In this episode, Congressman Andrew Clyde (GA-9) shares his powerful personal story of standing up to the IRS after federal agents seized nearly $1 million from his small business. Discover how his fight for justice led to major legislative reform and what he's doing now in Congress to rein in government overreach, cut wasteful spending, and defend constitutional liberties. From IRS abuse to the fight for fiscal responsibility, this episode is a must-listen for every American who values freedom and accountability.
In this episode, Congressman Andrew Clyde (GA-9) shares his powerful personal story of standing up to the IRS after federal agents seized nearly $1 million from his small business. Discover how his fight for justice led to major legislative reform and what he's doing now in Congress to rein in government overreach, cut wasteful spending, and defend constitutional liberties. From IRS abuse to the fight for fiscal responsibility, this episode is a must-listen for every American who values freedom and accountability.
Twitter/X: @Rep_Clyde | @jennybethm
Website: https://clyde.house.gov/
Andrew Clyde (00:00):
So it took about 24 hours for Mayor Bowser to remove Black Lives Matter Plaza. It is a stain and has been a stain on this city. Now the jackhammers are still going and we're still seeing the effects of that piece of legislation, and I was very proud to introduce it.
Narrator (00:20):
Keeping Our Republic is 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 of 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 (00:52):
We are joined today by Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde, and he's going to talk to us about what's happening right now on Capitol Hill with government spending and how we can help advance President Trump's agenda with the budget and the reconciliation process, which sounds like Greek to so many people. Thank you so much for joining me today, Congressman.
Andrew Clyde (01:15):
Well, thank you very much. It's always great to be with you and always great to talk to the conservative base.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:21):
Now, before we get into the reconciliation process and all of that Black Lives Matter plaza in Washington DC, it's no longer a thing, is it?
Andrew Clyde (01:33):
No, it has pretty much gone away or is in the process of going away right now. I was there a couple of weeks ago and the jackhammers were out and the bulldozers were out, and you could see that Black Lives Matter Plaza was being removed from 16th Street and it was I guess one of the fastest enactments of a piece of legislation that never became law.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:57):
And what legislation was that? How did this happen?
Andrew Clyde (02:00):
Well, we introduced on March the third, a piece of legislation that told the mayor of Washington DC that you will remove Black Lives Matter Plaza or you will suffer a 50% cut in your transportation budget, which was about $160 million. And we have the right to do it and we have the votes to do it. And so it took about 24 hours for Mayor Bowser and I credit Mayor Bowser with realizing that fight, this is not a hill that she wants to die on to remove. So she decided within 24 hours to remove Black Lives Matter Plaza. It is a stain and has been a stain on this city. Black Lives Matter is an organization that stands for divisiveness. It is a defund, the police organization, and we are not a defund the police nation, they get a free two block long billboard for their organization, courtesy of the public, and it's a block away from the White House. Can you imagine having your address, black Lives Matter Plaza for those businesses that are on those couple of streets? Terrible for them. But that's what happened. And now the jackhammers are still going and we're still seeing the effects of that piece of legislation and I was very proud to introduce it and I'm very happy that it has literally been enacted into law without ever being voted on or passed into law.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:41):
Congratulations. It's amazing. And very quickly, 24 hours.
Andrew Clyde (03:45):
Yeah, 24 hours. The mayor made the decision in 24 hours and said that she had more important things to worry about. And I'm like, great, fantastic. Let's get rid of this. It's an example of when Wayne Gretzky said, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take. Well, this is one of those shots that we decided to take, and lo and behold, we hit the bullseye.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:07):
That is amazing. Very good. And so you have been in Congress for, this is your third, fourth term? Third
Andrew Clyde (04:17):
Term? Third term. Third term. So four years. You were
Jenny Beth Martin (04:19):
A, not a small business owner but a business owner before this, right?
Andrew Clyde (04:24):
I was.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:25):
And it was for gun sales, right. And you were actually targeted by the IRS, do you?
Andrew Clyde (04:31):
I was actually, I started my adult career as a Navy officer, 11 years active 17 reserve, so 28 years in the Navy including three combat tours in Iraq and Kuwait. But in left active duty in 1996, actually retired in 2013, but it was in 2013 when the IRS came against my business. And I do have a small business. It's two locations in Athens and Warner Robbins, Georgia, two gun shops. And they came against me and confiscated $940,313 from my company's bank account, which at the time was almost everything that we had. It was April the 12th, a day for me that will live in infamy. When the IRS agents came in and notified me that they had seized through civil asset forfeiture that amount from our bank account. April 15th was three days later after we'd paid our taxes for the 2012. Then we had nothing left.
