Conservative Partnership Institute's Government Relations Director Hugh Fike is here to discuss the ongoing spending battle between Speaker McCarthy and House conservatives as the federal government barrels towards a government shutdown.
Hugh Fike, government relations director for the Conservative Partnership Institute and former chief of staff for HFC member Rep. Michael Cloud, on to discuss the upcoming battle between President Biden and the House Freedom Caucus over the debt ceiling...
Hugh's thoughts:
· President Biden should be made an honorary HFC member based on his press conference last week - he said the HFC wants to go after the IRS - well in fact they do. Poll after poll shows that respondents think the IRS has too much power and aren't acting in the best interests of Americans - so yes, HFC does want to curtail the power of the IRS and eliminate the 87k new IRS agents · Pre-covid levels - that's what the HFC is asking for. They want to Shrink Washington, and Grow America. They're saying, the government grew substantially in response to COVID. COVID is over. So let's pull back the money that's not been spent, let's return our government back to what it was before COVID · Long-term reforms - estimates are that these reforms and spending reductions will save $3 trillion over the long-term but some how the White House OMB Director says that these reductions won't save anything then went on to blame the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which means they're in a total tail spin on messaging · Woke and Weaponized - the key component of this is that HFC wants to cut out the cancerous parts of our government. There are parts of our government that are persecuting the American people - DOJ jailing pro-life activists, AFT showing up at people's houses asking them about their firearms, IRS denying tax exempt status to certain non-profits...the HFC is saying, let's cut out the cancer to preserve the body.
President Biden has found a new foil: the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
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Biden name-checked the Freedom Caucus on Friday, arguing that its proposed national budget plan would cut all spending other than defense by 25 percent — a characterization the group later disputed. “Twenty-five percent across the board,” Biden said in remarks scheduled to discuss a jobs report released that morning. “That means cops, firefighters, it means health care — that’s just what they call discretionary spending.”