Tennessee U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) joined Nashville’s Morning News with Dan Mandis on Supertalk 99.7 WTN Monday morning to bring listeners in the room with the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and discuss what’s next for Congress as President Joe Biden pushes for more funding for Ukraine amid growing conflict in the Middle East.
TRANSCRIPT
Dan Mandis: Representative Tim Burchett joining us on Supertalk 99. 7.
Congressman, as always, thank you for joining us. How is the mood of the House heading into this week under a new Speaker Mike Johnson – were you surprised that he was confirmed so resoundingly?
Rep. Tim Burchett: It is overwhelmingly pleasant. I can’t tell you how excited people are in the House right now.
And I mean, man, it was just – the Republicans are on fire.
Well, I gotta tell you, the base loves this guy; everybody loves Mike Johnson.
Dan Mandis: Well, if I may, congressman, so I’ve been gone a few days, so when I left, I mean, the Republicans – I think the last interview that I did, I forget who it was with – but the description of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives where you had people attacking each other. I mean, it was that bad.
And so just with the confirming of Mike Johnson, it has gone from really, really horrible to what you just said, which is what did you just say?
“Overwhelmingly pleasant?”
Rep. Tim Burchett: Yes, I can tell you how excited people are and I would say the person you had on there probably didn’t vote to kick out the former speaker either.
So that’s going to make a difference, too. I think that people understand why we did it now, and I’d say a lot more will come out on that.
Dan Mandis: Were you surprised that so many moderates voted for Mike Johnson, who I would describe him as very much of a conservative.
Rep. Tim Burchett: You know, and it proved our point: that the lobbyist and the former speaker were trying to scuttle every person from Jim Jordan on down.
I mean, Jim Jordan would be – if you ask, he’s probably behind Trump. He’s the most popular Republican in the country and the grassroots, but the lobbyists didn’t like him. And the trouble is the lobbyists don’t know Mike Johnson, that’s the problem; and then they tried to scuttle it by making some kind of co-leadership position.
Two speakers.
I mean, you know, how the heck is that going to work? That’s not even. I’m not sure if that’s even constitutional, but it sure as heck wouldn’t work day-to-day in the House, but we couldn’t have asked for a better speaker.
This guy, he understands the law.
He is a straight-laced guy. He’s a family man and, and he’s not, you’re not going to hear about him running around on his wife or anything like that or any scandals he’s involved in.
As you can see, I mean, the less litmus test is “The View” and MSNBC and a couple of those, and they’re just trashing him.
So that ought to tell you right there that we’ve got a good man in that position, and that stuff does not bother him at all.
Dan Mandis: You know, it’s interesting because the House – by the way, Congressman Tim Burchett is joining us.
The House immediately passed the Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
Biden won’t sign it; the Senate won’t pass it, of course, because there’s a lot of cuts in there.
I was explaining that to folks earlier. So now the two chambers are going to have to compromise, I suppose.
What’s next? I know that there’s supposed to be three appropriations that are going to be voted on in the House this week.
What are those three, and what do you think the chances are of those being passed in the Senate?
Rep. Tim Burchett: I can’t remember the names of the specific ones, but by law, we have 12. 12 appropriations.
In the past, you know, they lumped everything together and they wouldn’t allow debate – both parties – because the lobbyists had it all full of their, their largesse or the special interest, they had to grease every lobbyist in town with those bills.
And at least now the public knows what’s in them a little more, and the members can debate, and we’re allowed to attempt to put amendments on those. It’s just the functions of government is all they are and there’s 12 of them. But you know, in the past it wasn’t any debate, wasn’t any breaking down of bills.
And that’s one thing Mike Johnson supports is individual spending bills will be broken down instead of these mass 2000-page bills where you got a do like Nancy Pelosi says, you gotta pass them to know what’s in them.
So I think it’s kind of a new day on Capitol Hill, and that’s why you’re gonna see, like I said, The View and all these other low-life groups are gonna be attacking Mike Johnson because they keep controlling, and they’re at a loss.
They’re at a complete loss.
Dan Mandis: It’s interesting you say that because one of the things about Mike Johnson is he. Helped raise a young black teenager years ago, and he is now an adult – and they’re using that as an attack point! Is that the craziest damn thing you’ve ever seen in your life?
It is amazing that, I mean, and you’re right when you I think you nailed it when you said ‘low lifes’ and I wholeheartedly agree, and I want to play this for you.
