Amash of Michigan Compounding chairman jim jordan and the chairman mark meadows of north carolina. [applause] thanks so much for doing this. This is getting complicated. All right. Lets get started here. Lets start with just some simple basics. What is the definition of the Freedom Caucus . Mr. Meadows, well start with you . And if you argue the same answer, you get a bonus point. If we stay on script. I think we founded it, i know you got found in the pacific with to give a voice to millions of americans who felt like a washington d. C. Had forgotten. So its the forgotten man or woman that we believe needs to have a voice here. And really expects to have a voice but has been disappointed. I think thats what we are all about. Mr. Jordan, what is the biggest misconception about what you can stand for, what you guys do the diversity and group. Folks like amash a pretty strong liver cancer, the folks who are strong on the National Defense and just arranged and we love to do this, it almost impossible to let Reporters Committee meeting sometime. Thats what im talking about. Let us know. That would go viral. And listen to the debate. Weve had people join and say this is some of the best on capitol hill because we go at it back and forth. Amash is always greater weight in on his perspective, and is just backandforth. That is i was a probably one of the biggest misconceptions about the Freedom Caucus. Let me ask, i went to your town hall, i get those right after ryan, right after john boehner stepped in before we got a speaker ryan. One of the things that you talk a lot about is the rules, adhering to the rules of the house of representatives. A lot of people wonder, and if you listen to cable chatter, which i know not if you do, a lot of people say this is a group of 30 guys and they are stopping everything. They are not letting the house work its will because a majority of republicans want policy x to pastor how to respond to the . First i would say i know of the of us probably vote yes on most of the legislation that comes up. They might vote yes a little more often than i do. But even i vote yes on the majority of bills come up. We really care about process and thats a real reason for why the group was founded. We want the process to work and if you want the house to represent the will of the American People, and you have to allow the process to work itself out. You have to allow people to play within the rules. And what happens time and time again is the leadership waives the rules, suspends the rules. And they use the rules as a way to get the outcome that they want. Thats not how our government is supposed to operate. Good process tends to make that a policy which tends to make better politics. That might not be the interesting thing to talk about but just is right. If you do it right, he had hearings in april, people get to weigh in, get the best tolkien fight for the policies they want, that produces a better product. That tends to play out and i think a good example is the healthcare bill. Theres probably a reason why only 17 of the country likes this legislation. That may be because we did not actually hearings with witnesses, the doctors, hospitals, no regular American Families where people came in to talk about this legislation to know amendments were accepted in the process. If you done all that you mightve gotten a product that was better than 70 approval rating. The other part of that if i can jump in is having a process that works doesnt necessarily mean that you get more conservative legislation. For many of us we would recognize if it wasnt open process and would not be to the right. It would probably be sent to record some of the times the amendments are not allowed in order, the reason they said not allowed in order is because they will pass. What a novel idea. We cant put that amendment because it will actually pass. I thought that was what the legislative process was all about. We recognize that it open process doesnt necessarily mean or conservative legislation. Lets talk about health care which is on peoples minds. I cant. I only give him a shout out. One of the policy guys this does not get solved. Members of congress are asked to consider, in 25 days, and we read about it first on februar february 21st or 24th around that, in a leak copy. Thats a problem. It said cbo had it since january. I think its important we have these debates behind closed doors where its not, i know it doesnt sell as well but if its behind closed door where we have real legislative debate. I think its more about a process than where we are today. But lets be clear, you have negotiated with the white house over certain provisions of the bill. Youve been in discussions over what you can accept and theyve made you some offers. They, over the last couple days, mikmike pence has been to your office amid some offers. What are those offers. Just to be frank, if those offers that were made actually appear in a legislation, the majority, if not almost all of the caucus will vote for this bill. What exactly are you talking about. Breaking news. When there is breaking news it always makes members of the caucus sweat because we could be the breaking news. Here we are talking about this. Really, i think were talking about a couple of things. Making sure preexisting