Today, members are working on several pieces of legislation, including a measure to help the Homeland Security Department in its effort to combat fentanyl.
It's also possible the House might consider a temporary spending bill this afternoon to fund the government until March 14th.
No official vote currently scheduled, however.
The stopgap measure would still need to go to the Senate for approval before Friday at midnight to avert
Our next guest of the morning is Representative Sean Kasten, Democrat from Illinois.
He serves on the Financial Services Committee.
He also serves on the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Representative Kasten, good morning.
Welcome to the program.
Good morning.
Nice to be here.
Now that there's a text of the short -term funding bill, what do you think are the next steps in the process, particularly for Democrats?
We got 1 ,500 pages released last night at, I think it was about 7 o 'clock at night.
This is no way to run a country, and we're all furiously going through to figure this out right now.
None of us, certainly on the Democratic side of the aisle, want to shut down the government.
But this has been such a strange Congress, and I think it's important for viewers to understand how unusual this is.
We're talking about a CR, a continuing resolution.
This is a normal function of Congress that when you've worked and you've figured out all the funding for the State Department, the Defense Department, the Education Department, the Energy Department, and maybe there's a few little I's and T's you need to cross and we're about to run out of money, you pass a continuing resolution,
typically for a month or two, that says let's just keep government running at current levels until we iron out those details.
That's normal.
The Republican House this term has yet to pass a funding bill in two years.
So we are basically agreeing on a continuing resolution that is consistent with the funding level set when the Democrats last controlled the House.
Now as a Democrat, you know, those were my own funding priorities and so I suppose in some small way that's a win.
We're good to go.
I think?
We're good to go.
I think?
Bringing bills to the floor to do that is, I think it's disrespectful to this institution and disrespectful to the American people.
Those whole other things you talk about, some of others describing this bill as a Christmas tree of sorts, does it make it complicated for you as whether you're supporting it or not when you look at those add -ons versus what should be done just to keep government functioning?
You know, on any given line item, we could go through pieces where, sure, we might have done it differently.
I think on balance, a part of the challenge that Speaker Johnson has is that he's got a block of probably 60 to 70 Republicans who are going to vote against anything.
And so he really can't pass a bill without the Democratic support.
And so broadly speaking, this shouldn't be partisan, but broadly speaking...
In order for this to get to the floor, it needs to be something that will be attractive to the majority of the Democrats in the House, because he doesn't have a way to do that otherwise.
And so, structurally, I don't anticipate a lot of those items are going to be deal -breakers for a lot of my Democratic colleagues.
But again, that's not the way we should fund government.
Do you think that Democrats in return for support, if that is indeed the case, should they be asking for things as well from the Speaker?
Well, look, I think we can play that game.
I personally prefer not to because if we view this solely in an inside Washington game, you know, where the only thing that matters is the letter hanging off your name and, you know, I need something from your team, I guess we can do that.
But at the end of the day, if we don't fund government, things shut down.
You know, all of a sudden the national parks aren't open.
All of a sudden veterans who need health care can't get their support checks done.
Seniors who depend on Social Security payments.
The people who want to travel for the holidays, TSA isn't paid.
Our military is not getting paid.
These are not good things to do regardless of what your party is.
So the question I think all of us has is, is the alternative to keeping the government open
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Sir, you serve on that Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
I want to ask you, with the incoming of a new administration and Republicans controlling the House and the Senate, on those fronts of science and space and technology funding, what do you think is going to be the difference going forward next year when it comes to those fronts?
So in my time on that committee, it's been my privilege during that committee for six years, and it's always been a very robustly bipartisan committee, whether under Democratic leadership or Republican leadership.
Frank Lucas, our outgoing chair, is just a wonderful gentleman from Oklahoma.
Brian Babin, I'm sure, given the district he represents in Texas, will be very focused on space issues because we do oversee a lot of the space program.
So, you know, I'm looking forward to the work of that committee.
I think the things that we are most concerned about with the incoming administration on the scientific front is certainly a lot of outright science denialism from RFK Jr.
What does that mean for NIH funding, making sure that we're prepared for future pandemics or diseases?
This is important stuff, and we need to fund scientific research even if it violates things that we might want to believe politically.
There has been talk about defunding NOAA, privatizing the National Weather Service, which in terms of our ability to monitor hurricanes and prepare for floods would be problematic.
Again, I haven't seen that formally, but it's a concern we have to be sensitive to.
And then, of course, we have an oversight function.
