| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Of the Financial Services Committee. | |
| And then a look at the relationship between the new Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. | ||
| We'll speak with the Brookings Institutions Molly Reynolds and Jason Dick, editor-in-chief of CQ Roll Call. | ||
| Also, Stephen Newcomb of Axios talks about the speaker election and new leadership in the Senate. | ||
| And we'll continue our conversation about the 119th Congress with Washington State Congressman Adam Smith, Armed Services Committee ranking member. | ||
| And then Republican Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. | ||
| And later, we'll be joined by Emily Brooks, House Reporter for The Hill. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning and welcome to The Washington Journal on this Friday, January 3rd, 2025. | ||
| Today, it's opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Republicans will have a trifecta in Washington with control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. | ||
| But before they can get to governing, the party must elect a Speaker of the House. | ||
| It's the first order of business when they gavel in at noon today. | ||
| The question is: can Speaker Mike Johnson get the votes? | ||
| There are a dozen Republicans who are undecided how they will vote. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber as the drama unfolds. | ||
| Watch here, minute by minute, at noon today. | ||
| But before we get to the speaker vote, we want to know what is your message to lawmakers as the 119th Congress begins. | ||
| Democrats, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, dial in today at 202-748-8002. | ||
| And remember, you can all text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city and state. | ||
| We're going to get to the conversation with all of you in just a minute. | ||
| We are live here at the nation's capital this morning, just a few steps away from the Capitol Dome in the Cannon House office building, and we will be here throughout the morning, right up until noon Eastern time, when that speaker vote takes place. | ||
| Before the vote takes place, they will gavel in a couple of times on the House side before they close out the 118th Congress. | ||
| They do that just minutes before noon before they then back gavel back in for the 119th. | ||
| We are simulcasting here on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| And when the Senate gavels in later this morning, we will show you that coverage as well. | ||
| At noon, then, we will break off. | ||
| On C-SPAN 1, we will have coverage of the House minute by minute. | ||
| And our cameras will be in the chamber for that speaker vote. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2, you'll be able to watch our coverage of the Senate. | ||
| Pedro Etraveria is back at C-SPAN headquarters throughout the morning. | ||
| He'll be joining us. | ||
| Here he is right now with what you need to know about the speaker vote. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| And the one thing you do need to know is math when it comes to if Mike Johnson will win another term as Speaker of the House. | ||
| That's because the current makeup of the House and the close, not too far parody between the 219 Republicans who currently are going to be serving and the 215 Democrats. | ||
| That's one vacancy also because former Florida Representative Matt Gates resigned in November. | ||
| It's because of those numbers that Speaker Johnson can only lose one vote and still retain his speakership. | ||
| If he loses more than that, then his job or his future job could be in jeopardy. | ||
| In fact, one person has spoken out directly saying that he will not vote for the speaker. | ||
| That's Representative Tom Massey of Kentucky, the Republican from that state, and has said several times that he would not be casting a vote for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| In fact, it was on Matt Gates' show on One American News Network yesterday in which Thomas Massey talked about some of the reasons why he wouldn't vote for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| If Chip Roy were asked to serve as chairman of the rules committee, would that be enough to get your vote for Mike Johnson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| You can pull all my fingernails out. | ||
| You can shove bamboo up in them. | ||
| You can start cutting off my fingers. | ||
|
unidentified
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I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow. | |
| And you can take that to the bank. | ||
| Again, that was yesterday. | ||
| Now, he's the only one that has spoken out against Speaker Johnson. | ||
| As Greta said at the top, some have yet to be determined if they're going to vote for him amongst the Republican caucus. | ||
| Axios has a story taking a look and listing some of those people to watch during the course of the day as they vote. | ||
| 13 on this list from Axios. | ||
| A story published in the Hill this morning talked specifically about some of the reaction of those who have yet to say whether they would vote for Speaker Johnson or not. | ||
| They include Chip Roy, the Republican from Texas, saying on Tuesday that he remained as of then undecided because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president's agenda. | ||
| Also, one other person to watch for, Representative Victoria Sparts, Republican of Indiana, saying that she was considered the biggest wild card. | ||
| She met with Johnson on Thursday, telling reporters after the huddle that she would decide on her vote today, quote, We had a good conversation. | ||
| I think he's agreeing with a lot of stuff, but it's tough to deliver. | ||
|
unidentified
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Reported this morning, the conversations will continue in the speaker's office, according to Punch Bull News. | |
| The Speaker, Mike Johnson, will be meeting with those soft nose, as his office is saying, throughout the day before that vote takes place at noon Eastern time. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber for the vote, giving you the sights and sounds as they read off the members' names in alphabetical order. | ||
| They will stand up and they will say a last name of how they plan to vote. | ||
| Don't miss any of it. | ||
| Stay here with us on C-SPAN throughout the morning, right up and throughout the day at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We will see if Mike Johnson has one round of votes or if it has to go more. | ||
| Your message to these lawmakers as the 119th Congress gets slated is slated to begin today. | ||
| Let's go to our first call. | ||
| It comes from Michigan this morning. | ||
| Caller, help me with your first name. | ||
| Kawaii in a Democratic caller in Michigan, in Hawaii, excuse me. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yes, yes, I'm here. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, this is an opening day for the 119th Congress. | ||
| And I know I've been looking forward to seeing how this is going to play out today as far as the election of a new speaker. | ||
| I'm thinking, well, I'm not really sure, but what I'm looking to see and hoping, if Mike Johnson loses the gavel for whatever reason, I mean, I'm not too sure how this is going to go, but I know I'm looking forward to standing behind someone I've always trusted, and that is leader Hokem Jeffries of the state of New York. | ||
| I know he'll make a really good speaker, and I'm looking forward to see how this is going to play out throughout the day as they gavel for their first day. | ||
| Yeah, well, caller, Democrats are all slated to be here. | ||
| All 215 are slated to be here, and they, from news reports on Capitol Hill, will be voting for Hakeem Jefferies is what has been reported, all 215. | ||
| However, it comes down to the other side of the aisle. | ||
| What will Republicans do if they vote present, if more than one votes present? | ||
| That could throw the math to Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| That's an unlikely scenario. | ||
| Republicans who are holding out on voting for Speaker Mike Johnson, they don't want Hakeem Jefferies as their speaker. | ||
| They want the majority here in Washington for the 119th Congress. | ||
| They want to have control of the House and the Senate and the White House. | ||
| We will see what happens at noon Eastern time today. | ||
| It is a first order of business when they gavel in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Only the host, only the House, excuse me, votes for Speaker, and the House can't do anything, nothing, until they get a speaker in place. | ||
| No debate, no votes, no governing. | ||
| So keep your television here on C-SPAN throughout the day to watch this speaker vote. | ||
| And also, you can follow along on c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow. | ||
| Let's go to our next call, George in Canyon Lake, Texas, Republican Caller. | ||
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| I want to talk about Havana's syndrome and aka anonymous health incidents. | ||
| And this has been going, this is deja vu all over again. | ||
| I mean, we have to look at the markers that have been around for years and years. | ||
| And we have to start with the Moscow Signal, Ronald Reagan's Star Wars, okay, and then President Bill Clinton's non-consensual human experimentation. | ||
| All right, George, what's your message to these lawmakers? | ||
| 119th Congress. | ||
| We need some kind of laws to protect us from being experimented on by our government. | ||
| Okay, we're being tortured. | ||
| We're being coerced. | ||
| All right, that's George's thoughts there in Texas. | ||
| We'll move on to Jared, who's in Wilmington, Delaware, Democratic caller. | ||
| Jared. | ||
| Jared in Wilmington, Delaware, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Jared. | ||
| One last try here for Jared. | ||
| All right, let me move on to Roberto, Houston, Texas, independent caller. | ||
| Roberto. | ||
| Yeah, thank you, Greta. | ||
| We must consider our relationship with Israel. | ||
| The world considers it a terrorist state. | ||
| We have to consider what it's actually doing in Gaza, the Golden Heights, and the West Bank. | ||
| We're going to end up, we, United States, having to pay reparations along with Israel as to its behavior. | ||
| It is a terrorist state, and we must consider our relationship, reconsider our relationship with Israel. | ||
| Please, Congress, consider that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, Greta. | ||
| You bet. | ||
| Roberto's message to Washington here as the 119th Congress gets underway at noon Eastern time. | ||
| Before they do that, the 118th Congress will gavel in, gavel back out. | ||
| Stay here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, throughout the day for our coverage of today's opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Patricia, Chandler, Arizona, Democratic caller, let's hear from you. | ||
| What's your message to these lawmakers? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd like to see them too get rid of the FISA 702 Act. | ||
| It's affecting 450,000 Americans. | ||
| That's the illegal wireless surveillance that they've been doing on their own citizens. | ||
| And they need to shut that down. | ||
| It's affecting me and a whole lot of people. | ||
| So we can't have people follow me everywhere. | ||
| It's called the FISA 702 Act. | ||
| And they need to shut that down. | ||
| It's for people coming into this country illegally, not to do wireless illegal surveillance act on your American census. | ||
| And it's happening to over 450,000 Americans. | ||
| Check down the FISA 702 Act. | ||
| Okay, Patricia's thoughts there in Arizona. | ||
| She's a Democratic caller. | ||
| That is her message to lawmakers here in Washington. | ||
| Back to Pedro Echeverria with more on how today will unfold. | ||
| Whether you watch on television the app or online, here's the day of events planned for the House of Representatives as they start the 119th Congress. | ||
| It starts with a call of order to the chamber by the clerk, then followed by the prayer and pledge of allegiance. | ||
| And then they'll establish what's known as a quorum call to see if there's enough members there to actually conduct business. | ||
| Then the election of the speaker, which we've been talking about plenty about this morning. | ||
| It's at that point you got to put a pause because say they elect a speaker, then they go on to remarks by the speaker-elect and swearing in by the dean of the house, and then the oath of office for those newly elected and re-elected members, and then an adoption of the rules package, which will guide the House of Representatives as they do legislative business in the 119th Congress. | ||
| We'll talk about those in details in a little while. | ||
| And then after that takes place, they'll adopt what's known as administrative resolutions and unanimous consent agreements, and then the announcement of the speaker's policies on floor practices. | ||
| This is, by the way, available at the Congressional Research Service. | ||
| If you're interested in following those nuanced details of the House of Representatives and their plans on this first day of Congress, you heard Greta talk about the House Democrats and them planning to show. | ||
| You talked about those slim margins. | ||
| Well, according to Politico this morning, all of the House Democrats are expecting full attendance today when it comes to that vote for the Speaker. | ||
| In fact, it says that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi posted a video on social media Thursday from her flight back from Washington. | ||
| This will be ahead of what will be her first public appearance in the Capitol since she underwent hip replacement surgery after being hospitalized last month for an injury while traveling in Luxembourg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That from Pedro Echavuria, Democrats will be in full attendance today, all 215. | |
| We're expecting 219 Republicans. | ||
| There is one vacancy because Matt Gates was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Attorney General. | ||
| So he resigned his post, even though he won re-election to that Florida seat. | ||
| So this morning, they will, at noon Eastern time, the vote will take place and we'll see how many Republicans vote for Mike Johnson. | ||
| That is the question this morning and the storyline that folks are watching here in Washington. | ||
| Frank in New London, Ohio, Republican caller. | ||
| Frank, your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In order to see who we put in and everything, what these people need to do is vote on single issue problems. | ||
| I mean, everybody in the United States is tired of they vote on a package. | ||
| Well, the package don't work because there's good things in the package, but they want to trash it up and then they vote it down. | ||
| No, and then we get nowhere. | ||
| Vote on single issues. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Frank, you're referring to specifically what just happened in December, that large spending package that was negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson with Democrats, the first iteration of it, more than 1,500 pages. | ||
| Republicans and the president-elect, along with Elon Musk, reject it. | ||
| They go back to the negotiating table. | ||
| They have a bill that is much thinner, much more narrow. | ||
| But still, in the end, 38 Republicans voted against this, even after the president-elect and Elon Musk supported it. | ||
| And you're tired of that kind of governing here in Washington. | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| Here, it's real easy. | ||
| If the electric bill needs paid, you pay the electric bill. | ||
| You don't say, oh, well, we'll pay the electric bill if we do this and this. | ||
| No, stop it. | ||
| Enough is enough. | ||
| The American people are tired of it. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Frank's thoughts there in New London, Ohio. | |
| Republican caller Isaac in Arlington, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Isaac. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Thank you, ma'am. | ||
| I think my message to the next Congress coming up is to pass a budget so that services can continue. | ||
| There's no room in American politics to play games as far as who's in control, because it's the American people who are needed, you know, who need the help and who need the budgets passed so that things can continue to work in America as they are intended to. | ||
| We have to get past the ridiculous partisanship all around in order for America to succeed. | ||
| And if we keep down this road of this divided, you know, republic, then, you know, divided, we stand, divided, we will fall. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Isaac in Arlington, Virginia. | ||
| John, an independent caller in Connolly Springs, North Carolina. | ||
| John, we want to hear from you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think the Republicans ought to do like the Democrats do. | ||
| They say you vote the way we want you to, or next year we'll run somebody against you, you ain't going to get no DMZ money. | ||
| So I think that's what they ought to do, and it's worked for them. | ||
| So it ought to work for the Republicans. | ||
| Well, John, I mean, the president-elect said when Representative Chip Roy was opposed to the latest spending package, the president-elect said we should have a primary fight against Chip Roy in the Republican primary. | ||
| Somebody should challenge him. | ||
| That didn't seem to sway Chip Roy. | ||
| So why do you think that doesn't work with those in the Republican Party? | ||
| I don't know, but it should. | ||
| It's worked for the Democrat Party. | ||
| Don't give him any money next year, next election. | ||
| And they'll think twice before they pull something right there. | ||
| Well, what do you say to those? | ||
| How do you respond to the Republicans who say, we are standing up for spending? | ||
| We are tired of the amount of spending that happens here in Washington. | ||
| This isn't about support for a certain leader or support for president-elect Donald Trump. | ||
| This is about our principles, and we're tired of the amount of spending that happens here. | ||
| Well, that's right. | ||
| It's like that other guy said back before me. | ||
| They ought to vote on one single thing and quit putting this all this other junk in there that's nothing, you know, and we'll come together. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, John, it sounds like then you support Mike Johnson for speaker. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| He's a good man, and I don't believe there's nobody in Ireland to do it no better. | ||
| Okay, that's John there in Connolly Springs. | ||
| We'll go to Mary, who's in Fort Washington, Maryland. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
| Hi, good morning, the C-SPAN in America. | ||
| Well, first of all, I think this is the worst Congress we ever had. | ||
| They're clueless. | ||
| They only work for their donors, and we know it, and they know it. | ||
| My message would be, actually, do something. | ||
| This is Kevin McCarthy time all over again. | ||
| You want to do something? | ||
| Stop the proxy war in Russia. | ||
| How many people do you want dead? | ||
| The young people are dead over there. | ||
| Stop the genocide right now. | ||
| Take the defense budget and put it to the American people. | ||
| We don't need the infrastructure wars that keep going on. | ||
| So this Congress right now, they're joking to me because they don't do anything. | ||
| They hadn't done anything since 2008 except mix around, have these ridiculous kinds of settings where it takes 30 times to get a speaker. | ||
| This is dysfunctioned to the max. | ||
| So I have no, no support for this Congress at all. | ||
| I don't care what they do. | ||
| It's going to be the same thing. | ||
| We're still going to have Gaza genocide going on, killing kids every day. | ||
| We still have a Russian proxy war still going on that doesn't need to be. | ||
| This war is supposed to last 30 days. | ||
| We're into three years now. | ||
| They don't have any more people to fight in Russia. | ||
| They're calling up pregnant women. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So this Congress does. | ||
| All right, Mary in Fort Washington, Maryland, there. | ||
| Mary reminds us of what happened two years ago when the 118th Congress gaveled in and they went to the first order of business. | ||
| That was electing the Speaker then. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy was their leader. | ||
| And as she reminds you all, it was C-SPAN cameras in the chamber then and it'll be C-SPAN cameras today. | ||
| What happened two years ago? | ||
| They did not elect Kevin McCarthy on the first round. | ||
| It took days and 15 rounds before the Republicans elected Kevin McCarthy as their leader again. | ||
| Nine months later, they rejected him and ousted him from the top post. | ||
| After several other people were put forth, it was finally Mike Johnson who was put in the top leadership position. | ||
| He's been in it ever since. | ||
| And today, will he get the votes to lead in the 119th Congress? | ||
| This is what Speaker Mike Johnson had to say on Fox News yesterday about the pending vote for his reelection as Speaker. | ||
| What can you tell us? | ||
| How much confidence do you have that you will have the necessary votes to retain the gavel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to get this done. | |
| Look, I'm humbled and honored to have President Trump's endorsement for the role again, as well as the endorsement of leaders across the conservative spectrum and the Republican Party, all of my colleagues that are standing with us, and we will get this done. | ||
| Look, the things that we're talking about this morning are an illustration that we live in very serious times. | ||
| We cannot afford any palace drama here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have got to get the Congress started, which begins tomorrow, and we have to get immediately to work. | |
| We have to certify the election of President Donald J. Trump on January 6th on Monday. | ||
| And we have many important things pressing on us right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there's no time to waste. | |
| We have to stay unified. | ||
| The American people gave us a mandate. | ||
| You know, President Trump got 77 million votes. | ||
| We got almost 75 million for House Republicans, the largest number ever. | ||