conditions continue to stay protected. Making sure healthcare is affordable. The primary objective will be lower insurance premium. If we dont do that we will have failed. In doing that, the proposal that was out there was looking at allowing for a waiver for health benefits, allowing for a waiver for the majority of Community Ratings with the exception of gender, and allowing a waiver for guaranty issue. That would have to be in conjunction with the Palmer Harris amendment that being considered. They call it risk sharing. Its an invisible pool to make sure premiums dont go skyrocketing for those that are sick. So that went to the floor, if the house leadership about on the floor you would although for that . Im going to read it. Thats a novel concept. Doing that would pass a hou house. I can talk to the Freedom Caucus. They have a sophisticated operation that sophisticated and we know our numbers on anything so the majority of the Freedom Caucus would be favorably inclined to vote for that. You have to ask them but i think it would pass. I think it would have the majority of the Freedom Caucus as well, but i want to reiterate, whatever is put out there we need time to read and analyze and talk to the experts, we want to really understand the stuff, i am always a person of the group urging caution that we move slowly and not rush into things because you make big mistakes when you rush into things. I would not support Something Like that. Talk to us about dealing with this white house. Everyone is trying to understa understand. How do you find dealing with h him . We have a great relationship with mike pence. [laughter] before that goes viral, i have a great relationship with donald trump too. Ive known mike for a long time and so i have a great relationship with him and enjoy whenever he spends time with us on his been doing that a lot lately. Look, i have a Good Relationship with all of the folks at the white house. We know mike short, we got to know the president and the vice president. I love the statement that he says, im is conservative and im not mad about it. That kind of optimistic flight and spirit about fighting for conservative spirit is mike pence and id like to think thats what the Freedom Caucus is about. That is a strong relationship i think its been good with the white house. I was say this tweets and statements and the blame dont change the facts. When it comes to healthcare, we been focused on the facts. Look at the document. Read whats in the document. Doesnt do what we said we would do . We are looking to make this bill much more consistent with what we told the American People we would do when they elected us and that has been our focus the entire five weeks of this deba debate. It will continue to be until we can move in this direction. Let me redo some tweets. I know you have read them but maybe the room has a. The Republican HouseFreedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Freedom Caucus will help the entire republican agenda if they dont get on the team and fast. We must fight them and democrats in 2018. We held up a bill that only 17 of our citizens approved of and somehow that is not the right thing to do. Even congress should be able to do better than a 17 approval rating. Look, we are trying, i say this all the time, we make this job way too hard. Our job is to do what we said we would do. This has probably been the central domestic policy in the past six years. The elections were about this issue. Lets get it right. Back to the process. , when you hide the bill away, rolled out, dont have any real hearings, tell us its a binary choice, try to push it through, that maybe explains why no one likes it. Lets do that a little better at work this out and we will get there in the thing im told, it would be, i think its important we get the process right and establish the template as we move forward. Think about whats coming. We have a budget and a reconciliation in the appropriations process and infrastructure bill and some think it will be rolled into one bill before september 30 and then we have a debt ceiling. That is a lot of big issues. In a normal session you have one or two big moments. That is six over the next seven months. Lets get the process and template right for how we will deal with all of these big things moving forward. Then we have a better chance to deliver for the American People and thats what we are focused on doing. I want to ask you, obviously trump has kind of trashed you guys generally, but there is a trump aid in particular that said you should be primary. How do you respond to that. Im not worried about it. Thats how i would respond. My constituents know what i stand for. They want someone whos independent and will stand up for all of them and someone who will follow the constitution, uphold the rule of law, defend liberty and they have that person in congress right now. Im not worried about that. At every election people like to make these threats that me and it doesnt pan out. Hes not going to say it was highly inappropriate for that to happen. In simple. Have you told the president that. Have you tol it was highly inappropriate and im sure that with the administration. Its one thing for the president to do it, and legally he is allowed to do it, but it is very different for a staffer to