Jenny Beth sits down with Ed Corrigan, the President and CEO of Conservative Partnership Institute, to discuss the changes to the rules of the United States House of Representatives that came as a result of the 20 members of Congress who demanded change during the race for Speaker of the House. Learn how these new rules are making The People's House more open and transparent.
Ed Corrigan has dedicated his life to the conservative movement, from working in Congressional offices on the Hill to working for top conservative organizations, to now leading the Conservative Partnership Institute as President and CEO. Ed has an immense resume of experience fighting the battles for conservative principles in Washington, DC. In this episode, he joins Jenny Beth to talk about the outcome of the Speaker of the House race and what that means from a mechanical and policy perspective.
Ed Corrigan:
Our government is now been weaponized against us, against the American people. At a minimum, if we're going to be increasing the national debt limit, we shouldn't be spending that money on woke weaponized programs that are basically designed to hurt conservatives.
Narrator:
Keeping our Republicans on the line, and it requires patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom to her boy-girl twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Ed Corrigan, the CEO, and president of Conservative Partnership Institute, has dedicated his life and career to the conservative movement. He has served in numerous capacities all over Capitol Hill in his tenure working on behalf of America, including in the Trump transition team. He served as the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee from 2003 to 2012, and again in 2017. Ed got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern on staff for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before spending over 10 years working in various roles, including legislative director in the office of Senator Bob Smith. Ed has received the Weyrich Award for Capitol Hill Staffer of the Year, and in 2013 was named the Vice President for Policy Promotion at the Heritage Foundation. He has been a beacon of conservative values his entire career. We are so happy to have a leader like Ed in the conservative movement as we worked to restore our great republic. And now here's my interview with the president and CEO of Conservative Partnership Institute, Ed Corrigan.
Ed, thanks so much for being with me today.
Ed Corrigan:
Nice to be here.
Jenny Beth Martin:
So before we go into some of the issues I want to talk about, let's just sit just a moment and tell me what is Conservative Partnership Institute.
Ed Corrigan:
So the Conservative Partnership Institute was founded to be a resource for the conservative movement. We provide training, staffing, we help groups with support services. We have a lot of organizations that we try and help them build coalitions and things like that. So we're kind of a one-stop shop for the conservative movement.
Jenny Beth Martin:
I really appreciate the work that Conservative Partnership Institute does and have spent so much time in your building. And it's a great place for coalitions to meet and where we've done a lot of brainstorming and working out strategies for how we attack certain issues on Capitol Hill. Now, speaking of issues on Capitol Hill, we have some fights ahead of us in this Congress that hopefully are going to produce some conservative outcomes. Talk a little bit about what you think we're going to see from the current Congress.
Ed Corrigan:
Yeah. So there's a lot going on and a lot of preparation for things that are going to happen. To take a step back, sort of talk about where we are right now. A lot of folks followed the speaker's race and how all that played out. And to explain a little bit what the result was there and why it was so important. What we saw the conservatives in the Freedom Caucus asking for was a real change to how we do business in DC and particularly in the House of Representatives. They wanted a more open process, more participation for members, more empowerment, and specifically they wanted to make sure that conservatives had a voice in the process. In the past, we've seen the swamp has just basically been in control and we're on the outside throwing spitballs. I think they wanted to believe if Republicans are going to control the House, that they would have the ability to have a voice into that process.
And so a couple of the things we can get into about how they actually got some of these changes and what they are and then how that feeds into some of the big fights that are going to be coming up. So one of them was probably one of the central pieces. The one that was talked about the most was the motion to vacate the chair. That's not something that we would expect to be actually triggered, but it's one of those things that's kind of the first thing to basically hold everything else accountable. And Speaker McCarthy was willing to open the door to that, which is a gesture of good faith showing that he can be held accountable if he doesn't comply with the other tenants of the agreement.
But for me, I think the most important thing that they got was three members of the Freedom Caucus seated on the House Rules Committee. And to explain why that's so important, you have to understand that the House rules are actually pretty strict. Every bill that comes to the floor has its own rule. They can be very creative in how these rules are structured. Some of them have funny names, king of the hill, queen of the hill, Merv, things like that. But basically, the rules are supposed to be designed in the House. They're more restrictive because you have so many more members.