| And they have sent us a message that they want us to begin fixing all of this, and we will, and we're excited to do that. | ||
| Speaker, some of your members, especially within the House Freedom Caucus, have said they're not going to vote for you. | ||
| So have you talked with them, had private conversations? | ||
| Have they committed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have they reversed that decision? | |
| Because it's a numbers game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a numbers game. | |
| We have the smallest margin in U.S. history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll have a margin of probably two votes tomorrow during that, so can only afford to lose one or two. | |
| But I think we'll get it done. | ||
| I really do, Lawrence. | ||
| I've talked to every single one of those friends and colleagues over the holidays. | ||
| We'll be talking about process reforms inside the House, and I've encouraged all of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think the reason they're all going to vote yes is this. | |
| We're shifting into a brand new paradigm. | ||
| We have unified government that begins tomorrow. | ||
| We have the White House, the Senate, and the House. | ||
| A totally different situation than we dealt with over the last 14 months since I've been speaker. | ||
| So we're excited to deliver on the America First Agenda. | ||
| It begins on day one, and all that begins here, right here, tomorrow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Speaker, Mike Johnson predicting victory today when the House gavels in for the 119th Congress. | |
| We are live here on the Washington Journal from just a few steps away from the nation's capital in the Cannon House office building. | ||
| And joining us this morning is Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who is the chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee from Michigan. | ||
| Of course, thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
| Tell our viewers, what is your role of chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee? | ||
| So, first of all, it's good to be with you and to be with all the viewers this morning. | ||
| What's an important day? | ||
| I think the first day of Congress is an important day where we should all be coming together. | ||
| Congress means coming together. | ||
| As chair of the DPCC, I'm responsible for trying to coordinate the message, do a better job of delivering our message than maybe we did last year. | ||
| And also looking at the policy issues that matter and making sure we are hearing what the American people want us to be working on and then helping to make sure that's happening. | ||
| Where do you think the party fell short last year? | ||
| Well, you know, I'm a pretty blunt person. | ||
| And I, by the way, predicted Donald Trump would win in 216 because I was in the union halls and I heard what members were saying and their concern, especially about trade. | ||
| I think, again, I just think it's not one person's responsibility for what happened. | ||
| I think all Democrats have to do a better job of listening to what people are telling us that they're worried about. | ||
| I go to Kroger on Sunday mornings. | ||
| I have a routine. | ||
| And when I'm in the store, people know I'm going to be there. | ||
| They come and talk to me about what the price of eggs is what's really, I think, has not still quieted down. | ||
| How they're worried about their grocery bills, about people that can't afford to buy a home, their rents going up, everyday issues that matter to working men and women across the country. | ||
| We've got to listen and show them how we're addressing those issues. | ||
| Listen, and do you need to vote? | ||
| Do you need to vote with Republicans on some issues? | ||
| And what are those issues? | ||
| Well, first of all, I am somebody who always works across the aisle. | ||
| I think a bill is stronger when you can build a bipartisan coalition of people supporting the bill. | ||
| And I do that from many health care issues on telehealth pharmaceutical. | ||
| Buddy Carter and I, on pharmacy benefit managers, I say to Buddy, he comes from a pharmacy or a drug background. | ||
| I'm like, buddy, I'm angrier about this than you are. | ||
| But autos, taking care of the Great Lakes, manufacturing, national security, all these issues where we can work together. | ||
| We need to be working together. | ||
| What about on the border? | ||
| That is the first order of business. | ||
| Republicans want to deal with what is happening at our nation's border. | ||
| Well, Democrats vote with them. | ||
| This is what I'm going to say to you. | ||
| We need to strengthen our border. | ||
| Immigration. | ||
| We have needed immigration reform in this country for decades. | ||
| Republican presidents and Democratic presidents have tried to deal with it for decades, but it's hard. | ||
| It's very hard. | ||
| And I think what we've got to try to do is take, you can't take the politics out of it. | ||
| That's what this world is. | ||
| But we need to make sure those that shouldn't be coming over aren't. | ||
| We need to, you know, we should not be having criminals. | ||
| None of us wants criminals in this country. | ||
| You've heard the whole HB1 debate with Musk about the engineers and others, and there are companies that need that. | ||
| But what about our farmers and our small business workers? | ||
| During COVID, I had grown men crying with me that owned 7-Elevens and couldn't find people to work for them. | ||
| So it's a complicated issue. | ||
| I wish, look, it's a complicated issue inside each party. | ||
| So we need to work on it. | ||
| We're not going to tell you it's going to be clean and smooth. | ||
| You need to work on it. | ||
| Where are the red lines for Democrats on immigration and border security? | ||
| I think it's complicated. | ||
| And I think, you know, no, neither party, as you're seeing today on Swearing In Day, is monolithic. | ||
| There are different people with different feelings. | ||
| And, you know, compromise isn't a dirty word. | ||
| We're going to have to do a lot of talking and figure out a lot of this. | ||
| Immigration. | ||
| Streamers may be one place where we can find consensus. | ||
| Immigration, border security, a top issue for voters in November, as well as the economy. | ||
| What do you think Republicans and Democrats can do on the economy? | ||
| Where can there be agreement? | ||
| We ought to be, we don't have a farm bill. | ||
| We've got to be protecting our farmers. | ||
| We've got to make sure we're growing the product and try to lower prices there in the grocery stores. | ||
| We're competing with foreign companies that I worry about, by the way, are going to lower prices. | ||
| And then when they've got the monopoly and we're not producing anymore, are going to increase prices. | ||
| We need to be keeping our economy strong. | ||
| I strongly agree. | ||
| I'm one of those Democrats that believes tariffs are a tool in the toolbox. | ||
| I mean, you're not going to use them across the board. | ||
| But China is, it does this. | ||
| It subsidizes its corporations, its manufacturing, lowers its prices. | ||
| We're not paying workers then. | ||
| And now what they're going to do, I worked with Donald Trump very closely on NAFTA. | ||
| NAFTA was a bad trade law. | ||
| And now we've got to make sure China doesn't come in to Mexico, build a plant there, and try to bring it in as North American product. | ||
| So if President-elect Donald Trump and the Speaker for Republicans in the 119th Congress, as well as Senate Majority Leader Thun, if they put a tariff bill on the floor, it sounds like you would be open to voting for it. | ||
| It depends what's in it. | ||
| Can't make blanket statements, but I will work with him, and I do believe that tariffs on China on a number. | ||
| Manufacturing is an industry that is a national, economic, and national security issue. | ||
| And I will work with them. | ||
| I've made it very clear to my leadership that tariffs are a tool in the toolbox we need to use. | ||
| What would it do for the state of Michigan? | ||
| Protect our auto industry. | ||
| You know, today President Biden's expected to make an announcement on the Nissan Steel offer. | ||
| And I strongly do not believe that we should be selling our last major steel company to a foreign manufacturer. | ||
| These are really complicated issues. | ||
| We've got to work together on them. | ||
| For the speaker vote today, when the 119th gavels in at noon Easter time, it's the first order of business. | ||
| Nothing else can happen until a speaker is elected. | ||
| What did your leadership tell you about how it will play out today in the future? | ||
| My leadership hasn't told us because I don't think anybody totally knows what's going to happen today. | ||
| I will tell you this. | ||
| Democrats will be united. | ||
| We will all vote for Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| The number of Democrats here will not vote present. | ||
| They will vote for Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| We don't know what's going to happen among the Republicans. | ||
| Everybody knows Tom Massey for sure is a vote against. | ||
| I love, I mean, Chiproy and I don't agree on many issues, but his office is across from mine and we're friends and we talk about many, many things. | ||
| And I think that's important. | ||
| You can disagree, but you learn from each other. | ||
| So what did he tell you about? | ||
| He hasn't, I haven't seen him, but in the, I'm going to head to his office when I leave here. | ||
| But I think that, I mean, Republicans are going to have a challenge trying to bring their caucus together. | ||
| And what happens today is going to be emblematic of what's probably going to happen for the rest of the Congress. | ||
| I mean, it was not a smooth ending to getting the budget done at the end of last year. | ||
| And we're going to have to see. | ||
| What's it like in the chamber when a speaker vote is taking place? | ||
| Describe it for our viewers. | ||
| You're one of all of the House members sitting in the chamber. | ||
| Our C-SPAN cameras will be in there today. | ||
| Normally, those cameras operated by the House of Representatives. | ||
| They have given us permission to have our cameras in there. | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
| And do you think that's important? | ||
| And describe what it's like when you're sitting there. | ||
| So, you know, the first day of the new Congress is always emotional. | ||
| I think for everybody to be there. | ||
| There are new members on both sides. | ||
| They're excited. | ||
| It's an honor to have been chosen. | ||
| You know, they represent 800,000 people. | ||
| They worked hard to get there. | ||
| Their families are there. | ||
| Their friends are there. | ||
| They're celebrating this historic moment in their lives and the lives of their district. | ||
| Two years ago, four days of voting 15 times took on its own drama as each went on. | ||
| I think there'll be, this is my guess this morning, there will be a tension as the roll call begins. | ||
| And there are a number of House Republicans in the early letters that may or may not. | ||
| Burdette was going to be one of the first ones that will vote for the Speaker or not for Mike Johnson or vote president or vote for another member. | ||
| That will add attention to the climate. | ||
| So I think, you know, many of the members that are there want their family. | ||
| What was sad last time is people traveled from all over the country to see people they cared about, their loved ones sworn in, and it took four days. | ||
| And so by the time many of these members were sworn in, these are Republicans and Democrats, many of their family members had left. | ||
| So they had been there to celebrate, but they didn't see the actual moment of swearing in. | ||
| I think it's going to be a feeling of excitement of what an honor it is and tension at the same time as to what's going to happen. | ||
| As you noted, nothing can happen until the Speaker is elected. | ||
| We don't have to do that. | ||
| Members cannot get sworn in. | ||
| Nothing happens, including a vote on the rules package. | ||
| What do you make of the rules put forth by Republicans for the 119th Congress? | ||
| Well, I'm disappointed. | ||
| And I will be, I think you'll see all Democrats vote against them. | ||
| One is it's the first time you've seen the Relass Rules package let one member make a motion to vacate the Speaker. | ||
| This time it would be a motion with eight co-sponsors, but only Republicans. | ||
| Congress, the Speaker is the Speaker of all of us. | ||
| I mean, even though we didn't vote for him, I respect offices, and his role is important. | ||
| That's a disappointment. | ||
| I am also, Their priorities, the top 12, first 12 bills that are going to be expedited, don't do for me what I want to see, which is how are we going to lower the price of eggs or how are we going to take care of housing issues? | ||
| How are we going to address a lot of health care, lower prescription drug problems? | ||
| But some of them are just message bills that, look, I don't, I don't even know how I'm going to vote because I haven't seen the bill. | ||
| I do not want to see any police officer ever assaulted. | ||
| The men and women in New Orleans or what we see in our communities every day, they keep us safe. | ||
| And we need to honor them for what they do. | ||
| The men and women at this Capitol are putting their lives on the line right now, this day, and do every day to keep us safe. | ||
| But, you know, and no, we don't want an immigrant here that's responsible for a crime, but how do you make sure that there's due process? | ||
| And there's, like, what they're trying to do is make it look like Democrats don't care if a police officer is assaulted. | ||
| Well, we do. | ||
| And it's a complicated, they've gotcha votes. | ||
| It's totally got you votes. | ||
| And as I only, I'm somebody who thinks you need to be a U.S. citizen to vote, and you've got to, but there are ways to show it. | ||
| And I, again, haven't seen the bill. | ||
| These bills have not gone through any process. | ||
| But let's not make it harder for seniors to, I mean, all of a sudden they're not going to be able to vote. | ||
| Military men that are stationed overseas, moms. | ||
| We got to look at these bills, but some of these are got you bills. | ||
| And I just, I'd like to see us work together to deliver for the American. | ||
| All Democrats voting against that rules package then? | ||
| Is that your prediction? | ||
| Yes, that is my prediction. | ||
| Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, as always, we thank you for sitting down and talking with C-SPAN today. | ||
| We'll be watching. | ||
| It's good to be with you, and we'll see what comes. | ||
| We'll see if you'll be on the floor for a day or four days. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Pedro Echa Varia, back at C-SPAN with more on that rules package that will be voted on today if they can elect a speaker first. | ||
| And Congresswoman Dingell expressed some of those concerns about the rules package. | ||
| Just to give you some of the details, this will be a guiding document, a guiding post, so to speak, on how the House conducts its business in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Some of those details you heard the Congresswoman mention it would raise the threshold to introduce the motion to vacate. | ||
| You'll remember that it took one member to do so, but under this rules package, it would require nine Republican members instead of a single member to back making the motion to vacate to trigger a vote to oust the speaker. | ||
| It would also dissolve the Congressional Diversity and Inclusion Office. | ||
| It would eliminate the term accountability from the oversight's current House Oversight Committee's name. | ||
| You'll remember that the word was added in the 118th Congress, that to reflect the flurry of investigations that was taking place into the Biden administration. | ||
| It would authorize subpoenas of Attorney General Merrick Garland and other Department of Justice officials. | ||
| And then it would, as you heard Congresswoman Dingell say, set up votes on a dozen Republican bills. | ||
| That would include bills on strict border security requirements, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, and requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and more. | ||
| In fact, Axios has a follow-up story about how Democrats, including the Congresswoman, are reacting to this, top Democrats. | ||
| It includes Representative Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, saying, quote, this makes clear that they have no intention of working together to find common ground. | ||
| He adding that instead of electing a Speaker of the House, they have decided to elect a Speaker of the Republican Conference held hostage by their most extreme members. | ||
| Democrats are likely to follow McGovern's lead and close ranks against the package, according to a senior House Democrat telling that to Axios. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That will come to the floor today if the Republicans here in the House can elect a speaker in that rules package, as Pedro was just talking about. | |
| If Speaker Mike Johnson or another Republican gets the gavel at some point in the next Congress, it'll take nine Republicans in order to oust the Speaker this time around. | ||
| Your reaction to all of this, as well as your message to lawmakers in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Robert in Newark, Ohio. | ||
| Hi, Robert. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Robert Williams. | ||
| We are listening to you. | ||
| Thank you for hanging on the line. | ||
| PTL Elvira. | ||
| All right, I'm going to go on to Nixon, who's in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Nixon, welcome to the conversation. | ||
| What do you want to say to the lawmakers here in Washington? | ||
| Thanks, Scottie. | ||
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| I want to make sure we want Congress to focus on everyday Americans like myself. | ||
| We get up every day, go to work, pay our bills, pay taxes, help out the community, be good Christians or whatever religious background we have. | ||
| We do all of that and still find time to vote by election officials. | ||
| No matter what's going on in our life, we do our job. | ||
| All we want as Americans is for them to do their job. | ||
| Keep their word. | ||
| All right, so, Nixon, what do they need to do for everyday Americans? | ||
| What does that look like? | ||
| What policy? | ||
| Basically, working hand in hand. | ||
| We're not Democrats, we're not Republicans, we're Americans. | ||
| Stop, stop. | ||
| Nixon, you want to see bipartisanship. | ||
| Where do you think there could be agreement on what issues? | ||
| Every issue, every issue. | ||
| Nobody gets their way all the time. | ||
| Every issue that comes up, okay, give me five Democrats, give me five senators. | ||
| Let's work together to come to a common ground. | ||
| Every bill should have Republicans and Democrats sign off on it. | ||
| It shouldn't be one bill strictly Republican, one bill strictly Democrats. | ||
| It should be bipartisan going forward. | ||
| We are the ones that lead the world. | ||
| Everybody's looking at America and say, what's America doing? | ||
| How are we going to follow America when they can't follow themselves? | ||
| All right, Nixon, do you remember in the last Congress when there was that Senate proposal bipartisan on border security? | ||
| It was before the election. | ||
| President-elect Donald Trump, then candidate, said he was opposed to that bipartisan legislation. | ||
| James Lankford, a Republican, helped negotiate it. | ||
| Would you like to see that legislation brought back up, maybe renegotiated, but at least have it as the starting point for this Congress to deal with immigration and border security? | ||
| Yeah, most definitely. | ||
| And Congress has to tell President Trump, excuse me, Mr. President, this is a bill as bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| Nobody gets everything they want. | ||
| We can't just say no going forward just because we don't want to have that guy get the win on this guy get the win. | ||
| Once, once one side wins, we all win. | ||
| All right, Nixon there in Fort Lauderdale calling for bipartisanship. | ||
| That's his message to lawmakers as Washington wakes up here on this Friday, January 3rd, and they prepare to be sworn into office if first they elect a speaker and the speaker gets sworn in. | ||
| All of that taking place at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We are live here in the Washington Journal, bringing you coverage from Capitol Hill right up until noon Eastern time. | ||
| And then, of course, we will continue with our coverage throughout the day for however long it takes. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber, and you will be able to watch here on c-spancpan.org our free video mobile app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| As the vote is taking place, each member will be called by their last name and they will state who that they want to vote for for Speaker of the House. | ||
| Will it take only one round or will it take multiple rounds like it did two years ago? | ||
| Joe in Roseville, Michigan. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
| Hi, how are you? | ||
| Morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I'm calling about a problem with the Veterans Administration. | ||
| I was hoping to be able to speak to Representative Dingell, but the problem is that veterans, unless they're 100% disabled, they cannot be seen at the dental clinic in the hospital. | ||
| To go to any other clinic, I've had two major surgeries that were paid for by the VA, hearing aids, glasses, everything. | ||
| But for some reason, unless you're 100% disabled, you cannot be seen at the dental clinic. | ||
| And I wish that Congress, the VA committee, would do something about that. | ||
| I've spoken to many, many Congresspeople, and they've all said it's not our problem. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Joe wants this 119th Congress to take up Veterans Affairs issues. | ||
| And Joe, as you said, Congresswoman Debbie Dingle, Democrat of Michigan, joined us here this morning from Capitol Hill. | ||
| We're going to talk to, coming up here on the Washington Journal, Congressman French Hill, Republican of Arkansas. | ||
| He's going to be the chair of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| He'll be sitting here this morning. | ||
