December 16, 2025 • 13 mins
U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL 3) talked about some legislation efforts on Capitol Hill, plus discussed what Republicans have to do to win back the majority in 2026.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Final visit of the year with US Congress Women Kat
Cameick from Florida's third district, Cat How are.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You, good morning, How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I'm doing terrific. Give everybody a snapshot who might have
missed our last segment about the USA Act and what
it does and where it is right now in process.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, good to hear your voice. And yeah, I can't
believe it. Last segment, last interview of the year. I
can't believe the year is already gone. But the short
and suite of the USA Act, the On Account of
Unaccountable Spending Accountability Act, is very simple. In Congress, you
(00:44):
have the authorizing committees and you have the Appropriating Committee.
And for the last thirty years, the authorizing committees have
not authorized programs that we have been putting money towards.
And so the bill is very simple. In order for
a program or an agency to receive any money, they
have to receive the proper authorization by Congress beforehand. Otherwise
(01:09):
at sunsets in three years. And most people are that
I've talked about this are like there, wait a minute,
what wait? I thought you guys like go through and
you like greenlight these things. I'm like no, no, we don't. Actually,
to the tune of almost nine hundred billion dollars this year,
there will be programs that will receive an appropriation, but
(01:30):
they will have never been audited or checked by Congress,
or even greenlit by Congress. And so this is a
really really important step that we have to take in
cleaning up Washington. And it has to go through the
committee process, of course, as all bills do except for
the spending bills, which is ironic, And just last week
it made it through the Oversight Committee, which was a
(01:52):
really really big step and actually the furthest that it's
ever gone in terms of getting it closer to the
House for for a vote. But you can imagine that
there are a lot of obstacles and a lot of
people who don't want to see something like this happen
because they would much rather spend without that oversight. And
when you're talking about harder and taxpayer dollars, I think
(02:14):
we should be going through the budget with a fine
tooth comb, and this allows us to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Kat. The resistance to this falls on both sides of
the aisle. We know this is it easily summarized. The
resistance to a bill like this with it being described
as pork. In other words, they've got their pet projects
and they don't want them touched.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Absolutely everybody has fallen into this game of they like crs,
they like omnibuses, because what you are doing is you're
effectively pushing the power into the hands of a very
small select few, and in exchange for that, you get
all of the pet projects aka ear marks that you want.
And as somebody in the Republican Conference one of the
(03:00):
very few who does not do ear marks, that really
really irritates me because all of these projects should be
based on merit, and nine times out of ten they
shouldn't have a federal nexus anyway, Like why is the
federal government paying for bike paths? And you know, like
the Michelle Obama hiking trail in Georgia, Like why Nobody
(03:23):
can answer these questions, but it's all about bringing home
the pork. Instead of having a competitive process for projects,
they would rather just trade influence in Washington, And you know,
I just think that's fundamentally wrong. And we're thirty eight
trillion dollars in debt and that's just not fair because
it's ultimately garnishing the wages of our children and our grandchildren.
(03:44):
We need to get focused on the things that are
actually important for the country, and it's going to require
some big changes in The USA Act is really a
foundational piece of that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Kat On the National Day of two hundred and fourteen,
House Democrats, along with forty seven Senate Democrats, teamed up
to offer Hr. Fifteen and Senate Bill fifteen oh three,
the Equality Act of twenty twenty five, which would, among
(04:17):
other things, overturn every ban on men in women's locker
rooms and showers. And that's just the start of it.
