One Bill Is Right Answer for Trump’s Agenda: McCarthy

Well, I love what Majority Leader John Thune said. It's clear as mud in terms of the sequencing, but the priorities are clear for President-elect Trump in order to get his agenda through. And we're going to talk about that right now with former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. You know how challenging it is with slim majorities to get anything done in Congress. What's your advice to President Trump? Does he go for this one big, beautiful bill, or does he lean on the Senate who wants to see a two-track approach? I think one bill is the right answer, and this is why. You've got to understand for your— But is it big? Well, this is the point. It's different, okay? This is the first time in modern history the majority in the Senate is larger than the House. So the Senate's going to have a different view. They've got 53, but they really have 54 by having the vice president. The House has a smaller majority than it had in the last Congress. They lost seats while everybody else won. Plus, come January 20th, they're going to lose two more members for a time period. Those two Florida seats won't get filled until April 1st, and then the New York seat won't get filled after that. So you can't take that many bites of the apple. And remember for your viewers why you're doing reconciliation. It's a special provision that allows you, if your party controls the Senate and the House, to pass in the Senate without 60 votes, but you can't write a perfect bill. So this is how the Democrats did Obamacare. It's how we did tax reform. You've got tax reform you have to get done by the end of the year, otherwise your taxes all go up. So the pressure is on you. If you make the bill too big and too beautiful, most in history, it collapses upon itself because it's too big. The reason why they're looking at two different bills, they need money now for the border. But I believe the border is a disaster. Declare it a disaster, pull money from the disaster fund, you're going to be putting more in for California, and let you do the border right now, because tax will take a little longer. The other problem they have, though, is they made a mistake. They never finished the funding from last year, and this is a disadvantage for Trump. They hurt Trump by making him worry about last year's funding now, which is due in March. Was that a fault of Speaker Johnson? I don't know whose fault it is, but they should have got the job done, okay? And they should have done the debt ceiling already. So these are two provisions that the Democrats could use to their advantage and slow down your agenda. So the first thing I would do, you still have time now, finish the funding from last year and take care of the debt ceiling so President Trump could have the honeymoon or the agenda he wants to start putting forward. Because we're now in, they've got to confirm in the Senate the new cabinet, he's got to get his people in line to start working, but President Trump knows this job already. He knows he's got four years, he's not going to waste one moment. He'll do tremendous on the executive orders, but he needs the legislative body to catch up to him. Who's going to be that moderating voice to make sure that it's not too big so that it doesn't actually collapse? Well, it's what I love, it's the free market. It's a natural that you'll see. So you think it's this bond market? We've seen yields go up, people start to be very concerned about financial discipline. Do you think the bond market, does Congress have room to spend as much as Trump's rhetoric is talking about? Well, the problem is Trump's just now coming in, it's like I'm taking over a company. And remember what the debt ceiling is. You've got to give him leeway. So all it says is paying the debt that the last people had spent. But the debt ceiling doesn't solve all these problems. But the debt ceiling has passed. The market right now is pricing in his future plans and spending. Will that be the moderating force? Yeah, but you're not counting in Doge, okay? And what I look to Doge, I think this is good because it gives people the opportunity. But the way to handle this, and I tried to get Biden to go for this, in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed. So we needed to reform our military, all designed to fight the Soviet Union. But what member was going to raise their hand and said, close my military base? Nobody, but you need to. So you created a commission. But this was the important part. You had teeth to it. If they got their work done, it got a vote in the House and the Senate with no amendments. And lo and behold, it passed. They need to do something like that for Doge. When Doge gets their work done, let them vote in the House and the Senate with no amendments, and you'll know whether you can get it. I think one of our greatest threat is our debt, okay? But we've got to do a lot of things going forward. The debt ceiling is not a part of that. You should take that out of the way. Let the president be able to govern, do the job that has to be done. Are you feeling that this can potentially be done, though, in April, what Speaker Johnson's talking about? All of this? New spending, reconciliation, and a disaster? Well, I think it's hard to say by April 1st, because you haven't put – every vote matters. I'd wait to the Florida seats, because