Interview: Rep. Mike Flood on Donald Trump’s meetings with House Republicans: Panama Canal, debt ceiling, and wildfires
Inside the room where it happened with President Donald Trump, Rep. Mike Flood, and two dozen others House Republicans...
“A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” is a presidential palindrome associated with President Theodore Roosevelt — and, Rep. Mike Flood (R., Neb.) told the Washington Reporter in an interview, President Donald Trump’s focus on the body of water is similarly unrelenting.
Flood, the vice chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, was in the room during one of Trump’s meetings with Republicans; during the meeting, “[Trump] started out with the Panama Canal,” Flood said. “He's really focused in on that. He wants to get the American advantage back there.”
“We talked a lot about the Los Angeles fires and how poor the Democratic leadership has been and the challenges that they have related to the environmental stuff they've pushed the last few years, and the fact that they haven't been doing a good job of managing those wooded areas compared to what other nations do,” Flood added, “[as well as] the idea that maybe we're going to have to consider a California supplemental given the damage and destruction of the fires, potentially pairing that with the CR expiration on March 14 and the debt ceiling in one and find a bipartisan way forward there.”
“The debt ceiling is definitely on the top of [Trump’s] mind,” Flood added, and he sees reconciliation as an opportunity to both rebuild California after unprecedented devastation and tackle the debt ceiling. “Our message was we feel we can be most effective with one big, beautiful bill, and what he's talking about is how do you deal with this debt ceiling, and we're saying we can deal with that in the California supplemental that also deals with our budget and make sure the appropriators on our side are leading the charge on that.”
Flood’s meeting with Trump came on the heels of the former and future president meeting with governors, the House Freedom Caucus, and other relevant stakeholders. “There isn't one caucus in our conference that's dominating the conversation; he's hearing from all of us every day, which I think is a good thing,” Flood said.
The meeting, which was orchestrated in part by Trump’s new legislative team led by James Braid and Jeff Freeland, illuminated the devastation of the wildfires. “We're not at a place now where we know what that request is going to be, but that issue is going to figure in prominently into what we do the first six months of this year,” he said. “The California supplemental is going to be something we just have to deal with. And remember, that's going to be a bipartisan issue. You've got a lot of Democratic members from California who are really going to care about what happens there.”
A big shift between the last Congress and the current one, Flood said, is the relationship between the Main Street Caucus and the Freedom Caucus. “One thing that people don't really know is that as Main Street leaders, we have been sitting down at breakfast once a week with Freedom Caucus leaders and talking about things like how do we make the place work?” he said. “You saw that when we did the conference vote for Speaker Johnson, when he got unanimously nominated essentially, that was a negotiation between the Freedom Caucus and the Main Street Caucus. That was me and Dusty Johnson and Nick LaLota working with Andy Harris and Michael Cloud and others like Chip Roy to figure out what the motion to vacate number would be.”
In addition to the opportunities for bipartisanship on a potential California disaster supplemental and increased intra-GOP collaboration with the Freedom Caucus, Flood noted that his fellow Main Street members are in positions of increased prominence in the new Congress.
“We’ve got 80 members in the Main Street Caucus who populate every committee and many of the leadership spots,” he said. “Lisa McClain, the House GOP Conference chair, is in Main Street. Several of the committee chairs are in Main Street. Guy Reschenthaler is in Main Street. Erin Houchin, the new Secretary, is in Main Street.”
“We are conservative, we are spread out, and we are active,” Flood said.
Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Mike Flood, lightly edited for clarity.
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Washington Reporter:
Congressman Flood, thanks for chatting today. Can you walk us through your meeting with President Trump and what you and the Main Street Caucus talked about with him?
Rep. Mike Flood:
He started out with the Panama Canal. He's really focused in on that. He wants to get the American advantage back there. We talked a lot about the Los Angeles fires and how poor the Democratic leadership has been and the challenges that they have related to the environmental stuff they've pushed the last few years, and the fact that they haven't been doing a good job of managing those wooded areas compared to what other nations do, and the idea that maybe we're going to have to consider a California supplemental given the damage and destruction of the fires, potentially pairing that with the CR expiration on March 14 and the debt ceiling in one and find a bipartisan way forward there.
Washington Reporter:
How did this meeting come about? Did Main Street reach out to Trump?