Andrew Clyde (05:30):
In fact, I had to actually go borrow almost a hundred thousand dollars just to continue payroll and to pay the accounts payable that were coming due on a regular basis. So we went and we challenged the IRS and said, what's the problem here? This money is legally earned and properly reported. And after about three or four weeks, they came back and they audited me for four years, both personal and business. And they came back and said, yes, we agree. It's legally earned and properly reported, but we're not going to give it back to you. So I had to sue them, had to take 'em to court. We eventually got our money back, but it cost me $150,000 to do it. That was, we got it back in September of 2013. So from April to September it was basically, you're on your own. What they tried to do was to literally starve me to death and make me accept their offer.
Andrew Clyde (06:36):
When they offered me a deal to give back 615,000 if I would forfeit $325,000 to them for what I had done, nothing wrong. This was extortion in my opinion. So on August or October 3rd, 2013, I came up to the US Congress here and had a meeting with the oversight subcommittee of House Ways and means, which has authority over the IRS. And they looked at my story and they were just stunned and thought, oh my, we've never seen anything like this. But the more they looked into it, the more they found small businesses across the country had been targeted over 700 of them during the Obama era of 2009 to 2013 at the time. So they asked me to come in for a hearing where they had the IRS Commissioner and to testify against the IRS abuse. And so I did that. That was in February of 2015.
Andrew Clyde (07:32):
And the chairman at the time, Peter Ros, Congressman Roskam, forced the IRS Commissioner to apologize to us. There were three of us that were witnesses in the hearing room. One was a dairy farmer, one was a candy distributor and one was a gun store owner. And I was the gun store owner. And so eventually that led to a piece of legislation called the Respect Act, restraining Excessive Seizure of Property through the exploitation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Tools Act that passed the house unanimously that term didn't get a vote in the Senate. Second term came up on the hundred and 15th Congress didn't get a vote in the Senate. It passed the house again, second time didn't get a vote in the Senate. So finally in the third term, it passed the house early on and Senator Grassley picked it up and it passed unanimously in the Senate. And President Trump signed that piece of legislation into law on July 1st, 2019. And Peter Roski was kind enough and called me up and said, do you mind if we name this after you? And I said, sure, you can do whatever you want. I won't say no. And so he named it after the three of us that testified. So it's actually called the Clyde Hirsch Sowers Respect Act.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:47):
That's amazing. But it's also horrible. And let's put something, a perspective here. So this happened to you in April of 2013,
Andrew Clyde (08:58):
Correct?
Jenny Beth Martin (08:58):
On Mother's Day weekend. On the Friday before Mother's Day of 2013, that's when Lois Lerner admitted she was targeting tea party groups. And then months later we learned that the IRS was more likely to target to personally audit and target donors of the Tea Party to Tea party groups.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:23):
You were six times more likely to be audited. So people have always said to me, well, what happened to the Tea Party groups? And I'm like, imagine if you couldn't get your determination letter to say that you actually were a legitimate nonprofit, first donors wouldn't believe that they could donate to you in a tax deductible manner because they think you're doing something wrong. Second, you donors are six times more likely to be audited. Third, they're coming up to you around the entire country with stories like what you just described. But the gun store owners were especially egregious because there was something, I think that was the first and Second Amendment violation going on there. And it took years for you to get it worked out, months to get it worked out. There were other businesses all across the country going through the same kind of thing. And then our funding just plummeted. And it isn't because people couldn't donate to us or didn't respect what we were doing, but they were afraid to because once it was revealed what was happening, then they were like, oh, we better stop donating to them or we're going to be harmed ourselves. So we have survived and we pushed through it and we persevered. But man, it just makes me infuriated. And a million dollars, $980,000 being seized,
Andrew Clyde (10:47):
Nine 40,
Jenny Beth Martin (10:47):
That would 940 crush most small businesses. How do you survive your cashflow when that's going on?
Andrew Clyde (10:56):
Right, right. Well, that was the whole point. They were trying to literally starve us through cashflow because as a small business owner, cash is king. No cash, no kingdom. If you can't pay your bills on time, then you're not going to have a business for very long. No. If you can't pay your employees, do you think they're going to stay and work for free if you can't pay them? No. You have to be able to. And honestly, it was through the grace of God and some amazing things that had happened that honestly can only be attributed to God that preserved my business. And then literally through the six years that it took to get this enacted into law, created one of the most amazing success stories where the IRS takes what you have, seizes it, you get it back, and then you take away their authority through legislation to ever seize legally earned and properly reported money ever again through civil asset forfeiture.