And so by having three Freedom Caucus members on the House Rules Committee, it's a nine to four committee, nine majority, four minority, but therefore with three members, the Democrats will always vote against every bill that comes across the floor. And so three Freedom Caucus members have the ability to stop any bill if the leadership is trying to railroad them and to stifle conversation. And so basically that is their sort of power to hold the leadership accountable and to force a more open process. We've already seen that. We're already seeing more open process on the House floor, the ability of people to offer amendments. Really the House is actually a more open body than the Senate is, which is ironic.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. Let's unpack a couple of things that you just said. First I want to go back to the motion to vacate, but I'm going to hold that for just a second because you just said the ability to make amendments from the floor. Now, when I was in elementary school, I learned that bills went to the floor, they went to Congress and people could make amendments and change them. And that seemed like it was sort of a given, but that hasn't actually been a given in Congress for several years before now, has it?
Ed Corrigan:
Correct.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Go into that because I don't know that the general public actually understands just how broken Congress has been.
Ed Corrigan:
Right. And it's really sad because these members, they spend so much of their time and they're away from their families to be here. It's really not a very glamorous life. Being a congressman, you're living out of a suitcase. Some of them sleep in their offices. And so what is the payoff? Well, the payoff is I get to have a voice for my constituents and I get to be a participant in the process. If all you ever get to do is vote yes or no on what the swamp puts on the floor, that's not a rewarding way to represent your constituents. And so what you described is what we would want to exist, which is, a bill comes to the floor, members have the ability to say, well, I might be willing to vote for this bill, but I'd like these changes. And you offer those amendments and then you vote on those changes. And that's the way a legislative body is supposed to work.
And what we've seen happen though over the last probably five years, six years, even longer, is that the bills are sent out of the Rules Committee and it'll have a specific rule attached to it that says, "No amendments are allowed." That this bill will come to the floor, there'll just be a very brief debate and then no time to read it, and then we're just going to vote up and down on that bill. And I think members finally have had enough, and they would like to be a participant in this process and have the ability to offer amendments.
You can vote no on the amendments, right? They're not always going to pass, but having the ability to at least have a voice into the process. And so that's what we're going to start to see play out. The three members of the House Rules Committee from the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, and Thomas Massie have publicly indicated their desire to have a more open process. And that would be open for amendments for members of all perspectives to be able to have a voice into that process.
Jenny Beth Martin:
And that is good for America. It may mean that people who are on the exact opposite of the issues as we are, Democrats who are ultra-liberal leftist Democrats are going to have the ability to offer amendments. And I probably will never want any of their amendments to pass, but as an American, I think it's very important, no matter what the party is, for them to be able to offer those amendments that their constituents may want and see whether you can get the rest of the Congress to agree with you or not.
Ed Corrigan:
Right. And for organizations like Tea Party Patriots that are constantly giving information to your activists and members to say, "Okay, this is what you need to know about what's going on in the hill. This is what you need to know about this politician versus this politician." You need information. And the best source of information is their votes on the floor. And I think the swamp would prefer to have nobody know those things. They would prefer to have less information. And so for those of us who really value voter empowerment and activist understanding to be able to hold your member accountable, you really have to have the ability to force these votes.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. So that was a very important change. And then the motion to vacate, one of the things that I learned through this process, I wanted the motion to vacate to be back, but I don't know that it was my end all be all, but it was important to me because I think of it as a means to hold the speaker accountable. And it's a check and balance on the speaker. It's a third person in line for the presidency. They are not elected by the entire country, they're elected by their own individual district. And there has to be a check and balance on such a powerful position. That's sort of how I approach it when I look at all the other checks and balances within our government. But one thing that I learned through this process... How long had that been in effect before Pelosi took it away?
Ed Corrigan:
This was in effect since Thomas Jefferson's Manual. So for the entirety of our country, any one member can offer a motion to vacate the chair that would trigger a roll call vote on whether this... It's essentially like a vote of no confidence or a vote of confidence in the speaker. This is no different than any other parliamentary body in the world. You would think about it as the most important right of the legislature to say, okay, this person leads us, we'd like to have somebody different, especially in a legislative body. So it really is just reverting back to what it always was. People are thinking, "Oh, well, this is just going to be chaos. People are going to be offering motions to vacate." That has not played out yet this Congress and it is not what we've saw in the history of our country.
