interview with new house speaker kevin mccarthy. plus, a rare joint conversation with the chairs of the senate intelligence committee. only on "face the nation." coming soon, the first face-to-face meeting in the new congress between president biden and speaker mccarthy. the main topic o en,era's bills getting the country's fiscal house in order. we'll ask the speaker abo he thinks congress should do to keep the u.s. from defaulting. >> the republicans want to work together on real solutions, i'm ready, but i will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the united states as a bargaining chip. >> we'll also hear from virginia democrat mark warner and florida republican marco rubio, the chair and vice chair of the senate intelligence committee and get their thought on all those classified documents turning up where they shouldn't. plus the one issue they think congress can get bipartisan agreement on, curb

the threat from china. >> the chinese have found a way to use capitalism against us. >> in this technology race, second place is not good enough. then, mostly peaceful protests spread across the country after the release of video showing tyre nichols deadly encounter with five memphis police officers now charged with murder. we'll talk about policing in america with former orlando police chief and congresswoman val demings. it's all just ahead on "face the nation." good morning. welcome to "face the nation." we have a lot to get to this morning, including the latest on the evolving situation in memphis, but we begin with the new speaker of the house, california, republican congressman kevin mccarthy who is second in the presidential

line of succession. mr. speaker, good morning to you. >> good morning. thanks for having me back in studio. >> it must be sobering to hear that reminder. >> it took me a little while to get there, but it feels good. >> well, you are here now at this key moment in time, and i want to get to some of the top agenda items. you have accepted an invitation to meet with president biden. when will that happen, and what offer will you put on the table? >> we're going to meet this wednesday. i know the president said he didn't want to have any discussions, but i think it's very important that our whole government is designed to find compromise. i want to find a reasonable and a responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling, but take control of this runway spending. if you look at the last four years, the democrats have increased spending by 30%, $400 billion. we're at 120% of gdp. we haven't been in this place to debt since world war ii. we can't continue down this

path. i don't think there's anyone in america who doesn't agree that there's some wasteful washington spending we can eliminate, so i want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path to balance, at the same time not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time. >> but, avoid a default, in other words? do you have any indication that president is willing to discuss both lifting the debt ceiling and the issue of future spending? >> well, if he's changed his mind from his whole time in the senate and vice president before, he literally led the talks in 2011 and praised having those talks. this is what he's always done in the past. if he listens to the american public, more than 74% believe we need to sit down and find ways to eliminate this wasteful spending in washington. i don't believe he would change ouride toind a w t we re, and i n reonsible way to get this done. >> right. i mean, you know why i'm asking that. >> yeah. >> not linking --

>> to be fair, the president, when he called me to congratulate whipping speaker, this is one of the first things i brought up to him, he said we would sit down together. his staff tries to say something different, but i think the president will be willing to make an agreement together. >> we'll watch for that on wednesday. i want to dig in to what you're willing to put on the table. republicans campaigned on fiscal responsibility. you promised you won't spend more next year than you did last year. are you willing to consider any reductions to social security and medicare? >> let's take those off the table. >> completely? >> yeah. if you read our commitment to america, all we talk about is strengthening medicare and social security. i know the president says he doesn't want to look at it, but we have to make sure we strengthen those. >> what do you mean by strengthen is this lift the retirement age? >> no. i'm talking about social security and medicare keep that to the side. i want to look at, they've increased spending by 30%, $400 billion in four years. when you look at what they have

done adding $10 trillion of debt for the next ten years in the short time period, if you just look a month ago, they went through and never passed a bill through appropriations in the senate, while mr. schumer has been leader, he's never passed a budget, never passed an appropriation bill. he waits until the end of the year and allow two senators who are no longer here to write a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill. >> you want to work with democrats to come to an agreement on a budget? >> yes. >> that is what you're saying? >> yes. i first think our first responsibility, we should have to pass a budget. we both should have to pass the appropriation bill so the country can see the direction we're going. but you cannot continue the spending that has brought this inflation that has brought our economic problems. we've got get our spending under control. >> just fact check, 25% of the debt was incurred during the last four years trump presidency, over many years. >> over this time period but you've also found you had a pandemic and as that pandemic

comes down, those programs leave, i watched the president say he would cut it. no. he's spending $500 billion more than projected. we've got to stop the waste. is defense spending on the table? >> look, i want to make sure we're protected in our defense spending, but make sure it's effective and he efficient. i want to look at every dollar no matter where it's being spent. i want to eliminate waste wherever it is. >> when you became speaker you did come to that agreement, i referenced, of capping 24, spending at '22 levels, so that would call for reductions? >> i mean, look, you're going to tell me inside defense there's no waste. >> defense spending is up for negotiation? >> i think everything, when you look at discretionary, is sitting there. it's like every single household is like every single state. we shouldn't just print more money. we should balance our budget. i want to look at every single department where can we become more efficient, more effective and more accountable?