Tell me this thing doesn't have a chance.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, I mean at the end of the day, I mean,
Republicans still control the House and the Senate. And this
week actually we're considering some pretty great legislation, one of
which belongs to Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia talking about
her Innocence Bill, which really I think hits the crux
(04:49):
of something that years from now we're all going to
look back and be like, I can't believe that that
was a thing that we had to contend with, and
it is no trans surgeries on And there's also another
piece of legislation that is going to reaffirm protecting women's
spaces from biological men, et cetera. This is all stuff
(05:11):
that we we, of course, just common sense individuals are like, Yeah,
women need to have protections in these spaces. You shouldn't
have men in sports, you shouldn't have grown men in
the locker room with women, and we damn sure shouldn't
be funding using federal dollars these surgeries on you know,
(05:31):
the transition I'm using air quotes transition children. It blows
my mind that we've had to have this conversation repeatedly. Sure,
And the thing that is really wild to me is
that I serve on the committee that really deals with
a lot of this, particularly as it relates to the
funding aspect. When I play a video of the top
(05:56):
surgeon who does these pre pewbest and surgeries, the Democrats
walked out of the room and it became it was
truly a viral moment because people were like, wait a minute,
what you can't even sit here and listen to what
this man is saying. And the things that he was
(06:17):
saying was the quiet part out loud, the stuff that
we all knew that they really don't have the long
term studies, they don't know the effects that they still
have on children for the rest of their life. That
it is very experimental that the children that they're experimenting
on and I use that word deliberately, they are experimenting
on them that they're experimenting on don't have the necessary
body parts, so they have to basically ruin them create
(06:40):
lifelong patience by taking the stomach lining in order to
create body parts for them. Just really really Frankenstein type stuff.
And it really breaks my heart that as a society
we haven't rejected this outright. That shows a regression in society,
not an evolution, and I just it's really sad, but
(07:03):
I am encouraged this week we're going to pick this bill,
you know, these bills up and continue to stay firm
in the face of this. But yeah, I don't foresee
anything like that coming back unless we completely lose the
House and the Senate and all things go to crap.
I don't see us going back down that path again.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
US congress Woman Kat Camick with us one more segment,
and Kat, one of the big stories in the press
box today is a watchdog finding nine large US banks
still engaging in dbanking. And that's not really what I
wanted to get your thoughts on what's interesting to me
and what I think is the bigger issue. And you
and I've touched on this a little bit, but I
(07:43):
think it's the best way to end our segments for
the year is you know, this dbanking thing was covered
in Trump's Executive Order fourteen three point thirty one, which
was called the Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans Act,
and that was or Not Act, that was his executive order.
And this really rubs to the real problem, and that is,
(08:03):
how do we get some of the executive actions that
we know are good policy, how do we make them
lost so that the next president, if that person happens
to be a Democrat, doesn't just wipe everything away.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, a couple of things here, and that was actually
the issue that you mentioned, the d banking. That was
something that we highlighted in our work on the Weaponization
Committee last Congress, and it is frustrating that it continues
to persist because we don't have time to waste. And
we had highlighted this last Congress of when we do
get back into the majority, we need to be in
(08:41):
a sprint to rectify so much of this, but to
your point about the executive orders. I hear this often
of you know, what do we have to do? I
think a lot of people don't realize that a lot
of the executive orders that have been issued have been codified,
eighty seven of them, to be exact, we have codified
eighty seven of President Trump's executive orders. And this has
(09:03):
actually been one of my beasts with quote unquote leadership.
It's they like to operate in big packages and nobody
knows what's in it. And it gives me a little
bit of PTSD of the famous quote from Nancy Pelosio
you have to pass it to see what's in it.
And I'm like, you know, and I've actually talked to
(09:25):
a speaker about this and he says, well, we've done
a ton of work, Kat, you know, it's just the
builds are so big that you know, we're having a
hard time messaging it. And I said, well, that's a problem,
you know, and that's not something you should ignore, that's
something you should should really take stock of and highlight.
But even the fact that they're all in these big packages,
I still think we're not doing enough. And that is
(09:47):
one of the sad things that I you know I'm
coming to terms with at the end of this year,
we're not doing enough. I feel we are missing opportunities.