Andrew Clyde (11:57):
And I mean, it's a complete turning of the tables on the IRS, but it gave me such an incredible story that the people in the ninth district when our previous congressman, Doug Collins, who is now the VA secretary when he left office, gave me the opportunity then to run for office. And the folks in the ninth District just said, wow, this is a guy who beat the IRS who stood up against him. This is the person we want and he'll fight for us. And that is one of the things I love about being in Congress in that is the opportunity to fight for the people and the conservatives to fight to get us back to a constitutional republic and the idea that the founding fathers had of the way this government should work to get us back to those principles. And not that the people serve the government, but the government truly serves the people. And that's why I thoroughly enjoy what I'm able to do. And it's an honor to serve the folks at Georgia's ninth District.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:02):
And I'm so glad that you are in Congress and I think that what happened to you prepared you to be a better congressman than most people would be because you understood the legislative process, you understood it takes time, you understood what it takes to get votes signed up, and you understood that these laws make a difference in people's lives. It does. And that one made a positive difference. But there are many that make a negative difference.
Andrew Clyde (13:34):
Yeah, that's true.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:35):
So let's talk about what's happening right now
Andrew Clyde (13:38):
With
Jenny Beth Martin (13:39):
The process that we're in. There's a lot of talk about reconciliation and some people may not even know what that word is. They've just heard President Trump say he wants one big beautiful bill and they don't really know what that means. Can you kind of talk through the process that we're going through right now?
Andrew Clyde (13:58):
Sure. Well first on the appropriations committee, there are two types of funding in the federal government. One is discretionary funding, which is the appropriations process. It funds all of the three letter agencies of the federal government, DOD, treasury Department, you name the department, commerce, department of Commerce, department of the Judiciary, department of Justice. All of those different departments are funded through appropriated funds and that's discretionary. Then you have the mandatory, which are the things like people have paid into like social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and our debt. That's a mandatory expenditure. Congress cannot say we're not going to pay the debt. It says in the constitution that that's a mandatory responsibility of the federal government. So I'm on appropriations, but I'm also one of the liaisons from the appropriations committee to the budget committee. So the budget committee focuses a lot on the mandatory side. So really I'm very well positioned to speak both on the discretionary on appropriations and on the mandatory side as well in budget.
Andrew Clyde (15:14):
So the beautiful thing about budget reconciliation is that it bypasses the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. It's privileged in the Senate, it only takes a majority. So everything that we as Republicans can do to put it in reconciliation has the best chance of passing and becoming law. We have the house bias, very small majority. We have the Senate by 53 votes, but it takes 60 votes to bring call the filibuster or cloture to bring any bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote other than reconciliation or something that's privileged. And there are very few privileged bills, but reconciliation is one of them. So in order to, according to the Senate rules, in order to get something into budget reconciliation, it has to directly affect the budget. So it either has to decrease our deficit or increase our deficit, one of the two.
Andrew Clyde (16:14):
And so we're looking at using this to decrease our deficit and to lengthen or make permanent the tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which is a President Trump promise to the American people. And we in Congress are going to uphold that promise and we're going to help him fulfill that promise. And so the way it works is it's a two-part process. The first is a resolution, a budget resolution, which gives is basically instructions on how that the reconciliation process will work. And that resolution comes out of the budget committee and then it goes over to the Senate and the Senate has to vote on it as well. And so the two have to have literally exactly the same bill a passed in both chambers and to pass it in the Senate requires only a simple majority. So it's a privileged piece of legislation. So in the budget committee, we worked very hard to get a true resolution that did not increase the deficit or the debt one little bit, but it did lengthen or make permanent the tax cuts and jobs act that President Trump has wanted.
Andrew Clyde (17:30):
If we don't do that, if we don't extend these tax cuts, you're going to see on average a 22% increase in taxes for the average American small business owners can see their taxes go up to right about 40%, which would be devastating to the American economy. So in the budget resolution that unlocks the process for reconciliation and the resolution are instructions like to the ways and means committee, you have to increase the tax cuts to other committees. You have to decrease spending and it gives each a monetary amount for which they have to comply. And I think Department of Justice was decreased spending by like 50 billion Commerce Department was something like decreased spending by 230 billion. A Department of Education was another large decrease in spending. And I'm very happy that the president signed an executive order to eliminate as much as can be eliminated in compliance with the law, the Department of Education.
