[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. One of the weird things about the House Republicans being [sound cut] is that the 20 right-wing Republicans who did not vote for Kevin McCarthy yesterday, almost all of them voted for Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, but Jordan isn't running. Listen to who he's supporting.

Congressman Jim Jordan: I rise to nominate Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the guy who's getting the anti-McCarthy votes is supporting Kevin McCarthy. That's one weird thing. Another is there don't seem to be many, if any, policy differences at stake here. Here's more from Jordan's speech nominating McCarthy that lays out three priorities for the coming session of Congress that it looks like Republicans will focus on regardless of which individual is chosen speaker.

Congressman Jim Jordan: I think we have three objectives this Congress. Three fundamental things we have to get done in the 118th Congress. First, pass the bills that fixed the problems. In two years' time, we have a border that is no longer a border. We have a military that can't meet its recruitment goals. We have bad energy policy, bad education policy, record spending, record inflation, record debt, and a government that has been weaponized against we the people, against the very people we represent.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Jim Jordan on the House floor yesterday. We're actually going to play that clip again later and go through some of those for what we can expect over the next year or so, but it's the first time in 100 years that an incoming House has had to take multiple votes to choose the speaker. They took three yesterday with no winners. You probably heard. They'll start voting again at noon. There have been no breakthrough deals reported overnight.

Now, to listen to political analysts, this has implications for the 2024 presidential elections. The Democrats seem like the party of order and policy agree with them on everything or not while the Republicans look like the party of chaos by design or chaos by dysfunction. Neither of which is a good look. Of course, no one will probably care about any of this in November '24. That's what I think, but even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell seems to be willing to stand as an implicit critic of his own House colleagues.

Mitch McConnell is making a joint appearance with President Biden in Kentucky today to celebrate a bridge repair project from the bipartisan infrastructure bill in what might be an unusual tweaking, an unusual showing of bipartisanship between their branches of government, the Senate, and the executive branch as a contrast to McConnell's party internally not being able to get itself together in the House.

We'll talk about the chaos, but also about the eventual agenda, which I still think is the biggest story of the Republican House that the whole country will have to deal with, whether it's McCarthy or Steve Scalise or whoever it turns out to be. The news organization, Semafor, has an article called Three Ways Kevin McCarthy's Speaker Drama Could End. With us now is Kadia Goba, political reporter for Semafor. Kadia had her own byline article out yesterday as well called Kevin McCarthy's Supporters Might Not Be Ready for a Long Fight. Kadia, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Kadia Goba: Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Well, McCarthy's supporters lasted through three inconclusive rounds yesterday. Does that qualify as readier for a long fight than you might have guessed?

Kadia Goba: No, I anticipate it. Well, talking to members of Congress, a lot of them said they had an appetite for about three or four rounds. I think that puts us at a crucial moment today, but some of them are willing to go as much as 12 rounds. What I do not see is this being several days or several weeks. I don't think that that's going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: I did hear some history talk on TV yesterday about the time. I think it was 1856. When it went on for two months, they started the speaker election in early December that year and it ended in early February. We're not heading there, right?

Kadia Goba: No, we're not going to be there because think about the implications they had. That explicitly says that Republicans cannot govern, refuse to govern, and that will just spill over into any election for 2024, essentially giving Democrats the House majority two years from now. It would be very, very unwise for them to do that. What I assume they'll do is like coalesce around.

Well, first, McCarthy will actually just maybe hammer it out with some of the holdouts or the rest of the caucus. Probably, the more moderates will coalesce around a different candidate and bring that person to the forefront and make it possibly adjoining or working with Democrats to do that. It's up in the air. I am sure that negotiations are going on at this very moment, so we're all waiting patiently.

Brian Lehrer: That's the wildest scenario to me. The one that you just mentioned, it's the third and final scenario in Semafor's three scenarios on how this might end. Article called Dems Cut a Deal. That's the headline in the article or the subhead. What kind of deal could Democrats be involved with to elect a Republican speaker?

