Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
|
Time
Text
And your support helps keep our mission alive.
As we close out the year, we're asking you to stand with us.
Your gift, no matter the size, goes 100% towards supporting C-SPAN's vital work, helping ensure that long-form, in-depth, and independent coverage continues to thrive in an era when it's needed more than ever.
Visit c-span.org slash donate or scan the code on your screen to make your tax-deductible contribution today.
Together we can ensure that C-SPAN remains a trusted resource for you and future generations.
The house will be in order.
This year, C-SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
Since 1979, we've been your primary source for Capitol Hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided, all with the support of America's cable companies.
C-SPAN, 45 years in counting, powered by cable.
When Congress is in session, we like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that.
This morning, we're joined by Notice political reporter Rhys Gorman.
And Rhys Gorman, in the final week here of this Lame Duck Congress, we're facing a Friday deadline to fund the government passed December 20th.
Start there.
What needs to happen this week?
Is Congress on track to pass a government funding bill?
Yeah, so the government's not going to shut down.
They're going to come to some agreement.
But right now, this is, it's just kind of negotiations are still ongoing.
The plan was originally for Johnson and leadership to release the text of the continuum resolution yesterday.
It was supposed to be sometimes in the early afternoon, early evening, around there.
And then they didn't release it.
And the reason why is because there's still some fighting going on.
So Republicans really want aid to farmers into the bill.
And obviously, if you want to add, but they need Democrats to support it.
So they're like, Democrats will look at it.
Like, oh, if Republicans want this, then we need to get something out of it.
So currently, there's a lot of back and forth over what they're going to add.
Democrats have a lot of demands that they can meet.
For example, one of it is like 100% funding for the bridge in Baltimore that currently collapsed as well as some other things.
So there's some back and forth there trying to get negotiations.
Additionally, there are some Republicans that are really upset about this kind of like health initiative bill, this PBM reform bill that's in the, that, that's trying to get in there.
That's really just upsetting people.
I mean, this was kind of going out on Friday.
So there's a lot of stuff that's upsetting to the point to where Republicans are going to need Democrats to vote for it in order to pass it.
Democrats know that, so they're trying to get their money for it.
Like, if you need us to vote to save you guys, then you're going to need to give us something in return.
What is funding for farmers?
How did that come up in this campaign this year?
So one of the biggest things was the farm, the Farm Bureau really sent out and tried to kind of urge this mayor.
It's like, farmers need this.
Farmers are in trouble.
They need this kind of aid.
They need this help.
And so this kind of all came about that way.
And obviously, the Farm Bureau is really big in a lot of rural districts, especially.
And so this is really something that Republicans really started pushing for, especially more rural Republicans.
And Johnson and House Republicans are inclined to give this to them.
But again, as I said, like Democrats, it's not that they necessarily oppose it.
They're just like, well, if you're going to give Republicans this, then you still need our support.
So we're going to need something in return.
And so it's really just kind of stalling the whole negotiations.
And then remind people, if they do pass this, how long of a continuing resolution this is.
It's more than likely the rumor here is until beginning of March.
So Johnson really wants to kind of get something into March, which, as I've reported before as well, is that there's a lot of Republicans that are upset about that.
I mean, Trump's, this is going to be well into Trump's first hundred days.
So they're going to have to be dealing with reconciliation with Senate confirmation.
So they're going to be having to deal with a lot.
And then you're going to throw government funding on their plate.
Additionally, there's likely going to be a 217-215 majority.
It's likely going to be a very slow majority because you have Matt Gates who's already resigned.
His seat is not going to be filled by then.
Mike Waltz is going to be resigning on January 20th to go be National Security Advisor.
You're going to have Elise Stefanik, who likely will be confirmed by this, so she won't be a member of the House anymore.
So that's going to be a no margin because a tie in the House fails.
And so you're going to have no margin for error.
And it's already tough enough, as we're seeing today, to pass any kind of legislation, especially spending bills.
But they will have a Republican Senate, which makes things easier on that side.