use his official capacity to do that. Its just inappropriate and he can tweet at me all day long. It was just not appropriate. Have you talked to trump about these tweets. Have i talked to him, yes, a number of times. You have to have addressed these. Listen, i dont take them personally. Its all, he wants to get something done for the American People. I understand that. I want to get something done for the American People. When we look at that we are unified and not go and were unified in the fact that we want premiums to come down. I believe the current bill doesnt do that and he has been told the current bill does do that. There is a difference and im enough of a policy not to look at this in detail and for me its not enough to say we passed something so we can check a box. Neither is it for the president but weve got to actually lower premiums, and telling convinced it does that we wont vote yes. He is one of the most principled members of congress, if in fact there is a primary i will do everything i can to help and i think there are 37 of other members who will do the same and frankly a lot of people outside the Freedom Caucus who will also help him win that race if it happens. [applause] just be clear and we will move on to the issues you mention in the second, the chamber of commerce already tried this. A lot of people have tried and it didnt work. I want to say that we been fortunate, they been saying nice things about me and i want to say weve had two great leaders of the house Freedom Caucus who have been able to navigate a lot of difficult situations and mark this term, under a lot of pressure so i just want to thank them. We are good friends. We become really great friends and that makes a big difference. You had alluded to laying out the calendar and all the things we have to do, we are about to have another crisis in terms of government funding. The Government Shutdown in a couple weeks. Are you going to fight for something. Frankly plan parenthood hav should have been dealt with years ago. We want the Health Care Bill to pass. But still that there and we dont want to shut down, but we should fight for what we told the American People we said we would fight for. Maybe it is funding for securing the border thats in the bill we push forward. I know what the senate has said about that. We need to live on the promises and thats what we are committed to doing. Is it funding for the wall. I wouldnt frame it the way you did. Whats worth fighting for . Everything we told the American People we were going to accomplish, we talked about repealing obamacare and replacing with healthcare. We talked about securing the border. We talked about reforming the tax code so we could create an environment conducive to economic growth. All those things are coming. We need to make sure we deliver on every one of them strategically and tactically how that plays out we will see. I think this is a good place to focus on securing the border and we will see if thats what leadership chooses to do. I have a little bit different tag. I do agree we need to support that and do that, but the reason i dont believe there will be a shutdown is because of the other leverage points that jim was talking about. In any congress you have only two or three leverage points on must pass pieces of legislation. This year we got six or seven leverage points. Those leverage points provide another opportunity. Normally washington d. C. Is the land of promise. They promise everything and say if you just wait six more months it will happen and it never does. As we look at that, i think the other leverage points allow the shutdown talk to be minimized here in a couple weeks because there are other things falling behind. Thats a lot to think about. Lets be clear. On this government funding bill, its april 6 and the government shuts down, if Congress Takes no action the government will run out of funding. It somewhere, i can tell you. The government will run out of funding at the end of the month. You guys have thirtysomething votes, House Republicans have 237 votes which means you could basically stop anything you want if you stick together. Tactically, what do you use this leverage point to fight for . [laughter] i thought this was going to be a good morning. You know, i think what we do, specifically you are trying to get out what is going to be in the crown of us. I think they are talking. I would have preferred to have voted on it this week. We always wait until the end of the deadline. Its like a forest being surprised by valentines day. I dont get it. We just have to be surprised that we know funding is going to run out. It is time we get it. We should have voted on it this week so if there are differences we dont have a shutdown clock and we can work through them. Think what you will see is funding for the wall. I think youll see funding for better enforcement on sanctuary cities and of increase of military. I think most people will vote for that. I think it will get stripped out and it will be a hard decision to be made. Hows that. The things that drive me arent necessarily the things that drive the rest of the group. But from the vantage point, i am sitting more to the right. For me its all about getting spending under control. Of course most of the spending is mandatory spending. We