Kadia Goba: There could be a few different things. Dems could vote present. To be clear, the threshold right now, 218. If some Democrats vote present, it lowers the threshold and then blocks the 20 people or 20 Republicans who aren't or diminishes their power. The 20 Republicans who are voting against McCarthy. Therefore, lowering the threshold will give McCarthy a bigger majority.

There's all kinds of scenarios where moderates talk to Dems and create some kind of, like I said, concession or unity candidate. They come forward and everyone decides to vote with them. There's also that option as well. There's a couple of different things. I think the point is a lot of people will increasingly become more and more frustrated and want to get something done. Right now, actually, if I don't have a House of Representatives, they're all still technically members-elect.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, if you voted Republican for Congress, who do you want for speaker or any questions you have for Kadia Goba, political reporter for the news organization, Semafor? 212-433-WNYC. By the way, if you haven't heard of Semafor yet and this is the first time we're having someone on from there, it's the new news organization founded largely by Ben Smith, the former New York Times media columnist and former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, and Kadia, who was also previously at BuzzFeed, I believe, is that right?

Kadia Goba: That's correct. I was.

Brian Lehrer: Is a political reporter for Semafor now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Republican voters, you voted Republican for Congress. Any George Santos voters listening right now? I know you called in during the campaign. Are you willing to say, "I voted for that guy"? Do you want him to serve? Do you want him to be sworn in? Also, who do you want to be speaker? 212-433-9692 or anyone else may call too or tweet @BrianLehrer. Kadia, the media is talking so much about that 20-member right-wing group and the related Freedom Caucus in the House as we often refer to it. You cite in your article a pro-McCarthy group called the Republican Main Street Caucus, 70 members. What's the Main Street Caucus?

Kadia Goba: The new chair is Dusty Johnson. Pretty moderate Republican. I'd say he's conservative, but just not part of the extreme members of the Republican Party. They have been fierce advocates for McCarthy. Their whole point is that they came to Congress to get things done. Well, part of getting things done is establishing a congress, a House of Representatives, and a rules package. Right now, that's not happening, so it's the very antithesis of what they stand for.

Therefore, for the past month and a half, they've just been really pushing back against these 20 holdouts and being part of the negotiation. I think it's important for listeners to understand that the negotiations seem to have moved. Right now, it's centered around the motion to vacate the chair, which makes the speaker extremely vulnerable. I could get into that if you like me to. It's a little bit wonky, but that's probably at the center or at the heart of where all this debate is right now.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we can wonk out a little. This audience is down with wonking out a little bit. Go there.

Kadia Goba: Sure, so the motion to vacate is essentially the opportunity for someone, any member, to bring to the House floor a motion to remove the speaker. In the past, Democrats actually relegated that to just the minority and majority member. Only two people could actually bring that to the floor. House Freedom Caucus members or the holdouts said, "No, we want to change that. We want it to go in its original form." That means just a single member.

Just anybody could just bring to the floor every day if they wanted to, to remove the speaker, which would be McCarthy. He pushed back. At one point, they had just like, "Okay, we'll do it, but a majority has to vote on it." They pushed back. Now, as it stands from what I understand is that five people-- Well, one person plus four co-sponsors can bring that to the table. Now, as you can imagine, it makes the speaker beholding to any group that wants to aggravate the speaker and push him on specific policies or their agenda. It's very tenuous. It'll be interesting to see if McCarthy agrees to it at all.

Brian Lehrer: Isn't it like that already? I don't mean that any one member can initiate a no-confidence vote in the speaker that a small faction can hold the speaker hostage to their policy whims, especially on the Republican side. Hasn't this been going on for a decade or more already with what we originally called the Tea Party, now called the Freedom Caucus?

They basically ran Paul Ryan out of town when he was the Republican Speaker of the House for being too mainstream and too willing to cut deals with Democrats, then they did it with John Boehner. Now, they're doing it with Kevin McCarthy. It's a minority of the Republicans in the House, but they drove in policy to the right successfully for more than a decade.