Andrew Clyde (18:44):
I think that has been something that has needed to happen for a very long time. Even Ronald Reagan talked about doing that back in the 1980s when Department of Education was only signed into law or by executive order, I believe by Jimmy Carter in 79. So you have these different instructions to these different committees to either increase the tax cuts or lengthen the tax cuts or decrease spending. We think that the tax cuts will cost about 4.5 trillion over 10 years. Right. And we're working on spending cuts of $2 trillion over that 10 year window. So there's a 2.5 trillion delta there between the two. And the congressional budget office has told us that for every 1% increase in the gross domestic product, that equates to about 3.3 trillion of revenue going into the federal government over a 10 year budget cycle with GDP going up about, oh, we think about 0.75 of a percent that equates to that delta of 2.5 trillion. I know I'm talking a lot of numbers and I hope y'all are following me,
Andrew Clyde (20:08):
But so the 2.5 trillion of economic growth and the 2 trillion of spending cuts equals the 4.5 trillion that are going to be needed for the tax cuts. So they balance out, in fact, actually I'm hoping that we can actually reduce the deficit by a little bit while we reduce taxes and reduce spending. So that's kind of the process we and the House have passed. The resolution that bill that we worked on so hard, now it's up to the Senate and once the Senate passes it, and I'm very hopeful that they'll pass it here in the next couple of weeks, then we begin the really difficult process. Well, it's not really difficult for me, okay, because I'm a very much a fiscal conservative and a budget hawk. I want to cut as much spending as we possibly can. I want to give folks as much tax cuts as we possibly can.
Andrew Clyde (21:00):
So it's not hard for me to decide what to cut. A lot of that will be the Department of Education, but there's a huge emphasis in budget reconciliation on the tax, on the spending cut side on waste, fraud and abuse. And that is where Elon Musk and Doge has been tremendously helpful. There is a report put out by the government accounting office that the amount of waste and fraud actually simply in Medicaid is over 50 billion a year. That's an incredible amount. So 500 billion over the 10 year budget cycle. So that's a tremendous amount of savings that we can make happen if we will only enact greater reform and restraint on the spending that the federal government does and how it's accounted for. We saw Elon Musk, he showed us that over 20 million people in the Social security database are over 115 years old. There's nobody in the United States over 115 years old.
Andrew Clyde (22:14):
He showed us that in the small business administration that there were 333 million worth of loans to people, to children. Those under the age of 11, 312 million worth of loans to those over the age of 115. There's nobody over the age of 115, you put those two numbers together, you're over $600 million of loans that went out to people that guess what? Never have paid back one penny. Well, those are fraudulent loans because they didn't go to those people and half of them were dead and half of them are children that are not qualify for a small business administration loan. So with the help of Doge, the different branches, the secretaries can significantly reduce the fraud in government. And that's the whole point. I want taxpayers to be confident that the money that they're sending to the federal government is used in the most efficient way possible and that the federal government is the smallest it can possibly be to effectively accomplish the goals that the Constitution sets out for the federal government.
Andrew Clyde (23:24):
Just remember this, the states created the federal government, it's not the other way around. And the states gave the federal government certain authorities, it's in Article one 18, enumerated powers outside of that federal government does not have that authority. The 10th Amendment says anything not specifically delegated to the federal government is reserved to the states or to the people. So we in the federal government are limited by the Constitution and we need to stay within those bounds. And I think the President and Elon with Doge highlighting all these areas of fraud and abuse, give our government, give the president tremendous ammunition to curtail the size, scope, and cost of government. So I hope that answers a little bit.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:12):
It does. So I want to go back and ask a couple things. Let's clarify something on the numbers just in case people did not catch up. So it's 4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
Andrew Clyde (24:26):
Yeah, that's the cost. That will be the cost of the tax cuts. Correct. Because when you cut taxes, you cut revenue into the federal government. So there's a cost to that.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:34):
Okay. And economists would argue that it ultimately though the government winds up getting more revenue because of the growth in GDP.