Jenny Beth Martin:
And I think that McCarthy being willing to do that and to reinstate for an individual member, not for five members or whatever there may have been some discussion about before the final deal, I think it's very important for the tradition of America and to ensure that no single person has too much power in our country. So I personally really appreciate the fact that he did that. And it showed he has to have faith and trust in the other members. And it also lets them know he's trusting them and that gives them a reason to trust him. And I think there was a real trust issue with McCarthy. He made some vague commitments and people didn't believe that at first, but it seems to me as that process played out and what we've seen in the three or four weeks since then, he really is trying to rebuild that trust and I appreciate and respect that about him.
Ed Corrigan:
Yeah.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Now the Rules Committee, this change is quite dramatic. One of the things that I heard recently is that the change to the Rules Committee gives the Rules Committee more power. The changes to the committee gives it more power than we've seen since the 1960s. And they took power away from the speaker that the speaker wound up grabbing in the 1960s. What does that mean and how do you think such a change is going to... How will that play out? What are going to be changes we wind up seeing?
Ed Corrigan:
Right. In the past, the Rules Committee has been described as the Speaker's Committee. Basically, it was understood that the nine members of the majority are just going to be puppets for the speaker. The four members of the minority are going to be puppets for the minority leader. And every vote is just party line. Everybody has to vote for the rule when it comes to the floor, that's a party-line vote. And so what I think with this new regime essentially is intended to have is that the Rules Committee members are actually going to bring their own agency to the process. They're going to be able to scrutinize these procedures. They're going to be able to have an input into what amendments are allowed and hopefully going to create a more open and participatory process when it gets to the floor.
I think that's ultimately in a legislative body. I think it actually is helpful to the speaker because when you control things too much in a legislative body, basically people start to lose trust in the process. And they just say, "Well, okay, if I'm not going to get an ability to have a voice into this, I'm just going to vote against these bills." And so in a narrow majority, you really have to have all your members feel like they're a part of the process like they're empowered. And so I think that's this new way of doing the Rules Committee, which is really going back to the way it was prior to the 1960s. This new way of doing business I think is going to be very helpful, not just for conservatives, but also for Kevin McCarthy trying to keep his caucus together.
Jenny Beth Martin:
I don't know for certain and we're just... I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know what's actually going to happen in the future, but it seems like we may see some things play out that we can't quite anticipate because what you and I know is a past history that we've experienced from Congress. It was with really just a different set of rules. So the new rules may make things better and help us start having faith in this body of our government that so many people have lost faith in.
Ed Corrigan:
Yeah. And so what I think we're going to start to see is it's sort of like you're the dog that caught the car. Basically, the conservatives have been complaining about this process for years, just completely been ignored and ridiculed by their own leaders. And so now I think you have a leader who says, "Okay, you have a voice into this process." And so now conservatives are going to have to start thinking, all right, well, how are we going to use that power? What are we going to demand? We have a lot of these must-pass bills that are going to be coming through the House and Senate. And so that'll be a place where not just members of Congress, but also activists, voters who really want to be engaged in this process are going to have to smartly engage to decide what is it that we're going to try and accomplish here.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. So that kind of sets the stage. Now, we have must-pass legislation, and then there are things we want to see attached to must-pass legislation. For the average person who's listening, just describe what is must-pass legislation. Because you and I kind of say that, but the normal person at home may not know what that means.
Ed Corrigan:
So when we talk about must-pass legislation, you talk about bills that are... That something is going to happen, the government is going to shut down or something basically is needed in order to keep the normal functions of government to be ongoing. And then there's also sort of politically must-pass bills that sort of happen every year that everybody sort of feels like we really need to get it done, things like the National Defense Authorization Act. We have a reauthorization of the farm bill that's going to come up this year. But the two big ticket items that we're going to see probably play out, the first one will be the debt limit. There's a statutory limit on the debt.
People are always talking about we need a balanced budget amendment. We have a balanced budget requirement in our current federal law and it's called the debt limit. And the debt limit is limited at a particular monetary amount. We've already exceeded that debt limit right now. The Treasury Department is raiding pension funds to continue this out of control spending, but at some point, they'll run out of money in those pension funds. And so at that point, Congress is going to have to pass a law that allows them to borrow more money. Many conservatives say, "Our debt is out of control, we can't borrow more money. We need to stop this spending now." And so that's going to be that conversation where you have the left that wants to increase the debt limit and the swamp that wants to increase the debt limit to just continue out of control spending. And then folks on the conservative side will say, "We'd like to get control of this."
