Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Monday night that there's "plenty of blame to go around" in the ongoing spat between Republicans Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., but said that he will not vote to remove McCarthy.
Comer appeared on "Eric Bolling The Balance" before Gaetz officially put the wheels in motion with the procedural tool, a motion to vacate, later Monday night.
Regardless, Comer was clear — "I'll vote against it."
Comer told Bolling that "there's plenty of blame to go around" in the imbroglio.
"Everyone's got some type of liability in this whole situation," Comer said.
"Let's start on what we were supposed to do — we were supposed to vote on 12 spending bills before Sept. 30. That's not been done the seven years I've been in Congress. We've tried to do that," Comer said. "I am for cutting spending. I voted for every amendment to all these spending bills that we voted on last week. … There's not a number that scares me as to how much you can cut because we cannot continue to spend $2 trillion per year more than we take in.
"But here's the problem. Those amendments would only get 85 to 110 votes on the House floor … it takes 218 votes to pass. So the reality is that a lot of these conservative spending bills don't have 218 votes because there's not a Democrat in Congress who wants to cut anything."
"The leadership, although they did a poor job of managing the calendar, has had a very difficult time getting to 218," he added.
Comer pushed back on the notion that Republicans should have shut down the government to force the issue spending cuts.
"I don't believe that," he told Bolling. "I believe in spending cuts. I wanna cut, I wanna make all the hard decisions. But at the end of the day, I think we need to do what our caucus wants. But it's difficult to get to 218."
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Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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