Kadia Goba: Yes, it's a good point. It's actually the root of what happened in the Boehner situation. However, when Pelosi took office, she changed that to make it only two people, whether the minority or majority leaders. They were the only two people that were able to bring it to the floor. Now, in terms of people holding hostage like votes and stuff like that, yes, any member could do that, but it's quite different when it's the removal of a speaker, right? This is saying that, yes, anyone in the entire caucus, right now, it's just Republicans as it stands in the rules package, would be able to remove the speaker. Holding both hostage and threatening to remove the sitting speaker are a little different. Both of them very unproductive.

Brian Lehrer: As I'm hearing you describe this, I'm thinking and I'm not well-versed enough in how other countries run their parliaments to be 100% confident in what I'm going to say. I don't know if you also know the British system or any other, but doesn't the equivalent of the Speaker of the House really even higher than Speaker of the House, the prime minister in the UK, and probably similar in other countries, they can be brought up for a no-confidence vote by the parliament at any time? They can be brought down.

They have to continuously hold the majority in the parliament with enough faith of them to not call an election because they don't have it scheduled every four years like clockwork in the same way that we do. It depends more on whether they can hold the majority. I don't know. Maybe it's not so radical a thing. People in this country, sometimes on the progressive side as well as the conservative side, sometimes lament the fact that we have a two-party system, that it's so rigid and polarized in that way, and that it locks out minority voices.

It locks out democratic socialist voices from real power. It locks out more conservative voices from real power. Some people say, "Well, if only we had a multiparty system in this country, it'd be better democracy." I'm not taking that position. I'm just saying that the kinds of things that are under discussion here are maybe not that crazy if you look at democracies around the world.

Kadia Goba: Yes, certainly, that's exactly what the holdouts are saying. Their position is that Congress is broken. Their objective is to decentralize the power from a few people, and that means leadership. Specifically, the speaker and the majority leader and I guess the whip thereafter. That's exactly what they're saying. However, the concern is that because this part of the party is so far-right that they're using these tactics for agenda reasons and not to fix Congress, but it's because they're approaching this in a selfish way.

For instance, at one point, as I was saying before that the negotiations seem to have moved. Don Bacon was on the floor yesterday or outside of the floor yesterday. He's, I'd say, a moderate Republican. He told reporters that by kicking the football forward, they keep changing the goal line. They asked for this. Now, they want new committee chairs. When I say "they," I mean the holdouts. Now, they want to be on every committee chair and that's just not feasible. Yes, the holdouts who happen to be part of the House Freedom Caucus are saying that, "We're a minority. We want to be part of a seat at the table."

The larger part of the conference is they just seem unwilling to do that. Now, to give Kevin McCarthy some credit, very late last night around 10:30, he actually seemed to support this idea that putting more diverse members, by "diverse," I mean members of the Freedom Caucus, on these relevant chairs like appropriations and ways and means would be more appealing and look more like our country. We don't know if he is actually going to do that. That's going to be another concession, which will ultimately lead him to speak up, but he seemed open to it last night.

Brian Lehrer: Eric in Red Bank, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eric.

Eric: Hi, Brian. Good morning. I have a little bit of an outlandish question, but I wonder if your guest can help me--

Brian Lehrer: We're in the land of the outlandish in this whole story so far, but go ahead.

Eric: Yes, and I thought maybe this would make for excellent TV drama political viewing. What if the Republicans, particularly the folks in the Freedom Caucus who seem to love Donald Trump and want to be attached to him at the hip at all times, why wouldn't they nominate him for Speaker of the House? My thinking is it would force every Republican in real-time to say yes or no to Trump on live television. That would just make for tremendous viewing and it would also return the guy to power in a way that they're not going to be able to do, Republicans, for at least two years in the best-case scenario in their minds. Why wouldn't they do that? I'll take my answer off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Eric, thank you very much. That's really interesting. Kadia, I'll remind the listeners that in the run-up to the election in November, some people were talking about that scenario as something that Republicans might want, might even run on, but then they didn't, which is since you don't actually have to be a member of the House to be named Speaker of the House if you're elected that Republicans were going to put up Donald Trump because they felt that he was unfairly denied the election in 2020, even though he wasn't, that they were going to put up Donald Trump for Speaker of the House. No actual House Republicans are talking about that scenario, so what do you think as you listen to Eric?

