Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and former Trump official Russ Vought discuss using new House rules to target and remove the anonymity of individual bureaucrats
Vought: “The Holman Rule makes sure that those career bureaucrats are no longer anonymous, and that they are put in the crosshairs to the same extent – in the arena – that you are. That I am. ”
Published
Citation
From the January 12, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
REP. MATT GAETZ (GUEST HOST): Let's start with the Holman Rule. Talk about what it means for any member of Congress to be able to get up and defund a particular bureaucrat.
RUSS VOUGHT (PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA; FORMER OMB DIRECTOR): It's huge. And so you know I come from the executive agency before this role, and we would have all of these career bureaucrats that we would be having to work with and the American people would largely not know their names, until Covid happened and now everyone knows who Tony Fauci is. But think about the ability to go to the House floor and have a debate about a particular bureaucrat. That is enormous. It changes the entire game right now.
I would have situations where our staff would do anything they possibly could not to necessarily give me what I needed, because they were worried about their own ability to stay anonymous. The Holman Rule makes sure that those career bureaucrats are no longer anonymous, and that they are put in the crosshairs to the same extent – in the arena – that you are. That I am.
So that is a game changer in having the appropriations debate. Also, not just what the message it sends, but the extent to which it itself focuses the appropriations process on the deep state, on the administrative state that exists, that is now woke, and it's weaponized. And that has to be the biggest fiscal priority that we have, to go after the woke and weaponized bureaucracy.
GAETZ: Russ, if we'd have had this tool, we would have obviously directed it at Anthony Fauci, right? So, if you're comparing and contrasting, we would have had the ability – if we had the rules that we now have in place – if we'd have had those in place in the last Congress, you could actually force a vote on funding Fauci or not funding Fauci. As we look at a weaponized system across the apparatus of government, give us some examples or advice for who are some of the bureaucrats that enjoy their anonymity now? What are some of the agencies we should look at to target and take this tool out of the toolkit and actually put it to use?
VOUGHT: Well, there's all sorts of the types of people that you'd want to get in with Labor, HHS, and the COVID fascism that we've saw as a result of kind of lockdown-era policies. But we're going to want to use this in the Department of Justice. We're going to want to find those people that participated in the Russia hoax, that participated in going to FISA and lying to get warrants that are cooked up against the American people. So as you bring that aspect of what you negotiate, along with the Church-style committee that will sit within Judiciary, those are the kinds of things that you can say in real time that makes this enforcing.
The battle is certainly not over. We've got to show up at every stage, but it is self-enforcing. You enforce it, the 20 enforce it. And that was what makes this different than anything else that we've seen in recent memory, because not only is your voting no confidence in real speak – your motion to vacate present, but you also have the Rules Committee that is enforcing this on a bill-by-bill basis. So it's enormously successful and you've got a lot of potential to use it against that bureaucrat that you'd identify that's standing in your way at NASA or the EPA – who's the EPA bureaucrat that put Joe Robertson, a 77-year-old Navy veteran in jail for building four ponds on his ranch to be able to fight wildfires. That's the person we want to use the Holman rule on.