Scalise: Government Bureaucrats Must Show Up to Work
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co. to discuss how House Republicans are taking steps to hold lawmakers accountable for their actions with the removal of Reps. Omar (D-Minn.), Swalwell (D-Calif.), and Schiff (D-Calif.) from committees where they are briefed on classified information. Leader Scalise slammed Democrats for their hypocrisy, pointing to how they removed some House Republicans from all of their committee assignments last Congress. Leader Scalise also discussed how House Republicans are pressuring President Biden to reign in his administration’s reckless and inflationary spending during debt ceiling negotiations. Additionally, Leader Scalise also highlighted the importance of getting federal employees back to work in person to serve the American people.
Click here or on the image above to view the interview.
Highlights from the interview:
On removing Reps. Omar, Schiff, and Swalwell from committees:
“Well, I think they must have been looking in the mirror when they said that [House Republicans are being spiteful] because if you look [at] what they did last Congress, they removed multiple members from every single one of their committees. [Congresswoman] Marjorie Taylor Greene and [Congressman] Paul Gosar, they removed [Congressman] Jim Banks and [Judiciary Committee Chairman] Jim Jordan from the January 6 Committee with no reason, and in some cases, for things that they might have said before they were even Members of Congress. And by the way, [Congresswoman] Ilhan Omar voted to remove those members from all of their committees.
“Today, we're only talking about two committees, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence – committees that actually get briefings on national security. And so those members, all three of them, [Reps.] Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell, will still be able to serve on other committees. But the vote today just deals with [Congresswoman] Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee. By the way, she's already on the Education and Workforce Committee and that won't change. So you know, you might want to ask [Congresswoman] Omar why she voted to remove Republican members from every single committee. [Congresswoman] Omar still will be able to serve on other committees after this vote.”
On the debt ceiling meeting between Speaker McCarthy and President Biden:
“It was the start of a very important conversation about how to get control over spending in Washington because that's really what the debt ceiling is. When you max out the nation's credit card as President Biden did over the last two years, [recklessly] spending trillions – five to ten trillion dollars, depending on how accounts look at it – on things, in many cases, that had nothing to do with COVID or getting the economy moving again. And it created inflation. It created massive debt. And so we maxed out the credit card.
“It's time that we focus now, as we talk about the debt ceiling, [on] how we get control over spending in Washington. Again, both Speaker McCarthy and President Biden said that it was a good beginning, and this is going to be ongoing. This is going to be a conversation we're going to have for the next few weeks and months to work on how we can come together to control spending in Washington.”
On sending federal employees back to work:
“It seems like all across America, people are going back to work and they're showing up at their jobs. Why is it that only in Washington do they still want the pandemic to go on and hide behind that to spend billions on unrelated things? I get calls every day from military veterans, from people that are waiting over two years to get their IRS returns, people that are missing important honeymoons and other things because they can't even get a passport processed for six months because federal workers that do those jobs are not showing up for work. That's not something you can do remotely.
“There's no reason that someone who served our country – serving in the military, they showed up to protect our freedoms – [shouldn’t get a response]. The least that somebody that's collecting their full paycheck [from] the taxpayers should be able to [do is] show up to make sure they're taking care of those veterans and other people who rely on the services that need to be provided. And they're only provided if they're showing up in person. It's long past due to get this done.”