Kadia Goba: I'll go further. That conspiracy involved Donald Trump being called or nominated as speaker, and then people suggested that Republicans having the majority would then impeach Biden and somehow President Trump--

Brian Lehrer: Oh, install Trump. Oh, and as Speaker of the House, and then if they impeach the vice president too, the Speaker of the House is the next in line.

Kadia Goba: Correct, but here's God's honest truth. I don't really think that Republicans had any appetite for Trump being speaker. I think also if he wanted to, that would have been very clear at the beginning. They wouldn't have nominated anyone else outside of him. Now, to the listener's point, why wouldn't they just nominate him? They're not going to nominate him if they don't want him to be the speaker because that would, in fact, force all of them to actually vote yes or no against Trump, so it will put them in a precarious situation.

Brian Lehrer: Really, it should be a Democrat who does it, right? A Democrat could force the Republicans in the House to take an up or down vote in effect on Donald Trump.

Kadia Goba: They could and, yes, that would be a made-for-TV situation. Also, I'll throw this out there. A lot of people have been talking about Cheney being the speaker or people nominating her for speaker. That's not going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we've had calls. We talked about this a little bit yesterday because we had numerous-- and we have another caller on the board. I don't think I'm going to go there again with a caller and take that time, but we had numerous callers and tweeters yesterday raising that. That's going around, right? Nominate Liz Cheney as speaker. She would get some moderate Republicans. She would get a bunch of Democrats and then you'd have a conservative Republican, but a reality-based one in the speakership. How did that even get started?

Kadia Goba: I have no idea where that came from, but remember, this has to be something that Democrats agree on or agree to work with on Republicans. Their whole message yesterday was built around, "We are a unified caucus and we are voting for Hakeem Jeffries," which means I'm not breaking anything or doing any favors for any Republicans at this time.

Now after the fact, I did talk to a little, some of the Democratic members. I asked them where they are, including Hakeem Jeffries, on promoting this unity candidate. They essentially said Republicans haven't come to them at this point. To me, that signals that Republicans think they're going to work it out on their own and they don't need Democrats, which is what they've been saying all along.

Brian Lehrer: I noticed, by the way, New York angle on this that one Maryland Congressman, Andy Harris, voted for Lee Zeldin for speaker as this was going around yesterday.

Kadia Goba: Yes, he did. There was also a vote for Byron Donalds, which is actually originally from Brooklyn and, now, a representative out in Florida. You see this often. I think a representative from New York 11, Max Rose, actually voted for Tammy Duckworth. Sometimes they just throw a name out there just to mess with the vote. By the second vote, everyone was coalescing around Jordan and that's where we are.

Brian Lehrer: Bob in Manhattan has a question about the process that I think a lot of people are wondering. Bob, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Bob: Oh, hi. I'm on air now?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, sir.

Bob: The question is, why are the members-elect allowed to vote before being sworn in to uphold the Constitution? It seems odd. I was watching it and wondering as we went round and round. I'll take my answer off the air too.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Bob. Kadia, this is confusing for a lot of people who've run into this fact. It is not officially the new House that is voting for speaker because the new House hasn't been sworn in yet. The speaker has to swear them in, so the speaker has to be elected first, but it is actually the people who are elected in November. It's the Republican majority, George Santos, and everyone else even though they haven't been sworn in yet who get to vote for speaker. What?

