Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Newsmax on Tuesday that the six new GOP candidates for speaker of the House are "fiscally conservative" and will take the House in a "new direction" as members hold secret ballots to pick a designee for the conference.
"It's going to boil down to a couple of things. I mean, it's just pure politics," Burchett said during "Wake Up America." "Can this person withstand the pressure? Can they raise the money that's needed to fund all these campaigns, and do they have a conservative fiscal agenda? Fortunately, they all do."
CNBC reported Tuesday that 3 of the 9 candidates, Reps. Gary Palmer of Alabama, Pete Sessions of Texas, and Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania have left the race, leaving six others vying for the job.
The six remaining Republican candidates are Reps. Jack Bergman of Michigan, Byron Donalds of Florida, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, and Austin Scott of Georgia.
Burchett told reporters Monday night that the emerging conference candidate must garner the required 217 votes before their name will be put on the floor for a final vote.
In previous floor votes, the entire Democratic conference cast all 212 of its votes for New York Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
Burchett said Tuesday it is important that the candidates for speaker all have a fiscally responsible agenda because of the financial straits the nation finds itself in.
"Tell me what institution is $33 trillion in debt and pays $1 trillion a year in interest," said Burchett, who was 1 of the 8 Republicans that voted earlier this month to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the chair. "We ran up $1 trillion again in three months this year."
He said his vote, which has caused him to take some pushback, only helped expose a problem Congress has had for years: overspending.
"All the eight of us did was expose what's really going on," he said. "Now you're seeing all these folks that are running wanting to go in a different direction fiscally. So, I think all we did was expose it. I think that, in the long run, it's going to do this country a great deal of service because of our fiscal situation.
"People are worried about the government shutdown [being three days]. I'm worried about the whole fiscal, our whole monetary system collapsing."
Burchett said the current system is not sustainable, and members are using the spending to "grease" special interest groups and lobbyists.
"Congress cannot get their head in the game. All they want to do is spend and get reelected, and that's what they do," he said. "You've got a few people that control a huge amount of money, and they love the continued resolutions in the omnibus because all they do is grease their lobbyist friends and grease their special interests. Here we are $33 trillion in debt, and those [six] men understand that, and they understand that we can't go back to that system."
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Charles Kim ✉
Charles Kim, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in reporting on news and politics.
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