Republican Lawler: Ousting McCarthy as speaker would be ‘destructive’ to the country

Rep. Mike Lawler, New York Republican, thinks the threats to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are “delusional,” and “destructive to the country.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” host Jon Karl asked Mr. Lawler what he thought about Rep. Matt Gaetz’s announcement that he will file a motion against Mr. McCarthy to vacate the speaker post. Mr. Lawler responded, “Well, I think what I just heard was a diatribe of delusional thinking.”

“Look we’re in a divided government, and in a divided government, any final bill is going to have bipartisan support,” he continued. “It needs to pass the Senate, and it needs to be signed by the president.”

He went on to say that he agrees with Mr. Gaetz’s point that spending needs to be cut, and the need for single-subject spending bills, adding that that was the reason why he ran for government.

“But when you’re trying to break the system, when you’re trying to reform it, it takes time,” he said. “We have been doing the work over the last few months, going line by line, budget bill by budget bill, finding ways to cut spending, and reform the system. But we were not able to complete that work by Sept. 30, which was the end of the fiscal year.”

Mr. Lawler defended the 45-day stopgap measure, saying that it did what it needed to do, which was stopping a government shutdown that would’ve inflicted “pain on the American people” and “hurt an already fragile economy because Bidenomics has failed.”

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The stopgap measure passed Saturday will fund the government until Nov. 17. It did not include any funding for Ukraine, or money for border protections. It lacks spending cuts, but includes a $16 billion increase to federal disaster assistance.

To put forth a motion to vacate over this would be “destructive to the country,” Mr. Lawler said.

“We have a lot of work to do. The American people elected a House Republican majority to serve as a check and balance on the Biden agenda and the administration’s reckless spending,” he continued. “The only way to do that is to complete our appropriation’s work. We have 45 days to do it.”