Kadia Goba: [chuckles] That's a great question. What happens is each state sends in their-- what do you call it? Electors. It's actually a certificate to certify this person, George Santos or Mike Lawler, won our district. If anyone was paying attention yesterday, there was a quorum vote. That quorum vote is based on a certificate submitted by each state representing the people who are members-elect. They are not sworn in, as your listener just noted, until after the speaker's race.

They are all technically members-elect and don't become members until they are sworn in. Members-elect with a quorum on the House floor can vote for a speaker, which sets off the process of Congress. So far, we are stalled at the speaker's race. Anything beyond that, there are no rules in Congress right now because the members have not voted on a rules package, which is a very interesting time to go 24 hours without a rules package. It hasn't happened in 100 years, so there you go.

Brian Lehrer: This is actually the latest George Santos lie, isn't it, from what I've seen reported that he told somebody or others that he is now a sworn-in member of Congress. He's not a sworn-in member of Congress because nobody's a sworn-in member of this Congress yet.

Kadia Goba: Yes. Apparently, there was this auto-generated flyer that went out on his behalf. Apparently, everyone has the opportunity to or has one of those, but he didn't stop his. He didn't personally write a note that said that he was sworn in. This is something that was just auto-generated and someone should have basically stopped it.

Brian Lehrer: That might be a little over-reported as his latest lie. All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to continue with Kadia Goba from the news organization, Semafor. We're going to turn this to one more person who might very possibly wind up Speaker of the House, Steve Scalise from Louisiana, and the pros and cons of that, but also take it to the policy level. Because like I said at the beginning of the segment, I think no matter who winds up as speaker, they're going to be pursuing the same thing with the Republican majority House. We'll talk about what those things are. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about the dysfunction by design or dysfunction by accident. That is the House Republican attempt to elect the Speaker of the House, still going on after three failed votes yesterday, with political reporter Kadia Goba from the news organization, Semafor, which among other things has published a "three scenarios for how this might end" article.

Kadia, I want to go to one of the other scenarios that we haven't touched on, which is that conservative allies-- I'm sorry. Sorry, wrong one. A Republican replacement steps in. Everyone seems to say, that would likely be Louisiana conservative Steve Scalise, who is at the moment supporting McCarthy and is already the number two House Republican. He'd be maybe more famous around the country for having been shot and wounded by that assassin at a House baseball game in 2017. That's Steve Scalise, but he's also a conservative member of the House. Are Scalise's politics to the right of Kevin McCarthy's or why does his name keep coming up as the alternative?

Kadia Goba: That's a great question. Throughout this process, I've been really trying to determine what the differences are between Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy. When I talk to members, it all seems to come down to personality traits, which means there's a possibility, the 20 holdouts are just basing their threat against McCarthy because of his personality. I think Scalise is a little more likable as per members of Congress. I have, obviously, no game in this.

He was part of the Republican study, which is probably the largest conservative coalition on the Hill. I guess that makes him a little more conservative. In terms of policy, he's been Kevin McCarthy's number two for the past four years. I do not see him breaking ranks or just being that different when it comes to policy if he is chosen, which is why he becomes such probably a more viable or an important part of this whole puzzle because he would be a viable alternative to Kevin McCarthy.

Brian Lehrer: It would only be really if the McCarthy forces give up, right?

Kadia Goba: Yes, that's my point because they are so similar. I don't know why they would actually vote for him instead. If it comes down to that, then we know the story right after that was, "Oh, 20 members just didn't really like Kevin McCarthy."

Brian Lehrer: By the way, just to share with you some deserved credit, we just got a tweet from a listener. I have no idea who the person is, but the listener writes, "There's a reporter named Kadia Goba on Brian Lehrer Show right now. Never heard of her before, but I'm going to have to follow her because, damn, she seems to know her stuff." Just sharing.

Kadia Goba: I did not pay for that. I promise you.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: One thing about Scalise. Centering Scalise lets Republicans falsely say, if they choose to, that domestic terrorism is a problem on both sides. Yes, that was a Bernie Sanders supporter who shot at the Republicans that day and hit Scalise on the baseball field. That shooter was a lone wolf, crazy guy who Bernie Sanders and every Democrat denounced.