| We're going to talk to reporters as well throughout the day leading up to that speaker vote at noon Eastern time. | ||
| Pedro Echavarria with more on today. | ||
| We've said the name Thomas Massey several times this morning. | ||
| Republican from Kentucky, he the only at this current point saying he will not vote for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| In fact, putting out on X just a little while ago a poll that he conducted on Christmas Day. | ||
| The poll on January 3rd, we'll elect a speaker of the House. | ||
| Should members vote for Mike Johnson? | ||
| 7% of those respondents saying that. | ||
| Someone else, 93%. | ||
| Thomas Massey responding on the X feed saying, I conducted this poll a week ago. | ||
| Nearly everyone knows from his 18-month history of betraying Republicans and teaming with Democrats that Johnson isn't the right guy. | ||
| If he fails on the first round today, a better speaker can be elected in a few hours or over the weekend. | ||
| In fact, if you go to Thomas Massey's X feed, he had a back and forth with former Speaker of the House, Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, about the House Speaker vote. | ||
| Speaker Gingrich posing the question, I do not understand what the contrarian House Republicans think they will gain by opposing Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| They have no one else who can get more votes. | ||
| And then Thomas Massey responding, challenge accepted. | ||
| First, let me note that the vote for Mike Camp is not trying to make the case that Mike Johnson is endowed with the qualities necessary to lead our conference, even if you have limited yourself here to procedural justifications for his speakership, rather than telling us why he is a good or capable leader. | ||
| Under the question that Massey asks of no one can get more votes, Massey responds, it's somewhat ridiculous to assert that Mike Johnson is the only member of Congress electable to speaker. | ||
| He was only electable the first time because he hadn't held any type of leadership position, nor had he ever fought for anything. | ||
| So no one disliked him and everyone was tired of voting. | ||
| He won by being the least objectionable candidate, and he no longer possesses that title. | ||
| There's more in that back and forth between Thomas Massey and the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. | ||
| You can find it on Thomas Massey's X feed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, Pedro Echavarria, with more on the Speaker vote. | |
| Learning this morning about Thomas Massey's rationale. | ||
| He is the hard no. | ||
| There are about a dozen Republicans who could vote against Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| They have not said definitively, other than Massey, how they will vote. | ||
| Many of them meeting behind closed doors with Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| Mike Johnson telling reporters he's open to changes that they are requesting. | ||
| We'll see what those are. | ||
| And Punch Bowl News reporting this morning that those Republicans who are holdouts will be meeting with the Speaker again this morning, leading up to that vote at noon Eastern time. | ||
| Let's hear from Jonathan in Salem, Oregon, a Democratic college. | ||
| Jonathan, you are next. | ||
| What's your message to Washington? | ||
| Oh, good morning. | ||
| Huge C-SPAN fan. | ||
| Listen every morning, four in the morning in Oregon. | ||
| Love you guys. | ||
| You're my heroes. | ||
| My main thing is two things. | ||
| Everyone talking about immigration. | ||
| It bugs me to death because my community here in Salem is like 80% Mexican and it doesn't bother me. | ||
| It never bothered me. | ||
| I'm hugely disappointed by the election. | ||
| But my main issue I was calling in about is cost of living adjustment for disabled people. | ||
| I've been disabled since 2008. | ||
| Rent back then was $700, and that's about what I got from disability income. | ||
| And now rent is $1,200, and cost of living adjustment has only gone up by $100 since 2008. | ||
| And so I'm sure there's a ton of people out there disabled who are hurting and poor. | ||
| And my main message to the Congress this time is: will you please look at the poor people around struggling and try to do something about it? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jonathan, there in Salem, Oregon, with disability legislation as his message to Washington. | ||
| Cindy in Tarpon Springs, Florida, an independent. | ||
| Cindy, your turn. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You bet. | ||
| As a single person looking forward to my retirement, I am so tired of hearing about Social Security's gonna die. | ||
| I would love to see this Congress continue to revamp Social Security. | ||
| And I think, just being a plain old person, I think if they just removed that cap where you don't have to pay it after you make X number of dollars and let these millionaires and professional sports players and entertainers pay in. | ||
| So, Cindy, as you know, Social Security reform, Medicare reform, those are the big drivers of spending here in Washington. | ||
| And they also are the third rail of politics. | ||
| Lawmakers tend to not want to touch the issue. | ||
| How do you respond to that? | ||
| What's your message to them? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| The majority of the people in this country do not make more than $150,000 a year. | ||
| And we don't own businesses and hotels and make billions of dollars singing a song. | ||
| Understood, Cindy, but what do you say to them about this resistance to tackle a complicated issue? | ||
| They need to get over it and do something for us, for the people, and not be afraid of hurting some millionaire's feelings. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Cindy there in Tarpon Springs, Florida, an independent caller. | ||
| Mark Amanda, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Mark, we are live from Capitol Hill this morning, and we're getting your message to lawmakers for the 119th Congress. | ||
| What do you have to say? | ||
| Well, first of all, these office holders need to follow the oath of office. | ||
| I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully, faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I am about to enter. | ||
| So help me God. | ||
| How many of these elected officials have followed that oath? | ||
| How many people have followed the Constitution? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mark there with the oath of office and members of Congress, the members elect and the incumbents, they will all raise their right hand today and take that oath of office in the House. | ||
| That'll happen if they can elect a speaker. | ||
| They will have to go round after round to get to a speaker before the other members then can take that oath of office. | ||
| Over on the Senate side, they will take the oath of office when they gavel in at noon Eastern time, followed by other procedural business before the 119th Congress kicks off over there. | ||
| We are simulcasting here the Washington Journal on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2 at noon Eastern time here on C-SPAN. | ||
| We will take you to the House floor. | ||
| And the first order of business, as we've been saying, is that speaker election. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, you will be able to watch gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate proceedings over there. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the House chamber for that speaker vote. | ||
| You can watch here on C-SPAN, c-SPAN.org, or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| Let's hear from Greg, who's in Bremerton, Washington State, Independent. | ||
| Hi there, Greg. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah, thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I would like to tell Congress that they better watch their tales because I think the American people are getting really upset with the games that are going on. | ||
| For one thing, I agree with the gentleman from Oregon and the disability rights and things like that. | ||
| He's right. | ||
| You know, they should be taking stuff like that. | ||
| The middle class is going away. | ||
| And I hope that the Democrats, I used to be a Democrat. | ||
| Now I'm an independent. | ||
| But I hope that they actually stand up for us for a change. | ||
| Because all the talk about 2025, where is that now? | ||
| It's going on. | ||
| 2025 has been going on for the last year. | ||
| Just look at the Freedom of the Refrigerator Acts. | ||
| And even Trump said, well, the rich don't want tax breaks. | ||
| They want no regulations. | ||
| Now we got Elon Musk, who's probably going to be our next House Speaker, believe it or not. | ||
| I think that's where they're aiming. | ||
| And the oligarch's going on. | ||
| Are they going to fight against that? | ||
| Ramasamo Airwood. | ||
| I'm sorry about his pronunciation. | ||
| He says that we should not be allowed, our banks should be allowed to fine us for overdrafts. | ||
| How far back are we going to go? | ||
| People actually don't listen to this stuff. | ||
| And if Congress wants to do this country a favor, they should instill civics in high school, in grade school, in college, because we have the most stupidest civilized civilization in this country right now. | ||
| The most uneducated when it comes to how a country is rewarding. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Greg there in Washington State with his thoughts, predicting that it's Elon Musk that could become Speaker of the House. | ||
| Mike Johnson is looking for the votes this morning before noon Eastern time before the 119th Congress gavels in. | ||
| There is a lot of transition that happens here in Washington between an old Congress and a new Congress. | ||
| Lots of preparation within weeks of time. | ||
| New members are elected in the early November and then they come to Washington right away. | ||
| And there is a lot that happens behind the scenes. | ||
| Months of planning goes into effect to make sure office space for new House members and their staff are ready to go on day one of this new Congress. | ||
| That's today. | ||
| That transition is spearheaded by the office of the chief administrative officer of the house. | ||
| C-SPAN got a behind-the-scenes look at their work, including moving and repairing furniture, some of which are antiques. | ||
| I'm the Chief Logistics Officer. | ||
| Thank you for coming here and seeing all the logistics and support functions that support the transition that's occurring in the month of December. | ||
| Transition for MS actually started in July of 2020. | ||
| Once we started there were guests in to do the technical finishing process. | ||
| But we have had 70 guests available by December 1st of 2020. | ||
| And in the month of December, we start moving all these out, 192 access. | ||
| December, all has to be completed by January 7th, 2025 so that they can be thrown in on January 3rd back into the office and everything is set up. | ||
| The pencil, the computers, all the phone cabin is new. | ||
| Everything is set up. | ||
| And then they completely build. | ||
| This is the House upholstery shop. | ||
| We are a group of 11 individuals. | ||
| We restore and refurbish all the original house furnishings. | ||
| Every building had furniture designed for it, and we maintain it. | ||
| Come on back. | ||
| All the original furniture in the house office buildings was designed with horse hair. | ||
| Horse hair in the Turkish chairs, in all our sofas, in all our executive chairs. | ||
| Watch your step coming through. | ||
| Sorry, guys. | ||
| Horse hair doesn't break down like the foam products of today. | ||
| So we still have our original horse hair picker. | ||
| And I'll show you with the Turkish chair. | ||
| We turn it on, and when we take it out of the chair from 1907, this air, it doesn't break down. | ||
| All we do is we put it through here, it plucks it back up, we shove it back in, re-upholster. | ||
| It never breaks down, it doesn't rot. | ||
| So all we're doing is picking it through this massive amount of giant spikes in there. | ||
| And all it does is it plucks it right back up so we can reuse it. | ||
| It's the ultimate and reasonable product. | ||
| So it didn't hurt the horses. | ||
| It's from the main and tail. | ||
| I always tell people that. | ||
| This is the original 1937 longer chairs that we're redoing for Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Their whole committee is built in them. | ||
| Everything in the base is all horse hair inside. | ||
| So the only thing that wears out is the leather and the finish. | ||
| So we've just been recovering them. | ||
| So, you know, we'll just keep doing it until nobody wants furniture anymore. | ||
| So this is Turkish Chair Without. | ||
| And so everything under here is horse care. | ||
| And then when Corey builds this up, it'll all be horse care. | ||
| And it's all hand stone. | ||
| There's no wood up here. | ||
| It's all hand-stone instead. | ||
| And so it comes out looking like that. | ||
| And it's all horse chair and hand stitching to make it happen. | ||
| Antique furniture, each piece is unique, especially over the years. | ||
| Many of these pieces have been refinished by our finishing shop. | ||
| So what our inventory specialist does is they come into each room, all of our storage areas. | ||
| They have a scanner, and each piece in the House collection is barcoded. | ||
| And the older the piece, the more barcode. | ||
| So this has a more recent barcode, but there are some more original stamping, especially from the 1900s. | ||
| The way they used to do inventory is they would stamp into the piece a number. | ||
| And so say, you know, 400 coat racks were purchased by the Cannon. | ||
| This might be coat rack number 25. | ||
| And so what our inventory team typically does, they go in early in the morning and they'll just scan this piece. | ||
| It ties back to an electronic record. | ||
| And we can update photos. | ||
| We can document the finish, the stain color, whether it's mahogany wood, which was original for the Cannon, or walnut wood, which was original to the Longworth. | ||
| And so these are all great characteristics that members often are interested in. | ||
| They want to know the history of the piece. | ||
| They like to know, you know, was this desk in such and such a member's office or Speaker so-and-so's office? | ||
| You know, what desk do they have when they first came to Congress? | ||
| Because that tells a story and, you know, this is where we make history. | ||
| It is opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| We are live here from Capitol Hill, the Washington Journal, here all morning throughout the day, and we will be live for that speaker vote at noon Eastern time. | ||
| When the 119th Congress gavels in, it's the first order of business. | ||
| Nothing can happen until a speaker is elected. | ||
| And sitting here next to me from Capitol Hill is Congressman French Hill, Republican of Arkansas. | ||
| You're shaking your head because nothing else can happen until a speaker is elected. | ||
| So what do you know? | ||
| What can you tell us about those from your party who are undecided? | ||
| Thomas Massey is a hard note, but there are others in your party who are undecided. | ||
| Look, I think Mike Johnson's done a good job as Speaker. | ||
| He was dealt a tough hand when members of the House decided to kick Kevin McCarthy out of the job. | ||
| I thought Kevin McCarthy was doing a good job. | ||
| I thought he was a very effective speaker, and so it's put us on a course of not an orderly course of business. | ||
| And as you say, we can't start our work for the American people without a speaker. | ||
| And that's why I will vote for Mike Johnson today. | ||
| I'm proud of Mike Johnson's work. | ||
| I think he brings the party actually together in the House. | ||
| And while there's some people that still differ with how they might do something, it's important to take the big picture here, which is we have the House, we have the Senate, and President Trump's been re-elected. | ||
| And that's an opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate their priorities, how they can govern, and meet the campaign commitments that we made to the American people. | ||
| That starts by electing a Speaker, and that's why I believe Mike Johnson's the right choice. | ||
| And I believe it's the right choice, too, for the Senate and for President Trump so we can get our work started. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber for that speaker vote. | |
| Normally those cameras operated by the House of Representatives. | ||
| We've been given permission to be there so that we can show our viewers how people are voting in different angles in the chamber. | ||
| What's your prediction for how it unfolds today? | ||
| Well, look, it's my hope that 218 Republicans can support Mike Johnson for Speaker and that it will be not as dramatic as it was when C-SPAN pioneered a new form of coverage in the House chamber during Kevin McCarthy's election. | ||
| Because I think that's in the best interest of voters, our citizens at whole, and as I say, getting our work started with the incoming Trump administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So do you think it goes more than one round? | |
| Personally, I hope not. | ||
| I have no reason to think that it would. | ||
| I mean, I really think people over the weekend tried to reach that conclusion. | ||
| I know President Trump was making phone calls to explain, in his view, as the incoming President of the United States, that he believes Mike Johnson's the best choice to be Speaker. | ||
| It's the way to get, as I say, get our agenda started in the right way. | ||
| And we can't begin hearings or oversight or introduce bills that will benefit the American people on all the above energy strategy or securing the border or tackling the budget deficit unless we can form Congress. | ||
| And so that's why I'm, as I say, a supporter of Mike Johnson. | ||
| I think he's been a consensus leader of the House for the last 15 or 16 months since he was elected in October of 2023. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are news reports with the speakers meeting behind closed doors with some of those holdouts this morning, trying to convince them, perhaps making concessions to them. | |
| Will the conference meet as a whole before the vote that takes place at noon Eastern Time? | ||
| Only if the Speaker believes that's necessary. | ||
| So I would say if I were an aspiring journalist and I saw that the conference was not meeting before noon, that that would be a good sign. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well we will. | ||
| We're hearing that. | ||
| So that's an interesting insight for us. | ||
| So you are going to be the chair of the House Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Tell us about your agenda. | ||
| What is your responsibility for that committee? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think people ought to recognize the House Financial Services Committee is the oversight function for the American citizens of the securities markets, the capital market system, venture capital, the banking system. | ||
| And it's important for all of our families to recognize that we're the access to capital committee. | ||
| We try to provide affordable, abundant home mortgages for our families across the country. | ||
| We try to tackle the housing affordability issue in our committee. | ||
| We try to make sure our banks and our capital markets are safe and sound and secure for the American people and that we preserve the United States as the most sophisticated, best, most liquid, most effective capital market in the world because that's important to our well-being here in the United States from an economic point of view. | ||
| My agenda is first to right-size the regulatory burden that I believe the Biden-Harris administration led with. | ||
| I think we can have a safe, a sound, effective capital market system and banking system that offers investor and consumer protection but does not so burdensome that we see greater consolidation in the industry, that we see companies not doing as well as they could, customers not getting the products and services that they should due to too much regulation. | ||
| Secondly, I want to make sure that we have a market structure for digital assets. | ||
| A lot of Americans are involved in following cryptocurrency, looking at innovation with blockchain for the future innovation on the web, Web3 by writing applications for blockchain. | ||
| That includes digital payments, tokenized payments. | ||
| We don't really cover that in existing law. | ||
| So in this past Congress, the 118th Congress, we were able to draft legislation and pass it with bipartisan support for a tokenized payment, a payment, which we call a stable coin, a dollar-backed stablecoin, and a new regulatory structure for digital assets. | ||
| So access to capital, both in the banking system and capital formation, and creating a market structure for digital assets. | ||
| These are important objectives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wall Street Journal, recent headline says, cryptocurrency cheerleader, French Hill, wins top congressional finance post. | |
| Cryptocurrency cheerleader. | ||
| Do you agree with that description? | ||
| I really don't because I don't view it that way at all. | ||
| First of all, I think people keep talking about cryptocurrencies like some of the meme coins that are out and about which don't have any real value to society or they connect everything around digital assets with the formation of Bitcoin, for example. | ||
| This is much broader. | ||
| This is about the future not only of the web, but the future of peer-to-peer decentralized finance, which is writing applications on a blockchain operating system, which is no different than you have an iOS operating system in your iPhone if you have an iPhone or you use Windows on your desktop. | ||
| Blockchain is an operating system and it's going to lower costs for consumers and for businesses. | ||
| It's going to reduce fraud. | ||
| It's going to make our system much more accurate financially. | ||
| And in financial services, that's why I think it's important. | ||
| An aspect of using blockchain is having a tokenized payment. | ||
| And that's what people refer to as cryptocurrencies. | ||
| And I think that sometimes the tail wags the dog in this debate. | ||
| What I'm a cheerleader for is America leading the world in innovation and America leading the world in financial technology. | ||