have to get spending under control and we have to look at the things that both republicans like an democrats like. Republicans always love more military spending, of course, an democrats always love more domestic spending on social welfare programs and other things. We have to look at both sides and make sure we are not driving up the deficit. What happens time and again is republicans boost military spending and they get some social welfare spending and it keeps going up. I want to see it compromise were both sides say weve got to get this under control and we both take a little bit of a cut. Its a little bit different from maybe some of the rest of you. Given that, you have a president who is basically said he wants to marry tax reform and infrastructure and doesnt seem to care about bending as much money as possible on these kinds of things. Do you see some of the checks and balances on not. Sure. We are the legislative branch, not the three of us alone. We make these determinations and for the president to get the sign of the veto. We do have to get spending under control and thats always been one of my concerns with this administration. This administration is not as concerned about spending. This morning the president told the New York Times yesterday that he wants to do a trillion dollar infrastructure package and it doesnt need to be a Publicprivate Partnership because borrowing is so cheap. I will speak for myself that i have serious concerns about that. We cant keep borrowing, we can keep spending, we have to get our budget in order and whether its barack obama or donald trump or any other president , im going to hold the same position. Do you believe mexico will pay for this wall. No. Okay good enough. The p Peterson Foundation is sponsoring the event. We have a 20dollar debt. This is serious. If you get a chance, read the Time Magazine post. It said you have this number and this represents what we all owe, all 300 million of us owe this tremendous debt. Weve got to control spending. Jeff is right. You have to have an economy growing at more than a percent or so. You have to get to three and half percent or youll never deal with it. All those things fit together when you talk about the magnitude of the problem. Now lets talk about the debt ceiling. It has been one of the biggest fights since you took majority in 2010, raising the debt limit, and john boehner, the former speaker in 2011 went to new york and said he wanted to marry the debt ceiling increase with spending cuts of equal magnitude. You need to look at every opportunity you can to rein in some of the spending. We had a plan back in 2011 that the American People liked. The American People want to get a balanced budget. They understand the cant solve the problem overnight. I think that kind of approach is what we have to look at as well. Mr. Meadows, i want to ask you about tax reform. Even the lead negotiator for the Freedom Caucus thats here in healthcare. Its not a resume builder, i can tell you that. Given what youve been going through in this daily drama, you were up last night late on the phone talking to folks, do you think tax reform can get done by august like the secretary of the treasury think. I do. Im optimistic if we do it differently than we did healthcare. I can tell you, the chairman working very hard. Weve met with devon nunez and a number of different people. This comes down, in my mind on tax reform to a question. You have the border adjustment tax word you have it where its not revenue neutral. We need to have those discussions today. Lets look at legislative tax and what it means for our constituency. I do believe we will get tax reform, and i think we can get it done before august, as long as we are serious about having real debate. Listening sessions are not debate. Its where you come in and you say heres what were talking about. You share your ideas and ever but he goes home and nothing happens. Debate has to be about changing policy and really looking at it and having the rigorous debate. We are very optimistic. If i was in the stock market, i would be banking on the fact that we will get tax reform and that is a different narrative then what you are hearing on capitol hill because of some of the positions Freedom Caucus has taken. You mention the border adjustment tax which is basically a mechanism by which imports are taxed instead of exports. Thats what they have been working on for a long time. What you think about that. Thats obviously a huge sticking point. We havent been taken a formal conclusion. As we look at that i think its important that we listen. Ive had very interesting and dynamic conversations. You get these things on your schedule, all the sudden summary shows up and you think wire they coming to meet with me. Now it is the adjustment tax season. They come in, they set up and i start guessing, are they for it or are they against it. Im surprised because some that you think would be for it, like whirlpool and possibly toyota, theyre not, and some of the others you would think would be against it are the other way. Its really a mixed bag and i think its important we have a good debate. You have a position on it. I havent. I have concerns about it. My background is in tax law and economics. This is one of the most complicated taxes i