January 6th rioters get heralded as political prisoners by Trump and so many Republicans. There are organized groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers stoking violent revolution. I think it needs to be said out loud that even though Scalise might be an innocent and sympathetic figure for being shot for political reasons, but his rise could lead to a lot of false equivalencies that we need to be on the lookout for. Do you see people getting ready to use Steve Scalise's story in that way if he becomes speaker?

Kadia Goba: I'm not sure. I think it's a great point. It's the same analysis of Liz Cheney. Somehow she supposedly became moderate because she stood up for the rights of the people. That's not the case. Liz Cheney votes very conservative. At that narrative, I think there'll be a lot of fact-checking on Scalise's background. I'm not sure if that's going to fare well, especially for some reporters on the Hill. There's a chance, like I said, using the Cheney analogy.

Brian Lehrer: Just a little inoculation there in case that starts to happen. CNN reported in November that Hakeem Jeffries, the new Democratic leader in the House, said he has a much warmer relationship with Steve Scalise than with McCarthy. Do you know any more about what their relationship is like?

Kadia Goba: He's been very tight-lipped about that. Other than that, I haven't. This is personally asking as well. He doesn't elaborate on that when asked, but he has said he has a warmer relationship. What that means is the warmer that he doesn't speak to McCarthy at all and maybe he says hello in passing to Steve Scalise. To what degree that warm is unclear at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a Scalise call. Elliot in Manhattanville, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elliot.

Elliot: Hi. Great guest. I'm not going to get the exact quote right, but Scalise is from Louisiana and there was also a Senate candidate named David Duke from Louisiana many years back. Scalise apparently compared himself at one point.

Brian Lehrer: A Senate candidate. I know the story and I know you're talking about David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, so just for context for the other listeners. Go ahead.

Elliot: Precisely. However, as you guys were just talking about, people like Hakeem Jeffries who are nice guys do get along better with Scalise because McCarthy, I don't know, isn't that likable. Also, I just wanted to say that the people who are voting on speaker, they're not sworn in, but that doesn't matter because they don't have to vote for somebody who's a member of the House. They've just gotten together and they're choosing a speaker and someone gets sworn in.

Brian Lehrer: That's another way to explain that fact. Thanks, Elliot. Yes, I noticed, Kadia, that when that Jeffries comment first was reported on CNN liking Steve Scalise or having a warmer relationship with him, that got some Democratic Party hate on Twitter. People were quoting Scalise from the past saying something like, "I'm David Duke without the baggage." I do know that Scalise has distanced himself from some explicitly racist associations that he had 20 years ago. Also, Black Congressman Cedric Richmond had vouched for him as very much not a racist after some of that came to light. I'm just curious if you're familiar with any of this racist or allegedly racist history.

Kadia Goba: Yes, well, when it comes to Scalise, when he says "without the baggage," I assume he means without all the racism and anti-Semitic tropes that Duke is known for. Like I said, if anyone thinks that members in Congress don't actually talk to each other on different sides of the aisle, they'd be really mistaken. They have to work together. There are relationships. This is what I mean about it coming down to likability. I just think that, in general, the feedback that I've gotten from members on both sides of the aisle is that Scalise is just more likable than Kevin McCarthy. That's all it boils down to. I don't think their politics are that far apart though.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few minutes left. I want to get to what I referred to before as probably my own most prominent thought about this speakership battle, which is that even though we're going through in this conversation right now just like a lot of the rest of the media is, the weeds of who's it going to be and the melodrama of this election process for speaker.

None of this really matters because whether it's Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan or Steve Scalise or probably anyone else, the Republican House majority will have their agenda of conservative legislation on policy and investigations. We already know what that is and which Republican speaker won't affect it. How much do you think that's the case? You're much closer to it than I am.