| We've done that for our whole existence. | ||
| And Web3 and the use of blockchain, both in financial services and in other businesses, I think is critical for our economic and technology future. | ||
| One quick point. | ||
| People go, I don't even understand what blockchain is. | ||
| Well, let me give you an example from outside the United States. | ||
| Saudi Aramco, the biggest oil company, one of the biggest oil companies in the world in Saudi Arabia, has all their accounts receivable and all their accounts payable vendors on a blockchain to schedule payments and schedule receipt of supplies, right? | ||
| And in that, they've shrunk their days receivable money that they're owed by from 40 days to 15 days. | ||
| So you see the effectiveness of using this new operating system, but we don't have a regulatory structure for innovation in that space. | ||
| We made progress in this Congress, and I hope in this coming Congress, the 119th, we'll create a dollar-backed stablecoin that'll benefit the United States internationally and domestically, and a regulatory structure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It sounds like you believe cryptocurrency is here to stay, and respond to that. | |
| And also, should there be one type, one cryptocurrency? | ||
| So I believe blockchain innovation is here to stay and the use of blockchain both in financial services and in other forms. | ||
| And I think tokenizing assets is here to stay. | ||
| And I see those experiments all over the country in business. | ||
| I just gave you an example. | ||
| I think we will set up a regulatory framework for a dollar-backed stablecoin. | ||
| And it wouldn't be one. | ||
| It wouldn't be issued by the government per se. | ||
| It would be regulated by the government. | ||
| So you could have a bank-issued dollar-backed stablecoin. | ||
| You could have a non-bank-issued dollar-backed stablecoin for use on their particular blockchain. | ||
| So Saudi Arabia could have a dollar-backed stablecoin they used in their economy for settling international transactions, for an example. | ||
| So I don't see it as a one-size-fits-all solution, and I don't support a Federal Reserve central bank digital currency being issued by the federal government. | ||
| I don't think that's the way to go. | ||
| It's not needed in our very sophisticated, developed economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Congressman Frenchfield, thank you very much for sitting down and talking to us here this morning on the opening day of the 119th Congress. | |
| C-SPAN cameras will be in your committee room when you're taking up those important issues. | ||
| So we thank you very much. | ||
| It's a pleasure. | ||
| Good to be with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Happy New Year. | |
| We're going to go back to Pedro Echeria, who is with two guests back in the C-SPAN studios a few blocks away here from the nation's capital. | ||
| Pedro? | ||
| Two close watchers of Congress talking about the opening day of the 119th Congress joining us. | ||
| Molly Reynolds with Brookings Institution joins us. | ||
| She is their governance studies senior fellow. | ||
| Also Jason Dick, CQ Roll Calls Editor-in-Chief to both of you. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
| Happy New Year to both of you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Happy New Year, Pedro. | |
| Jason Dick, let's start with you. | ||
| What are the scenarios for Mike Johnson today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the scenarios could go, this could be much ado about nothing, and we could get a first ballot election of a speaker, as we have in most of U.S. history. | |
| There's an old saying that Democrats have to fall in love, Republicans have to fall in line. | ||
| We could see this happen with the Republicans. | ||
| That's the ideal scenario, probably from Mike Johnson's perspective. | ||
| And then there's the extreme edge of the other side, which is that we could go 15 rounds or more, as we did with Kevin McCarthy two years ago, that it would take that long and several days to elect a speaker because we need a majority of those present in voting. | ||
| We don't know exactly how many people may show up. | ||
| There's always a little bit of a variable there. | ||
| Somebody might get sick. | ||
| Somebody who said they won't take their seat could show up. | ||
| But Mike Johnson will need a majority of those voting and present, and that could take a little while. | ||
| And then there's a scenario of maybe some of Mike Johnson's detractors or some of his members who want to show him that they have a say in this process. | ||
| Maybe they deny him on the first ballot, but let it go through on the second or third, just to show him who's boss. | ||
| Molly Reynolds, that we're at this point, possibly once again, so and soon after Speaker McCarthy, what does that say about the current state of the House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'd say it says a couple things. | |
| One, it reminds us just how narrow the Republicans' majority is. | ||
| Republicans are staring down the narrowest majority in the House in about 100 years. | ||
| They have very little room to maneuver. | ||
| That's before you even get to the big divisions within the conference and the idea that there are distinct factions who want different things. | ||
| And when you make concessions to one of those factions, that means that you've done things that may well make the other faction frustrated. | ||
| And so trying to thread that needle before we even get to questions of actually legislating and figuring out how to get all of these folks on the same page and rowing in the same direction on legislative priorities. | ||
| There's reporting that Speaker Johnson's being asked to make deals with certain members. | ||
| There's reporting that Speaker Johnson isn't going to make these deals. | ||
| What's as far as negotiating and making those promises, at least those deals, how much of it is part of the process overall? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So as Jason mentioned, in much of U.S. history, we've elected speakers on the first ballot. | ||
| Though in recent decades, that's been not necessarily going to a second round, but we've seen the individual trying to get votes for the speakership from his or her own party, that that can be a tricky process. | ||
| You know, it happened to Nancy Pelosi in advance of her second speakership in 2019. | ||
| It happened to John Boehner. | ||
| It happened, obviously, to Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| It happened in October of 2023 after McCarthy was deposed and Johnson was eventually elected. | ||
| And I don't think Johnson was high on very many people's lists of who was going to be the new Republican speaker after that happened. | ||
| So in some ways, this is not unprecedented, but for Republicans to be going through this process repeatedly each time they need to elect a speaker, I think really does remind us kind of just how fractured the conference is. | ||
| Jason, Dick, we've heard the people upset with Mike Johnson, maybe not giving him the speakership, but who have we heard about who would take his place if that were to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not a lot. | |
| I mean, the name that frequently comes up a little bit is Jim Jordan, who, you know, he ran as speaker. | ||
| He was on the ballot a couple times in October of 2023 after Kevin McCarthy was removed from the speakership before Mike Johnson was elected. | ||
| Jordan got up to 200 votes at one point, and then his total started to fall a little bit. | ||
| But it doesn't seem like there's any sort of groundswelling. | ||
| I mean, Jordan still has a lot of loyalty in the House Republican conference, but he doesn't have the infrastructure that Mike Johnson has. | ||
| And he, at this point, at least does not have the endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump. | ||
| Trump came out earlier this week very strongly for Mike Johnson. | ||
| I think he saw that this could complicate possibly the counting of the electoral votes, certification of his win on Monday if there was no House Speaker and there was no House. | ||
| And so we haven't really seen a lot of alternatives, a lot of mentions. | ||
| I mean, every once in a while you hear sort of a, oh, what about Elon Musk? | ||
| Or what about Matt Gates? | ||
| Or what about this? | ||
| And it's amusing. | ||
| It's sort of a parlor game. | ||
| It's like trying to imagine your favorite star NBA player playing for somebody else. | ||
| But it doesn't really have any kind of momentum in the same way that Mike Johnson, who has the office currently, at least until about 11.01 a.m. today, and somebody like Jordan who has a lot of support. | ||
| So other than those two names, it's not really any, there doesn't seem to be a lot of frontrunners. | ||
| If you had to boil it down, what's the largest beef that some Republicans have with Mike Johnson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
At this point, it's usually about spending. | |
| Several Republicans, particularly those in the Freedom Caucus, people like Chip Roy, are of the opinion that Johnson has too often, instead of aligning himself with them and their desires to cut spending, has just sort of said like, okay, I don't have the votes, so I'm going to go to the Democrats and we're going to work with them. | ||
| I mean, some of this is just a reality. | ||
| In the last Congress, we had a Democratic Senate. | ||
| So the Democrats had to be part of the negotiations to get an eventual measure to the president, who's a Democrat. | ||
| And so it usually revolves around spending. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to find somebody who doesn't like Mike Johnson. | ||
| He's a very amiable person. | ||
| It seems very genuine. | ||
| I mean, he's a nice guy. | ||
| So it doesn't seem like personality things. | ||
| I mean, previous speakers, there have been sort of personality conflicts. | ||
| We saw this remarkably with Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| Some people looked like they genuinely didn't like him. | ||
| And I don't know if there's really any lot of those sort of personality conflicts. | ||
| This is usually about spending and the size of the federal government. | ||
| And as Molly Reynolds, as you see it, is that the main reason, or are there other reasons that perhaps you see? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think Jason's right. | |
| I think that's a lot of it. | ||
| I mean, somewhat ironically, Mike Johnson's need to go to Democrats to negotiate with them, not just on big spending bills, but also frequently on the terms of getting legislation to the floor in the last Congress. | ||
| That was driven in part by the fact that some of these hardliners in his party, once they sort of dig in, he has no choice but to go to Democrats. | ||
| And then the effect of that is to drive the ultimate policy closer to the center. | ||
| So sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways. | ||
| And so I think that that I agree that sort of this notion that Johnson works too much with Democrats, that he works with Chuck Schumer, he works with Keith Jeffries to get these deals done and these deals are bad for Republicans, that that's the sort of principal driver of the conflict right now. | ||
| Our guests joining us about this opening day of Congress, and if you want to ask them questions, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and 202-748-8002 for independents. | ||
| You can text us your slots at 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can post on Facebook and you can post on X as well. | ||
| Before we take calls, Molly Reynolds, then the speaker's race and who is speaker only is the opening step of what happens to an agenda. | ||
| At this case, what's the threat to the Republican agenda depending on today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So obviously they can't really get started on legislating until they've settled the speaker race. | |
| There's the question of counting the electoral votes, which is scheduled to happen on Monday. | ||
| And I think that obviously the easiest and most direct way to get to having that happen smoothly would be to elect a speaker before then. | ||
| I think there are kind of a number of options available to them to maybe have a temporary speaker or something like that if they needed to. | ||
| I tend to think that the existence of that deadline on Monday is going to help be an action forcing mechanism in a way that there really wasn't one for Kevin McCarthy in 2023. | ||
| There wasn't something, particularly because we were looking down at divided government, there wasn't some big thing that they really needed to be doing that helped force them to agreement in that speaker race. | ||
| But from there, they have big plans, big plans on taxes, big plans on additional spending on immigration, on energy. | ||
| And they need to have at least come to some sort of temporary peace in this intra-party dispute in order to get on to some of those agenda items. | ||
| Jason Dixon, question to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| I mean, a couple weeks ago, Molly and I did a couple of podcasts on the Roll Call Political Theater podcast, and she really hit the nail on the head with this idea that when there's unified control of government by one party, all the debate is within the party itself. | ||
| I mean, not to slight the minority party of the Democrats, but there are so many debates within the Republican Party over so many different policies. | ||
| Some of these are just degrees of not huge differences, but it's the degree of how far they want to go. | ||
| But I mean, if they just have to be able to sign off, somebody has to compromise within the party. | ||
| So they're their own worst enemies at this point, because they can't blame Democrats anymore for anything. | ||
| This is all their show. | ||
| They have a little bit of a cushion. | ||
| It's remarkable to think that there's more of a cushion in the Senate than there is in the House for the majority party. | ||
| But they need to, one, of course, get the officers of the House elected, but then they need to decide exactly how they want to proceed on tax cuts on immigration, on energy production, and on beefing up defense. | ||
| They want to use an expedited process, the budget reconciliation process. | ||
| They haven't even decided whether they're going to do that in one tranche or two tranches. | ||
| So these are basic decisions that have to be made in kind of administrative, all that boring administrative stuff that you do as part of your job, like that has to be done. | ||
| That's important because it'll set in motion the things that they do agree on. | ||
| And then they can have the debate about, okay, this is how much we're going to cut taxes, or this is how long we're going to cut taxes, or this is how many miles of the border fence we're going to construct. | ||
| We have to get to step A before we get to step T or Z. Let's hear from Jimmy. | ||
| Jimmy in Buffalo, New York, for our guest, Republican line, your first up. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| And I had to make a comment. | ||
| You know, things are not going the way they should be. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, nothing makes any sense. | ||
| You haven't even started this new Congress, and they can't even agree on one thing or the other. | ||
| But my topic, your previous callers mentioned Social Security, they mentioned disability, things of that nature. | ||
| So my question is to one of your guests: what decisions can Trump make or Congress in terms of making changes to Social Security? | ||
| Whether it be regular Social Security, Social Security disability, does he have to get authorization from Congress? | ||
| Does he have the ability to do it of his own? | ||
| Gotcha, Jimmy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Molly Reynolds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So for sort of big changes in these programs, we would certainly be looking at a need for congressional action. | ||
| And I think one of the things that has been particularly interesting to watch about President Trump's sort of political career is on things like spending on Social Security, spending on Medicare, so big entitlement programs that are actually causing a lot of our long-term budgetary challenges. | ||
| That President Trump sort of took a turn from the Republican orthodoxy of the 2010s. | ||
| And in fact, you know, has been clear that he himself is not interested in cutting spending on these programs, not interested in doing sort of the Paul Ryan-style budget moves on some of these things. | ||
| And so depending on any number of things and how things shake out, I could imagine this being a place where we see some conflict between Congress and President Trump. | ||
| Because again, I think this is a place where there are some Republicans in Congress who are much more interested in making cuts to things like Social Security and Medicare. | ||
| But at least up till now, Trump has been in a very different place than that. | ||
| Jason Dick? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I agree. | |
| Social Security is not called the third rail of politics for nothing. | ||
| In 2004, George W. Bush was reelected. | ||
| He had enhanced majorities in the House and Senate. | ||
| He said that he was going to spend political capital, and his first priority was to change the way Social Security worked, to make it more part of the private markets. | ||
| It was dead at the gate. | ||
| I mean, it was the quickest way to squander political capital. | ||
| Trump also knows that his voters, this is very important to them. | ||
| And one way that he could jeopardize that sort of support, that very solid support for him, Particularly among retired people and people in rural areas and so forth who are dependent on Medicare and Social Security is to jeopardize that or even be thought of as open to jeopardizing it. | ||
| There's very little that Trump can do unilaterally on Social Security to get to Jimmy's question. | ||
| I mean, he would need authorization from Congress, Congress to pass legislation on almost any kind of significant change. | ||
| So I don't see anything happening because it's just, I mean, once pressure starts, I mean, we, you know, years, decades ago, you know, Congress agreed on an agreement to sort of start cutting little by little Medicare payments to doctors every year or every three years, whenever that doc fix, it's called, comes up, they always revert it to the original formula. | ||
| And, you know, to so that even small changes like that seem insurmountable to really change. | ||
| So I don't see a lot coming up on Social Security. | ||
| Indeed, one of the last things that Congress managed to do in December before going on recess for the holidays was actually clear a small expansion of Social Security benefits for certain public retirees. | ||
| And so, again, this suggests that there's not a huge appetite for cutting these kinds of programs. | ||
| Let's hear from our Democrats line, Everett in Florida. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think the 119th Congress should take up the farm bill, help the farmers out, help the Social Security people. | |
| And, you know, I feel that they should be. | ||
| I think the 119th Congress. | ||
| Caller, you're going to have to stop listening to yourself and just continue on with your comment, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was trying to think what else I was going to say. | |
| Gotcha. | ||
| But we'll keep it there. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| The farm bill, other things that are of importance to people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, the farm bill, the five-year farm bill is now in its seventh year right now. | |
| So Congress has extended once the authorization of the last farm bill that they passed, and then they signed as part of last year's end-of-year continuing resolution and end-of-year packaging. | ||
| They extended it, bought themselves another year. | ||
| I mean, this may actually expedite it with unified Republican control. | ||
| I mean, some of the conflicts that we see over and over again in the farm bill typically line up along use of hunger pro. | ||
| You know like hunger abatement programs. | ||
| You know like snap versus subsidies. | ||
| You know to to farmers and you know it's a it's a constant push and pull but they, they get close but they just never quite get it to the very end of the line on it. | ||
| On a deadline. | ||
| I would expect that they would get it done this year, if nothing else because they again this is a more of a Republican and Republican debate now, whereas the previous administration or the previous Congress was a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. | ||
| And Molly Reynolds, speaking of deadline, there's the issue of funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, you know, when we were talking before about Republicans agenda in terms of taxes and immigration spending and energy programs, we didn't even touch the fact that at the beginning of March Congress is going to need to again raise this question of funding for most federal agencies. | |
| They they sort of punted this again just before Christmas. | ||
| That was obviously a quite contentious process. | ||
| They thought they had a deal that would keep the government open and kind of, on that train, bring a whole bunch of other cars out of the station. | ||
| President-elect Trump inserted himself into the debate at the last minute, called for them to also address the debt limit, all kinds of things. | ||
| And then they managed to keep the government open. | ||
| We have avoided a government shutdown at Christmas. | ||
| But this is sort of a looming thing that Republicans are going to have to work on. | ||
| And we have examples from the past that tell us that this can be a challenge for a new unified majority. | ||
| So this happened at the beginning of 2009 when Democrats with much larger majorities than Republicans have in this Congress also had to come in with a new president, new congressional majorities, and try to finish up the previous year's appropriations work. | ||
| And it was a little bit of a nuisance for them hanging out there in March when they were trying to kind of get momentum on other bigger things they wanted to get done. | ||
| And real quickly, I mean, Molly mentioned the debt ceiling. | ||
| The debt ceiling will likely need to be addressed even before the March 14th expiration of this continuing resolution. | ||
| Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, said that extraordinary measures, what the Treasury Department uses to avoid breaching the debt limit, which means maybe they don't put in as much of their money towards certain maintenance of U.S. securities and so forth, might start as soon as January 13th. | ||
| So even before Trump is inaugurated, the Treasury Department will be sort of trying to maneuver around a debt ceiling. | ||
| And again, the slimness of the majorities, once Trump is inaugurated, Michael Waltz, the Republican from Florida, becomes his national security advisor. | ||
| That deprives Mike Johnson of one more Republican. | ||
| Elise Stefanik, my guess is that Elise Stefanik will be a very popular pick in the Senate. | ||
| They'll go on to get her confirmed as soon as possible because that also removes another Republican vote from the House. | ||
| I mean, Democrats might, you know, who knows? | ||
| They could be motivated on that. | ||
| And that just means that there's less and less margin of error for Mike Johnson to navigate a debt ceiling deal as well as everything else that we've been talking about. | ||
| Joining us for this conversation, Jason Dick, who we just heard from editor-in-chief of CQ Roll Call Molly Reynolds with the Brookings Institution. | ||
| She's their senior fellow in governance studies. | ||
| Let's go to Patrick in South Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, gentlemen and ladies. | |
| You know, our standard of living, inflation are primary concerns of the Americans today. | ||
| And, you know, we really don't have three branches of government. | ||
| We have four. | ||
| We know who the fourth is. | ||
| It's the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. | ||
| And he's got taxing power. | ||
| And he, with the inflation that he does not want to arrest, they lowballed the actual inflation rate that is an input cost into everything in government. | ||
| How much we're going to get our increase in Social Security. | ||
| And until he comes to bear and gets inflation and the purchasing power of the dollar, the value of the dollar at zero, we do not, this 2% target, this was dreamed up, I guess, 15 years ago, which allowed them to go ahead and just print more money. | ||
| And the only way we're going to arrest inflation is we've got to stop throwing the money around. | ||
| I mean, we're trillions of dollars in debt. | ||
| The train has left the station. | ||
| You know, we're on a collision course. | ||
| You know, we're the cannonball run going down the hill. | ||
| So I don't know, Mike Johnson. | ||
| I don't know if he's the man to do it like he just did over this past six months. | ||
| We need the Freedom Caucus. | ||
| I like Jim Jordan. | ||
| I want a heavy hand. | ||
| I want the spending and stuff. | ||
| I want Jerome Powell to go ahead and be more realistic about this inflation and stop lying to the people about that real inflation. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Gotcha, Patrick. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So let me sharpen his comments a little bit. | ||
| So economy was a big issue in the election. | ||
| Democrats have said that even if whatever Republicans put forth, they want to keep the economy front and center, could Democrats and Republicans find ways to find common ground on that front, just specifically on matters of the economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question. | |
| I think if we're thinking about inflation, I think it's also true that a number of the things that Republicans have said they want to do are unlikely to bring inflation down. | ||
| So it's unclear sort of where we'll land on tariffs, but President Trump during the campaign was very clear that he wants to pursue an aggressive tariff strategy. | ||
| Some of the things in the tariff space he can do himself without going to Congress. | ||
| Some of them he would probably need to go to Congress for. | ||
| Congress may well, particularly Republicans, have an appetite for trying to kind of help President Trump adopt an aggressive tariff policy. | ||
| That's not likely to help inflation. | ||
| And then depending on where things land with the administration's plans for immigration and for border enforcement and for deportation, we could also see disruptions to certain sectors of the labor market, which again may have consequences for inflation. | ||
| And so again, I agree that I think Democrats will want to talk a lot about the economy, but I think when kind of push comes to shove, some of the things Republicans, particularly President-elect Trump, have been articulating are really at odds with what Democrats would want to see. | ||
| I mean, I'd throw in tax cuts there too. | ||
| I mean, tax cuts, you know, introduce a lot more money into the economy. | ||
| If you have more, what we saw with the last round of tax cuts in 2017 was that people went out and spent the money and that added to some of the inflationary pressures. | ||
| When we saw the big rescue packages during COVID, that put a lot of money into the system and increased inflation to the point where it was very difficult to get it back under control. | ||
| Jerome Powell has said that he doesn't see a ton of interest rate cuts on the horizon for the coming year because he started to see inflation creeping back up. | ||
| So for the caller, for Powell's purposes, he's probably going to keep things even as much as he can and not cut rates unless something unforeseen happens. | ||
| But Molly's right. | ||
| Just from an economics perspective, a lot of these different priorities that the Republicans are pursuing have the potential to break open inflation again. | ||
| And the 119th Congress, Hakeem Jeffries expected to remain as minority leader, was voted into that with Catherine Clark as minority whip, Pete Aguilar as caucus chair. | ||
| What do Democrats do going forward in the House in response to however the 119th Congress under Republican control shakes out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you get people in unguarded moments sometimes in the minority, they will be honest and say that being in the minority is a lot more fun than being in the majority because it comes with the ability to criticize what the majority is doing and particularly in the House having no obligation whatsoever for the running of the place and crafting of legislation, especially in a situation like this where Republicans are largely debating among themselves. | |
| So Democrats have a platform right now where they can, they basically kind of have free shots if they want. | ||
| And the way that they craft their message and whether they're disciplined about it is kind of up to them. | ||
| It seems like Jakeem Jeffries and his team of Catherine Clark and Pete Aguilar are, you know, they seem to work fairly well with Chuck Schumer, who will be the minority leader in the Senate. | ||
| How much they coordinate in what they choose to emphasize, whether they want to put the emphasis on somebody like Trump or whether they want to put the emphasis on senators or nominees that are coming from Trump or the economy. | ||
| They have a rich sort of palette that they can work with, but whether they can actually develop the discipline for a coherent message that will resonate with the American public and the voting public is yet to be seen. | ||
| And I suspect that eventually whoever the Speaker House will have to come to the Democrats and the House for legislative purposes, that gives them some kind of bargaining chip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So Jason was talking before about the budget reconciliation process, which is a particular set of legislative procedures that allow for legislating without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate. | ||
| So for that bill or those bills, depending on the strategy they ultimately pursue, that will be on a party-line basis. | ||
| Democrats won't be involved with that, with those negotiations. | ||
| But for things that are still subject to a filibuster in the Senate, including the annual appropriations bills, including for the next fiscal year, including whatever it is that they do to wrap up this year's appropriations work, that will require Democratic votes in the Senate. | ||
| The filibuster is still around. | ||
| And so, again, to go back to kind of where we started with these divisions in the Republican Conference, given that the House Republican Conference is so divided, there are places there where Johnson or whoever is Speaker is likely going to have to go to Democrats to get the votes that he needs. | ||
| Let's hear from Landon. | ||
| Landon in Florida, Democrats line, you're on with our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And yeah, I'd just like to say how it's affected me in my daily life. | ||
| I'm actually a business owner at Gopi Square Mall, Portuguese, Florida. | ||
| And we actually, well, first of all, I grew up in a middle-class family. | ||
| My dad had a Toyota in Paula. | ||
| And we actually at my store have seen huge changes in we sell. | ||
| Let's go to Mike. | ||
| Mike in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes, I'm a conservative. | ||
| A couple points. | ||
| If my immediate family has needs that are not being met, and my neighbor who has kids that don't have milk and don't have eggs, and yet I lend him support, what does that say about me? | ||
| And if I'm living by my credit card and I have what bears insurmountable debt, and yet in my backyard I have a bunch of hardwood trees, should I not sell those trees to pay off my debts? | ||
| And the other quick thing, that Congressman, I think, from Arkansas was concerned about the blockchain and about crypto wallets and tokens. | ||
| I think maybe we need to be focusing. | ||
| Congress, everybody needs to be focusing on more priorities than that. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So, Jason Dick, if Republicans, now that they have power, they're going to look for ways to cut spending. | ||
| Where are the obvious targets, do you think, going forward? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a canard that there's a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. | |
| And that's not to say that there aren't ways that you can be more efficient, but that is sort of thrown around. | ||
| Like, we're going to go after waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Let's say that that's the easy target. | ||
| That would probably get you about one half of 1% of the daily debt that the federal government runs up. | ||
| The biggest drivers of congressional debt or federal debt are, as Molly alluded to, Social Security, Medicare entitlement programs like that. | ||
| Those are kind of untouchable. | ||
| They're roughly 66, 70% of the federal budget in a given year. | ||
| The Pentagon and the Defense Department consumes a lot of the discretionary spending that Congress does have control over. | ||
| There are frequently people will note that, like, do we need, say, this fighter that we started this, you know, that we started developing for combat in the 1990s that has never really produced anything of use to us? | ||
| Do we need to continue production of that? | ||
| And the answer is usually yes, because it belongs in some congressman's backyard and is spread around the country well enough that it has enough patrons. | ||
| I mean, there is a lot of, and I apologize for being sort of glib about this, but I mean, the reason that there are no real easy targets is because everybody has a constituency. | ||
| Like, when, in order to get to a point where you have congressional funding, you have patrons and you have people whose jobs rely on a lot of this funding or a lot of these programs. | ||
| That's not to say that there isn't a lot of glut in some defense programs, say, but they're just very hard to cut because there are always concerns, there's always a human consequence that brings up sort of immediately to the people who are most affected so quickly. | ||
| Molly Reynolds? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think Jason's absolutely right that most of what's driving our kind of long-term fiscal picture are these big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare. | ||
| I think those are, it's very politically unpopular to try to make cuts to those. | ||
| I think we may well see, because I think there are elements of the Republican Conference in both chambers who are interested in trying to make cuts to entitlement programs that serve low-income Americans. | ||
| So Medicaid, which is health insurance for low-income adults, possibly things like SNAP. | ||
| I think we could easily see legislative efforts to say impose work requirements in those programs. | ||
| And so in the long-term budget outlook, this isn't going to make a huge difference. | ||
| Again, a lot of it is the larger entitlement programs. | ||
| Frankly, a lot of it at this point is interest on the debt itself. | ||
| But for Americans who rely on these programs, I think an attempt to make cuts in them would be significant. | ||
| This is from Vincent in California, Independent Line. | ||
| Yeah, Maylon? | ||
| Yeah, Sierra, go ahead. | ||
| So as an independent, my message to the lawmakers is that I really hope that both sides are able to work together. | ||
| The lack of bipartisanship with the recent new politics is ridiculous. | ||
| Nothing will ever get done unless we work together. | ||
| The American people are tired of it. | ||
| It's creating a deep dividing line between. | ||
| Okay, that's caller. | ||
| You got a, and callers coming into the program. | ||
| Make sure that you're not calling, if you're calling in, call with a question or comment for our guest. | ||
| And let's keep the conversation to the 119th Congress Molly Reynolds. | ||
| This from President-elect Trump on his troop social fee just coming out recently saying, good luck today for Speaker Mike Johnson, a fine man of great ability who is very close to having 100% support. | ||
| A win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party. | ||
| And yet another acknowledgement of our 129-year most consequential presidential election. | ||
| And then in all caps, a big affirmation indeed. | ||
| And then he finishes with MAGA. | ||
| Even as he puts those out, even if he's telephoning members of Congress, what do you think is the reason for some of these Republican holdouts, even though the president-elect is strongly backing Mike Johnson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think this gets back to the conversation we were having earlier about why there are members who are frustrated with Johnson and that they are worried that any commitments he makes to them, even with the backing of President Trump, he's not going to ultimately be able to keep. | |
| He's going to have to keep working with Democrats. | ||
| And so I think that it has been interesting to see what are, are there limits to President Trump's political power with Republican members of Congress? | ||
| Is he always willing to sort of follow all the way through, sort of use the necessary political capital to actually get things across the finish line? | ||
| Right before Christmas, we saw him come out with a demand that Congress raise the debt limit before he took office. | ||
| That didn't happen. | ||
| And so that is a sort of a potentially interesting development as we look ahead towards this question of, you know, can President Trump's support work as effectively as is when he comes out in opposition to something as we saw repeatedly during his first administration. | ||
| Jason Dick. | ||
| Yeah, I'd point out too that after the initial round of negotiations had produced this sort of compromise end-of-year spending package that had a little bit for Democrats, a little bit for Republicans. | ||
| It seemed to be on a glide path. | ||
| And then the president-elect and Elon Musk and his allies said that, no, go back to the drawing board, strip out all this pork, and raise the debt ceiling. | ||
| More than three dozen Republicans voted against that debt ceiling, raising or to get rid of the debt ceiling for the foreseeable future so that Trump wouldn't have to deal with it. | ||
| And so it's not just a couple of holdouts. | ||
| It's people who feel very deeply that the fiscal order of the nation needs to be addressed. | ||
| And I think that let's say you whittle that in half, there's no cushion to work with. | ||
| It only takes a couple of members of Mike Johnson's conference to vote something down along majority lines. | ||
| And so I think that the very simple reason about defying Donald Trump is just that if you have power, exercise it. | ||
| And some people are not afraid to exercise that. | ||
| Some people do want to get in line and say, no, this is the, you know, we have a mandate. | ||
| They're claiming a mandate and they want to get to work on Trump's agenda. | ||
| They're very direct about that. | ||
| And some people are saying, not so fast. | ||
| We are on an unsustainable path fiscally with the country. | ||
| And it only takes a couple to make a difference in that. | ||
| And some people would say that that's foolish not to exercise that kind of power if you're a publicly elected official. | ||
| And Molly Reynolds, speaking of exercising power, there is something called the Congressional Review Act, and it could deal with acts done under the Biden administration, even though the new Congress kind of pulls the trigger on it. | ||
| Can you explain that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So the Congressional Review Act allows Congress to revisit regulations issued by the executive branch for a certain period of time after they've been finalized. | ||
| It's at its most powerful when we see a transition in the White House from one party to the other and when the new Congress is unified in control with the party of the new president. | ||
| Because that's a particularly sort of powerful constellation of circumstances for going back and looking at regulations that were finalized at the end of the previous president's term. | ||
| It's about 60 working days, the last 60 working days of the previous Congress. | ||
| Those regulations will be ripe for review by Congress in this way. | ||
| So we're looking at anything sort of finalized since about the beginning of August. | ||
| And we'll see how extensively Republicans use this power. | ||
| We saw them do it at the beginning of 2017 with the start of the first Trump administration. | ||
| I think in some ways that was in part because everyone was a little surprised that Republicans had unified party control. | ||
| They were a little surprised that Trump had won. | ||
| They're still trying to figure out their legislative agenda. | ||
| This year, I think they've done more work in advance to kind of imagine what the agenda would look like, though. | ||
| At the end of the day, we do have these big divisions. | ||
| And we have not, for example, they have not settled on a strategy for: are we talking about one reconciliation bill? | ||
| Are we talking about two reconciliation bills? | ||
| How are we planning on timing them? | ||
| All that kind of stuff. | ||
| So, you know, you can imagine some of these Congressional Review Act resolutions working as something for them to work on while they're doing some of this, some of this other stuff. | ||
| We also know that we haven't talked too much about the House Rules Package, but one of the things that's part of that is sort of tease up for additional consideration in the House, I think, 12 bills, all of which are on things that are kind of real Republican red meat issues around immigration, around transgender athletes in schools, around abortion, that sort of thing. | ||
| So, we have some sense of kind of where they'd like to go from a messaging perspective right out of the gate while they kind of figure out what else they're going to do next, including on reconciliation, including on spending, and potentially also on the Congressional Review Act. | ||
| And Jason Dick on that House rules, even including on how you oust the Speaker of the House if it goes through. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| This was perhaps the biggest change in the rules package. | ||
| I mean, well, you know, every two years, the House needs to adopt a new rules package because they basically start over from scratch. | ||
| But if it's the same majority, they just sort of tack on a few things, the few nips and tucks to the previous rules package. | ||
| This, though, would prevent this would raise the threshold for how many people need to sign off on a privilege resolution to oust the Speaker from one to nine. | ||
| And it needs to be nine Republicans, and Democrats can't offer it. | ||
| So it's a much narrower path to oust the Speaker than it was when Kevin McCarthy was ousted in October 2023. | ||
| Let's hear from Billy in Texas Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, am I speaking? | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Billy from Texas. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes, I was Billy Hollywood Groves. | |
| I just want to say that America is a nation of God. | ||
| And I didn't vote for Trump, but I ain't got nothing against him. | ||
| I met him a long time ago. | ||
| Kobe Bryant introduced me to him back in Padre Island when I was over the Boys and Girls Club in Crockett, Texas. | ||
| But America is a nation of God. | ||
| We got crazy people here, but we don't have people in total power that are crazy. | ||
| And we got the majority of Americans are God people. | ||
| And we know if we believe in God and keep our strength in God, we will lead the nation. | ||
| Because across this planet, we got a lot of crazy, evil people that's doing crazy stuff. | ||
| But we got more God people than we have crazy people. | ||
| And that's why, at the end of the day, America will be number one because we're going to keep staying a nation of God. | ||
| Because if we come to the devil, we won't make it. | ||
| Okay, Republican line, Carol in Florida. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I'm going to say, this is all I'm going to say: is I am hoping for a Congress that can actually function. | ||
| I sat here for and listened to the whole conversation, and all I hear is Republicans this and Democrats that you are working for the United States American people, not your party. | ||
| So please keep that in mind. | ||
| Speaker Johnson is the best you're going to get. | ||
| There isn't anyone else in your party or the Democrat Party that's better than him. | ||
| He's fair, he's open-minded, and he gets things done. | ||
| If the Republicans, the far-right Republicans, would work with him instead of against him, like you do all the time. | ||
