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With a looming Sept. 30 legislative deadline in Congress threatening to shut down the country, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is resolutely adamant that if Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., works with Democrats to negotiate a spending deal, the newly-minted House Speaker could be out of a job.
On X, Rep. Gaetz shared a clip from an interview he did this week with Amanda Head on “Just the News, No Noise.” He captioned it, “If @SpeakerMcCarthy works with Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats to advance Joe Biden’s spending priorities, he cannot remain as Speaker of the House.”
Gaetz explained to Head, “We very well may have a shutdown in three days…I’m not a shutdown cheerleader by any means. But to me, what’s extreme is a $33 trillion debt with $2 trillion annual deficits on top in an era of rising interest rates where this debt is going to have to be refinanced.”
He added, “Rather than negotiating just in terms of continuing resolutions or omnibus bills…we should be taking on each of these agencies with single subject spending bills.”
“I’ll be blunt, in the House of Representatives, we are poorly led by Speaker McCarthy,” Gaetz also remarked, accusing House leadership of backing up legislative negotiations against a spending deadline, which they hoped would result in a continuing resolution.
Gaetz further explained, “To liberate ourselves from that, we have to break the fever. We have to maybe endure a shutdown over the weekend or for a few days…we have got to get these individual spending bills considered under a new paradigm.”
Rep. Gaetz has harshly criticized Speaker McCarthy over the past few weeks in the face of the potential government shutdown, and he has made headlines with his fiery speeches on the House floor.
On whether he would initiate a motion to vacate if Speaker McCarthy decided to work with Democrats, Gaetz said, “A motion to vacate is a last resort.”
During an interview with The National Pulse, President Donald Trump called Gaetz a “great guy” who was “strong,” amid rumors that the Florida representative could potentially be eying a run for the Sunshine State’s governorship when Gov. Ron DeSantis’s, R-Fla., term is over.
