This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 29, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
KATIE PAVLICH, GUEST HOST: We are still days away from swearing in the new Congress, yet President Obama is already threatening to use his veto pen. Listen to this.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "MORNING EDITION"/NPR, DEC. 29)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There are going to be some areas where we disagree. And you know, I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office, partly because legislation that I objected to was typically blocked in the Senate even after the House took over -- Republicans took over the House. Now I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
PAVLICH: So how will the GOP-led Congress work with the Obama White House come January? Here to tell us all about it is Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert. Great to see you...
REP. LOUIE GOHMERT, R-TEXAS: It's great seeing you.
PAVLICH: ... in studio in New York. A long way from Texas, right?
GOHMERT: Great to be with you, Katie. Thank you.
PAVLICH: The president talks about things that you can agree on. Let's start with what you agree you. What do you agree on?
GOHMERT: Wait a minute. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear him talk about the things we can agree -- first thing -- first rattle (ph) out of the box, he wants to talk about what he's going to veto. He's going to use his pen. Well, we've already seen -- you know, he used to tell us, Katie, If you've got any ideas about health care, then my door's open.
Well, I tried. There are all these security people. They may not keep people from jumping over the fence, but by golly, they keep people like me from getting to the president's Oval Office. So he wasn't serious about that. He's never really wanted to work with us.
But there's a lot of things that we need to do that we didn't get done in the last Congress. Now, I, for one, felt like there were many things that we passed, hundreds of bills we passed in the House. We should have forced the Senate to take a vote. If we had forced the Senate to take the tough votes, then you would have had even more Democrats staying home.
PAVLICH: Right.
GOHMERT: But now that we're going to have a Republican-controlled Congress in both the House and Senate, we need to send the bills and we need to force the Senate to vote on them so that he does veto them, so it'll be harder for a Democrat president to win unless they're on board for the things the American people want.
PAVLICH: Right. Well, now that Harry Reid is not there, you guys are actually going to be...
GOHMERT: Oh, he's there.
PAVLICH: Well, he's there, but he's not leading the pack, stopping things at the door, so don't make it to the White House, right? You know, the president is saying, I've only vetoed two things, but that was really a move so that he can use his pen now and say he's not being overly zealous with his veto pen.
So now that Harry Reid is not there to stop everything that comes out of the House -- you know, you mentioned hundreds of pieces of legislation. We can't go through hundreds of pieces of legislation on air. What are the top three things that you think that the Republicans should do right away to get into the White House and to get President Obama using his pen either to sign something into law or to veto it?
GOHMERT: Well, one of my favorite things would be to eliminate the massive overregulation that we're creating. We need to stop the invasion of privacy of people's lives. We need to defund as much of ObamaCare as we can, and pass good things.
I mean, it's amazing. Paul Ryan and I have very similar ideas about where health care should go. There are a lot of things we can agree on we ought to be passing. We ought to force him to prevent people from getting freedom to pick their doctors and pick their insurance. There are a lot of those things we can do.
And then we ought to defund this president's efforts to continue to help our enemies and hurt our allies abroad. It's killing us. I just got back from Afghanistan and Iraq. And you hear the same thing around the world. Why are you helping your enemies and hurting your allies? We can affect that with the purse, if we use it.
But I -- the reason I brought back up Harry Reid, that he's not going to be gone -- Katie, right before just a few weeks ago, we saw that Pelosi may be no longer speaker, but our Republican speaker ran to the Democratic...
PAVLICH: Sure.
GOHMERT: ... former speaker to get the votes to pass a massive bill that he didn't give us a chance to read!
PAVLICH: That's true.
GOHMERT: That's got to stop.
PAVLICH: Well, that does need to stop, and...
GOHMERT: It needs to stop.
PAVLICH: ... it's going to be up to you guys to stop it. So what are three specific things that you guys are planning on getting on the table within the first month of these new members being sworn in? You have Mitch McConnell saying, you know, "Obama care," the medical device tax, which is, you know, something actually that Democrats disagree with. They want to get rid of that. You have the Keystone pipeline, which has been in waiting for years.
I mean, what are some of the specifics that the American people can look at you and say, We elected you, put you in office in November, now tell us what you're going to do to make sure that we put you there for a reason?
GOHMERT: Yes, and some of us wanted a contract that would include defunding the amnesty. I think that helped us win the majority in the Senate, defund the amnesty, defund "Obama care" as much as we can in next year's legislation, and release the energy sector to provide more jobs. It's ready. There's ready to be an economic boom if we will stop the overregulation. Let states that have the power do the regulation.
Those are things we ought to do immediately upon taking over as a new Congress. But we promised people not amnesty but defunding the amnesty, and Republican leaders need to get on board.
PAVLICH: Well, it seems like there's two options here. There's President Obama. If he makes good on his threat, he's going to veto pretty much everything because he's made it clear that he doesn't want to work with Republicans. But then the other option is you guys continue to pass pieces of legislation and do what you promised for the election, but also previous in President Obama's tenure, and you look at, well, if President Obama's going to veto this, are you going to be able to get Democrats to maybe come around on a couple bills like the Keystone to override his veto. Do you think that that's an option?
GOHMERT: I think that if we pass the things Americans want, the things I'm talking about, then it will be very difficult for senators who are Democrats to vote against them. And if we have to override a veto and they vote with the president, it's going to be hard for some of them to keep their seats.
The problem -- the thing we haven't been doing the last four years that Republicans have had the majority in the House is forcing those tough votes. And so it's fine if they vote against them. At least make them vote. I think we'll get a lot of these things passed, and I think just like Bill Clinton didn't want welfare reform, wasn't going to sign welfare reform, was fighting welfare reform, but when he realized, whoa, they have now -- I better sign and now he brags about doing it. Same with the balanced budget back in the '90s. Clinton was against it, would veto, but when we saw they were building the votes to override his veto they got it passed. Katie, we can do that to if we just keep our promises on the things I've talked about.
PAVLICH: It's a whole new ball game with Congress being controlled by the Republicans. I have a feeling that President Obama is not too happy about it. Thank you very much.
GOHMERT: The number one rule, don't go to Pelosi for the votes, otherwise --
PAVLICH: We'll try to avoid that. Thank you Congressman so much for coming in.
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