>> more efficiencies in social security and medicare? >> we take social security off the table. >> would you support a short-term debt limit extension to september, buy more time? >> i don't want to sit and negotiate here. i would rather sit down with the president and let's have those discussions. the one thing i do know is, we cannot continue the waste that's happening, to continue to spend more money and leverage the debt of the future of america. we've got to get to a balanced budget. >> i think many people would agree on the issue of fiscal responsibility, but there's that deadline on the calendar in terms of facing potential default. are you saying -- >> wait a minute -- >> you will guarantee the united states will not do that. >> we're not going to default, but let me be honest with you right now. let's take a pause. we have hundreds of billions of dollars. this won't come to fruition until some time in june. the responsible thing to do is sit down like two adults and have that discussion. the white house was saying before like they wouldn't even

talk. i'm thankful that we're meeting on wednesday, but that's exactly what we should be doing. and we should be coming to a responsible solution. every family does this. what is -- what has happened with the debt limit is, you reached your credit card limit. should we continue to raise the limit or look at what we're spending? if chuck schumer -- >> being passed -- >> chuck schumer never passed a budget since he's been leading. he's never passed an appropriation bill. those are the most basic things that congress should do. and what if you're going to show to the american public where you want to spend your money and ask the hardworking taxpayer for more money, you should lay out how you're going to spend it and eliminate any waste so you don't have to raise more taxes. >> to put a fine point on it because it matters a lot to the markets in particular, you will avoid a default? you will not let that happen on your watch? >> there will not be a default. what is irresponsible is what the democrats are doing right now, saying just raise the limit. >> would you get in the way --

if 15 republicans said they would raise the debt limit would you allow them -- >> the only person getting in the way right now is the president and schumer. they won't even pass a budget. they won't even negotiate. we have now until june. i want to make sure we have something responsible, something that we can move forward on and something that we can balance our debt with. so i'm looking for sitting down. that's exactly what i've been asking for. the only one who is playing with the markets right now is the president, to have the idea that he wouldn't talk, does the president really believe and all your viewers, do you believe there's no waste in government? do you believe there was no waste in that $1.7 trillion? that's what we were spending just four weeks ago. so i think the rationale position here is, sit down, eliminate the waste and put us on a path to balance. >> we'll watch for that meeting on wednesday. i want to ask you about your vision of leadership. you made a number of deals within your party to win the speakership. senator mitch mcconnell, your republican colleague, said,

hopefully mccarthy was not so weakened by all of this he can't be an effective speaker. how can you effectively govern with a narrow majority and when your conference is so divided? >> well, you know, that may be somebody else's opinion. let's just see what my father always said. it's not how you start, it's how you finish. let's see what happened in the first week. in the very first week, we have passed, what, the 87,000 irs agents, we -- bipartisan created a new select committee on china, 146 democrats joined with us. we bipartisanly passed the strategic petroleum reserve being sold to china, where 113 democrats joined with us. we just now, for the first time on the house, it hasn't happened in 7 years, the entire time the democrats were in the majority, where you had an open rule. let me explain what that is. an open rule allows every single member of the house to offer an amendment on a bill. what i'm trying to do here is, let every voice in america have

their ability inside the house. we open the house back up so the public could actually join. >> you're arguing you haven't been weakened. >> no. it's only strengthened. maybe people didn't like what they saw that we didn't win on the very first vote, but that was democracy. what you found at the end of the day we're actually stronger. what else, we changed it where members of congress now have to show up for work. i know in the senate, they don't come very often, but if you look at what we've been able to do, we're transforming congress. >> you also allowed -- >> looking for solutions. >> one member can force a vote to oust you as speaker. how can you expect to serve in the next two years in this role? >> how every other speaker has served -- >> without those rules like that right now. that's a risk. you really think you can control the freedom caucus and some of the conservative members who gave you such a hard time. >> everybody has a voice. let me explain that. that one vote to vacate, that's not new. that's been around for 100 years. the only person who took it away when they got a small majority