Jenny Beth Martin:
So one of the ways that I kind of have been talking about the debt ceiling. I've gotten a few media questions about it. Do you want them not to increase the debt limits so that we default on all of our loans or do you want us to make sure that America maintains its solid credit rating and we increase the debt ceiling? And I said to a reporter last week who asked me about that, I just said, "I think that's kind of a false dichotomy that you're presenting." Let's face it, the debt limit is going to increase. We all know that. And for a reporter to ask whether I actually think it's not going to increase, that's not even a fair question because it's going to increase.
It's really much more like saying, I'm going to take a second mortgage out of my house and I go to the bank to say, I want a second mortgage. And the bank says, okay, well we can give you a second mortgage, and here's what you're going to have to do in order to get that second mortgage. So it's negotiating the terms in which you get the second mortgage or negotiating the terms in which Conservatives and Republicans agree to increase the debt limit. If we can help present that to the public and explain that maybe it gets rid of that dire, oh my gosh, the whole world is going to end if we don't act right this entire second. Yeah, we're going to act, but it's a matter of acting responsibly, not just acting recklessly.
Ed Corrigan:
Right. And the other thing to keep in mind is that when this conversation comes up, both sides are going to be standing in their corners. And anytime you have must-pass legislation, it's a game of chicken. Whereas the President Biden is going to say, "We will not entertain any spending cuts. We will not entertain anything. You will either pass a debt limit with no spending cuts or we will not raise the debt limit at all." And conservatives will say, "Well, we can't do that. We need spending cuts." And so you could have a situation where at least for a certain amount of time, the debt limit doesn't get increased.
Now one thing to remember about this is that it's not like all of a sudden we have no money. Basically, the only thing the debt limit says is you can't borrow any more money, but you still have revenues coming in. And so basically the revenues that are coming in are sufficient to pay our debt obligations, to fund programs like Social Security and Medicare where you're going to basically have to make some hard play calls if the debt limit doesn't get increased. Are some of these other programs, some of these discretionary programs that many of us would probably want to eliminate anyways, but there's no reason we would have to default on any debt obligations. We have plenty of money that would be coming in on an ongoing basis in tax revenues and so forth to pay for the debt obligations.
Jenny Beth Martin:
And that's another thing that the mainstream media is going to... They're not going to pay attention to that so it's important for me to add that to my talking points. But they're going to create this false end-of-the-world scenario and try to put all sorts of pressure on the Republicans in the House to just do what Biden wants. And we've seen that play out. So we've got that, we have the NDAA, the farm bill, and then the beginning of the next fiscal year. What kind of things should we expect? What would you like to see the grassroots activist advocating for as we look to these must-pass pieces of legislation?
Ed Corrigan:
Well, at a minimum. Okay, so let's take a step back. So in 2019, we had lots of spending and we were still running a huge national debt and a huge annual budget deficit. And then going into 2020, the same. However, what happened in 2020? We had the COVID-19 pandemic and all of a sudden the government started spending trillions of dollars on these programs to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, what they're still talking about is continuing to spend at that level. So at a minimum, it seems like conservatives should say, okay, well, the COVID emergency is over. Why don't we go back to the spending levels that we had before that? You could theoretically still look at the inflationary rates-
Jenny Beth Martin:
Yeah. So adjust it for inflation.
Ed Corrigan:
... but the idea is why are we now spending. We increased our baseline so dramatically because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Let's go back to what it was before that.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Yeah. The COVID-19 levels should not be the new standard.
Ed Corrigan:
The new baseline. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Yeah. The standard.
Ed Corrigan:
And that's what the swamp does. Every single time there's some new emergency, it's like Rahm Emanuel's famous quote, "Never let an emergency go to waste." They use that as a way to increase the spending baseline so that they can continue spending at a higher level.
Jenny Beth Martin:
So I think that that is a very important thing. We need to go back to those lower levels. I also think we need to be looking potentially at portions of the government that we've learned over the course of the last three years with all these lockdowns that might actually... They are not the proper function of government. Some of the pieces of education really have become indoctrination. Are there ways we can pull back some of... We're not going to stop spending on education, but can we make sure it's actually on education rather than on indoctrination?
Ed Corrigan:
Right. And then the final thing, which is sort of goes along with a lot of the other stuff the House conservatives are working on is, our government is now been weaponized against us, against the American people, against people who think like us. And at a minimum, if we're going to be increasing the national debt limit, we shouldn't be spending that money on woke weaponized programs that are basically designed to control how we think and to hurt conservatives.