I feel like we are not using the majority in
a way that is reflective of what the people wanted
when they elected Republicans in the House, in the Senate
(10:07):
and gave President Trump the White House. So we have
to do more. And I think the notion that we're
going to pretend like, oh, everything's hunky, do orient fine,
it's not. And so my goal next year is maybe
that makes me a bit of a scrooge, but I
think I need to be a little bit more aggressive,
(10:28):
which if the Speaker or any one of my colleagues
heard me say that, they'd be like, oh boy, yeah,
I think that we were missing our opportunity. And to
your point, there is a lot more that has to
be done, not just to codify the President's work, but
we have got to get our fiscal house in order
(10:49):
and we are continuing to ignore it and that is
a big problem, which is why you see me focusing
things like the Rains Act, the Regulatory Reform or the
USA Act, which would reign and spend and you know,
zero based budgeting and a structured debt, repayment, all the
non sexy things that are important long term, and they
(11:11):
may not be the sexy thing going into a midterm election,
but my goodness, they will. They will make the difference
between us remaining a constitutional republic and going off into
this weird quasi socialist experiment. I mean, it's just we
have to get our house in order, that is for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
How do you keep the majority in the House in
the Senate with one year to go?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Infrastructure, I think one we have seen in the elections
playing out around the country that the infrastructure can't pop
up in an election year and then disappear right after
the election day. You have to make sustained investments into
every community that is certainly a battleground. But beyond the
(11:58):
other thing is you have to do the things you
campaign on. We have heard repeatedly from folks that affordability
is the issue. And I'm married to a firefighter. I
know affordability is an issue. I am one of the
few in Congress that is not independently wealthy, and so
we do pay attention when eggs are eleven dollars for
(12:22):
an eighteen pack. We pay attention when butter and beef
is up. You know, these are the things that we
know are problematic, and if we're not doing everything in
our power to focus on those kitchen table issues, it's
a missed opportunity. And so I think that while there's
been a lot of great things done, it's not near enough,
(12:42):
and we have got to stay focused on the affordability issue.
It is very real. It is something that is driving
a lot of the problems in communities around the country,
and for those of folks that are on fixed incomes,
it's an even bigger problem. So we've got a small
note with a long, long, long to do list, and
(13:03):
I'm hopeful that people get serious about it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Kat, thank you as always for the time. Thank you
for the year of visits. Can't wait for January to
roll around and us to talk again. Is there a
Christmas tradition that you're looking forward to rolling around yet? Again?
Is it Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I'm more of a Christmas Morning person, and of course,
not being a firefighter, he's always either at the station
on one of those days, so we have to navigate that.
But with Aggie, our brand new four month old daughter,
I'm looking forward to a new tradition of reading a
new Christmas story every single night. We love you.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Christmas, love it you guys. Have a blessed Christmas and
thank you again.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Thank you guys. Merry Christmas, everybody,
Final visit of the year with US Congress Women Kat
Cameick from Florida's third district, Cat How are.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You, good morning, How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I'm doing terrific. Give everybody a snapshot who might have
missed our last segment about the USA Act and what
it does and where it is right now in process.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, good to hear your voice. And yeah, I can't
believe it. Last segment, last interview of the year. I
can't believe the year is already gone. But the short
and suite of the USA Act, the On Account of
Unaccountable Spending Accountability Act, is very simple. In Congress, you
(00:44):
have the authorizing committees and you have the Appropriating Committee.
And for the last thirty years, the authorizing committees have
not authorized programs that we have been putting money towards.
And so the bill is very simple. In order for
a program or an agency to receive any money, they
have to receive the proper authorization by Congress beforehand. Otherwise
(01:09):
at sunsets in three years. And most people are that
I've talked about this are like there, wait a minute,
what wait? I thought you guys like go through and
you like greenlight these things. I'm like no, no, we don't. Actually,
to the tune of almost nine hundred billion dollars this year,
there will be programs that will receive an appropriation, but
(01:30):
they will have never been audited or checked by Congress,
or even greenlit by Congress. And so this is a
really really important step that we have to take in
cleaning up Washington. And it has to go through the
committee process, of course, as all bills do except for
the spending bills, which is ironic, And just last week
it made it through the Oversight Committee, which was a
(01:52):
really really big step and actually the furthest that it's
ever gone in terms of getting it closer to the
House for for a vote. But you can imagine that
there are a lot of obstacles and a lot of
people who don't want to see something like this happen
because they would much rather spend without that oversight. And
when you're talking about harder and taxpayer dollars, I think
(02:14):
we should be going through the budget with a fine
tooth comb, and this allows us to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Kat. The resistance to this falls on both sides of
the aisle. We know this is it easily summarized. The
resistance to a bill like this with it being described
as pork. In other words, they've got their pet projects
and they don't want them touched.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Absolutely everybody has fallen into this game of they like crs,
they like omnibuses, because what you are doing is you're
effectively pushing the power into the hands of a very
small select few, and in exchange for that, you get
all of the pet projects aka ear marks that you want.