was nancy pelosi. so nancy felt she did not have the power to stay in office if that was there. i'm very comfortable in where we are. i don't have any fear in that. >> you don't regret any of the concessions you made? >> the only concession i made was taking it from five to one, where it's been around for 100 years. >> i want to ask you about some of the makeup of your caucus. >> yes. >> according to cbs records, 70% of the house gop members denied the results of the 2020 election. you put many of them on key committees, intelligence, homeland security, oversight. why are you elevating people who are denying reality like that? >> well, if you look to the ra had the same thing, denied trump or bush was in there. bennie thompson -- >> did you see the numbers we put up there, 70%? >> did you also be fair and equal where you looked at ras can did the same thing, bennie thompson, a ranking member, a chair these individuals were chair of the democratic party. >> i'm asking you as leader of

kevin mccarthy's house why you made these choices? these were your choices? >> they're my choices but the conference choices. i'm also asking you, when you look to see just republicans, democrats have done the same thing. so maybe it's not denying. maybe it's the only opportunity they have to have a question about what went on during the election. if you want to hold republicans to that equation, why don't you also hold democrats? why don't you hold jamie rascon, bennie thompson? when democrats appointed them to be chair, i never once heard you ask nancy pelosi or any democrat that question, when they were in power in the majority. when they questioned -- >> you're talking about things going back to 2000 a time when i didn't have this show backwhich. >> they were in power last congress. so why -- >> you're talking about questions from 2000 eio asking questions that happened to another congress. s the only thing i'm -- >> this is your congress. >> these are members who just got elected by their constituents and we put them

into committees. i'm proud to do it. >> let me ask you about specifics then. marjorie taylor greene you put her on a subcommittee to investigate the origins of covid. >> yes. >> she compared mask requirements to the type of abuse jews were subjected to during the holocaust, called for fewically to be arrested and -- fauci to be arrested and imprisoned. how is anyone supposed to take that work seriously and credible? >> you look at all of it so you have the questions out there. >> you think these are legitimate questions? >> i think what the american public wants to see is an open dialog in the process. this is a select committee where people can have all the questions they want and you'll see the outcome. >> you know that there is a lot of doubt about institutions and faith in institutions. >> oh, yeah. when you saw what happened in congress where they had proxy voting, bills didn't go through committees -- >> i don't think most people know what proxy voting is. >> let's explain. >> approval -- >> it would be fair to your

viewers. >> gap lup of congress is 20%, approval of journalists is not very high. does it wear down credibility when you put someone under state, local, federal, international investigation, as a representative of your party -- >> are you talking about swalwell? >> george santos, representative from new york. >> we should have that discussion. let's have that discussion. you want to bring up santos and let's talk about the institution itself because i agree wholeheartedly that congress is broken. your viewers should understand what proxy voting was. it never took place before. >> i'm asking about george santos. >> i know you asked me a question. i would appreciate if you let me answer. let's go through this. it's not one simple answer. cups is broken based upon what has transpired in the last congress. the american public wasn't able to come in to see us. people voted by proxy meaning you didn't have to show up to work. bills didn't have to go through committee. i'm trying to open the people's house, back for the people, so

people are held can accountable. as i heard for the first time in seven years every member got to vote. >> if you got a third of your caucus to vote to oust him you could do so. you don't think you can get your republicans to do that? >> i wasn't finished answering the question. if every new person brought into congress was elected by their kweptss what their constituents has done is lend their voice to the american public so their members can serve on committee. i'm trying to change some of the committees as well like the intel committee is different than any -- >> you're not going to answer the question i asked? >> you asked a question. i'm trying to give you that. >> i don't think you said the name george santos once. i asked you a few times. talking about proxy voting and other things. >> no. you started the question with congress was broken and i agreed with you. >> no. >> i'm answering the question how congress is broken and how we're changing it. how congress is broken, i

equated every member that just got elected by their constituents, they have a right to serve. so that means that santos can serve on a committee the same way swalwell who had a relationship with a chinese spy, but they will not serve on intel because -- >> they're wrapping me in the control room. >> that's unfortunate. >> i would love to have you back. >> i would love to be able to come back and have time to answer the questions. >> we've spent a lot of time here and i have more questions for you, but i have to go. we'll be right back. explore the mighty mississippi river with american cruise lines.

