CNN Newsroom: Interview With Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND)

Interview

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I don't think so.

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I mean, moving forward, I mean, getting the rule on the floor, if it follows the rules, I mean, there's going to be, I mean, there's -- obviously, everybody has their own opinions on this thing and it's going to continue to move through that. But getting the rule on the floor and voting for the rule are two different things. And one of the things that we dealt with when we actually won the speakership is making sure we follow regular order, and I think that's important.

We're going to put this out for 72 hours. It's not going to come off a printer in the Speaker's office at midnight. We're not going to force feed it to the entire membership at noon the next day. And that's kind of how Kevin has run his speakership and it's been good for our conference and I think good for the country.

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Yeah. I've always said if we negotiate in good faith for the best deal we can get and avoid the X date and a credit downgrade and a lot of things that would be catastrophic to our country and the global economy, I would support it.

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Yeah, and then I think some people want it shorter.

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Yeah. Some people want it shorter. Some people want it earlier. I mean, I think having a debt ceiling fight in the middle of a presidential election is something that is problematic -- can be problematic for both sides. But more importantly, when you get the wins out of it such as administrative PAYGO, we're going to get one agency permitting reform. We're going to put the shot clocks back in. I mean, just the PAYGO alone would have saved us $1.5 trillion over the last three years.

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It means, essentially the White House and anything they spend over $100 million dollars they have to offset. So, think student loan debt, interest payments, some of those things. They can't do those programs without finding -- it's hard to find $600 million offset in the bureaucracy. So, it's really reining in the administrator state and making Congress pass bills instead of the agencies.

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I do and I mean, I consider a lot of those guys friends and close colleagues. But I think we're in divided government. We control one-half of one-third of the branches of government -- or one-half -- or one-half of one of the three branches of government, and it's important that we recognize that.

But we're getting really legislative wins that are going to be hard to unwind. You know, taking just the food stamp and TANF and making it go down from 12 percent and 8 percent and phasing the age in from 49 to 55, those are wins that are going to exist long after this and we're going to -- I mean, rescinding of the IRS agents in the first year, rescinding of the COVID funding, this was -- federal money will be more than all of them combined in packs (ph).

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No. I think that, I mean, you know, we have a lot of people that are really considerate.

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Yeah. I think it depends on how you feel like the negotiation were going. I think a little of this is a victim of our own success. I mean, nobody expected us to get limits (inaudible) across the finish line. And if you take it from that and where we came off, I mean, I can see some concerns.

The problem is, there's a whole bunch of those things that we're never going to get any Democratic support. And it's the first time Republicans, I mean, under the previous speakers have ever gotten it across. But if you take it from the posture of, we're not going to negotiate for anything but a clean debt limit increase --

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-- we got a lot of policy wins and we're bring non-defense discretionary spending back down to 2022 levels.

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Yeah. I think there's different parts. One, you just want more cuts and more spending. Listen, I agree with them. If I could write the debt ceiling deal, it would be significantly more conservative than this. I would have just about everything that was in limits grow in that.

And I just recognize that we're going to have to get at least 11 Democrat votes in the senate and we have a Democrat in the White House. I think this is -- I mean, there are real conservative wins in this deal and I can't really figure out what we've given up in it other than raising the debt limit.

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When you have --

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We were not holding the country hostage. We were negotiating for a deal in a divided government and I think it's really important to recognize and I think the White House is finally coming around to the point that they don't control all three branches of government anymore. As we've done through congress and all times in divided government, that we're going to take the leverage we have and we're going to force fiscal sanity back into Washington, D.C.

I mean, there's a reason the polling was 60/40 in favor of this in moving forward because people know we're spending too much money, particularly if you take the two years during COVID, which for a lot of those things were very unique, but we got to get back there -- $32 trillion in debt, $100,000 per household. I mean, that's -- it's the biggest threat we face as a country and we have to get our fiscal order back or our fiscal house back in order.

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Yeah, I think a lot --

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Yeah. I think a lot of it depends on what the text says, but we're going to honor the 72-hour rule and we're going to continue to do that. We're not going to change our rules for this. So, if text gets -- if they get in agreement tonight and text drops tonight, we should be able to vote on Wednesday.

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Yeah, I've never been able to truly figure out Senate procedure and timing. That is for somebody on the other side. But I think, no. I think once -- first of all, once we get it through and you're aiming -- it's a lot of things. One of the things, the NEPA reform is going to do is signal to markets that we're actually open for business. A lot of those are, I mean, the negotiation is different than when you're trying to get the bill through.

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Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I want to honor it. I want everybody to have a chance to read it. You know, we've been making calls all day and, I mean, I'm really -- all of my members, I mean, people are broadly supportive of it for the most part, but they also want to see the text.

I mean, even for me, like, somebody from an oil and gas-producing state, I wants to see what the actual text is. I know what the outlines are, but a lot of this is the devil in the details, which is what I'm assuming is delaying the call a little bit.

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Thanks a lot.

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