This is Mike Johnson, and he’s talking about the funding for Israel.
Listen:
Well, listen, we’re going to move a stand-alone Israel funding bill this week in the House.
I know our colleagues, our Republican colleagues in the Senate have a similar measure. We believe that that is a pressing and urgent need.
There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address, and we will. But right now, what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention, and I think we’ve got to separate that and get it through. I believe there’ll be bipartisan support for that, and I’m going to push very hard for it.
Dan Mandis: So he is separating – and this is great news.
You were talking about this earlier Congressman Burchett, the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, talking about how he is going to untie – separate – the funding for Ukraine and Israel.
Your thoughts on the funding for both?
Rep. Tim Burchett: Well, first of all, the president is playing complete politics with it.
He talks about it being an Israel funding bill.
It’s over $100 billion.
Only about 12 percent of it went to Israel – around $10 billion to $12 billion, I believe in the president’s proposal. The rest was what he called ‘border security.’
Now, in that border security, all that was was a bunch of bureaucrats that would allow for illegal aliens, and some people that are frankly on the terrorist watch list, to get to the innermost portions of this country and not be able to be – and you never would hear from them again – basically, is what would happen.
Something went bad went down and that was a portion of it and the other largest portion – I believe around 60 billion – was for Ukraine. You gotta ask yourself, what is pressing in the world today? It is not Ukraine.
You have a president who’s been corrupted by and his son has had shady business dealings with people over there.
And now that is his priority, and he’s couching it as an Israel relief package, and that just is not true.
And people need to start calling it out.
Again, it’s a big diversion. The national media is not covering that, but they ought to be.
Ask yourself. ‘Why is all this money going to Ukraine? And why is it not going to Israel?’
Dan Mandis: 7:48 a.m. Nashville’s morning news – Congressman Tim Burchett, joining us.
So I’m seeing that the funding package, the aid package for Ukraine more than likely will pass.
Although what the Speaker of the House, Johnson is saying is that he wants to include more accountability for those funds. What do you think about its passage?
Do you think it’ll pass?
Rep. Tim Burchett: Probably – you’ve got enough moderate Republicans and Democrats, that will do that.
I won’t.
I’m not going to fund anymore. We’ve given them 114 billion unchecked dollars. And I haven’t voted for a red cent. And I just think it’s a very corrupt nation. It’s not our war. It’s just, we’re getting into that slippery slope again.
There we are. We’ve, you know, the money – it’s very much like Vietnam. And we’re just, we’re itching for a fight somewhere in this world. And as I like to call them, the war pimps at the Pentagon and in Congress are pushing for every opportunity to get us into a world war.
And we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, what’s the constitutional reason for us to be in Ukraine? And I submit to you, there isn’t one. There is not one. They’ve never really been an ally of ours as Israel has been. And, and it’s just, it’s just a very slippery slope of a very crooked nation.
Dan Mandis: One last question here. You have the media covering this breathlessly. So I will ask you about George Santos, a New York state representative, a Republican, wants to expel him for the accusations of fabricating his resume.
What’s the mood on Capitol Hill amongst Republicans as it relates to George Santos?
Rep. Tim Burchett: Well, he’s got a – and that’s primarily the folks out of New York – I’d say he’ll probably get thrown out.
But I think the issue we should ask ourselves is, what about a trial by jury kind of thing, or we you know, we’ve had, we’ve had members accused of things in the past and found innocent, we’ve had them found guilty, I said, let’s just let the court run its system, run it, run its, run its deal, and and then we’ll, We’ll address it after that, but until then, I just because you’re accused, I used to have a dear friend of mine, Joe Haines.
He was a state senator and a very good attorney in Nashville when I was in the state Senate. He said, ‘Tim,’ he said, ‘you can indict a ham and cheese sandwich,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t mean you’re guilty.’ And I’ve always remembered that because that was some pretty good advice that Joe gave me and, and that kind of changed my whole opinion of all that back then.
I’m not going to vote to kick him out. I think they ought to just wait and let the courts decide. And then, and then we’ll, we’ll get to where we’re at.
Dan Mandis: All right. Thank you very much, Representative Tim Burchett, for joining us on Nashville’s Morning News on SuperTalk, 99.7 WTN, always great to speak to you.
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Photo “Tim Burchett” by Tim Burchett.