| Please tell me that you can put an end to that. | ||
| Second of all, when taxes were started collected, it was to support the military, not support the government, the military. | ||
| So you gave away all of our weapons, and we expect to have you put them all back. | ||
| I have family in that military, and I'll be darned if it's going to send them to war with nothing to work with. | ||
| You keep saying Social Security and Medicare are your biggest expense. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| Congress is. | ||
| We pay your paychecks. | ||
| We pay your expense account and we pay your retirement and your health bill. | ||
| We pay social security. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| I'm on Social Security. | ||
| I pay my own Medicare. | ||
| It's $174 every month out of my paycheck. | ||
| You can't say that. | ||
| And you're giving it to everyone else. | ||
| People are not paying into it. | ||
| I paid my Social Security my whole working life. | ||
| And you're handing that out to everybody. | ||
| And now you just passed a bill that when a federal government worker can retire, they'll be able to collect both their federal retirement and their Social Security. | ||
| Well, that's two checks from one treasury. | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Carol there in Florida. | ||
| I want to take the first part of her question and ask you both, a function in Congress. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Or have we ever seen, in your opinion, a function in Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to remember that even in Congress, which is kind of very publicly dysfunctional, has these big divisions between the parties and again within the parties as well, that Congress still gets things done. | |
| And a lot of the things that gets done are not flashy. | ||
| They're not the things that grab headlines. | ||
| And so we want to sort of give credit where credit is due. | ||
| I will also say, though, that if you actually talk to members of Congress, they will say the same things that this caller said about feeling frustrated about the way the institution often doesn't work. | ||
| And that many of them will say, this is not why I came to Washington. | ||
| I came to Washington to solve problems. | ||
| I came to Washington to work across party lines. | ||
| And I too feel frustrated about the ways in which the institution and the ways in which sort of our partisan politics make it harder for us to do that. | ||
| And I think, you know, we do see some members, you know, do their best to work around that. | ||
| But again, certainly if you, particularly members who have decided to retire, they will say things like what the caller said, that they will say that, you know, this is not why I came to Washington. | ||
| I am frustrated just like you are about our inability to get things done. | ||
| I think one of the things that we see if we go back a few decades when it seemed like Congress did function better is that the two parties, the two primary parties, Democrats and Republicans, were less homogenized. | ||
| I mean, we had very conservative Democrats, particularly in the South. | ||
| We had very liberal Republicans, particularly in the Northeast. | ||
| We had a kind of a weird libertarian strain of different members in the Mountain West, you know, where I'm from, I'm from Arizona. | ||
| So we had a much more diverse set of members of Congress, regardless of whether they identified as a Democrat or a Republican. | ||
| And that held coalitions together better. | ||
| I mean, you know, when Richard Nixon, you know, was facing impeachment charges and corruption charges, you know, he was really attuned to where Democrats from the South were, you know, where they were landing on this, even more sometimes than his own party, which was in the minority at the time. | ||
| So those coalitions were more diverse among the parties and among the chambers in times past. | ||
| And it gave a sort of, it made things a little bit more solid because it was harder to pull the coalitions apart. | ||
| We're much more homogenized now. | ||
| The Democrats, you know, are much more alike than they were. | ||
| Republicans were much more alike than they were back just a generation or two. | ||
| And so it has made for some growing pains, I think, in the last couple of decades where they've settled into these sort of pools, if you will. | ||
| And it's easy to sort of only associate with them, with your own kind. | ||
| And so people are not listening to each other in the same way that they did when they had to listen to somebody in their own caucus, their own conference, who had a very different view of abortion or spending or the Defense Department or things like that. | ||
| We've also reached a point where both parties look at the next election and think, hey, if I'm in the minority now, I could be in the majority at the next election. | ||
| The majority is very narrow. | ||
| I only need to pick up five seats on net, what have you. | ||
| So that level of competition also shapes people's behavior. | ||
| And so if you think that you, even if you're in the minority now, you could be in the majority in the next election, that really disincentivizes working with members of the majority party because you don't want them to seem successful. | ||
| You don't want them to have accomplishments that they can run on. | ||
| And you want to be able to say, you know, throw those thumbs out, elect us instead. | ||
| And that dynamic also, I think, adds to what Jason is talking about. | ||
| Let's hear from Eric in Montana, Independent Line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| My question is: are we going to see any Democrats today showing any form of bipartisanship? | ||
| They have the potential to not only pick the minority leader, Hartim Jeffries, but with probably a handful, maybe around 20 votes, they could also influence the majority leader. | ||
| Without a true Democrat leader right now or an election in front of us at the moment, would there be any bipartisanship shown from any moderates, progressives, or far-left Democrats? | ||
| This would be their time to step forward to show that they want to also work for the best purposes of our country. | ||
| It's a scenario, but what do you think of the scenario? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's unlikely. | |
| I mean, again, the Democrats know that they're not going to be, you know, they're not going to have the speaker, you know, and the speaker is most likely going to be a Republican. | ||
| And so their incentive really is just to sort of sit back and let the Republicans work this out themselves. | ||
| That's not to say that if things didn't go very sideways, that we wouldn't find some way of, you know, like working, that the Congress would find some way to work together, that the House would come together and say, what about a consensus speaker? | ||
| I mean, we saw some of this discussion in October of 2023 where when they were kind of deadlocked and Jim Jordan was sort of at 200 or 199 votes and Jeffries was holding at 212, that that's when Democrats had the most say over it because it was apparent that they weren't going to move down from that. | ||
| And there was kind of this discussion. | ||
| It didn't last very long. | ||
| But it's not inconceivable, but it is unlikely. | ||
| Yeah, I think one of the big important things to remember here is that getting elected speaker, in some ways, is, you have to win the one vote, but it's not really just winning one vote. | ||
| You need kind of a durable political coalition that will keep delivering votes for you on the things that you want to do. | ||
| And so any kind of coalition speaker, one elected by a group of Republicans and a group of Democrats, it's really hard to imagine how that person would be able to keep going back to that specific well, and certainly not to a well of just members of the Republican Party. | ||
| At that point, you probably would have alienated some number of your own members. | ||
| And so you're really not going to be able to deliver on the procedural votes that we ultimately saw create many of Mike Johnson's headaches and Kevin McCarthy's headaches before that in the House. | ||
| So it's in some ways it's a one-shot game, but you really need to have a durable coalition that's going to keep you empowered as Speaker. | ||
| And it's just hard to imagine how that would work in a coalition environment. | ||
| Let's hear from Kentucky, Milo. | ||
| Hello, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, panel. | |
| First, I have to say, only C-SPAN would take cameras through an upholstery shop and do interviews with the people who are working there. | ||
| That's what makes you all a national treasure. | ||
| Now, back enough with the fanboy stuff. | ||
| Now back to business. | ||
| Thomas Massey, I don't know him. | ||
| I've never met him, but I know people who know him very well, and they keep him in, they put him in very high regard. | ||
| And I have these, and those people I know, I keep them in high regard too. | ||
| Do you feel like, and he seems like a fearless guy. | ||
| Do you feel maybe you all know or have heard something? | ||
| Do you feel like he may be trying to make some type of play for the speakership? | ||
| I'm in Kentucky, but I don't live in the district that he represents. | ||
| That's up in Boone County, Northern Kentucky. | ||
| I've considered voting for him, but I would have to move, and I don't think that's likely. | ||
| But anyway, thank you for the good work that you do. | ||
| I'll be interested in your opinion. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't heard any indication. | |
| And as far as I know, people that I work with in the newsroom and so forth haven't heard that this is an attempt by Massey to put himself into the race for Speaker. | ||
| I think that he is an interesting guy. | ||
| He's an interesting member of Congress. | ||
| He's an inventor. | ||
| He has a sort of off-grid house in Kentucky. | ||
| I mean, he has really, he's got this little pin that shows the national debt. | ||
| I mean, he is an interesting and he's an intellectual member of Congress. | ||
| And particularly, he gets re-elected. | ||
| He's doing enough right for his constituents that they feel that he should be returned. | ||
| He doesn't, though, have the kind of broad-level support to really get more than probably a handful of votes for Speaker. | ||
| And I think that he knows that, too. | ||
| This seems to me, his opposition to Johnson seems more one that's grounded in his own principles and his own positions than something that would make him sort of a viable candidate. | ||
| I don't think that he can, I wouldn't think that he would consider himself a viable candidate for Speaker. | ||
| Jason Dick is with CQ Roll Call. | ||
| He's their editor-in-chief. | ||
| Rollcall.com is the website. | ||
| If you want to check their workout, Molly Reynolds with the Brookings Institution, the Governance Studies Senior Fellow, Brookings.edu, the website. | ||
| And to both of you on this opening day of the 119th Congress, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for having us. | ||
| And our coverage of the 119th Congress continues here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We are live from Capitol Hill this morning and throughout the day up until noon Eastern time when the 119th Congress will gavel in. | ||
| They will take their first votes on who is going, who will be their Speaker of the House. | ||
| As you've been learning all morning, Speaker Mike Johnson does not have the votes or appears to not have the votes at this time. | ||
| Will he, though, by the time the gavel comes down at noon Eastern time? | ||
| He is working behind closed doors to try to get them. | ||
| President-elect Donald Trump is doing the same. | ||
| Here's some more reporting for you. | ||
| Melanie Zonoma, who reports for Punch Bowl News, has this on X this morning that she has more details about a phone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Congressman Chip Roy, who has not said if he will vote for Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| He said Trump did not try to pressure Roy over his speaker vote, and Roy told Trump Johnson needs to change things to win the gavel and or to be successful if he does wind up getting the votes. | ||
| Roy also warned Trump there are other likely no votes besides himself. | ||
| So that conversation taking place between Congressman Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas, and President-elect Donald Trump as he tries to get those Republican holdouts to vote for Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| The president-elect also posting on Truth Social good luck today for Speaker Mike Johnson, a fine man of great ability who is very close to having 100% support. | ||
| A win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party and yet another acknowledgement of our 129-year most consequential presidential election. | ||
| A big affirmation indeed, MAGA, is what the president-elect said. | ||
| And Mike Johnson responded to him saying thank you very much to the president-elect. | ||
| And he said it's a new day in America. | ||
| There's also this from Speaker Mike Johnson today. | ||
| This is a post on X with video from Sam Leisker, who reports for Scripps News. | ||
| And he says that Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters there when asked if he would be open to making Representative Chip Roy chair of the Rules Committee. | ||
| Speaker Johnson says, I'm not making deals with anybody. | ||
| Chair of the Rules Committee would give Chip Roy power over what comes to the floor and how it comes to the floor, how it's debated and how it's voted on. | ||
| So he would be the gateway to any speaker and legislation that gets voted on the House floor. | ||
| So that is the latest from Capitol Hill Reporters here in Washington. | ||
| And we are live here, just a stone's throw from the Capitol Dome. | ||
| And we are live up until this morning. | ||
| We bring you to the House floor here on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| We are simulcasting the Washington Journal on C-SPAN 2 at noon Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| We will bring you over to the Senate where there appears to be less drama, but work will get done over there as well. | ||
| They'll take the oath of office and they'll continue with some procedural votes. | ||
| And then you'll hear speeches on the Senate floor from the two leaders of the parties there in the upper chamber. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune taking over the top position from Mitch McConnell, who stepped down from leadership but continues to serve in the Senate, and Senator Chuck Schumer, who will be the leader once again for the Democratic Party, and they will be in the minority. | ||
| Republicans, with a trifecta in Washington, that they will have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. | ||
| First, though, they need to elect a Speaker, and it is only the House that elects the Speaker. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts this morning and your message to lawmakers as we are just hours away from them convening the 119th Congress. | ||
| Michael in Hawaii, Republican. | ||
| Michael. | ||
| Aloha Kakayaka. | ||
| I think Marjorie Taylor Green should be our speaker. | ||
| She says she's going to vote for Mike Johnson. | ||
| Well, if you know a little bit about politics, Johnson is Barack Obama, I think. | ||
| I think Our President Trump trusting the wrong person. | ||
| I think he, this guy Johnson, is a hypocrite. | ||
| And I'm not the only one that thinks that way. | ||
| Hypocrite? | ||
| Hypocrite? | ||
| In what way, Michael? | ||
| And always. | ||
| He says he's conservative, but he's not. | ||
| He says he wants more money to Ukraine of all places. | ||
| Number two. | ||
| Number three, Mike Powers in Hawaii does not trust him. | ||
| I'm 82 years old. | ||
| I'm living in Hawaii as the Democrat sethpool. | ||
| I love Hawaii. | ||
| And I believe in people like Pulsey Gabbard, who's got more balls than any Democrat. | ||
| And her father. | ||
| I know Mike real well. | ||
| I know Carol, her mother, real well. | ||
| I've lived in Hawaii 55 years, and there's hope for conservatism over here. | ||
| And we have to start in our Congress. | ||
| We have to have a conservative speaker. | ||
| And they're going to have to vote down Johnson. | ||
| And they're going to have to find out really fast that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the most erudite woman in Congress. | ||
| All right, Michael. | ||
| Well, listen to what Marjorie Taylor Greene had to say when she posted this on X. You all have seen me disagree with Mike Johnson at times. | ||
| You've seen me fight against him at times. | ||
| But you want to know something else? | ||
| Here's what I recognize. | ||
| For the past four years, all of you, and myself included, have put blood, sweat, and tears into electing President Trump. | ||
| And when you want to talk about blood, President Trump himself actually was the one that shed blood after an assassin shot him in the face. | ||
| Here's what I know. | ||
| All of you are sick and tired and fed up out of the drama and all of the garbage that comes out of Washington, D.C. | ||
| And after two terrorist attacks on our nation where innocent people were killed, and after four years of unbelievably horrific government policies, and now that we're in $36 trillion in debt, all of you at home, and myself included, are ready for the drama to end. | ||
| Well, here's what I'm asking my colleagues to do. | ||
| Let's put aside our pride. | ||
| Let's put aside our egos and let's put aside the infighting. | ||
| It's time to come together as Republicans, and it's time to do whatever it takes to make sure that we deliver the mandate that the American people told us to do. | ||
| And that's why I'm excited tomorrow. | ||
| I cannot wait to get started. | ||
| I'll be voting for Mike Johnson. | ||
| I will be looking ahead in complete hopefulness and working as hard as possible. | ||
| You see, we're going to elect a speaker, and then we're going to swear in as members of Congress. | ||
| And then on Monday, we're going to certify the most historic election in our nation's history when we certify Donald John Trump's election as 47th President of the United States. | ||
| We're going to spend a few weeks getting to work, working hard on preparing for his agenda. | ||
| And then on January 20th, we're going to inaugurate Donald John Trump as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| Now, it's 18 long days until we get to that important day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene there in a video that she posted on X saying we need to stop the drama. | |
| You'll recall that the Congresswoman threatened Speaker Mike Johnson in 2024. | ||
| The rules for the 118th Congress allowed just one member to offer a privileged resolution on a motion to vacate. | ||
| They want to change the rules in the 119th Congress. | ||
| It'll take nine members to do so, but it can only be Republicans. | ||
| That is in the rules for the 119th Congress. | ||
| They will vote on the rules today if they can get a speaker. | ||
| That comes first. | ||
| The speaker vote at noon Eastern time. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber for that vote. | ||
| First, they will call on members to stand up, and we will know exactly how many members are present for the vote. | ||
| That is determinative because that number will dictate the magic number, the outright majority. | ||
| What number will Speaker Mike Johnson need if he were to get the speakership in that first round of vote? | ||
| If he cannot, there will be round after round. | ||
| We'll see what happens here in Washington on this Friday, January 3rd, 2025, opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Let's go to Stephen, West Palm Beach, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Stephen. | ||
| Hello, Grid. | ||
| I hope you can hear me because they're drilling. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yeah, we can. | ||
| We can hear you. | ||
| Okay, I hope you can hear me because they're drilling on my condo here at the concrete. | ||
| Feel free to ask me any questions to clarify what I'm saying for the viewers. | ||
| I'm an international investor. | ||
| My biggest investments right now are in South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and emerging market bonds. | ||
| The only thing I have left here is my real estate. | ||
| What is happening in the Congress is simple. | ||
| And it happens in many Western countries. | ||
| The Congress and the people that we elect do not run the government. | ||
| I've learned the last half decade or so. | ||
| The government runs them. | ||
| And I'm not talking about the bureaucracy. | ||
| The legal quagmires they have to get into, the spider's web of mandatory spending, domestically speaking, and international treaties give them effectively no powers of the purse at all. | ||
| They just have to approve what's been there before. | ||
| A true Congress, a true legislature, has power of the purse. | ||
| That's gone. | ||
| All right? | ||
| There is no such thing. | ||
| The second thing, there is no such thing as a conservative anymore. | ||
| The libertarians were thrown out of the Republican Party in the late 90s by baby Bush and compassionate conservatism. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this has occurred in many countries. | ||
| You're going to have many callers call in that have moved here from other countries. | ||
| In Canada with a man named Aaron O'Toole. | ||
| In the United Kingdom with a man named Boris Johnson. | ||
| In Australia with a man named Malcolm Turnbull. | ||
| These are all people who run right and govern left. | ||
| Why do they govern left? | ||
| Stephen, because let me ask you then, what is a conservative to you? | ||
| Define it. | ||
| A conservative is somebody who believes in small government, effectively. | ||
| If you were to be a true conservative right now, you would expect the federal government's budget to shrink by roughly 25%. | ||
| That would be conservative. | ||
| That would be conservative. | ||
| I mean, I'm picking a number out. | ||
| It's in here. | ||
| You can pick a number. | ||
| 25%, 20%. | ||
| All right, Stephen, so why doesn't Chip Roy, Thomas Massey, why do they fall into that category for you? | ||
| Why does who fall into that category for me? | ||
| Chip Roy, Thomas Massey. | ||
| They are saying that they want changes to spending. | ||
| No, but I'm glad you brought that up. | ||
| Those 40 members, it's so illustrative. | ||