It does make it easier on that side, yes.
But again, they're going to need 60 votes to get anything passed for government funding, and they're only going to have 53 votes.
So they're going to have to kind of do some bipartisanship there to get to that 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
And as we don't bipartisanship in the House, it doesn't really go over well because people, especially there's a lot of the hardliners of the Freedom Caucus, see why we cave to Democrats if we have the majority in this building.
But you need to cave to Democrats at least compromise a little bit in order to get it passed in the Senate.
So what's the alternative?
A 12-month, nine-month government funding bill, CR?
Really, there's no alternative now.
This is really the only thing Johnson really can do.
I mean, if he were to do a longer CR, people would be very upset.
It likely wouldn't pass.
If he would, there's a lot of members that I talked to that said they would have preferred just to quote unquote clear the decks, which would have been get funding off the plate, actually do the spending bills, actually do the appropriations like they're supposed to not just do a continuing resolution.
Obviously, with only, what is it, four days now?
That's not a possibility.
And so people realize that this is now Johnson's only option.
I talked to Steve Womack in my story, who's just upset.
He said there's a lack of leadership.
They don't have leadership right now because what's happening is instead of actually doing the appropriations process, they just keep kicking the can down the road.
So he's even like, look, I hate this fact that we're having to do another CR.
I'm going to vote for it.
But I'd much rather us just do the job we were sent here to do and fund the government.
You talk about a March deadline complicating confirmations that will be happening at that time.
Where are we this week on confirmations on nominees coming to Capitol Hill and visiting?
Who are you watching for?
So RFK Jr. is going to be up on the hill for the first time.
Well, not first time as nominee.
He's going to be meeting with senators.
And so he's really going to be making this pitch.
We've seen it spend, he did not have a good end of the week last week.
And you see, Mitch McConnell kind of came out, not against RFK Jr. by any means, but basically saying, hey, like we should kind of back off this kind of skepticism of the polio vaccine.
Mitch McConnell, famously a polio survivor himself.
John Corden sent out a, tweeted out an article that was looked at as like a subtle jab at RFK about the polio vaccine.
So there is some people that are, RFK's going to have some tough questions, especially about kind of his stances that he's taken in the past on these vaccines.
Obviously, especially like when you look at McConnell, who is a polio survivor, he knows the effectiveness of these vaccines and he doesn't want to hear, he doesn't want to see these go away.
And so RFK is going to have to answer some tough questions.
But there's also, I mean, there's also Democrats that have expressed an openness to at least hearing him out.
And so we're going to see how this kind of goes for him.
You talk about the headlines late last week.
The headlines continued this morning.
This is the front page of the New York Times.
Kennedy aide filed to revoke the shot for polio.
So is Mitch McConnell meeting with RFK Jr. this week?
I imagine that would be a place reporters would be gathering if that's going to happen.
Yeah, I do not know exactly if they're going to be meeting necessarily this week, but I do know that he is going to be meeting with them sometime before the confirmation hearing and he's going to want to get answers to these questions.
I mean, that headline was exactly what McConnell was referring to.
I mean, that is something that he does not want to be reading on the front page of any newspaper.
And so I do imagine that he will be meeting with him 100% before the confirmation hearing.
Anyone else on the Hill this week that you're watching for?
I think I'm going to be, I mean, obviously, Pete Hegseth, as I reported, I mean, he kind of salvaged his nomination.
It was looking grim for their first second there.
I mean, there's reports.
I mean, I also reported that Ron DeSantis was being considered as a replacement.
He was really struggling.
I mean, he was going through going through it.
He was getting these tough questions, stories coming out about his past, and he salvaged this.
He kept fighting.
He pushed forward with the help of people like Donald Trump Jr., JD Vance, Breitbart, Charlie Kirk.
They all kind of did this pressure campaign because they saw how Senate Republicans were bolded after Matt Gates, I mean, effectively be killing the Matt Gates nomination, saying that you're not going to be Attorney General.
We don't want you to be Attorney General.