Andrew Clyde (24:49):
Right? More revenue that they're currently getting. Correct? Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:54):
So when you say the cut, what you mean? You mean it seems to me one of the things that you're saying when you say that is that you mean the immediate cashflow change? Correct. Is that right? Because we're still going to wind up, the government will wind up getting more revenue with lower tax cuts, which is strange to some people they don't understand. But I've been explaining it. If you had a high that's the size of the diameter of this pen and you're getting a quarter of this, it is still a small amount, but it's a quarter. So you're getting a quarter of it and you decrease it to like 10%, it's going to be very small. But because you've decreased it to 10%, the diameter grows. So now you're getting 10% of this.
Andrew Clyde (25:40):
Right,
Jenny Beth Martin (25:42):
Exactly. So in this 10% is much bigger coming in. So when you were, you're acknowledging that, and I think it's important for some of the people who have been going, wait, the people in the house Freedom Caucus are saying that it costs, you're talking about the immediate cashflow change to the government. That's right. And we have to acknowledge that there is a change and there will be a shift before that the growth in GDP. Now, why does the pie grow? The pie grows because people are keeping more of their own money. Businesses are keeping more and they can go and invest it. Right? They can give raises and that in turn creates growth.
Andrew Clyde (26:23):
Their businesses will grow and that will grow the economy. Alright, so therefore, just like what you said, we took a section out of that pie. Okay? It's called tax cuts. Well, that helps the pie grow. And when the pie grows, the growth of the pie is much larger even with the section out of it than the pie was before. Okay. Now, but in the immediate timeframe, the section of pie that comes out, the tax cuts is partially made up by spending cuts.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:57):
Got it.
Andrew Clyde (26:57):
We put back some of that based on the $2 trillion of spending cuts. That is the goal of the budget resolution to be written into the budget reconciliation, which is the actual legislation that makes it happen.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:12):
Okay. And then when you were saying, and I think I have the numbers right, that 1% increase in gross domestic product equals a $3.3 trillion trillion increase in revenue back in
Andrew Clyde (27:23):
That's correct.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:24):
And that's the part that we're talking about with the growth of the economy, but it takes a bit longer, which is why they counted over 10 years instead of one.
Andrew Clyde (27:33):
Right. It's a budget window of 10 years. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:35):
Okay. That all makes sense to me and I got the numbers down, so I hope that going back through that makes sense. The waste fraud and abuse that Elon Musk is doing. I think there's one other thing that he's doing, which I suppose kind of would be it qualifies as waste, but it's duplicative programs and processes. So when Linda McMahon announced cuts in the Department of Education, one thing that really stood out to me is that I think there's a person who has a position of strategic communications. I think that was one of the positions they highlighted. There are like seven people who have that. So they're kind of downsizing that. So they don't have so many people with the exact same title within different departments or divisions of the department. But also there are people who are like, oh no, what about school lunches and school breakfast? But that's actually happening through the Department of Agriculture, right?
Andrew Clyde (28:38):
That's correct. That's true. And then also the focus here is when we get rid of the Department of Education and just remember our student, since the Department of Education came about, we have spent more per student than literally any other country of the world, but yet we're not the first in learning or reading or performance by students. Actually, we've gotten worse. And so in fact, I saw a statistic yesterday that 60% of eighth graders do not even come up to a fourth grade reading level, which is incredibly wrong. So we have spent so much money, but yet we don't have the benefit for it. And then you have these 4,000 plus employees of the Department of Education who on average have salaries way over a hundred thousand dollars each. So there's a tremendous amount of overhead in the Department of Education where we can simply take the money and send it to the states and allow the states to use it as the states see fit. Because to me, education of our students should be in the hands of parents and of the school boards. And at the very highest level, the state, not the federal government in the Constitution, which created the federal government, there is no authority over education whatsoever. That is something we have stolen from the states and it needs to go back.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:14):
And I think that's very important what you're seeing. So we can look at the outcomes and talk about that, but the root is that we have to look at the proper constitutional role of government.
Andrew Clyde (30:25):
That's correct.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:26):
Okay. Very quickly, two other quick questions. I know you have a heartbreak and we're on Capitol Hill and you've got to be able to go to your meetings. I do. The house has passed the budget resolution. It goes to the Senate and passes. And then what happens next?
Andrew Clyde (30:46):
Once the resolution passes, then the instructions are confirmed,
Andrew Clyde (30:51):
They're put into law into the resolution, and then those instructions go to the House committees and to the Senate committees and say, okay, now find these cuts on the cutting the spending side, 2 trillion worth of cuts over 10 years. And on the tax cuts side it's like, okay, now let's look at all of these tax cuts and what it will take to make them permanent and let's enact them. So the spending cuts, the growth and the growth in GDP and the tax cuts over here need to balance out. And that's going to be the job of the various committees to make that happen. And they're going to have probably a couple of months to do that.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:32):
And then they put it all back into one big beautiful bill.