| Those 40 members of the Freedom Caucus, although we have to be careful, because don't forget Mick Milvaney was part of the Freedom Caucus until he became the budget director under Trump. | ||
| Then all of a sudden he was perfectly willing to sign off on any budget, no matter how much was spent. | ||
| But if you take these people at their word, they are what you would call conservatives from a fiscal point of view. | ||
| I'm not talking about gun control or any of that stuff, guns or Bible belters or whatever. | ||
| But notice, this is only 40 people out of a legislature in the House of 435 in the Senate. | ||
| The last true conservative we had in there was Jim DeMint, and he retired a decade ago. | ||
| All right, Stephen, let me ask you before I go into other calls, do you think Mike Johnson should serve as Speaker of the House? | ||
| I have no clue, ma'am. | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But like I said, it's going to matter. | ||
| You don't think it's going to matter. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Stephen, with his thoughts there in Florida, an independent caller. | ||
| Bobby, is an Oklahoma a Republican? | ||
| Bobby, what's your message to lawmakers here? | ||
| Yes, I'd just like the Republicans to get in lockstep, the same as the Democrats do with our speaker. | ||
| Everyone goes in line on the Democrat side, backs their speaker, and gets things done. | ||
| We have done this before. | ||
| They kicked out McCarthy. | ||
| It took four times to get Johnson. | ||
| He's done the best he could do being in a slick government. | ||
| We've got all three governments now. | ||
| The people who have voted reelect Mike Johnson, let him do his job, and get the things done that President Trump was elected for. | ||
| All right, Bobby. | ||
| Yeah, and spending too much. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| We spend too much time in government not doing the 12 appropriations bills for a year. | ||
| And every year they do, it's last minute, they throw in billions of dollars of pork spending for different personal projects instead of getting the 12 spending bills done for a year. | ||
| They're supposed to be done by July or September at least, and they can't never seem to get them done. | ||
| Bobby, you're a hard job. | ||
| Okay, but Bobby, you're saying they should elect Speaker Johnson, put him in place so that they can get going with the president-elect's agenda. | ||
| However, that's exactly why some of these Republicans are saying that they are undecided or may vote no against Speaker Mike Johnson because of what you just said. | ||
| Spending. | ||
| They're not taking these bills up one by one and bringing them to the floor. | ||
| Some of these members are saying they want some sort of guarantee. | ||
| They want a change in how Washington runs. | ||
| They want to see individual spending bills debated and voted on. | ||
| They don't like these big packages. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| But look how much problem they had last year when they tried to replace Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| How long did that take? | ||
| Do we have time for them to be squabbling over who they can't find to replace him as Speaker? | ||
| Do they have a choice? | ||
| I heard of anybody they are even talking about replacing him with. | ||
| All right, Bobby, reminding us of what happened two years ago at the start of the 118th Congress on that January 3rd, when that new Congress moved to elect Kevin McCarthy, he did not win. | ||
| And it took 15 rounds and days before they finally elected Kevin McCarthy as their speaker. | ||
| A lot of negotiations and a lot of tension on the House floor. | ||
| You'll remember, C-SPAN cameras were there, and we brought you the sights and the sounds as the votes took place over those many days. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will again be in the chamber today. | ||
| We've been given permission to have our cameras in there. | ||
| As you all know, those cameras normally for the House chamber are controlled by the House of Representatives. | ||
| But today, it'll be C-SPAN cameras bringing you the vote as it unfolds. | ||
| You'll get to see, does Mike Johnson have the votes in the first round or will it take more? | ||
| As our caller also reminded us, nine months later, Republicans then dethroned Kevin McCarthy, and it took many more nominations of different people before the Republican Party landed on Mike Johnson. | ||
| He has retained the top post since then. | ||
| And today is the day when he finds out if he has 218 votes to be the Speaker of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Crystal in Philadelphia, Democratic caller. | ||
| Crystal, it's your turn. | ||
| Thank you so much, America. | ||
| What a joke. | ||
| It's a joke. | ||
| Johnson is a Kool-Aid drinking clown standing outside the courthouse up in New York with his red tie circus of votes trying to get this guilty jerk off. | ||
| Republicans are a bunch of hypocrites, liars. | ||
| The Democrats need to stand up for America and stop this stupid clown show, the ridiculous arguments they have, dumb fools. | ||
| Trump is a crooked creep, rapist. | ||
| Crystal, you said Democrats need to stand up for America. | ||
| What do they need to do in this 119th Congress? | ||
| Where do they not agree? | ||
| Tired, silly sideshow of trying to put Johnson back in. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| I mean, the future of America is at stake. | ||
| Now, if Trump gets back in, okay, okay, with his ridiculous nonsense, he's back and forth. | ||
| He's here, he's there. | ||
| And America, some of America, bought the foolishness. | ||
| Please, Democrats, throw some monkey wrenches in their nonsense show. | ||
| Help us. | ||
| America, please. | ||
| All right, Crystal. | ||
| Crystal in Philadelphia is saying she wants Democrats to stand up for America, throw a monkey wrench in the Republican agenda. | ||
| The Republican agenda, the governing cannot begin here in Washington until they elect a speaker. | ||
| That will take place in the House chamber. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be there. | ||
| That begins at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We are simulcasting right now here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| On C-SPAN, we'll bring you to the House floor at noon Eastern Time. | ||
| And at noon, we will bring you over to the Senate on C-SPAN 2 as they gabble in the 119th Congress for the upper chamber. | ||
| Pedro Etruria with more on what to expect in the Senate. | ||
| They have their own agenda in the Senate and their own procedure. | ||
| And you can see that play out, like Greta said. | ||
| Here's what to expect when it comes to the agenda today. | ||
| We'll start with the swearing in for newly elected and re-elected senators. | ||
| By the way, that's approximately one-third of the Senate as it currently stands. | ||
| They will establish that presence of a quorum. | ||
| They'll adopt administrative resolutions and standing orders. | ||
| They will also agree to a date when bills and joint resolutions may begin to be introduced as part of their legislative process. | ||
| And also as part of the process, they'll elect a new president pro tempor. | ||
| That, by the way, it comes from the chance that if the senate chooses this to preside in the senate in the absence of a vice president, the term is a Latin term to mean for the time being, signaling that the position was originally conceived as a temporary replacement. | ||
| That President Pro Temp, by the way, for the new Senate, will be Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa. | ||
| Speaking of what to expect today when it comes to John Thune, now being the Senate Majority Leader, Chad Pergram from Fox News, with excerpts from his first speech that he's expected to present later on today. | ||
| And it says this, one of my priorities as leader will be to ensure that the Senate stays the Senate. | ||
| That means preserving the legislative filibuster. | ||
| The Senate ruled that today has perhaps the greatest impact in preserving the founders' vision of the Senate. | ||
| Also means restoring the Senate as a place of discussion and deliberation that includes empowering committees, restoring regular order, and engaging in extended debate on the Senate floor where all members should have a chance to make their voices and the voices of their constituents heard. | ||
| Again, that's expected to be part of the speech of John Thune, now the Senate Majority Leader in the 119th Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senate Majority Leader John Thune expected to say those remarks on the Senate floor when they gavel in for the 119th Congress, promising to keep the filibuster in place. | |
| We'll see if President-elect Donald Trump agrees with him when this Congress begins. | ||
| And as the legislative days go by, does he continue? | ||
| Does the President-elect agree with the Senate Republican leader there to have a filibuster? | ||
| Nomination hearings will begin for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks in the Senate shortly in the coming weeks. | ||
| We will see those hearings begin for those that are going to serve in the cabinet, secretaries, defense secretary, etc. | ||
| Those to get underway in the Senate, they will have to advise and consent. | ||
| Confirmation hearings will be held in that chamber, and you can look for our coverage on c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow. | ||
| We are live from Capitol Hill this morning on the Washington Journal, and we are going to be here until noon Eastern time when the House will gavel in. | ||
| We will then bring you to the House floor on C-SPAN and over on C-SPAN to bring you to the Senate floor. | ||
| In the meantime, a conversation with all of you. | ||
| What's your message to lawmakers in this 119th Congress? | ||
| Caroline in Washington State, Independent. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Thank you for taking that call. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I don't know what the weather is like back there, but right now in Washington, it is kind of calm. | ||
| Well, it's a little chilly here, I'll say that. | ||
| Well, we spent some time. | ||
| I guess I would start by telling you that I was, I'm a teacher. | ||
| I live a teacher, and I taught in Appalachian, West Virginia, in Tunnellton, and I taught in Longer's kids in Dembing, Washington. | ||
| I taught fishermen's kids in Petersburg, Alaska. | ||
| I was just a teacher, and that was what I did. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And they were, it was a good thing. | ||
| Anyway, and I don't really have much to say about do you have a message, Carolyn, to lawmakers here? | ||
| I don't really have much to say about Mitch McConnell or what your topic is. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I just, I'm sorry. | ||
| All right, Caroline. | ||
| That's all right. | ||
| We will leave it there. | ||
| Caroline in Washington State. | ||
| She says she doesn't have much to say about Mitch McConnell. | ||
| Mitch McConnell will not be serving in leadership in the 119th Congress. | ||
| He retired from that post, but he remains in the Senate. | ||
| He'll still serve representing the state of Kentucky. | ||
| And we'll see what role he plays with President-elect Donald Trump's agenda. | ||
| Let's go to Steve in Fairview, Oregon, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| I'm a city councilor in the little town of Fairview, which I where I live in Oregon. | ||
| And the position I hold is a nonpartisan position. | ||
| But a few callers ago, you had a guy by the name of Bobby that you spoke with, and I agreed everything that Bobby said. | ||
| McCarthy, I liked him a lot. | ||
| I liked Johnson a lot. | ||
| And when McCarthy didn't make it, he ended up quitting. | ||
| And I'd hate to see the same thing happen to Johnson. | ||
| But for me, I have bigger fish to fry. | ||
| We have spent a lot of money in this country on immigration. | ||
| Currently, about a year ago, I married a young lady from Kenya, and I'm 70 years old. | ||
| Well, in talking, watching her talk to her daughter on the phone in Kenya, excuse me, she would be happy when she's on the phone talking to her, and then all of a sudden, after the phone call is over with, it turned to sadness. | ||
| And I couldn't stand it. | ||
| So I turned around and told her, he says, honey, I will petition for your daughter to come here. | ||
| My problem is, is we have a lot of people that are going about immigration the right way. | ||
| We have 10 times more that are going about immigration the wrong way. | ||
| And it's costing this country a lot of money because of that. | ||
| All right, Steve. | ||
| So, Steve, in the 119th Congress, the Speaker of the House gets to define the first 10 bills, H.R. 1 through 10. | ||
| What should H.R. 1 look like to you? | ||
| For me, immigration is a top issue. | ||
| The top number one issue. | ||
| Our country is hemorrhaging on cash that we are giving, just giving to people. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ty, what's up? | ||
| Here's five bucks. | ||
| Steve in Fairview, Oregon, a Republican caller. | ||
| Henry in Miami, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Yes, I'm calling Bob Johnson. | ||
| Johnson don't need to be Speaker of the House to do what he do with Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| Death complete the interest in. | ||
| And get back to Trump. | ||
| I don't think Trump really won Florida at all. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Henry in Miami there with his remarks. | ||
| A little history for you this morning on this January 3rd, 2025. | ||
| Why does Congress convene? | ||
| Why does the Constitution say that Congress must convene on January 3rd? | ||
| It comes from the 20th Amendment to the Constitution that specifies that the changeover for members of Congress occurs on January 3rd at noon. | ||
| It also states that Congress itself should convene on that date unless it established a different date by law. | ||
| Congress passed the 20th Amendment in 1932 and states completed ratifying it in 1933. | ||
| Prior to that, after an election, it was four months, March, before the new Congress would take over and the president and lawmakers back then felt that that was too long of a time for there to be a lame duck, Congress and president. | ||
| And so the Congress changed the laws in 1932 and the states, enough of them, two-thirds, ratified it in 1933. | ||
| So here we are in January 3rd, 2025, opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Tom in Raleigh, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning, ma'am. | ||
| I think Speaker Johnson's going to get it. | ||
| At the end of the day, there is no alternative. | ||
| I've heard nobody else's name, you know, floated out there. | ||
| But here's what concerns me on both sides. | ||
| When they do that continuing resolution, I don't understand why they wait to the last hour to pass it. | ||
| I mean, they've got the entire, what, four, five, six months to pass the budget, but they always wait to the last minute. | ||
| And that is so frustrating on both sides. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans do it. | ||
| Well, Tom, it does apply pressure because they're facing a deadline. | ||
| And so you have people who are holding out on saying how they're going to vote, but when they're faced with a deadline, perhaps that's what makes them say one way or the other or put them in a position to start to negotiate. | ||
| Yeah, but they've got all that time to negotiate, but they wait to the very last hour to pass it. | ||
| To me, that's just uncalled for. | ||
| I mean, we have to have a budget in our household and we have to pay bills, but they wait to the very last hour to pass it. | ||
| So anyway, I enjoy C-SPAN. | ||
| I'm glad y'all carry all the committees. | ||
| I'll spend 90% of my time watching y'all, and y'all do a good job, ma'am. | ||
| You have a good day. | ||
| Hey, Tom, thank you for that. | ||
| Thanks for watching. | ||
| And thanks for calling in this morning to share your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Frank in Santa Rosa, California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Frank. | ||
| It's your turn. | ||
| Oh, hi. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN being there to carry the vote this morning. | ||
| I mean, that's great. | ||
| And I'll be watching for sure. | ||
| I appreciate this, but, you know, what I have to say is I'm talking about the gun control issue and the fact that the Speaker of the House, the present one, will not allow it to come forward. | ||
| And you talked about the first 10 bills that come up for the House. | ||
| Why the hell can't they have a bill to improve control of guns when our kids are being murdered by these, excuse the expression, asshole idiots who come into our schools and plan the murders and then kill themselves? | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| All right, Frank, his message to Washington. | ||
| He wants to see lawmakers here act on gun control, gun violence in our nation. | ||
| We'll go to Cordell in Columbia, Pennsylvania, an independent. | ||
| Cordell, your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Hi, Greta. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| My message to lawmakers, whomever they may be, would be to diversify the media. | ||
| And what I mean by that is every single morning I wake up, right? | ||
| I have programs that I watch, like, you know, my wife leaves for work, you know, 5:30 every morning, right? | ||
| I'm up early in the morning. | ||
| You know, I don't see African American or any other, let's say, Native American or any other image of any other race on the television. | ||
| Like, it's like an identity thing for me. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, I don't get inspiration in the morning from my media, from you guys that are, you know, giving us the information in regards to like the way the government operates and all that. | ||
| You know, I don't see like, you know, myself in society. | ||
| They don't show, you know what I mean, like what it's like, where I come from. | ||
| Would you say that about Congress as well? | ||
| You don't see yourself in those that represent Americans? | ||
| Right, Ha-King Jeffries, he's from, I guess, what, Brooklyn, New York, but I'm from Pennsylvania. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So it's a little bit common that in New York you see black excellence. | ||
| But I'm from a small town called Columbia, Pennsylvania. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Small town. | ||
| And so I never see anything black. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, Cordell, continue watching here. | ||
| Let's go back to Pedro Etcheria because he's got some statistics for you on the demographics of this Congress. | ||
| And we at C-SPAN do love a good demographic when it comes to the breakdown of the House and the Senate looking at the 119th Congress. | ||
| Let's start with the House. | ||
| The median age of House members going into the 119th, 58.63 years. | ||
| The youngest representative was born in 1997. | ||
| The oldest representative born in 1936. | ||
| 68 representatives are millennials, and 12 representatives are 35 years or younger. | ||
| That information from Rutgers University. | ||
| When it comes to the Senate, that median age is 63.363 years. | ||
| The youngest senator being John Ossoff, Democrat from Georgia, born in 1987. | ||
| The oldest senator, Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa. | ||
| He was born in 1933. | ||
| He'll become the president pro tepe in the new Congress. | ||
| And five senators are millennials. | ||
| There are also some standouts when it comes to new members of Congress in both the House and the Senate, starting with Representative-elect Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware. | ||
| She is the first openly transgender member of Congress. | ||
| In the Senate, Senator-elect Candy Kim, Democrat from New Jersey, will be the first Korean-American senator. | ||
| Senator-elect Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, will serve as Ohio's first Latino senator and the first senator born in South America. | ||
| Senator-elect Angela also Brooks, Democrat from Maryland. | ||
| She will be Maryland's first black senator. | ||
| And Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat from Delaware, will be Delaware's first female and first black senator. | ||
| Also with also Brooks Shu will be the two black women will serve together in the Senate for the first time. | ||
| And then Representative Ruben Gallego, Democrat from Arizona, he will serve as Arizona's first Latino senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Demographics of the 119th Congress. | |
| You will see some new faces in Washington, and C-SPAN will be there to bring it to you. | ||
| Gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House on C-SPAN 1, the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You can watch major hearings that are taking place on C-SPAN 3 and the other networks as well. | ||
| You can also follow along here of the 119th Congress on our website, c-span.org, or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| We're live here from Capitol Hill this morning, and we expect at noon Eastern time that the new Congress will begin. | ||
| What happens next is up in the air. | ||
| Will Speaker Mike Johnson get the votes to retain the top post? | ||
| We're asking you this morning to deliver your message to lawmakers. | ||
| What do you want to see them act on first? | ||
| Do you think there should be bipartisanship? | ||
| What do you think about this speaker vote? | ||
| Who should lead each party? | ||
| Let's go to Robert in Bluffton, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Robert, good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you today? | ||
| I'm doing well, sir. | ||
| Go ahead with your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Oh, so many. | ||
| So many, so many. | ||
| But anyway, the first thing I'd like to say is to the Republican Congress is that if you don't come together and elect a speaker, you can't get anything done. | ||
| You have to get a speaker first. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you want to change it later, change it later. | ||
| But you need to come together right now, today at noon, and vote for Mike Johnson to come in there and start the process. | ||
| You need to certify Trump's election victory. | ||
| And then if you want to change the speaker at a later date, then knock your socks off. | ||