Jenny Beth Martin:
I think that most Americans would agree that that's not the proper role of government, including some of the censorship that we've seen that the government actually has been involved in when it comes to social media companies.
Ed Corrigan:
Right.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Are there other aspects of spending yet that we know that we should expect people on Capitol Hill to be advocating for cutting over the course of this Congress?
Ed Corrigan:
Well, I don't know that I would say anything in particular. Certainly, a lot of our entitlement programs are out of control, and a lot of that was done during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not necessarily Social Security, Medicare, but some of the welfare programs and stuff that were dramatically increased. I think the border is out of control and that's causing additional strains on spending and so forth. But I think a lot of the sort of policies that we would all want to be fixed should be thought of in the context of this budgetary conversation. And so ultimately, I think everything should be looked at. If you're going to start dealing with trillions of dollars in an annual budget deficit, nothing can be left off the table.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. So I think that the really important takeaway right now, because let's face it, with the changes that we saw from the speaker race, the House seems to be a little bit behind where they normally would be by the end of January and beginning of February of a new congressional session. Normally your leadership is in place, the committee structures, and that who's going to be on what committees are in place before Congress even begins. So it seems like they've taken time to lay the groundwork to get this Congress right. I think those of us who are in outside groups like you are with CPI and I am with Tea Party Patriots, we're kind of letting them get their feet underneath them.
So what I think is important for activists to be paying attention to is there've been very significant rules changes, and we're going to see those rules changes affect the way Congress works in this congressional session, and then pay attention to these must-pass pieces of legislation. Be aware that they're going to be coming up. And then let's watch for the areas where we can be advocating for the things we want to see happen when it comes to reducing the size and scope of government. And the way to reduce the size and scope of government is to pull back spending that funds the size and scope of government.
Ed Corrigan:
Right. And then a couple of final things to just throw in there is: The first one is, and this was part of the conversation in that speaker's election, was the way our parties do politics. Basically what we have on both sides of the aisle is that the swamp uses its power to control member's behavior by using the weapon of campaign spending. And so a lot of that was discussed with respect to some of these massive leadership packs that exist for the party committees where members are... They demand that members pay dues to be on specific committees, which doesn't seem proper and it isn't proper, but it happens. And this happens in both parties and both houses. And then they use that weapon. Once you pay your dues, they use that money to control your behavior, and in a lot of ways to disadvantage conservatives in elections.
And so that was discussed. We're hoping to see some changes in the way that happens and that plays out. And then finally, I think basically how conservatives would engage with this legislative process and whether we see the leadership controlling them or whether they're actually able to engage in there and have agency in their decision making.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. Those are important points for us to remember. Now we're about to close out, but one thing that I think a lot of people who are going to be listening to this podcast and watching the video of it, they may not have known you before because sometimes I think you're doing things sort of... You're not normally in the limelight. But one thing that I've learned about you is that you love to fight these battles. You are a real fighter. And when the opportunity comes up, you see these pieces, these leverage points as opportunities to... The speaker fight wasn't really about the speaker fight, the speaker fight was about the fight that we had to vote on the speaker and using that vote to make a difference. And you understand these rules in an interesting way that you've taught me so much, you look at how we can use the rules to fight to get what we want. Sometimes the topics may seem a little bit dry to the people on the outside, but this is how you fight inside of Congress by using these rules.
Ed Corrigan:
Yeah. And it is a little dry, and I appreciate your ability then to communicate and figure out how to explain this to voters to empower them. But yeah, I mean ultimately it's like when you understand the policy, that's one thing, but then to understand the procedures and some of the leverage points, that's when you can actually affect change. And the swamp understands it very well, and so I think it's incumbent on us as conservatives and part of this as activists to better understand how we can engage with those leverage points.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Well, I appreciate all that you've taught me that you're teaching our audience today. And we'll probably want to have you back at some point as we get closer to some of these end-of-the-world scenarios that really aren't the end of the world at all but the opportunity for us to advance conservatism. And this is Ed Corrigan, he is the president of the Conservative Partnership Institute. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is a Jenny Beth Martin Show. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Narrator:
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooneyhan, and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin:
If you enjoyed this episode and want to stop freedom thieves from turning our country into a communist nightmare, be sure to subscribe to the podcast.