we traveled to capitol hill last week for an exclusive interview with the two leaders of the senate intelligence committee. democratic chairman mark warner and republican vice chairman marco rubio. we began by discussing the classified documents mishandled by the current and former presidents and former vice president. >> do you have any timeline in terms of when you will get visibility into the documents of classified material that both president biden and president

trump had in their residences? >> margaret, unfortunately no. and this committee has had a long bipartisan history of doing its job, and our job here is intelligenceoversight. the justice department has had the trump documents about six months, the biden documents about three months. our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those. our job is to make sure there's not an intelligence compromise. and while the director of national intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you've got the special counsel, the notion that we're going to be left in limbo and we can't do our job, that just cannot stand. >> the intelligence community would say their happeneds are tied because this is an ongoing active justice department investigation. what would. >> meet the level of addressing your concerns without compromising that? >> i don't know how congressional oversight on the documents knowing what they are in any way impedes ap investigation. these are probably materials we already have access to. we don't know which ones they

are. it's not about being nosy. the bottom line f, in fact, those documents are very sensitive, materials are sensitive and they pose a counterintelligence or national security threat to the united states the intelligence agencies are tasked with the job of coming up with ways to mitigate that. >> does the director know what materials were? >> we got a bit of a vagueness on that. i believe you want to make sure the intelligence professionals and not the political appointees were making that, that makes sense to me. but i would think that president trump and president biden would probably want to have this known if they say there's no, there there. >> there isn't a day that goes by that there isn't some media report about what was found where, some characterization of the material in the press. somehow the only people who are not allowed to know what was in there are congressional oversight committees, so this is an untenable situation that has to be resolved. >> the idea that some of these documentes go back to when president biden was a senator,

does that suggest that there's something more than a problem in the executive branch? >> well, agreed. that's why the notion of, we're not going to give the oversight committee the ability to do its job until the special prosecutor wu kno we have asberse doesn't intelligencecotee,uts he o read virtually everyd document. we have a problem in terms of classification levels, how senior elected officials when they leave government, how they hand documents. we've had too many examples of this. i think we've got the bipartisan bona fides to say let's put them in process. >> you threatened to withhold some funding to some of the agencies? >> i'm not in the threat business right now, but we certainly -- there are things we need to do as a committee every year to authorize the moving around the funds. i think the director of national intelligence and other heads of

intelligence agencies are aware of that. i prefer for them to call us this morning or tomorrow and say look, this is the arrangement that we think we can reach so that the overseers can get access to this. i prefer not to go down that road, but it's one of the pieces of leverage we have as congress. >> we're going to figure out a way to make sure we get access so that we can not only tell the american people, but we've got another 85 u.s. senators who are not on the intelligence committee who look to us to get those assurances. >> what is it that you as lawmakers can do? is it new regulatioecr of natio intelligence is the individual, the chief officer, for intelligence classification. i think there's been a number of other members of the senate, both parties, have been working for years on the notion that we overclassified the number of things that we read in a scif that somehow appear in the newspaper. you know, it begs the question, it's kind of been an issue that's been bubbling for a long time. >> over classification?

>> i think this series of events pushes it to the forefront and again, we have the power to write legislation, which then executive agencies have to follow. >> in terms of record keeping? >> in terms of recordkeeping, in terms of literally at least guidance on classification issues. again, this director of national intelligence, want to give her credit, she has been acknowledging and long before this issue came up, said we need to work on this issue of, you know, declassification, over astion ery director says it, and it kind of gets pushed back. i think, you know, one good thing that may come out of this, we're going to find a way to resolve this iss j deparen worked inaithngressn therumpifie document investigation back in september. according to a letter sent to lawmakers yesterday. but circumstances change with the appointment of two separate special counsels. now separately, the justice

department tells us they are committed to sharing as much information as we can with congress without endangering the integrity of our ongoing investigations. we'll be right back. f kids,y went through a divorce. she had a lot of questions when she came in. i watched my mother go through being a single mom. at the end of the day, my mom raised three children, including myself. and so once the client knew that she was heard. we were able to help her move forward. your client won't care how much you know until they know how much you care. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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welcome back to "face the nation." for all the division on capitol hill, one subject that invites at least some bipartisan unity is the threat posed by china. for more, we return to our interview with the leaders of

the senate intelligence committee mark warner and marco rubio. >> president biden is reportedly close to issuing an executive order when it comes to restrictions on u.s. investments in china. but there's concern about risking further escalation. what's your view on how far that action should go? >> the chinese have found a way to use capitalism against us, what i mean by that, the ability to attract investment into entities that are deeply linked to the state. the military fusion that exists in china is a concept we don't have in this country. we have contractors that do defense work, but there is no distinction in china between biomedicine and whatever it mightnd be and the interest of the state. the third is the risk posed we at this point have not had levels of transparency in terms of auditing into these companies. when you invest in these companies in u.s. exchangings you don't have as much information about the book