Good morning and welcome. I'm Tom Davis on the telephone. Whippy is Congressman Josh bra keen. Busy weekend. Not too many people can say that they were involved in maybe what you had to do? Tell us a little bit about how your weekend went in Washington, DC. Yeah, so it was intense. We came up against the government shutdown. High voted against a continuing resolution. It was going to maintain spending levels. That was my major objection
to it. It did not have any border security or spinning reductions. It was just a true continuing resolution, and so the majority of not only the Freedom Caucus but many of the members voted against it. In the House Representatives the day prior we had many of us contended was a best the best starting point for a stop gap measure, which was a thirty percent cut to all spending outside of veterans month security and Department of Defense and through Border security.
HR the bill we had passed back in the spring. HR two was attached to it, and the majority of the Freedom Talk has voted for that. He was a stop gap measure for thirty days, but it had significant cut, significant policy reforms, and it would have led to real enforcement of border security. And it was it gave us as the House what many of us
saw. It gave us the most leverage to begin to get to what you know, it was going to be a negotiation of the Democrat led Senate, but it gave us the most leverage in the leverage time only exists when you get two hundred and eighteen votes on the board that the Republican held House of Representatives is only with four votes. It takes two eighteen generally speaking, to get to a majority. We only have four votes to spare when you have
one half of one third of the leg of government. The House Senate doesn't. We have one half of one third of the leg of government. The leverage comes from being unified and holding the line. And you know, I was saddened that we couldn't. We came up to a three votes short even after the whip count. We came up more than that short the day prior. But when they came back with the revisits the whip counts, that can you if it was less than the seven days, would you get there?
We were still two or three votes short, and so ultimately we ended up with a less than desirable result. The one upshot is I'm headed back. We've changed the schedule. We're gonna be doing town halls this week. What I was pulling for two weeks ago was to try to get to a top line number to finish these twelve appropriation bills, which was real cuts as much as a twenty percent. If we can finish out these appropriation bills, we've
already passed almost more than one half of all the appropriation bills. And that's what we're heading back up there to do, to try to show the American people that we can do what's only been done four times in fifty years, complete twelve appropriation bills. The last time it was done was in nineteen ninety
seven. And because even though that cr was passed that I was opposed to, within forty five days we come up to another government shutdown, and if we can get our appropriation bill and show the American people were serious about reducing spending and seriously about mort of control, then we've got a leverage point again to work with the Democrats. All they want to do is plus up the spending question. For you, is mister McCarthy going to remain the Speaker of
the House at the end of this week. Now Matt Gates is foot forward. He announced yesterday he said he's helping forth a motion of a k Tom. I'm in deep prayer over this. The question is with the conditions after January and then you know that I was involved in a conditional speakership, The question is you can replace the speaker because you'll have a more conservative speaker that's it is in their place. Then and you end up with somebody who is
unconditional, that's not willing to off on agreement. You just get a change of speakership without conditions. That's not better for the conservatives. And then my question is I'm prayerfully. I mean that I'm praying thing over and have been since yesterday since I've heard the news. What produces the most conservative result Freedom Caucus is the conscious of that conference at large, pulling them through the right. The fact that we've got Ralph Norman and Hip Roy in the funnel of
the rules committee. Anything that goes to the floor has to go through the rules committee. That was a condition of getting those two people on that on that rules committee. That stops the crap from coming to the floor all too many times because it's the funnel that every bill has to flow through. And so I'm in prayer about does this produce a more conservative results or a less conservative result just under the name change of doing something. And so look,
we've also got played along game here. We've got a presidential election to think about, and if this erupts and in the midst of potentially a government shut down, we don't complete these still of appropriation bills, and it just looks like a dumpster fire. We've got the Democrats on the ropes right now on the border and on people knowing that they're spending twelve hundred dollars more months to buy the exact same goods and services as compared to when Biden took office.
That's the long game. And I don't want to I don't want to pretend you get a Republican president's going to solve all the problems we've seen that result in the past. But think about the difference between forty five year low of immigration on that border compared to we've never seen these type of numbers. Think about when Trump was in and for every regulatory front that bureaucracy was imposing. Trump say you're going to impose something, you getting rid of two regulations.
This administration, for every law that's been passed, has put thirteen different regulations in place. For every law that's been fine, because you have a regulatory, the deep state run them up. So the president sadly was never designed to be this. So this is powerful. But because of the rule of law all being thrown out the window generation upon generation and each party allowing it, presidency is extremely powerful and we've got to make sure that we can get
rid of this administration. Josh Ricken, thank you very much, because I know you're busy catching planes and trying to get to and fro and get the will of the people done in the capital. But thanks for spending time with us, and will be consulting your Facebook page. On the makeup days for the town hall in Bartlefeld, Tom, we did, we did cancel. We had to cancel because I'm going back to vote. We had to cancel our fifteen town halls we had planned in the next three days, so those
have been canceled. I just want to make sure ebody know that we appolgized, but I got to do back in DC to vote now try to finish out, hopefully get a start off finishing now these appropriation bills. Very good. Josh Ricken, thank you very much.