that's two more seats. You can't get tax done that fast, because remember, tax – they're going to do something about SALT. They're going to do something about tax on TIPS. That costs money, so how are you going to pay for it? But you've got to start working on the border, so take that money from disaster and do the executive orders. Get that done. You want to do something on energy, but if you put the debt ceiling to reconciliation – Which is what people are talking about. That won't work, and this is why. Because there are members in the Republican Party that will never vote for it, and you have no votes to spare. The House Freedom Caucus. Yeah. So you should take – Who wins that fight, Trump or the House Freedom Caucus? Well, no, Trump will always win. House Freedom Caucus loses from that perspective, because the House Freedom Caucus is then saying to the American public, your taxes are going to go up. And you know, a lot of – you've watched in the House Freedom Caucus, their former chairman was anti-Trump. They have anti-Trump people in that caucus, and it's unfortunate. So nobody can fight here. They've got to focus on priorities, but they've got to focus on the policy. You're not going to get it 100% right, but government isn't designed that way, right? You've got to have confidence, because you've got to deal with the Senate. But you'll get this done. It's in the sequencing of how you do it. I also want to ask, you mentioned California and the disaster at the top. How do you think Trump is going to deal with, when he's inaugurated, and the incoming tragedy, devastating fires that are apocalyptic, people not having their homes, not having enough water, not having enough firefighters. How is he going to work with Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to solve this crisis? There's a third point, too. A lot of these families lost their insurance in the last six months because of Gavin Newsom's inability to deal with this problem. Because the insurance companies wanted to raise the rates. They wanted to be able to make sure they could afford to insure. When he wouldn't focus on that issue, they have left the state. My mother lost her homeowner insurance from GEICO, and she had no claims, because California was uninsurable, and they ignored the problem. He gallivanted around. You know the saddest part about all of this? We've had these fires before. I went out to California with then-President Trump, November 17, 2018. We just had Paradise, where 85 people died, and we toured that with Gavin Newsom, who had been elected governor, not sworn in, and Jerry Brown. And then we flew down to Malibu, that had a fire as well. I was in the meeting, walking these places, where President Trump was saying, you've got to take the fuel away. Yeah, you're going to get a fire when there's wind and push it, but if it doesn't have fuel, it can't keep growing. The other problem, too, is had you worked on the evacuation ahead of time, instead of these cars getting stopped and people, that's what happened in Paradise. What about the infrastructure? You can't go to a fire hydrant and not have water. And President Trump worked on providing the water further, and you know who fought him on it? Gavin Newsom. But looking ahead, Trump is going to come in and want to make sure that California gets the money they need? I think you're going to see Trump will be there for California, but what Trump's going to do, too, is you can't keep repeating the same mistake. I think you're going to see executive orders pretty early about the water again. The President Trump did that last time. Had Gavin followed through, we would have had water. President Trump was very serious about making sure, taking out that fuel, protecting it, managing it, so you won't have that. You're going to see him double down even harder on this. But California, the state, they've got to change their behavior. And I think what President Trump will do is put the mechanism in where Gavin cannot make this mistake again. Since you left Congress, I know you've been focused on AI. I just want to end on this, but you've also become an informal advisor to President-elect Trump. You were at Mar-a-Lago just last week. Do you see yourself going into government, or do you like being that call on the outside? Look, I served for a long time. I want to utilize the knowledge I have from being Speaker and everything else, and also on the outside, that Congress starts looking at the issues in the next 50, 60 years. I mean, if Congress is looking back to do the funding from last year, we're losing the battle for the next century. And I firmly believe whoever captures AI and quantum—so these are all the issues I worked on while I was Speaker. I went to MIT, which teaches a course to all the generals in our military. Four years ago, I happened to develop a course to teach it to all of our members of Congress. The China Select Committee, right? The AI Committee. So whoever captures AI and quantum has the advantage. But if you want to capture AI and quantum, you've got to get the energy policy right, otherwise it'll never happen. Yeah, the data centers. So what I'm doing in the Alpha Institute is literally just policy, showing a roadmap for the policymakers to solve those problems. Just continue what I did while I was working there to help the policymakers and America succeed and be successful.