The only reason she did that, I believe, is because she knew that her constituents were literally banging on her door saying, man, if you don't vote this way, you can forget about us.
And it just really shows you, and C -SPAN's a testament to this, get involved.
Get involved.
Be courteous.
Don't get me wrong.
You don't call a congressperson and abuse them.
But you call them and you say to them, look, this is really important to me.
I'm your constituent.
Okay?
And I don't care about Elon Musk.
I'm living in a hotel room, in a FEMA hotel room in northern Florida, and I'm not going down without a fight.
That's all I wanted to say.
Have a good day.
That's Daniel in Scranton, PA.
Well, most of the action on Capitol Hill is beneath the surface at this point, and it is changing minute by minute in some cases, as we learned here on the air today where we had three votes coming and then a potential one vote coming,
and we should be hearing from Speaker Johnson at some point this afternoon.
You know, how can I not be nervous?
It would affect your district, obviously.
Absolutely, it would affect my district, but also, like, this is the piece that I continue to say to my constituents back home, whether they voted for Trump or not.
It is not good for the country to have billionaires calling the shots.
Just imagine if you would, let's do a little thought experiment here.
Can you imagine if George Soros or Warren Buffett I think they're still trying to figure that out.
Well they could go back to the original agreement and we would have a You know, we'd have a solution and everybody could go home for Christmas and we'd be doing our jobs.
In lieu of that, if they're trying to come up with something new, do they need to be in touch with Democratic leadership to get Democratic votes?
Well, absolutely.
If they want it to be bipartisan, that implies consultation.
It requires consultation.
What if it's like a short -term stopgap for a week through January?
I mean, enough gimmicks.
We've just got to get back to the agreement that we had.
That's my position.
There are two problems.
One is what we demanded in the bill so that we could help So,
I think...
Mike Johnson, to his credit, realized that he was going to need Democrats.
That's why we negotiated the bill.
So he could put that, he could grow a spine right now, ignore his puppeteers, Musk and Trump.
We're still not sure which one is going to be the real president.
And then he could put this negotiated bill on the floor.
The American people would be...
I mean, I don't know.
Because that was the agreement.
That was the agreement.
I mean, that was the agreement, was what was negotiated.
So we'll go in and hear what our leader has to say and how he sees this unfolding.
He did a magnificent job of negotiating something that would really help Americans.
The farm bill needs to be reauthorized.
That was part of the whole thing in the beginning.
So there are pieces in here that are important.
Communities are suffering from no disaster funding.
That was in here.
And so I think, you know, this was just a huge tactical mistake.
And by the way, I don't think that this is good for Donald Trump going in as the new president because his...
Approval ratings are already going down a little bit.
They will continue to if we have a government shutdown.
But he seems to think Democrats are going to take the blame.
Yeah, but he says things and he tries to make it seem like they're true.
They're not.
The shutdown is clearly a Republican shutdown.
That's why they're trying to frame it this way.
I had to tweet back at Elon Musk yesterday and explain why if you are the majority party, you can put any damn bill you want on the floor.
If you have the votes, and you are the majority, so you should be able to garner the votes for the bills you put on the floor.
If you can't do that, then you actually have to negotiate with the other side to get enough votes.
So, don't come to us and say you gotta vote for our thing or it's your fault.
That's just not how it works, even if you say it a million times.
So, Musk has been tweeting out all kinds of lies and misinformation about even what was in the package.
That's just their...
They're M .O.
But for the American people who are wondering where their next Social Security check is going to come from, whether or not their kid's going to get a cancer treatment, whether or not they can travel because of the FAA, people forget all the ways the government operates.
And so that is the real harm that Republicans are doing with the Republican shutdown.
Congressman, how important is it for Mike Johnson to be in touch with Leader Jeffries in terms of getting Democratic votes on anything he wants to put on the floor?
It's critically important.
And, you know, look, here's, I feel, Mike came in with me, I feel kind of bad for the guy because he was trying to be the Speaker of the House.
He got his power completely undercut by two outsiders, including, you know, who are billionaires, who have never had to, I mean, this is the thing that really galls me.
They've never had to worry about where their rent check is coming from.
They never had to worry about whether or not they're going to put food on the table or whether they're going to be able to afford their critical medicine.
But at the last minute they want to yank a deal that allows Americans to feel secure about it.
This is the problem with billionaires running the government.
I mean, look, the debt limit, let me just go back in history a little bit.
The debt limit used to be something that was done in a bipartisan way.
It was not really used as a negotiating tactic.
It followed the appropriations bills.
Republicans, several years ago, under Donald Trump, made it a negotiating tactic.
They made it a bargaining tactic.
And so, you know...
Oh my gosh, I have literally booked flights.
Every day I cancel two and I book another two and I cancel two and I book another two.
She does!
You're right.
You're right.
They're getting bonuses.
