McCarthy: Shutdown would give Biden more power

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joined Lisa Boothe on her her podcast to speak about the upcoming Sept. 30 deadline for the House and Senate to avoid a government shutdown.

“If you shut down [the government], you really cede the power to the government,” McCarthy said on “The Truth with Lisa Boothe.”

McCarthy mentioned that if the government were to shut down, military troops and air traffic controllers wouldn’t get paid, and the U.S.-Mexico border would be “wide open” without the U.S. Border Patrol staff.

“Say you don’t fund [the government], you go to a government shutdown. You know what happens then?” McCarthy told Boothe, a Republican strategist and commentator on Fox News since 2016. “The border is wide open. Do you not want to fund the border agents?”

Recently McCarthy has butted heads and expressed frustration with House Republicans who have held up appropriations processes and received threats from members who want him removed from his leadership position.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has threatened to have McCarthy removed from his seat if he doesn’t follow through on spending priorities that were previously negotiated and promised when McCarthy tried to earn enough votes to become Speaker.

Hard-line conservatives have battled GOP leadership for months over spending bills, following a tension-filled month of May before the government ultimately passed a bill raising the debt ceiling avoiding a government shutdown.

With less than two weeks until the deadline, McCarthy’s comments on the podcast appeared to be a message to those members.

“So the way I look at it is, we want government to function, but we want it to be limited government. We want it to be honest; we want it to be accountable,” McCarthy said. “We can show government can govern that way. That’s why we’ve been moving our appropriation bills. We’ve got to finish that job.”

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