In the latest episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and Seth Leibsohn sit down with Congressman Addison McDowell of North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District to cut through the noise surrounding the latest government shutdown.
While headlines paint chaos and blame, McDowell says the story is actually simple — “Democrats voted to shut the government down.”
He explains that House Republicans offered a clean, short-term funding bill — one that would have kept federal operations running while appropriations negotiations continued. Every Democrat, he says, voted against it, both in the House and Senate.
“They voted not to pay our soldiers, not to pay our ICE agents. Republicans voted to keep the lights on,” McDowell tells Stone and Leibsohn. “We’re not going to be held hostage by Chuck Schumer to give healthcare to illegal aliens.”
CRs, Shutdowns, and the Real Fight
When asked to explain the “CR” — or continuing resolution — that Washington always seems to fight over, McDowell puts it plainly:
“It just continues the previous funding levels. Democrats voted for this exact thing 13 times under President Biden. But now, because of Trump derangement syndrome, they want to shut the government down and pick a fight with the president.”
While McDowell admits he doesn’t like governing by CR, he emphasizes that the House GOP has already passed all appropriations bills and is pushing to lock in Trump-era funding levels to stop the current “Biden spending spree.”
The short-term bill, he explains, is about giving time to finalize those appropriations — not giving in to political gamesmanship.
Cutting Waste Without Hurting Workers
Co-host Seth Leibsohn raises an important point — that shutdowns often reveal just how much of the federal government is non-essential. Could that spark a long-overdue conversation about reducing its size and scope?
McDowell agrees — but with a caveat.
“That’s not a conversation we should have while our soldiers aren’t getting paid,” he says. “But yes — we absolutely need to have it. The swamp hasn’t done that in decades, and that’s why we’re $37 trillion in debt.”
He points to recent Republican actions like the Working Families Tax Cut and the first rescissions package in 50 years as proof conservatives are serious about restoring fiscal sanity.
“We believe in small government that works,” McDowell says. “Every federal worker should be doing a real service, doing it well — and we shouldn’t be paying three people to do the same job.”
The Bottom Line
In a town where dysfunction has become routine, McDowell’s message is refreshingly direct: open the government, pay the troops, then get serious about cutting waste.
For Americans frustrated by shutdown drama and runaway spending, his call for regular order, smaller government, and real accountability may be exactly what they’ve been waiting to hear.
Transcript
Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up today, Congressman Addison McDowell. He is a friend of the program and here to talk about the shutdown. He represents North Carolina’s sixth congressional district. Congressman, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Democrats are really pushing hard, you know, for this health care, for illegals and for this massive additional subsidy for Obamacare. Give us the latest on the shutdown and where things stand right now.
Addison McDowell: The latest on the shutdown is actually pretty simple. It’s that the Democrats are lying to the American people and not taking, they’re not taking into account what they actually voted for in the House and what they voted against in the Senate. In the House, they voted to shut the government down. You know, we offered a clean funding bill, short-term one, that would kept the government open. They all voted against that in the House.
There was a bipartisan passage but almost every democrat voted against that. Then in the senate they have almost exclusively again voted to do the same thing and they voted to shut the government down. So it’s pretty simple that the democrats have voted to shut the government down, they voted not to pay our soldiers, our troops, our ICE agents but republicans have all voted to keep the lights on because we’re not going to be held hostage by Chuck Schumer to give healthcare to illegal aliens.
Sam Stone: And so in the House, you passed a clean CR. I still think despite the fact that every year we end up in one of these fights and this is part of the discussion, a lot of people don’t know what that means. Can you explain that very quickly?
Addison McDowell: Sure. So it just continues the funding level that was previously enacted. So Democrats have actually voted for this exact thing 13 times before. They did it all while Joe Biden was the president. But now, because they all have Trump derangement syndrome, they want to shut the government down and pick a fight with the president. And we’re not going to cave to that. We’re not going to let them hold the American people and federal workers hostage.
So that they can get all of their pet projects. That’s not how this is going to work, but you know, the, I’m somebody that doesn’t want to govern by CR. I want to get back to regular order and do the appropriations process. And so in the house, we have actually passed all of the appropriations bills and we’re ready to go to get president Trump’s funding levels set in stone so that we can stop with the Biden funding levels.
So uh that’s what we’re saying is what we’re going to do a short seven-week funding bill so that we can finish the negotiations on the appropriations bill and that’s what we want to do and we want to get the lights on and the government’s quick as we can.
Seth Leibsohn: Congressman Seth Leibsohn here. Thank you for being with us and thank you for all your good service. You know, one of the things that I have been dreaming of with each government shutdown that seems to be so routine right now is that it might catalyze a spirit in the American people to realize so much of government is so unnecessary after all. And Gallup came out with a poll this week showing Americans’ confidence in a lot of federal agencies. That’s lowest level yet.
Are we asking too much of the American people to look at some of these shutdowns and really have a serious reconsideration of the size and scope of government generally and get to the business of actually getting into some serious trimming down and some serious cuts? Or is that, as I say, asking too much of the Americans, right?
Addison McDowell: No, I mean, I don’t think that that’s too much to ask of the American people. I just think that we don’t need to have that conversation with the government shut down because there are, you know, there are important jobs. There are important people that work for our federal government to do a great service to our country. They work very hard and they’re, you know, they’re good people. I do have some discomfort with the fact that we have anyone that is considered non-essential to our government because that’s our tax dollars.
But that’s not a conversation we need to have with our soldiers not getting paid. We need to make sure that we have that conversation regularly, which is something that the Washington establishment and the swamp haven’t done for many, many years, maybe as long as I’ve been alive. And the result of that is $37 trillion in debt.
So what we need to do is we need to open the government back up and then absolutely, yes, we need to have that conversation. But Republicans have already been doing that. You you look at the working families tax cut, we got rid of a bunch of unnecessary things. We passed the first rescissions package from the president. I don’t think we’ve done that in 50 years. And so Republicans are serious about this and we want to do that.
We all believe in a small scope of government, conservatives do. And so we want to make sure that every single worker for the federal government does a service, they do it well, and we don’t need to pay three people to do the same job. And so that’s what we need to look at. We just don’t need to do it when our soldiers aren’t getting paid.
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