And Elon Musk is not a member of the cabinet, has not been proposed as a member of the cabinet, was not elected by anybody, but he has a massive financial interest in a company that has a lot of contracts with our space agencies and SpaceX and also has a lot of contacts with other foreign nationals and I think we have...
For us to be a co -equal branch, we need to be very vigorous and not presuming guilt, but making sure we're asking the hard questions to make sure that we are protecting our space resources and our national secrets from foreign adversaries where that might not always be in Elon Musk's financial interest.
This administration has spent a lot of time and money talking about green energy, so to speak, and making those investments.
Do you foresee clawbacks on that front next year?
So I'm really proud of the work we did in the Inflation Reduction Act, as are my constituents.
I mean, I have never met anybody who wanted to pay more for energy.
And, you know, if you have a home that's got solar panels on your roof and you don't have to pay an electric bill, you're generally pretty happy about that.
If you have a house with an electric vehicle and an electric vehicle charger to pay gasoline, you're pretty happy about that.
When I say happy, you're happy in the sense that there's no scenario where you're going to say, I'm going to shut down my solar panel because the power from the grid is cheaper.
On the other hand, if you have a coal plant, there's a lot of days where you might say, I'm going to shut that down because it's cheaper.
What we did in the IRA was to provide incentives so that people who couldn't afford the upfront payment to buy that solar panel, to buy that vehicle charger, that that became more affordable so that all Americans could have access.
And we also were very intentional about trying to make sure we prioritize those investments, especially for the manufacturing, in areas that have historically depended on fossil energy to create jobs and local economy.
And as a result...
A lot of those investments have gone to very red parts of the country politically.
Not because we were targeting that, but because if you live in an area that depends more on extractive industries, where it's historically easier to permit things, you're probably, you know, in a more Republican community, if you live in an area that's more densely populated, harder to permit things,
depends on access to cheap energy, you're probably more likely represented by Democrats.
So I'm...
I'm hopeful that there will be broad -based support to maintain those just because there's a lot of constituents all across the country who continue to want cheap energy and who continue to want to have the jobs that those investments are creating.
I think there will be a tension with this White House because the incoming White House, I think in a lot of cases, puts the interests of energy producers over consumers.
There are more consumers than producers in the country, but we just need to make sure that we keep reminding them of that fact.
This is Representative Caston joining us.
Sean Caston, our first call comes from Colorado, independent line.
This is Matt.
You're on with our guest.
Good morning.
Good morning, Matt.
Hi, good morning.
So I want to push back a bit on when you made a comment about how a continuing resolution is normal.
From my understanding, that's plan B from when you don't have the ability to actually make a budget.
My background is, I've worked for the DOD for 20 years, and every time there's a CR that comes through that puts up a question about how much money we're going to get to spend, when the money is going to come in,
are we going to shut down the government?
That shouldn't be normal.
And I tell you what, every year about this time, it causes about 25 to 30 percent of inefficiency in...
Okay, okay.
That's Matt there in Colorado.
In the event where you've done all the work and you need another week or so, that's why the CR is used.
Running for two years on CRs is deeply abnormal.
I completely agree with you, Matt.
Whether you're at the DOD or the Veterans Affairs, any agency should not have that uncertainty any more than somebody who works for any.
You know, if you're in the private sector and you don't know whether you're going to be able to continue a project you've been working on, it's really bad government.
You know, when we as Democrats were in the majority, we made a habit of always getting, not just the budgets, but the appropriations done by July, because we run into September fiscal year, so that we would have those out of the House, off to the Senate,
where the Senate could work them and get them back and get it done in time.
That is the way we're supposed to work.
We as Democrats don't have the gavels, and what's happened over the last two years is that in exchange for McCarthy getting the speakership, he granted positions on the Rules Committee that controls what comes to the floor to...
The nihilists in this caucus, to be very blunt about it, and they have not allowed any bill to come to the floor under regular order without having a bunch of poison pills in it that just make it not work.
So I agree with you, Matt.
We shouldn't be running this way.
And I'm sorry if you heard me say that differently.
But it's where we are because of the completely unusual situation created by the leadership on the Republican side of the aisle in this Congress.
Let's hear from Richard.
Richard in Georgia, Republican line.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning, Richard.
Good morning, sir.
All this money that we're sending to Ukraine without Congress acting, why can't we take that same money and send it to the Americans first and put North Carolina,
give that money to North Carolina, put Americans first instead of some foreign country?
Thank you.
Yeah, so there's no reason we can't do both, but let's just talk about the consequences of failing to do both.