Gaetz and Mace tell their side of the story to Steve Bannon

Reps. Matt Gaetz and Nancy Mace teamed up Wednesday to defend their move to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, they addressed their critics’ characterization of them as “far-right” for orchestrating McCarthy’s ouster.

“I don’t quite understand why so many people characterize our movement as … when they write about me, they say things like hard-liner, ultra-MAGA, the far-right. And I’m thinking, let’s talk about this for a moment,” Gaetz began.

“Nancy is not a hard right, intransigent lawmaker. Nancy’s a fiscal hawk, and she’s been a fiscal hawk the whole time. And to get her to vote for the Limit, Save, Grow bill, it was an open secret in this town that Kevin had to agree to bring her bill up for a balanced budget amendment,” he continued.

Passed in April, the bill was McCarthy’s solution to the debt crisis. It would have raised the nation’s borrowing cap by $1.5 trillion in exchange for major spending cuts. The White House and congressional Democrats both opposed it.

“I didn’t vote for it, but I can understand that Nancy leveraged her vote to get something that’s really important to the American people up for consideration. And I was heartened by that, because Kevin had promised the 20 the same thing,” Gaetz added.

Listen:

Mace then jumped in to tell her side of the story.

“I didn’t vote for the debt-ceiling bill. I’ve negotiated on other votes. I warned everybody about the debt ceiling. I warned everybody that Congress was not going to do what they promised they were going to do. And it laid out exactly the way I said it was going. This was predictable,” she said.

Retaking the microphone, Gaetz then doubled down on what he’d said earlier about how he and Mace are anything but “hard-right.”

“What’s hard-right about saying we should follow the law? The law requires these single-subject spending bills and a budget to be passed. What’s hard-right about saying when you say 72 hours to read the bill, you don’t get to waive that to pass a  continuing resolution. What’s hard-right about saying something that spends more than $150 million should not go on the suspension agenda where it is not subject to amendment. The things I’m fighting for are good government,” he said.

Mace concurred, arguing that they’re “reasonable things.”

“I’m a centrist, I would say small L libertarian. Fiscally conservative, socially sensible. Matt and I agree on like 98 percent of things. But it’s not unreasonable to ask Congress just follow the law. The law from 1974, the Budget Impact and Control Act, says a budget and 12 spending bills,” she said.

“Now, he and I are not going to agree with leadership on either side of the aisle on the amount they’re going to spend. They’re going to spend way more than we would ever want. But you still have a process where the bills are vetted, they’re amended, the people have a say through the representative, and then they’re voted on the floor, not the CRs and omnibuses,” she added.

Concluding his remarks, Gaetz then stressed that THIS is how government is actually supposed to work.

“We would vote different ways on some of these amendments. And there’s an interesting ability with more voting and actual legislating for coalitions to form and for us to work together. And it’ll be ok if we take a lot of votes, if we’re together on some things, against one another on others. That’s real governing,” he said.

“But it never happens here because they delay everything, back you up against shutdown politics, then just get you to vote for continuing resolutions where the lobbyists are in charge of what’s in it,” he added.

The remarks by Gaetz and Mace came a day after they both voted with all House Democrats to oust McCarthy from his post. This has made them public enemy number one to the GOP establishment, which is now rooting for their ouster:

Vivek Saxena

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