Rep. Mike Flood:
Well, it wasn't just Main Street. There were RSC folks there. You had people like Kevin Hern and you had Russell Fry, who's an ELC member. You had Andy Barr and Ann Wagner and a bunch of us on Financial Services. You had some appropriators like Mario Díaz-Balart and Stephanie Bice who's also Main Street. It was kind of a cross section. I would say these are pragmatic governing wing conservatives who are the ones who make the wheels turn when it comes to finding common ground and pushing an agreement. Marjorie Taylor Greene was also there. So it was an interesting group of about 24 members, and this was his fifth meeting like this in a row. He's had the governors, he had the Freedom Caucus, he had the SALT people, he had the committee chairs, and then he had the conservative movers and shakers who helped put deals together and actually push policy.
Washington Reporter:
Do you feel like he was saving the best group for last?
Rep. Mike Flood:
I would hope. My sense is this all kind of came together really quick, early last week, and his White House team was there, James Braid and Jeff Freeland, were there. My sense is that those guys are exhausted. They've been a lot of these, but he got a lot of real feedback on what one versus two reconciliation bills look like. And certainly there are people who want two there. There's a majority, I think, of people who want one. He's really focused on getting that debt ceiling done, however it needs to get done. Coming in, we ran into Sean Hannity. He was just walking out as we were walking in.
Washington Reporter:
Tell me about your caucus. You’re the fairly new vice chair of the Main Street Caucus. One hundred percent of your caucus backed Trump on his first priority of this Congress, which was keeping Mike Johnson in place. Do you see yourselves as being his most reliable legislative partners?
Rep. Mike Flood:
One thing that people don't really know is that as Main Street leaders, we have been sitting down at breakfast once a week with Freedom Caucus leaders and talking about things like how do we make the place work? What kind of communications do we have? And you saw that when we did the conference vote for Speaker Johnson, when he got unanimously nominated essentially, that was a negotiation between the Freedom Caucus and the Main Street Caucus. That was me and Dusty Johnson and Nick LaLota working with Andy Harris and Michael Cloud and others like Chip Roy to figure out what the motion to vacate number would be. If it's not going to be one, what should it be? That was us saying, ‘hey, we won't file our amendments on punishing members if we can find a way through how we make this place run without the burden being at one on the motion to vacate.’ And then we got into the speaker’s election, which was really the first of many of just a couple, a handful, of consequential votes. And it was Main Street and the Freedom Caucus, working with the speaker and the Whip, and then the Majority Leader, figuring out how we're going to navigate getting everybody except Thomas Massie to vote yes. Something that I think changed between the 118th and 119th Congresses is there are several of us in Main Street that are at the table, working hand in glove with Freedom Caucus members who have priorities that we also care about, like government spending, which is a problem and it needs to get dealt with in reconciliation. And I think there are a great majority of our Main Street members who are willing to do something pretty big in order to curl that, to stem the tide of the deficit that spirals even further. And so how we do that, and how do we get there? And how does the IRA fit into it? And how do biofuels fit into that? How does Medicaid spending fit into it? All these different things we have to talk about. We are not going to touch Social Security and we're not going to touch Medicare. We are also at the table with Jody Arrington on the Budget Committee, and we're talking about what that budget resolution is going to look like, and how should we set the numbers for that? How should we set the rules?
Washington Reporter:
You mentioned that President Trump opened the meeting talking about the Panama Canal. What was your message from the Main Street Caucus to President Trump about what the priorities for your members specifically are?
Rep. Mike Flood:
Our message was we feel we can be most effective with one big, beautiful bill, and what he's talking about is how do you deal with this debt ceiling, and we're saying we can deal with that in the California supplemental that also deals with our budget and make sure the appropriators on our side are leading the charge on that.
Washington Reporter:
Did the timeline of your priorities or anything like that change based on Trump's feedback to you?
Rep. Mike Flood:
It's going the direction we want to go. I had not gone into this meeting really, truly appreciating the scope of the LA fires. I knew the LA fires are a problem. We're not at a place now where we know what that request is going to be, but that issue is going to figure in prominently into what we do the first six months of this year. The California supplemental is going to be something we just have to deal with. And remember, that's going to be a bipartisan issue. You've got a lot of Democratic members from California who are really going to care about what happens there.
Washington Reporter:
Did President Biden ever invite the Main Street Caucus membership to meet with him?