Andrew Clyde (31:35):
Exactly.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:35):
And then it'll pass the House Senate
Andrew Clyde (31:37):
Pass, the Senate president will sign it into law. It bypasses the filibuster in the Senate. So the Democrats, literally, it's truly a Republican only exercise and the Democrats literally have no ability whatsoever to stop it.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:52):
And is this all a function of mandatory spending because it's coming out of the budget committee?
Andrew Clyde (31:59):
Yes, it is mandatory spending within the reconciliation package from the instructions. There is a little bit of money that is going to the border
Andrew Clyde (32:12):
For border security to the Department of Justice for border security as well, and then to the Department of Defense to increase our defense spending. And the reason they're doing it on the mandatory side is there has always been this dynamic on the discretionary side of if we increase a dollar of spending in defense, then an increase, there's an increase of a dollar on the domestic spending side. We don't need to do that. We need to break that cycle. And so we're going to take a little bit of money and put it into the mandatory side for the Department of Defense so we don't have to be increasing the domestic spending.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:52):
And that would be mandatory then presumably from here on out or until future Congress changes?
Andrew Clyde (32:59):
That's correct.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:59):
Okay. Then the last thing, well, and maybe this is twofold, but then what happens to cuts in the discretionary side and what is a rescissions package?
Andrew Clyde (33:12):
Okay. Well, I'm believing because we now have Russ vote as OMB director and Dan Bishop as a deputy director of both of whom I know very, very well. And they're both fiscal hawks and they will ensure that this government spends money as efficiently as possible. So I believe that you will see a reduction maybe back to 2019 levels, pre covid levels of government spending on the discretionary side. And that's all the three letter agencies that we're all familiar with. So I'm looking forward to that. And we on the appropriations committee have committed to whatever the president's budget, that lower budget that we're expecting comes out, then we're going to write our appropriations to that budget because I trust the people in OMB now. And then, let's see, what else did you add?
Jenny Beth Martin (34:02):
Rescissions?
Andrew Clyde (34:03):
Oh, rescissions. Right. When it comes to rescissions, the president has the authority under the 1974 Budget Act to send to Congress a list of rescissions that where he wants spending reduced. And that also is a privileged piece of legislation. So I'm looking forward to after the budget resolution or the reconciliation rather, that piece of legislation is passed, I'm looking forward to seeing what Rescissions the president is going to send to Congress and ask Congress for. I don't know what that's going to be yet. I think they're probably still working on it because it's a big budget. And to find all the places that need to be rescinded, I think it's going to take some time. But I'll tell you that there are so many places in the current federal government, so many agencies and programs that are what I call not authorized Congress. When a federal program comes into existence, first we authorize it and then we fund it. We don't always fund it to the maximum amount. Alright? But here is an opportunity to look at everything whose authorization has expired and go, okay, why are we still funding it? We shouldn't be. And so there's another opportunity to reduce spending there as well.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:25):
And then Rescissions on the Senate side, it's privileged also, right? So it does not require 60 votes either.
Andrew Clyde (35:31):
That's correct. That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:32):
So we have the ability to look at mandatory spending and then through without cloture and the filibuster.
Andrew Clyde (35:40):
That's
Jenny Beth Martin (35:40):
Correct. And then the same thing with the discretionary side through Reconci, I mean through Rescissions, potentially.
Andrew Clyde (35:49):
Rescissions definitely. However, the appropriations, the actual process of appropriations is not privileged in the
Jenny Beth Martin (35:58):
Senate. Right.
Andrew Clyde (35:59):
Okay. So that does take the 60 volt threshold. That's why you see the appropriations are a little more squishy. Okay. Then reconciliation or the rescissions. So now that we've got four Freedom Caucus members on the appropriations committee, we're running a little more to the right.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:19):
Alright. And maybe we can come back and talk more about appropriations once the president's budget is out, but would be great right now. Now we've got to focus on the reconciliation process.
Andrew Clyde (36:29):
That's correct. Jenny Beth.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:30):
Well thank you so much for joining me today.
Andrew Clyde (36:32):
Well, it's a privilege to be with you and great to talk to your audience, the conservatives that truly want government spending to be as lean as possible. Thanks.
Narrator (36:45):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Han, and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:05):
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