And as somebody in the Republican Conference one of the
(03:00):
very few who does not do ear marks, that really
really irritates me because all of these projects should be
based on merit, and nine times out of ten they
shouldn't have a federal nexus anyway, Like why is the
federal government paying for bike paths? And you know, like
the Michelle Obama hiking trail in Georgia, Like why Nobody
(03:23):
can answer these questions, but it's all about bringing home
the pork. Instead of having a competitive process for projects,
they would rather just trade influence in Washington, And you know,
I just think that's fundamentally wrong. And we're thirty eight
trillion dollars in debt and that's just not fair because
it's ultimately garnishing the wages of our children and our grandchildren.
(03:44):
We need to get focused on the things that are
actually important for the country, and it's going to require
some big changes in The USA Act is really a
foundational piece of that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Kat On the National Day of two hundred and fourteen,
House Democrats, along with forty seven Senate Democrats, teamed up
to offer Hr. Fifteen and Senate Bill fifteen oh three,
the Equality Act of twenty twenty five, which would, among
(04:17):
other things, overturn every ban on men in women's locker
rooms and showers. And that's just the start of it.
Tell me this thing doesn't have a chance.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, I mean at the end of the day, I mean,
Republicans still control the House and the Senate. And this
week actually we're considering some pretty great legislation, one of
which belongs to Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia talking about
her Innocence Bill, which really I think hits the crux
(04:49):
of something that years from now we're all going to
look back and be like, I can't believe that that
was a thing that we had to contend with, and
it is no trans surgeries on And there's also another
piece of legislation that is going to reaffirm protecting women's
spaces from biological men, et cetera. This is all stuff
(05:11):
that we we, of course, just common sense individuals are like, Yeah,
women need to have protections in these spaces. You shouldn't
have men in sports, you shouldn't have grown men in
the locker room with women, and we damn sure shouldn't
be funding using federal dollars these surgeries on you know,
(05:31):
the transition I'm using air quotes transition children. It blows
my mind that we've had to have this conversation repeatedly. Sure,
And the thing that is really wild to me is
that I serve on the committee that really deals with
a lot of this, particularly as it relates to the
funding aspect. When I play a video of the top
(05:56):
surgeon who does these pre pewbest and surgeries, the Democrats
walked out of the room and it became it was
truly a viral moment because people were like, wait a minute,
what you can't even sit here and listen to what
this man is saying. And the things that he was
(06:17):
saying was the quiet part out loud, the stuff that
we all knew that they really don't have the long
term studies, they don't know the effects that they still
have on children for the rest of their life. That
it is very experimental that the children that they're experimenting
on and I use that word deliberately, they are experimenting
on them that they're experimenting on don't have the necessary
body parts, so they have to basically ruin them create
(06:40):
lifelong patience by taking the stomach lining in order to
create body parts for them. Just really really Frankenstein type stuff.
And it really breaks my heart that as a society
we haven't rejected this outright. That shows a regression in society,
not an evolution, and I just it's really sad, but
(07:03):
I am encouraged this week we're going to pick this bill,
you know, these bills up and continue to stay firm
in the face of this. But yeah, I don't foresee
anything like that coming back unless we completely lose the
House and the Senate and all things go to crap.
I don't see us going back down that path again.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
US congress Woman Kat Camick with us one more segment,
and Kat, one of the big stories in the press
box today is a watchdog finding nine large US banks
still engaging in dbanking. And that's not really what I
wanted to get your thoughts on what's interesting to me
and what I think is the bigger issue. And you
and I've touched on this a little bit, but I
(07:43):
think it's the best way to end our segments for
the year is you know, this dbanking thing was covered
in Trump's Executive Order fourteen three point thirty one, which
was called the Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans Act,
and that was or Not Act, that was his executive order.