Believe me.
Can you stick with the camera?
Sure, of course I can.
Okay.
I mean, listen, the only thing I will say is Elon Musk and Vivek have come up here and spent a lot of time talking to the Republicans.
And these are very smart gentlemen.
I think what they should take from yesterday is that Nothing on a budgetary basis is going to pass here without the Democrats.
So perhaps the next time they come to DC, they should meet with us.
Thank you.
Was there a plan laid out at all about how we get out of this or what the next steps will be?
It's basically Speaker Johnson negotiating with Elon Musk and Donald Trump and acting like the rest of us don't exist.
And that's going to be a problem.
Would you be willing to support a shorter -term CR, like maybe just through January?
Is that something you'd be open to?
I'd have to talk to people about it.
I'd have to see what's put on the table.
I don't know at this point.
Aside from going back to the original deal, what's your preference?
I mean, would you be willing to support a clean CR, a clean CR with a disaster in Farm Aid?
What do you want?
My preference is that we should have passed the appropriations bills weeks ago.
We had the votes to pass the appropriations bills.
But Speaker Johnson knows that the Freedom Caucus is hostile to any appropriations bill.
So he chose not to bring them up because he didn't want to offend them.
So my preference is just pass the damn appropriations bills.
CRs are terrible.
And speaking as the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, they are devastating to the Defense Department.
Over half the discretionary budget.
They don't get to plan for the future.
They spend pretty much all their days trying to figure out what money they can spend and what money they can't spend.
It is irresponsible that we're not passing appropriations bills that we could pass.
So that would be my preference.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Hi, Cox.
Did you ever say if they're communicating with Republicans?
They are.
Yes, he's talking directly to Speaker Johnson?
Yes.
Okay, and what exactly, what are the terms?
Do we know?
Nope.
No, but communications have been reopened?
Communications have been reopened, and that's really all I can say.
Okay, thank you.
I think you had it right, Speaker Jeffries.
No, I mean, if Republicans want to know what Democrats will do, they need to reach out to the Speaker.
I'll let Hakeem speak for himself on that.
But the point being, the Republicans shouldn't try to do guesswork and game out where they think Democrats are.
We have a leader.
He speaks for us.
And if they want to resolve this, they'll talk to Hakeem Jeffries and we can come to some agreement.
If they don't want to resolve it, They'll keep doing what they're doing.
Would you support splitting up the bills?
Well, we're waiting for the speaker to talk to us and give us some definite answers about what is Plan C.
We don't see Plan C.
We need to get back to Plan A, vote on it, and ensure the American people that we can govern.
They are in the majority.
They are in charge.
They write the bill.
But Jeffries is working on that with Johnson?
He's trying to work on that, but it can't be one -way communication with a minority always trying to reach out to the majorities.
The majority should be the responsible party and talk to us.
They need our vote.
They need more Democrats.
On any bill that they put up, they're going to need more Democrats.
So get back to the table.
Talk to us.
We want to work with you.
Thank you.
I think the lines of communication are open.
Is there any detail on what the next path forward could be?
We had a deal.
They want the deal.
They've got the deal.
A red line?
It's more of a chartreuse line.
Perhaps teal.
If it was part of a plan that enacted the exact statute that we agreed on and was going to pass the Senate in that form, you know, if they want to put it on yellow paper or blue paper, you know,
if the same thing becomes law, fine, but splitting it up...
Thank you.
He indicated there was communications going on and that's a very positive sign.
We'll see what happens.
No, no, no.
But he's talking.
Well, I don't think either one of them are in the bill that they offered.
It was RFK and it was taken out because it was in the other provisions.
I was just checking to make sure I was right.
We think, obviously, the National Guard air wing is very, very important.
We have it and we want to keep it on the stadium.
The governor has been working, as you know, on an MOU.
The two senators in particular have been working on it.
Glenn Ivey and whose district that...
Who's right behind you.
What he said.
He's working hard on it.
So we'll see where we go.
If this gets broken up into separate bills...
Well, I don't want to discuss the ifs because they're endless.
Hi, Congressman.
What was the update in there from Leader Jeffries?
We're still getting...
He doesn't have any proposal that's been advanced to him to date, so...
Is he communicating with Speaker Johnson and Republicans?
I think he'll have to discuss whatever communications he has, but it was clear that they have not provided any specific proposal to us as a way out of this.
Instead of disaster funding, they've only given us a disaster.
And no timing on votes or anything scheduled for today?
Did he say to stay by this weekend?
Say again?
Did he say to stay here this weekend?
We haven't discussed departing.
I think we'll be here until this is resolved.
What was all the cheering about, Congressman?
Oh, a number of our members who are departing who are providing comments and indicating they'll be with us until we get this resolved.
Not shutdown -related?
Not shutdown -related, yeah.
Thank you.
The House will be in order.
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