Kadia Goba: Oh, absolutely. This is coming from someone who lives in DC. This is a very Beltway conversation that has leaked outside of the Beltway and becomes somehow important. I was listening to another station. An 85-year-old woman called him from Indiana and said like, "Anyone but that Kevin McCarthy." It's funny to me. The implications of this speaker's race do not change what's going to happen with the Republican majority.

There are going to be a slew of messaging bills that come to the floor. We already know that Scalise as the majority leader, one of the first things they're going to do is rescind the $87,000, the money that was supposed to help IRS agents build up the IRS so that they could process returns more quickly. They're going to rescind that. It probably won't pass the Senate. I'm not sure, but the conservative agenda is very much on the table.

That was already published yesterday. When we came into work in this building with a bunch of reporters where it's like super crowded and annoying and crazy right now, there was already an agenda planned for a vote. That didn't happen because they didn't vote on the speaker, but that is already coming. There's also the Hyde Amendment that they're going to enforce and try to make permits.

Brian Lehrer: That's no federal funding for abortion.

Kadia Goba: For abortion, correct, yes. The Republican agenda is very much on the table. It doesn't matter who the speaker is. It is happening.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play that clip of Jim Jordan again on the House floor yesterday nominating Kevin McCarthy, but in which he lays out the three-part Republican House agenda in 30 seconds. Here we go.

Congressman Jim Jordan: I think we have three objectives this Congress, three fundamental things we have to get done in the 118th Congress. First, pass the bills that fix the problems. In two years' time, we have a border that is no longer a border. We have a military that can't meet its recruitment goals. We have bad energy policy, bad education policy, record spending, record inflation, record debt, and a government that has been weaponized against we the people, against the very people we represent.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Jim Jordan. I'm hearing fossil fuels. I'm hearing less immigration. I'm hearing less race and gender-inclusive education. I'm hearing shrink the size of government, plus investigate Joe Biden and the investigations of Trump, investigate those investigations. Is that the likely story set of the next year anyway, barring breaking news events?

Kadia Goba: Very much happening. I assume that Republicans will-- Although they'll vote on it like I said, there will be ceremonial votes. I don't think they'll get a lot past the Senate. Don't forget, Joe Biden has the veto power to set all of these things back. They won't be able to get a two-thirds vote to overturn his veto. That is still going to happen. The more relevant thing is the investigations, right? Legislation, they can pass that all they want.

It might not go that far, but investigations, it's going to upend a lot of the White House. I think one of the things to look at is this church committee style. There's going to be a select subcommittee under the judiciary that investigates the intel agency, FBI, and all of them. Again, once the rules package actually passes, those are the things that people need to pay attention to. Some of what's going to happen around the investigation, that's going to be the big deal and that is happening.

Brian Lehrer: We could keep going on this and talk national politics all day. We wouldn't run out of callers and we wouldn't run out of topics, but we are about out of time. Let me just follow up on one thing that you mentioned a minute ago and wrap it up with that. This defunding of the IRS, Jim Jordan said in that clip "record debt." If the Republicans think that the United States has a debt problem, wouldn't they want to bring in all the revenue that is due based on people's legal taxes?

Kadia Goba: Yes, you would think. Just to give you some background on that, there was a study that came out, that $600 billion. Americans weren't paying about $600 billion in IRS taxes. The administration allocated about $45 billion in this last package before the government funding package to essentially hire more staff at the IRS. You probably know someone who is going through that or hasn't had a return file or hasn't adjusted a file for months now. They want to adjust that. Well, Republicans are not buying it. They're like, "Well, actually, we think you're going get the money from the middle class, and that doesn't work for us." They're trying to repeal it on that merit. We will see what happens.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Kadia Goba, political reporter for the news organization, Semafor. To quote that listener on Twitter whose tweet I read before, "Damn, she seems to know her stuff." Thanks a lot. Let's do this again. Thank you very much.

Kadia Goba: Thank you so much.

 

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