And this really rubs to the real problem, and that is,
(08:03):
how do we get some of the executive actions that
we know are good policy, how do we make them
lost so that the next president, if that person happens
to be a Democrat, doesn't just wipe everything away.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, a couple of things here, and that was actually
the issue that you mentioned, the d banking. That was
something that we highlighted in our work on the Weaponization
Committee last Congress, and it is frustrating that it continues
to persist because we don't have time to waste. And
we had highlighted this last Congress of when we do
get back into the majority, we need to be in
(08:41):
a sprint to rectify so much of this, but to
your point about the executive orders. I hear this often
of you know, what do we have to do? I
think a lot of people don't realize that a lot
of the executive orders that have been issued have been codified,
eighty seven of them, to be exact, we have codified
eighty seven of President Trump's executive orders. And this has
(09:03):
actually been one of my beasts with quote unquote leadership.
It's they like to operate in big packages and nobody
knows what's in it. And it gives me a little
bit of PTSD of the famous quote from Nancy Pelosio
you have to pass it to see what's in it.
And I'm like, you know, and I've actually talked to
(09:25):
a speaker about this and he says, well, we've done
a ton of work, Kat, you know, it's just the
builds are so big that you know, we're having a
hard time messaging it. And I said, well, that's a problem,
you know, and that's not something you should ignore, that's
something you should should really take stock of and highlight.
But even the fact that they're all in these big packages,
I still think we're not doing enough. And that is
(09:47):
one of the sad things that I you know I'm
coming to terms with at the end of this year,
we're not doing enough. I feel we are missing opportunities.
I feel like we are not using the majority in
a way that is reflective of what the people wanted
when they elected Republicans in the House, in the Senate
(10:07):
and gave President Trump the White House. So we have
to do more. And I think the notion that we're
going to pretend like, oh, everything's hunky, do orient fine,
it's not. And so my goal next year is maybe
that makes me a bit of a scrooge, but I
think I need to be a little bit more aggressive,
(10:28):
which if the Speaker or any one of my colleagues
heard me say that, they'd be like, oh boy, yeah,
I think that we were missing our opportunity. And to
your point, there is a lot more that has to
be done, not just to codify the President's work, but
we have got to get our fiscal house in order
(10:49):
and we are continuing to ignore it and that is
a big problem, which is why you see me focusing
things like the Rains Act, the Regulatory Reform or the
USA Act, which would reign and spend and you know,
zero based budgeting and a structured debt, repayment, all the
non sexy things that are important long term, and they
(11:11):
may not be the sexy thing going into a midterm election,
but my goodness, they will. They will make the difference
between us remaining a constitutional republic and going off into
this weird quasi socialist experiment. I mean, it's just we
have to get our house in order, that is for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
How do you keep the majority in the House in
the Senate with one year to go?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Infrastructure, I think one we have seen in the elections
playing out around the country that the infrastructure can't pop
up in an election year and then disappear right after
the election day. You have to make sustained investments into
every community that is certainly a battleground. But beyond the
(11:58):
other thing is you have to do the things you
campaign on. We have heard repeatedly from folks that affordability
is the issue. And I'm married to a firefighter. I
know affordability is an issue. I am one of the
few in Congress that is not independently wealthy, and so
we do pay attention when eggs are eleven dollars for
(12:22):
an eighteen pack. We pay attention when butter and beef
is up. You know, these are the things that we
know are problematic, and if we're not doing everything in
our power to focus on those kitchen table issues, it's
a missed opportunity. And so I think that while there's
been a lot of great things done, it's not near enough,
(12:42):
and we have got to stay focused on the affordability issue.
It is very real. It is something that is driving
a lot of the problems in communities around the country,
and for those of folks that are on fixed incomes,
it's an even bigger problem. So we've got a small
note with a long, long, long to do list, and
(13:03):
I'm hopeful that people get serious about it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Kat, thank you as always for the time. Thank you
for the year of visits. Can't wait for January to
roll around and us to talk again. Is there a
Christmas tradition that you're looking forward to rolling around yet? Again?
Is it Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I'm more of a Christmas Morning person, and of course,
not being a firefighter, he's always either at the station
on one of those days, so we have to navigate that.
But with Aggie, our brand new four month old daughter,
I'm looking forward to a new tradition of reading a
new Christmas story every single night. We love you.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Christmas, love it you guys. Have a blessed Christmas and
thank you again.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Thank you guys. Merry Christmas, everybody,
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