Rep. Lawler: Gaetz's McCarthy Plans 'Delusional Thinking'

Rep. Mike Lawler on Sunday called fellow GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz's announcement that he will be filing a motion to force House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his seat because he relied on votes from Democrats to pass a 45-day continuing resolution Saturday a "diatribe of delusional thinking."

"We're in a divided government, and in a divided government, any final bill is going to have bipartisan support," the New York Republican told ABC News's "This Week." "It needs to pass the Senate, and it needs to be signed by the president."

He added that nobody in the Republican conference disagrees with the need for single-subject bills or to cost spending, and noted Gaetz, R-Fla., who appeared earlier on the ABC program, pointed out that the national debt is $33 trillion.

"It's unsustainable," said Lawler. "But when you're trying to break the system, when you're trying to reform it, it takes time. 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."

Still, the work was not able to be completed by Saturday, the end of the fiscal year, said Lawler.

"To shut down the government would inflict pain on the American people and it would hurt an already fragile economy because Bidenomics has failed," said Lawler. "The only responsible thing to do was to keep the government open and funded while we completed our work."

He said he does agree with Gaetz that all 12 appropriations bills must be completed and that the Senate "has not passed one single bill."

But by filing a motion to force McCarthy, R-Calif., out, Gaetz will delay the ability to complete the funding work over the 45 days approved in Saturday's continuing resolution (CR), said Lawler.

"Just like he and some of my colleagues did during the past three weeks, they delayed the process by voting down the rules, violating our conference rules," he said. "They delayed the process by refusing to come to an agreement within the conference on a conservative CR that would have cut spending by 8% and enacted border security. They are the reason that we had to work together yesterday with House Democrats to pass a CR. That is not the fault of Kevin McCarthy. That's the fault of Matt Gaetz."

Meanwhile, 90 Republicans voted against the bill to keep the government running, but Lawler said he does not think that marked a lack of confidence in McCarthy's leadership.

"We have a lot of people in our conference who have never voted for a CR," he said. "That's their prerogative. That's their right as elected representatives of their districts. But we have to work together as a team. We have 221 Republicans. We need 218 votes to pass legislation through the House floor."

Gaetz, he added, is "constantly talking about the need to follow regular order, [saying] Kevin McCarthy lied, he violated this, violated that."

But the Florida Republican "voted against the choice for speaker of the conference. He voted to take down rules, and now he's putting a motion to vacate on the floor in defiance of conference rules, which requires a majority of the majority," said Lawler. "So, you know, this is a guy who says one thing out of one side of his mouth and speaks another thing out of the other side. He's frankly duplicitous."

Lawler also said it's up to Democrats to decide to remove McCarthy, but he believes it is "destructive to the country to put forth this motion to vacate," as there are 45 days left to complete work on appropriations.

Failure to come to an appropriations agreement will also impact how the crisis at the southern border is handled, said Lawler.

"House Republicans have passed HR-2. We need to use the appropriations process as the vehicle to get border security for the American people, crack down on this massive influx of migrants coming into our country, and reform our immigration system long term," he said. "But this will all be torpedoed by one person who wants to put a motion to vacate for personal, political reasons, and undermine the will of the conference and the American people, who elected a Republican majority to govern."