They knew that if Hegseth, the same thing happened, Senate Republicans would be emboldened and be like, we're more powerful than Trump.
We can destroy these nominations.
They didn't want that to happen.
So Breitbart started running kind of all these endorsements from senators in P. Hegseth saying, we plan to vote for him.
They actually, they preemptively ran a, they got word of a New Yorker story that was running up P. Hegseth and they preempted it.
They kind of ran a story discrediting, attempting to discredit it prior to the New Yorker ever actually publishing their article.
So that's how they used Breitbart.
Donald Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk really went on Twitter, kind of pushed these campaigns, like advocate for Hegseth.
JD Vance really made the fight just being like kind of what I was saying before, being like, we can't give up on Pete Hegseth.
We do not want to give up on Pete Hegseth.
I have sources telling me that this would, if Trump were to replace Hegseth with Ron DeSantis, how bad it would look for the base, being like, we elected Donald Trump to get his nominees.
And now the Senate is like, he's caving to the Senate as well.
And so there's this whole kind of campaign to kind of convince Senate Republicans to vote for him, Joni Arch, especially, Lindsey Graham, especially.
And I mean, while he's not out of the woods yet completely, he's significantly in a better place than he was just two weeks ago.
Reese Gorman with us this morning to talk about the week ahead in Washington.
Always interested in taking your phone calls as well.
Phone line split, as usual.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
If you want to read his stories, it is notice.org.
For viewers who are not familiar, what is NOTIS?
So NOTIS stands for News of the United States, a little play on POTISCOTIS.
It's founded by Robert Alberton.
It's about a year old.
We have the Notice side, which is basically this news side, which reporters such as myself and others who cover Capitol Hill, cover national politics, cover the White House, cover energy and environment, the DOJ.
And then there's also a fellowship side of it, which is we have 20 fellows now.
There's 10 fellows in the first class, 10 fellows in the second, where these are people who are not necessarily all new to journalism.
Some people might have done local journalism.
Some might be fresh out of college.
Some, we have one person who's a veteran who kind of got out of the military, wanted to get into journalism.
And so these are people, we're trying to help them kind of get into national news in the best way.
It's kind of like a teaching hospital.
It's where the best way is kind of just by doing, not sitting in a classroom of J school.
And so really we're teaching them.
They get to come up on the hill.
They get to cover stuff.
They get to go kind of out on the campaign trail when the campaign was going on.
They get to go into kind of local municipalities and kind of cover states and cover cities.
And it's just a really cool kind of trial and the kind of learning by doing as opposed to just sitting and having someone tell you how to do journalism.
Why include that as part of the notice mission?
Why a teaching hospital for journalists?
I think Robert, who founded it, this kind of was a vision for him for a while where he really saw that journalism school is great.
But a lot of times in order to do journalism in D.C., it's kind of hard to get a job up here for a while, especially because, I mean, journalism doesn't pay very well.
It's a highly competitive get a job at one of the outlets up here covering national news.
And then, well, as we know, local news, where, I mean, I spent three years in local news.
I love it.
It is, I mean, it's becoming harder and harder to find good local news outlets because they're getting, whether it's getting bought up by hedge funds.
And also, if you do find one, they don't pay very well.
And so I think his idea was he really wanted to train this new breed and kind of brand of journalists and kind of bring them up here and kind of teach them how to do it.
And then the idea is, so they have a two-year contract with their fellows for two years.
And then afterwards, the idea is that they get a job whether in DC news, whether back in the state, whether covering national news.
And so that's kind of the idea and the thought behind it.
And it's working out well.
I mean, the fellows are great.
They're doing great work up on Capitol Hill and across the country.
We just did an hour-long segment on trust in news in the United States, Americans' views on the news industry.
In the wake of the 2024 election, as we enter 2025, as we enter another Donald Trump administration, where do you think that stands as somebody who can look at it from the inside out?
Yeah, I think, I mean, it's 100% that the trust in news is down, right?
I think that there's, I mean, people are watching the news less, and I think we saw as well.