Rep. Mike Flood:
No.
Washington Reporter:
What do you think it says about how Trump is going to approach his second term, that he is doing all of these meetings with you even before he takes office?
Rep. Mike Flood:
He's hitting the ground running; he spent the last five days interacting with governors, the Freedom Caucus, the Main Street Caucus, a cross section of everybody, with topics like the SALT issue, dealing with the men and women he's going to end up working hand in glove with the next four years. And he also knows that Americans want to see deliverables on the things that he campaigned on, and so devil's always in the details, but he's operating at a high level, wanting to know where we're at, and then offering insight as to what he's focused on; the debt ceiling is definitely on the top of his mind.
Washington Reporter:
Do you have any clarity on how those divisive, intra-GOP issues, like the SALT deduction, will be handled?
Rep. Mike Flood:
I think the President very much understands the concern that these California and New York state members have about the SALT deduction and what happened in the 2017 bill and how it needs to be dealt with. He's just saying, basically, let's keep an open mind. We’ve got to get to 218 votes, and in reconciliation, it's going to be us and us alone going down that path. He's clicking on all cylinders. Just the fact that he’s been president four years before coming back into the same role, helps him seem very organized, and his White House team is not only working all these nominations very hard, but they're also coming in to the track a Republican conference that hasn't always been in sync. And he's weighing in on the issues that we're going to have to vote on and find a way to 218 and he's getting a perspective from every single part of the caucus. There isn't one caucus in our conference that's dominating the conversation; he's hearing from all of us every day, which I think is a good thing. We’ve got 80 members in the Main Street Caucus who populate every committee and many of the leadership spots, Lisa McClain, the House GOP Conference chair, is in Main Street. Several of the committee chairs are in Main Street. Guy Reschenthaler is in Main Street. Erin Houchin, the new secretary, is in Main Street. We are conservative, we are spread out, and we are active.
Washington Reporter:
Going back to your time in the state legislature, you led one of the first efforts legislatively against TikTok. What do you think is happening in the next week with this app?
Rep. Mike Flood:
I don't know. The Supreme Court indicated in its oral arguments that it is likely to upload the ban. TikTok did not come up in our meeting with Trump. At the end of the day, we didn't vote to end TikTok. We voted to say, ‘either you sell it to an American in the interest of our national security or it goes away.’ My sense is somebody's gonna buy it who’s not gonna present such a national security risk.
Washington Reporter:
You said your sense is that someone will buy it, or that your sense is, if someone does buy it, it would not present a national security threat?
Rep. Mike Flood:
If the right person buys it, it will not present national security risks that we have now.
Washington Reporter:
Is there a buyer imminent? On January 20, are people going to be able to open TikTok?
Rep. Mike Flood:
I don't have a sense right now. My sense is that we passed a law. It was signed by the President. It is the law of the land, and it needs to be enforced in the interest of our country. I have to think there is a buyer out there who will take advantage of this opportunity, and hopefully protect more Americans from being exposed to an enemy of the United States that wants to destroy us.
Washington Reporter:
You were speaker of the unicameral legislature in Nebraska; what kind of lessons in leadership did you take from that to now being vice chair of the Main Street Caucus?
Rep. Mike Flood:
Well, this reminded me of when I was Speaker. We have a constitutional requirement that our budget be balanced, and that's exactly what reconciliation does. The idea that you're sitting down with the executive branch, you're sitting down with the appropriators, and all the members in Republican conference to figure out what your pay fors are going to be and how we have this discussion on both sides of the ledger, reminds me of the work I did in Nebraska to deal with spending and revenue issues. And I think a lot of times, Democrats come in and they spend, and Republicans come in and they cut taxes. But those two things in a budget reconciliation process have to meet on the ledger and have to follow the rules that the Budget Committee sets forward. And there's a real willingness among Main Street Caucus members to make major cuts to the federal budget to get America back on track. I'm feeling pretty good about where we're at.
Washington Reporter:
While I have you: any Super Bowl predictions?
Rep. Mike Flood:
No, but I am rooting for Notre Dame against Ohio State; I will be at the inauguration and not the Notre Dame championship. My sports focus is all on Notre Dame.
Washington Reporter:
Never say that you don't make sacrifices for this job; thanks for taking us in the Room Where it Happened, as they say in Hamilton.