This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and Seth Leibsohn sit down with Congressman Addison McDowell of North Carolina’s 6th District for a candid discussion on what’s really driving Washington’s latest budget standoff — and how Republicans in the House are working to bring back a sense of normalcy and discipline to the process of governing.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple question: can Congress still function the way it was designed to?

For McDowell, the answer starts with returning to “regular order.” That means passing appropriations bills the way they’re supposed to be passed — one by one, through committee, debated and voted on — instead of governing by crisis through short-term spending patches and last-minute deals.

“We’ve actually passed nearly all the normal spending bills this year,” McDowell says. “That’s what governing looks like. For too long, we’ve let dysfunction be the default in Washington — and that’s what’s created uncertainty in the economy and frustration for working families.”

Host Sam Stone pushes the discussion deeper, noting that uncertainty in government spending creates ripple effects in the economy. Businesses can’t plan ahead if they don’t know what Congress will do next. “One of the biggest barriers to economic growth is not just taxes,” Stone says, “but uncertainty — the inability to predict what government will do in the next 12 months.”

McDowell agrees. Predictability, he says, is key to a strong economy — and good governance means giving the private sector stability to grow and create jobs. He points to the recently passed working families tax cut as an example of how Republicans are trying to deliver that certainty.

“We prevented a tax hike that was about to hit working families,” McDowell explains. “That’s real relief. That’s government doing what it’s supposed to — giving Americans room to breathe instead of pulling the rug out from under them.”

But the conversation quickly shifts from policy to politics — and to what McDowell and the hosts call “shutdown theater.”

While Democrats have accused Republicans of driving the country toward a shutdown, McDowell argues the opposite. He blames Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggesting the stalemate is less about fiscal principle and more about political fear.

“Let’s be honest — Schumer’s worried about being primaried from the left,” McDowell says. “He’s making decisions to appease AOC and the radical wing of his party, not to serve the American people.”

Leibsohn jumps in, noting that Schumer has been in Washington since 1981. “He’s been there so long,” Leibsohn jokes, “we were still shooting hoops into peach baskets when he got elected.”

McDowell laughs but doesn’t disagree. “If you’ve been in Congress since before I was born,” he says, “it’s probably time to move on.”

Behind the humor, though, is a serious message — one that resonates throughout the episode: Washington is broken because too many people in power are more focused on political survival than public service.

McDowell closes the conversation with a note of optimism. For all the dysfunction in D.C., he insists that House Republicans have been more united and productive than the media gives them credit for.

“For the last ten months, we’ve been airtight,” he says. “We’ve worked together, passed real bills, and done what we said we’d do. Now it’s time for the Senate to stop playing games and do their job.”

As Breaking Battlegrounds listeners know, that’s a theme that runs through every episode — a call for accountability, transparency, and leadership that puts the country before politics.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Congressman, a moment ago you’re talking about the return to regular order, the fact that the House under the Republican leadership has passed and is finalizing passing a lot of the normal spending bills in normal order. That’s one of the things. We talk about cutting the deficit, but the way out of the deficit is both cuts and economic growth. One of the barriers, I think, to economic growth has been uncertainty that the markets can’t predict governments, you know, next 12 months. How important is it to finally start getting the house back to that regular order?

**Addison McDowell: **I think it’s incredibly important and you look at things like the working families tax cut that we passed, that provided a lot of certainty because we said, hey, look, the tax hike that was going to happen, we’re not going to let that happen. And a lot of people were very worried about that for many years because they knew that it was going to sunset exactly when it did. And the federal government, we need to do a great job of providing certainty to businesses in our country so that they can thrive, so that they can give great, good paying jobs to men and women of this country.

And if the government can’t get anything done, you know, I can see how that would be a problem. Now, the important thing to remember though, is that the last 10 months, Republicans, especially in the house, have been airtight. We have worked together as a team and we have governed and we’ve governed well. And I think that is uh... something the American people are going to see and they’re going to realize that okay when we elect Republicans they do the job they told us they would do uh... and they stick together and work as a team.

And that’s something that I’ve been very proud of that come into congress that you know we’re working together were actually getting things done I mean it’s win after win after win and I’m fired up. And I hope that uh... Chuck Schumer will give up on this project uh of you know trying to appease the woke liberal base and AOC who he’s scared is going to primary him so that we can get back to work. Because we’re, we’re making good on a lot of promises that president Trump and Republicans and Congress made. And I’m ready to get back to work.

**Sam Stone: **That’s an important point, because I personally, Seth, do not think this shutdown would be happening at all if Chuck Schumer were not looking down the barrel of a primary from a candidate he thinks will beat him.

**Seth Leibsohn: **This to me, and Congressman, I don’t know if you want to comment on this or not, but this to me is the greatest farce I can see from here in Arizona. You have Chuck Schumer, who’s worried about a primary two years out, and not this next election cycle, but the election cycle after that. And he looks older. He’s younger than Donald Trump. He looks older than Donald Trump. He’s going to be older yet.

Can someone just tap Chuck Schumer on the shoulder and say, you’ve been in Congress since 1981, it’s been a nice run, you don’t need to be worried about these things, thanks for your service, and let’s move on, for goodness sake.

**Addison McDowell: **The only comment I’ll make is that in 1981, I was negative like 13 years old. And so if, know, Chuck, you’ve been around too long, my friends. But the last thing we need is Senator AOC or President AOC. we, you know, that cannot happen. And so I just think it’s very ironic that in March Chuck Schumer said a government shutdown will be catastrophic. We cannot do that. We have to keep the lights on.

And then he got hammered by the radical left and now all of a sudden he’s like you know what we’re gonna shut the government down and he said it it makes me very very angry that Chuck Schumer sitting there in his office with his glasses down low and he’s talking he’s so proud he says getting better for us every day. Us being the the Democrats that’s what he’s saying that.

But what he doesn’t understand because he’s a limousine liberal from New York is that the American people are suffering and you think you’re doing great that they’ve backwards. And the calculus that he’s using to come up with that is outrageous. I think that that’s a symptom of him being in in in you know federal politics since baseball was founded yeah just time to move on.

**Sam Stone: **We were shooting hoops into peach baskets when he got elected the first time. We are speaking with Congressman Addison McDowell of North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District.

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