Massie To Newt Gingrich: Can Trump 'Unwind The DoE A Week After He Signed The Bill That Funded It?'

2 days ago

At Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This hearing reminds me of a breakfast I had with Antonin Scalia,

00:06about a dozen of his congressmen invited him to breakfast, and this was about a decade ago when

00:12Obama was the president and John Boehner was the speaker, and my colleagues appealed to Scalia

00:20and said, what can you do? You need to get involved here. The courts need to get involved.

00:26Obama's running roughshod over Congress, and Scalia refused to accept that premise. He said,

00:34no, this is not my job to referee fights between your two branches. My job is as a jurist

00:41to decide if somebody's been harmed and what the remedy is, and occasionally we interpret the law

00:47and the constitutionality of it. He said, by the way, you're the most powerful branch of government.

00:54I don't know what you're complaining about. All the tools you need to restore the balance

00:58are in the constitution, and one of my colleagues protested that impeachment was just too hard to

01:03pull off, given the threshold in the Senate and the political backlash, and Scalia just shook his

01:10head. He said, I'm not talking about impeachment. You all have the power of the purse. You are

01:15funding everything you complain about that Obama is doing. Just quit funding it, and it was a pretty

01:23clear message. Now, that was about tension between Congress and the executive branch,

01:29and our hearing today is about tension between the judicial system and the executive branch,

01:35but I think it's still the case that what Scalia said is true. Let me give you an example of

01:42something I'm going to predict is going to happen in the courts soon that I'm not going to have much

01:47sympathy for the president. So, the president recently had a press conference and said he's

01:54going to wind down the Department of Education. Oh, great. That's my bill. I've got a one-sentence

02:00bill that eliminates the Department of Education. I should be very excited about this. The problem is

02:06much of the activity that he says he will undertake, he just signed into law the funding

02:12of it a week before. We did a continuing resolution that fully funds every single penny

02:17of the Department of Education in a week, and the president signed it. This is, as Professor

02:24Shaw pointed out, appropriations bills are laws too, and they require both chambers and then the

02:33president to sign it, and so it's an appropriation bill. It's a law. It's in law, and a week later,

02:39he announces that he doesn't like some of the law, and so he's going to do things differently.

02:44So, that's my problem that I have. Now, I do think it's a good hearing, and this is a great question.

02:51I tend to think that probably there are cases where they shouldn't have nationwide injunctions,

02:59but this is a double-edged sword. Under the Biden administration, he did unconstitutional and

03:06unlawful things during COVID that were stopped with nationwide injunctions. So, for instance,

03:11he had a rent moratorium that was stopped until the Supreme Court eventually basically said it

03:19was illegal. He refused to grant religious exemptions to the vaccines in the military.

03:27There was a nationwide injunction. Actually, one of the attorneys in that is a constituent

03:31of mine, Chris Wiest, who stopped all of the vaccine mandates at that point in the Air Force.

03:40That was a nationwide injunction, and then his OSHA vaccine mandate was stopped

03:45with a nationwide injunction. So, I'm torn on this. Maybe if we just don't have nationwide

03:52injunctions, people in certain districts can live under tyranny or the perception of it,

03:57and if you're in a different judicial district or circuit, you get some remedy from the tyranny.

04:03Maybe it works out better that way. Maybe we should have tried each of these cases in each

04:08of these courts and found out the answer. But, Mr. Speaker, former Speaker Newt Gingrich,

04:14what do you have to say since you were speaker and led this appropriations process?

04:21Do you think the president can unwind the Department of Education a week after he

04:26signed the bill that funded it? Well, as you know, when I was speaker, we balanced the budget,

04:35something you believe in, for four straight years, the only time in the last century.

04:39So, I think I can talk with some authority about this. I suspect there will be a real fight

04:45at the Supreme Court level over whether or not the president has impoundment authority,

04:49which was taken away during the collapse of the Nixon presidency, but had existed before that.

04:56That'll be a legal fight. I think your point about injunctions is semi-right. That is, a court should

05:02be able to issue the injunction. My point about the Chief Justice is, if that particular

05:08single district judge says this is a valid injunction, if they immediately went to the Supreme

05:16Court and then the Supreme Court agreed that it was a valid injunction, then you could have a

05:21nationwide injunction. But I am with Lincoln, who said even though the court had decided, seven to two,

05:29that slavery could be extended nationally, he refused to accept the legitimacy of that decision

05:34because it wasn't unanimous. Now, so the precedent is pretty clear. I think your instinct is right.

05:40There are times you need a nationwide action. My only point is, if the district judge says that,

05:45the following morning it should be in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court should

05:49have to render judgment. If they agree, then you have a nationwide injunction. But if they say,

05:54no, you're in error, then there's no nationwide injunction. Makes sense to me. I yield back.

06:00I thank the gentleman. We now go to the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Raskin.

Massie To Newt Gingrich: Can Trump 'Unwind The DoE A Week After He Signed The Bill That Funded It?'

Category

Transcript

Recommended