have seen. If you dig into it and understand, its very complicated. Im concerned about the unintended consequences. I think those who are pushing this have not thought carefully enough about how it might affect various parts of the economy, how it might affect tourism and other things based on the adjustments that will happen when we choose a tax code in this way. We should be very careful about it. There are some good aspects and a lot of uncertainty. Im concerned about it at this point. You are adding a whole new revenues stream on the economy and not getting rid of another one. I think this thing is problematic. Then you get the practical concerns, talk to employers in your district. They have supply chains that this is not a good tax when youre not getting rid of the corporate tax. Youre just lowering it and adding a new stream. One of the reasons for it is because the speaker want to lower taxes as much as possible. Allowing families to keep more of their money, ive never bought into that line of thinking. I think you to create a tax code thats conducive to growth and you get the higher growth rate which weve always believed his revenue to the treasury, thats what republicans believe not that we have to put ourselves in his revenue straitjacket and make sure it all bounces balances out in the end. Year after year we pretend its not possible. You have a president who is interested in cutting spending. I want to ask about one quick thing. How do you keep the Freedom Caucus together in the era of trump, and what do you see as your role. You propose something big. I will let the chairman talk about it, but the keeping us together part, i think we stick together pretty well. Our role has never changed. We have a mission statement. Many think this is forgotten. Our job is to remember them and fight for them in a tactical w way. We will do that no matter what. If you stick to that principle of admission, i think the rest takes care of itself. Mark has done a tremendous job during this difficult five or six weeks but thats who we are. We dont pretend to be anything better or worse or different. Thats who we are and what were about and thats why we put the group together. It started with nine went to 30 and stayed there. We believe in each other, there is no attempt to coerce members. Its very different from how the Leadership Team operates where it its either you vote with us or we will punish you in some way. We dont do that in our group. We allow our members to make up their mind about things, but we do have an understanding that we are stronger when we work together. We have to operate that way because the conference works together. You have to make sure you are able to work and make the changes that we want in process and legislation. I think the other part of it is to make sure that every member is as well informed about the policy. I feel i can now have a phd in healthcare policy but was never on my bucket list. As we started to look at that, we want to make sure that we actually read the bill. I can tell you having read the bill over and over and over again, i can see areas i can look at from a more moderate district perspective and one of the things that might be interesting, one of the things weve looked at is keeping some of the obamacare subsidy for the working poor in exchange for some of the other mandates that get pulled out where it actually, when you look at it, they said what you mean, you talked about repealing obamacare, but we are giving a subsidy here, why not look at keeping some of the obamacare subsidies in place and modify that. That is an interesting comment that came out of conversations with thought leaders. I think the more information we have, the better informed we are and the other is theres only two rules to be a member of the Freedom Caucus. You have to be able to say no to leadership, but you also have to be able to say yes to leadership. There are times when that is not out there. In terms of the friction that you talked about and where leadership is where the Freedom Caucus is, you consider to run for speaker. You regret not doing it . I thought jake said he had the last question. [laughter] no one is talking about that. We truly are focused on what i said, doing those things that we told the American People we were going to do. There is a camaraderie in the group. One of the reasons you get on the plane and you fly back is could you know there are 30 other folks committed to the principles that you think the folks in your district want you to fight for. They believe the same thing regarding their district and theyre willing to, work hard to try to accomplish those things. Thats what were focused and, not whos going to be and what position, not assigning blame, its about focusing on the goal. I learned a long time ago, when you set the goal and youre committed to doing whats necessary to obtain it, thats when good things happen. Focus on the goal and stay committed to attaining that in doing the things you told the people you are going to do. Does paul ryan laugh at this entire congress. I think so. They go. I think we are out of time on that very cheery note. Thank you for making this possible. The audience is watching, thank you and continue to follow us live for updates and visit politico. Com. Thank you. [applause]