I mean, they're getting their news through other mediums, whether it be podcasts, whether it be kind of different news segments.
So I think it's something that definitely we have to look internally and be like, why are people not trusting us?
What are we doing?
And I think it's, I mean, it's just an objective fact that people don't trust us anymore.
I mean, we've lost the trust of a lot of the American people.
So I think it's just more of an introspective thing we have to look at.
Be like, why are people trusting us?
What are we doing?
What have we done for the past 10 years that has led to this point?
And really try to gain the trust back of the American people.
It's not going to be an overnight thing, but it's something that we just, I think, have to really attempt to do and really commit to it.
So example, how do you bring that into a story about the CR and funding the government past Friday?
How do you build trust on a story like that where a lot of this is happening behind closed doors?
We're not seeing the text of these bills, but we're hearing about what's in it and what the arguments are and what's holding it up.
But nobody's talking about that out in the open.
I think just being as fair as possible, I think listening to people and giving both sides and not necessarily implementing your opinion or what you think is best for a CR with this.
I think talking to people, I think the way it kind of goes with building relationships with sources as well.
Whenever you're working on a story, people don't want to just feel like you are talking to them and you don't actually care what they say.
You think they're stupid.
They actually want to feel heard.
They want to feel listened to.
So I think actually talking to these people that are involved in these things and then reporting the news kind of as fact there.
I mean, obviously there's objective truths that you implement in, but I think that, I mean, you don't just go talking to a member of Congress who might be opposed to the CR and be like, oh, why are you opposed?
You want to shut down?
That's kind of dumb.
No, you'd be like, oh, well, like, why are you opposed?
Actually, listen, hear them out.
Be like, okay, well, like, we'll put their point in because there's people out there in America that will see their point and be like, I agree with what they're saying.
So the CR is happening this week.
What else is happening on Capitol Hill that could impact Americans at the end of a lame duck Congress when we're all focused on the regular end of the year funding fight, the scramble, the potential for a government shutdown?
What else is happening that people may not be paying as much attention to that down the road we're going to find out, oh, that's the thing that actually had a lot of impact on people?
I mean, the Senate's going to be passing the NDAA this week, hopefully.
So that's their own.
Can I explain what the NDAA is?
NDA is the National Defense Authorization Act is basically the annual defense act that kind of gets in and kind of gives just anything the military can do, that's what the NDAA is.
And it really is there to kind of it funds things.
It kind of gives the military more power, different powers here and there, and it has to be funded, or it has to be authorized every single year.
And so that the House passed it.
And obviously, for the most part, it usually is pretty easily byparseable.
In recent history, it's been more and more difficult.
There's always kind of these sects that oppose it, but it always passes pretty overwhelmingly.
It's just a fight to kind of get in and out things.
I know that, I mean, Mike Rogers of the House Armed Services had said that there are things in it that you wish weren't in it at this point in time.
But end of the day, kind of John's had to put it in and get Republican support.
What's one of those things?
One of those things I believe was kind of that they put in one of the cultural war items of no funding for transgender surgeries for military members.
And I think that that was something that some members of the House Armed Services Committee looked at.
It's like, why don't we?
This does not need to be in the NDA.
We don't need to make the NDA this kind of culture hot button issue.
We could have Trump is going to address that in January 20th when he's sworn it off.
So there were some people that are kind of upset at that because they're like, the NDA is historically, I mean, they just kind of want to do the job, but they kind of turn to this kind of cultural hot-button issue.
Question from Twitter.
JD writing in.
Mr. Gorman, in your opinion, what are the top three legislative priorities for Congress in the first week of the new Congress with Trump's transition in mind?
I definitely think reconciliation is going to be a big one.
They're going to try to, they're working on how what it's going to look like.
Reconciliation is basically where you can pass something through the Senate at a filibuster proof, so it only needs a simple majority to pass.
And it's basically how parties in power kind of get their big issues through.
Biden did it multiple times when he had both the House and the Senate.
