good thing military spending is out of control in the United States and I think that we should spend more money on saving lives rather than taking lives but that's not necessarily what I think they're going to do. Although you have some Republicans like Jim Jordan saying that military spending cuts are actually on the table although he was fairly vague about that in a Fox News interview and we've heard some Republicans talk about their goal to balance the budget. This is something that Lauren Boebert said that she wants to do which is why she opposed Kevin McCarthy but if they actually really believed in balancing the budget that does mean that military spending cuts would be on the table right? Wrong roll call continues military and national security related programs which received more than half of this year's budget boost or 76 billion would take a 10% hit if cuts were applied proportionally but top Republicans are already warning that will never happen and this was reiterated by Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emeron Fox News. In the spending approach you've got the discretionary spending that involves both this out of control domestic spending since before the pandemic under Nancy Pelosi and you've got defense spending and the argument is this would affect defense spending which I'm here to tell you guys Republicans will not impact defense spending aside from efficiencies and waste it's the domestic spending that we're going to go after. Yeah so cuts to the military budget are highly highly unlikely and if we do see cuts it's not going to be very substantial. I think that we need to cut the military budget by 75% but even if we cut it in half we'd still be the largest military spender globally but if we're not going to cut the military budget what's going to happen? What are they going to target if they actually want to balance the budget if that is indeed their goal? Well let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Should military spending cuts be on the table and put on the table by a Republican? Well look I agree with Jim Jordan that we are going to carve out woke policies out of the military. We are going to look at the out-of-wack ratio of generals. I invite them to come on Armed Services Committee and and work with us on that but Stu and by the way I'm all for a balanced budget. We've got to get spending under control but we are not going to do it on the backs of our troops and our military when at the same time we're talking about China is the greatest threat. We're going to have a select committee on China they're tripling their nuclear arsenal. Iran is racing towards a new North Korea is about to launch and ICBM Russia is on the on the march and oh by the way we still have a global terrorist state now in Afghanistan thanks to Joe Biden. So this is I mean we can work on report prioritizing defense spending but that's really nibbling around the margins. If we really want to talk about the debt and spending it's the entitlements program that 70 percent of our entire budget that 1.7 trillion and defense within that is only 30 percent. So if we want to talk about big reforms I look forward to hearing that from those folks who are pushing towards a balanced budget. So there you have it it's entitlements. Now notice how he was being purposefully vague there. Oh well you know when it comes to the military budget sure we can cut out some of these woke programs but you know ultimately it's going to come domestically from entitlements entitlements is code for austerity and if they get their way but they ultimately want cuts to Medicare and Social Security. But let me explain to you how disingenuous he was being there. So he was asked a question about our discretionary budget. Notice how he pivoted to entitlements which usually includes the conversation about Social Security and Medicare. Now to say that Social Security is an entitlement is a misnomer because that isn't an entitlement in the sense that it's a welfare program that's something that we all paid into. So that's our money and the government is holding it for us until we need it. So to say that that is an entitlement is wrong if that is indeed what he's referring to which I think obviously that is the case but this is our discretionary budget here. Now as you can see military spending takes up almost half of our discretionary budget. So if you really want to balance the budget and make some cuts to our annual discretionary budget the military is an obvious solution. But notice how he took the question about the discretionary budget and then pivoted to entitlement programs. So entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and I say entitlement in quotes because those aren't entitlements but those programs are not part of our discretionary budget they're part of our mandatory spending. The average Fox News viewer the average Republican probably doesn't know that. So in order to actually make that be the case where you make cuts to Social Security and Medicare and other programs that Republicans deem entitlements you have to reform the programs in order to make these quote adjustments. Now how do you reform the programs here? Well you can do that in a plethora of ways but one way was floated by Senator Ron Johnson where you simply make Social Security and Medicare part of our discretionary budget so it can be adjusted i.e. cut annually and at the whim of Republicans whenever they take control of the House of Representatives. So with these deceitful Republicans you oftentimes have to read between the lines in order to force cuts to entitlement programs or programs that Republicans often deem as entitlement programs you have to reform these programs make them part of our discretionary budget. So that's what Republicans want to do they want to either try to cut Social Security or Medicare as they've been broadcasting their intent to do over the course of the last year and then some or just push more austerity on us in a plethora of ways but what's even more ominous than their agenda is the ways that they can get Democrats to acquiesce if Democrats don't hold strong because now there's more conditions to raising the debt ceiling which is a necessity in order to pass budgets. So what happens if they don't come to an agreement where we're in this hypothetical situation where Republicans say in order to approve of this budget we're going to mandate cuts to Social Security a reform to this program to make it part of our discretionary budget and Democrats choose not to and they don't reach an agreement and then the debt ceiling doesn't get raised well catastrophe happens full-blown catastrophe because if the debt ceiling doesn't get raised and the United States ends up defaulting on its debt that will trigger a global recession we're talking about worldwide misery and they have that as their leverage and they're already broadcasting their ability to basically push through what they want because they know that Democrats will never allow that to happen so Democrats will be forced to acquiesce let's listen to Bob Goode admit that on Vogue's news well the real test for us as you know Neil will be when the debt ceiling situation arises when we reach the debt limit we've got to have the willingness to go to the mat over that to force cuts and spending to put us on a fat path to fiscal responsibility we've got to use the leverage that we will have at that time because as you know the omnibus bill was passed unfortunately a couple of weeks ago we've lost all of our budgetary leverage through September but we will regain that in the debt ceiling uh battle when we have that soon and the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is on the line for us to cut spending so we don't face a reckoning someday because of the rise in interest rates and the rapidly rising our national debt so we've got to show courage that was on display display in here in this congress I would say historically over the past week we've got to continue to display that courage to fight to save the country from a fiscal standpoint he's admitting it there he says the full faith and credit of the United States is on the line for us to cut spending in other words if democrats don't go along with what we want either austerity social security cuts medicare cuts and whatever else we're willing to default on our debt now democrats wouldn't do that we would though they know that we're crazy enough to do that so the full faith and credit of the United States government is on the line for us to cut spending that's the leverage ultimately that they were looking for so they're going to use that leverage to do very terrible things because they know that democrats aren't going to want the United States government to default on its debt I mean nobody should want that but these republicans are crazy enough to make that happen so that's what we have to be on the lookout for I think that overall this congress is going to be boring legislatively speaking because they're not really going to be able to get through things that they want because the senate will reject it or biden could veto it but when it comes to bills that's where they have all of the leverage and that's where the true showdowns are going to be so I would highly encourage you to pay attention to these budget showdowns because that's where it matters and that's where it's going to impact you directly