And now Trump's going to do it.
So what's the talk right now is what reconciliation is going to look like, but that's definitely going to be one of the top legislative priorities.
I mean, there's talking in one bill and two bills.
So if there's two bills, the first bill would be border energy, kind of these like big issues that not necessarily tax related that Trump has talked about.
And so they'll try to get that through, which would be just a simple majority in the House, simple majority in the Senate that would pass.
And then second priority would likely be taxes, would be the reauthorization of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act from 2017, which were commonly known as the Trump tax cuts.
That there's the salt, raising the salt caps, which is something that Trump has promised to do.
That includes stuff like no tax on tips that he's emphasized.
And so those things right there are stuff that he will also be focusing on.
And then also, I mean, just border security net large.
I mean, there's stuff that, yes, will have to go through Congress, but there's also stuff Trump is going to do by executive order that he said he's going to do by executive order that he can do on the first couple days of his administration.
And so I think those are things that you're going to look at are some of the top priorities.
Why is reconciliation a sort of get out of the 60-vote majority free card for the party in power?
It's a parliamentary thing.
So, I mean, it's basically just a way called budget reconciliation where it's not, it's not everything can be used for it.
So you can't just have your broad priorities.
You can't just be like, oh, I want to do X.
The parliamentarian has to agree that this falls under this reconciliation measure.
So it's a way of just more easily getting stuff through.
And there's stuff that the parliamentarian at times rejected part of Biden's reconciliation plan and kind of narrowed the scope of it.
And so it is a very narrow scope that the parliamentarian has to be like, this is not fall in line with this reconciliation.
And we think an immigration bill would be something that would be allowed to use parliamentarian has be like, this is not fall in line with this reconciliation.
And we think an immigration bill would be something that would be allowed to use reconciliation for they're definitely going to push to get that through.
Yes.
I mean, they've been talking about using it to first things to like secure the border, things like energy.
And it's really just fully on the parliamentarian.
There's going to be, I mean, the language is still being worked out.
Obviously, like they're going to have to narrow.
They can't just do every single border like kind of priority that Trump has.
They can't put it completely into a reconciliation bill.
They're going to have to.
Who's the parliamentarian?
The parliamentarian, the Senate.
I blanket on the name, but they're going to have to be the person.
But it'll be the same in the United States.
Yeah, it'll be the same.
More than likely.
Beulah is out of Clarksville, Tennessee, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
You're on with Reese Corman.
What's your question or comment?
My comment is something that I continue to use with everybody.
It's very simple in what we can understand as we move forward in elections, and that is using a football analogy for our positions.
One of the things that we did at this election was that we dropped the ball.
We had a good quarterback, Joe Biden.
He dropped the ball at the debate, but instead of us coming and huddling up whenever the referee throwed a yellow flag, we walked off the field.
So we can't do that in the future.
We have to come together and huddle up and discuss what is our next play instead of because we just went willy-nilly.
My belief is that if I were the campaign manager, I would have had Joe Biden, any in the future, any candidate on every news outlet possible the very next day, reiterating the questions from the moderator of that debate.
And that way, that's where we dropped the ball.
But I do have to say that there's one positive is that the Democrats know how to pivot, and we pivoted it really quickly.
But I think the football analogy covers any election dog catcher to the president.
So you have a good day and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Reese Gorman, any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think that she kind of just expressed her opinion there on kind of where she views that the Democrats.
And I think it sounds like she thought the Democrats did well in the election.
They did kind of look kind of come in on the margins on the House.
They did end up at a net positive, even though they did kind of still lose the House, but there was a net positive.
They did gain some seats.
But they lost the White House and they lost the Senate.
But it sounds like she thinks that the party's going in the right direction at the moment.
Ed in Jacksonville, Florida, Republican.
You're on with Reese Corman.
What's on your mind?
Yeah.
Yeah, good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to know if the, on the NDAA, if the military pay raise stayed at the same percentage of rate that they suggested.
I do believe that the military did, there was a pay raise in the NDAA.