| All right. | ||
| But right now, you need to. | ||
| Robert is right. | ||
| Nothing else can happen here in Washington until they elect a speaker. | ||
| That's at noon Eastern time. | ||
| Robert's saying he wants one round. | ||
| He wants Mike Johnson to continue to serve as Speaker of the House. | ||
| Republicans in control here of the House chamber. | ||
| And they will have the majority in the Senate and, of course, the White House as well. | ||
| What will be their agenda? | ||
| None of it can happen until they elect a Speaker. | ||
| And as Robert was just saying, they can't certify the election results. | ||
| President-elect Donald Trump's win, which they are supposed to do on Monday. | ||
| They cannot do that until they have a speaker. | ||
| Greg in Pendleton, Indiana, Republican. | ||
| Greg, we are up on Capitol Hill this morning. | ||
| You can hear it's getting louder around here, busier as more people come to the nation's capital. | ||
| Lots of media here. | ||
| They're setting up around us to cover what's happening here on this opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Lawmakers are making their way to their offices. | ||
| They've brought their families to Washington in hopes that they get sworn in today. | ||
| They will do so on the Senate side, but will they get sworn in here on the House side? | ||
| Greg, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I've been alive for 68 years and I've watched all this bull for a lot of years. | ||
| And I tell you what, the Republicans, if they don't get their act together, there's going to be another party to look at down the road. | ||
| And if they don't get this passed, this is what America was crying about. | ||
| This is why Trump was elected. | ||
| If they can't do the job, we need to know who these guys are that are holding out. | ||
| We need a list of them. | ||
| We need to know what states they're from, and we need to get them out of office. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| Enough is enough. | ||
| You better get it through because people are sick and tired of it. | ||
| Well, Greg, there's been a list out there. | ||
| You've heard the names this morning here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Thomas Massey said he's a hard no. | ||
| Don't even try to change his mind, is what he told news reports, news reporters throughout the days leading up to today. | ||
| And then you've got people like Chip Roy, who talked to President-elect Donald Trump today and tried to convince him to vote for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| According to news reports, Chip Roy told the president-elect there's more than just him who are opposed to Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| So we'll see who actually votes for someone else or votes present when their name is called in the House chamber. | ||
| Again, C-SPAN cameras will be there to capture it all. | ||
| Normally those cameras operated and controlled by the House of Representatives. | ||
| Not today, C-SPAN cameras in the chamber like we were two years ago when many rounds took place before the Republicans elected their speaker. | ||
| Brenda in Lexington, Kentucky, an independent. | ||
| Hi, Brenda. | ||
| Brenda in Lexington, Kentucky, independent caller. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yes, I'm here. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| We can. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Oh, great. | ||
| Sorry, I don't know what happened. | ||
| Just a couple points. | ||
| I am here, by the way, for this. | ||
| This is what I'm tuning in for: is this fight? | ||
| Because that is the only gratification we can get from this Congress. | ||
| That is the only gratification we have gotten in the last 20, 30 years is to see these people actually wake up and fight each other. | ||
| It's like a pay-per-view that my taxes pay for. | ||
| And, you know, I really do think that unless Congress gets their butts going and gets some things passed that will benefit all people, they shouldn't be paid. | ||
| Not a penny. | ||
| No salary, no salary for these members elect, these new members. | ||
| You know, this is their first time in Washington. | ||
| You're saying you don't get paid until you elect a speaker and start governing. | ||
| And if you do it, if you pass bills, if you stop bickering, if you stop posturing in front of the media, no offense, but we're paying for them to do a job. | ||
| If you were doing your job and you stopped doing your job, would you continue to get a paycheck? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Brenda, that tees up Speaker Mike Johnson with reporters at the Capitol after the government funding vote on December 20th. | ||
| He talked about President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the agenda and the job of Speaker of the House. | ||
| So I was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process, spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. | ||
| He knew exactly what we were doing and why. | ||
| And this is a good outcome for the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well. | |
| Elon Musk and I talked within about an hour ago and we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. | ||
| And I said, hey, you want to be Speaker of the House? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He said, this may be the hardest job in the world. | ||
| I think it is. | ||
| But we're going to get through this. | ||
| We are going to unify this country, and we are going to bring the America First Agenda to the people beginning in January. | ||
| We cannot wait to get started. | ||
| I hope you all have a great holiday. | ||
| That was Speaker Mike Johnson back in December talking to reporters after they passed that government funding bill that kept the government open, avoided a government, shut down. | ||
| Fast forward to today, January 3rd, 2025. | ||
| Will Speaker Mike Johnson retain the top post? | ||
| More on that coming up, but let's go back to Pedro Echaferria with more details about today. | ||
| And on that front, Olivia Beavers from the Wall Street Journal putting on her ex-feed that a group of conservatives and potential opposition votes against Mike Johnson are circulating a document, which they're calling a scorecard, that lists the multiple failures of the 118th Congress. | ||
| According to Olivia Beavers, the author remains unnamed. | ||
| It hits talking points that similarly have been shared by some conservatives about Mike Johnson's tenure in the Senate. | ||
| So that's making the rounds on the House side leading up to today's vote. | ||
| This is from Frank Thorpe from NBC News on the Senate side that Mitch McConnell's nameplate being removed from the leader suite in the Capitol for the changing of the guard, saying that Senator John Thune's name will go up soon. | ||
| They also add that Senator Barrasso's name already on the whip's office. | ||
| That's just down the hall. | ||
| That's from Frank Thorpe, also from NBC News. | ||
| This from the presidential side, the White House, that the president and the First Lady, Joe Biden, expected to go to New Orleans Monday to, quote, grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack on January 1st. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, Pedro Echo Verubia, with more on what's happening here in Washington on the opening day of the 119th Congress, we're up here on Capitol Hill, and joining us this morning is Stephen Newcomb. | |
| He is the co-author of Axios' Hill Leaders newsletter. | ||
| Thanks for being here. | ||
| Let's start with the question of the day. | ||
| Does Speaker Mike Johnson have the votes? | ||
| It remains to be seen, right? | ||
| We know he has one no, one hard no, Thomas Massey. | ||
| I think that this speaker race sort of encapsulates his whole tenure so far as Speaker, and that is slim margins, right? | ||
| I mean, he can only afford to lose another vote at this point. | ||
| Now, his allies think that he will remain Speaker. | ||
| There's no real alternative that anybody has put forward. | ||
| But the question is, how long does that draw on? | ||
| Does it go past today? | ||
| We'll have our first ballot at around noon, and then we'll see where things are. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Everything starts at noon, and we'll see how this shakes out. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber for that. | ||
| Before then, though, is Speaker Mike Johnson meeting with these holdouts? | ||
| He is, yes, he's been making a lot of phone calls over the last really two weeks. | ||
| They had a long break, obviously, with the holiday. | ||
| Trying to figure out what these folks want. | ||
| They said that they want process changes. | ||
| What exactly those changes are are unclear. | ||
| They were really upset. | ||
| A lot of the conservatives were upset with how he handled the government funding fight right before Congress left for Christmas break and the new year. | ||
| So that could be playing a part into it. | ||
| But it really remains to be seen what concrete proposals that some of the holdouts, and again, the problem is we don't know exactly who the holdouts are either yet until they go to the floor today and vote. | ||
| Could there be more than the dozen that we've heard about? | ||
| There could be, right? | ||
| I mean, they could get there to the floor. | ||
| The problem with the public vote, obviously, we know that the president-elect has thrown his support behind Mike Johnson to be Speaker. | ||
| The problem with the public vote is you vote publicly, the president-elect knows who you're voting for. | ||
| So, you know, that obviously the sort of MAGA machine can turn out some pretty powerful pressure campaigns. | ||
| And I think that, you know, that's something that a lot of these folks are thinking about before they take this vote. | ||
| Explain what our viewers will see when they're watching C-SPAN this morning. | ||
| Our cameras in the chamber, the first thing that happens is you get an idea of how many lawmakers are actually here. | ||
| Explain. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's right. | ||
| You'll have a quorum call. | ||
| You'll understand what the math is going to look like. | ||
| The math could change for Speaker Johnson depending on how many folks are here. | ||
| Now, as far as we know, it'll be the attendance that they need, 344 of them, or 400 and 344. | ||
| Yeah, no, 444. | ||
| 444. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| So they. | ||
| 430. | ||
| Yeah, so they'll need to figure out really what the math is. | ||
| But then the cameras, I mean, you're getting unprecedented access to the House chamber. | ||
| We know that when the speaker fight went on last time for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, there were some iconic moments. | ||
| So hopefully the insight that viewers get, it's a very intimate look at the House floor that really only reporters and folks who are in this building get on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| Yeah, normally these cameras operated by the House of Representatives with C-SPAN cameras in the chamber, you're going to see the huddles that take place. | ||
| People are having side conversations while the procedure votes are happening, right? | ||
| And this is something that print reporters, as you said, other reporters, you can go into the chamber and watch this happening. | ||
| You can see who's on the floor, who's not. | ||
| Sometimes members are only talking to just themselves in the chamber, but today it'll be a full house. | ||
| You said it's a public vote. | ||
| Explain. | ||
| Yeah, they go to the House floor and the clerk will call the roll alphabetically. | ||
| And everybody has to stand up in the House chamber and announce who they're voting for. | ||
| Now on the Democratic side, you're going to, I think, probably unanimously have everybody vote for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| So if this thing goes to multiple rounds, expect to hear a lot of Hakeem Jeffries' name over the next, you know, however long this is going to take today at the very least. | ||
| And obviously a lot of Republicans are going to vote for Mike Johnson, but the ones to look out for are once their names come, who are they going to vote for? | ||
| Folks like Andy Biggs, Thomas Massey, sort of the Freedom Caucus Coalition, these very conservative folks. | ||
| It's going to be very dramatic as we go through the roll call. | ||
| And as you said, it's in alphabetical order. | ||
| So Biggs comes first, I believe, the one that people are, you know, one of the dozen that folks are watching to see, okay, what does he do? | ||
| What are his options? | ||
| What can he say when his name is called? | ||
| Well, you can say, you can vote for whoever you want. | ||
| Literally anybody, the Speaker does not have to be a member of Congress. | ||
| We've had folks, like during former Speaker McCarthy's fight to become Speaker, vote for folks who are not in Congress, former members of Congress can vote present as well. | ||
| So it's a wide range. | ||
| There's no predicting who they're going to say, what they're going to say. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see the names that they come up with as an alternative. | ||
| Whether those are serious alternatives or sort of just a vanity name is something we'll have to see. | ||
| Will we hear the name Elon Musk? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think that Musk responded playfully to it. | ||
| I think that there are some people who take it more seriously than others. | ||
| But look, somebody who is not a member of Congress is not going to be the Speaker of the House. | ||
| So whoever votes for anybody, whether it was Elon Musk or a former member, that person is just not going to become Speaker. | ||
| We've learned that President-elect Donald Trump had a phone call with Representative Chip Roy. | ||
| What does Congressman Chip Roy want? | ||
| Has he said who he's going to vote for? | ||
| He hasn't said who he's going to vote for. | ||
| He hasn't been a concrete no. | ||
| He's sort of teased that he was a no. | ||
| He's one of those folks that wants some of the process changes in the House of Representatives. | ||
| He's talked about it being more member-driven. | ||
| He wants more individual feedback on the legislative process. | ||
| He doesn't want it to be as top-down as it is, at least as he sees it is. | ||
| Again, the government funding fight that we went through right before Congress left was a big part of some of those feelings being hurt. | ||
| So no specifics really have come out about what he's asking for, but put him in the group of folks who want procedural changes committed to from Johnson. | ||
| There were some reports pushed by folks to have him serve as chair of the rules committee. | ||
| Why would that be important? | ||
| So having control of the rules committee is incredibly powerful. | ||
| The way that the House of Representatives works to get any bill onto the floor through regular order, the House Speaker has to go through the rules process. | ||
| The rules committee has to vote on a rule that will govern the amount of debate time is on the floor. | ||
| So to go through that process, and if you're the chairman, you have a pretty powerful check on anything that the Speaker and House leadership wants to do if they want to get it through your rules committee. | ||
| Now, the Speaker can bypass the Rules Committee and put a bill on the floor which is considered under suspension of the rules, but any bill that goes onto the floor under that procedure needs a two-third majority to pass. | ||
| So obviously it makes the lift much higher if you go through the rules process, you go through the rules committee, it's just a simple majority that you get for a bill. | ||
| Two-thirds means he needs Democrats. | ||
| Whoever is the Speaker would need Democrats signing on to the legislation. | ||
| He would need to know that if he's bringing something onto the floor under suspension of the rules, that he has enough votes. | ||
| And that's Democrats. | ||
| And that's been a lot of the criticisms, right, from his Republican conference is that Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, has delivered a lot of votes in a lot of these super critical moments on government funding, the debt limit, Ukraine funding. | ||
| It has been bipartisan. | ||
| He has had to count on Democrats to provide sometimes a majority of the votes, losing half of his conference. | ||
| So that's why Speaker Johnson is reticent to go through that suspension of the rules because it plays not well politically within his own conference. | ||
| Even if you get past the rules committee, it's been described as a read-thin majority. | ||
| How does he get legislation voted on on the floor? | ||
| We're going to have to see. | ||
| I don't know, given the margins and given what they need to accomplish in the new year, especially a lot of the government spending stuff. | ||
| Obviously, they pushed the government funding fight into the first 100 days toward the first 100 days of the administration. | ||
| It's going to be really difficult for him to sort of control that conference. | ||
| To his credit, he's done it once before, right, at the end, sort of the second half of the last Congress, and he went through a lot of these fights. | ||
| But these are things, a lot of the same situations that saw him be criticized already that has threatened his job, those are things that are coming up again. | ||
| On top of the fact that the Republicans have a very ambitious legislative agenda that they want to get through Congress, and if they, you know, fall under that bar, there's only a few people who are to be blamed in Congress. | ||
| We learned earlier this morning, Congressman French Hill was sitting with us here on Capitol Hill, and he said, if you don't see a conference meeting called before the 12 p.m. vote, then Speaker Johnson is in a good place. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's right. | ||
| If he doesn't have the votes, they're going to have it scheduled so that they can leave the House floor and go immediately into a conference meeting to sort of try and hash out where they're at. | ||
| If Speaker Johnson doesn't notice a meeting beforehand, they probably feel pretty confidently that they're not going to lose another vote other than Thomas Massey on the floor. | ||
| And if it goes more than one round, I mean, if people just want to, these Republicans who are saying no, they're going to vote, what's the likelihood that they just want to have an opposition at first, but then they're going to come around? | ||
| Yeah, they could certainly, you know, your leverage is at an all-time high when you are the one standing in the way of what something someone wants, right? | ||
| And if you are the one or the two or the three people who are standing in the way of Mike Johnson becoming Speaker, you're going to be able to win some concessions, hypothetically. | ||
| So yeah, they might vote no on the floor at first just to sort of stake out their position, get into the room with the Speaker, talk about the things that they want, just, you know, put their money where their mouth is and vote no on the floor and to see what they can win from the speaker behind closed doors. | ||
| We learned earlier from Pedro Etraveria that the sign, the office plaque for Senator Mitch McConnell in his leadership office is coming down. | ||
| A new one is going up for Senate Majority Leader John Thune. | ||
| What are you expecting today in the Senate? | ||
| They're going to swear in the new senators. | ||
| They will present the electors. | ||
| They won't vote on, certify in the election yet, but they'll sort of go through that process. | ||
| And it's, you know, the handing over of power. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will no longer be in the majority. | ||
| He will sort of go into the resistance of the first two Trump years and trying to win back his majority. | ||
| And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, his first time as majority leader, obviously a long time that Mitch McConnell was Republican leader, historic run. | ||
| They have a lot on their plate that they want to get done. | ||
| They want to start very ambitiously. | ||
| The schedule for the first 100 days in the Senate is packed, and I think they're going to start today and on Monday once they get back to really get the ball rolling on particularly a border plan and a spending plan. | ||
| What do you make of the matchup, if you will, of Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer? | ||
| Chuck Schumer with many more years than John Thune in playing chess with the other side in the parliamentary moves that you have over on the Senate side. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thune watched Mitch McConnell for a long time. | ||
| He was a top Mitch McConnell sort of acolyte, learned from him, obviously was his number two as whip. | ||
| I don't think that, and Mitch McConnell's still around. | ||
| A lot of his leadership team, I think, is up in the air, but some of those folks will still be around. | ||
| So a lot of the experience will still be around Jon Thune. | ||
| He has a leadership team already that has been in the room, sort of knows how to deal with not only the Schumer team and that operation, but also just the Senate in general, the way that the floor works. | ||
| So I think that they'll probably hit the ground running. | ||
| It's not like, you know, when Speaker Johnson became Speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted, he had no experience at all in leadership. | ||
| So it's not that type of situation. | ||
| What role will Senator Mitch McConnell play in the 119th Congress? | ||
| As you noted, he's still serving and representing Kentucky. | ||
| He is, he's still serving. | ||
| I think that he'll still have a voice in leadership. | ||
| He's still, obviously, a lot of folks look at him as somebody who has a ton of experience. | ||
| He's going to be on the subcommittee on appropriations for defense. | ||
| He's going to have a lot of say over defense spending, which is obviously a huge priority for him throughout his career. | ||
| But, you know, how much does he get out of the way and sort of let Thune be John Thune? | ||
| I think the parallel is Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi in the House for Democrats, right? | ||
| And I think that if you talk to some House Democrats, they'd tell you they're frustrated that Nancy Pelosi isn't all the way out of the picture to let Leader Jeffries do the job. | ||
| So we'll have to see how that dynamic plays out on the House Senate side and on the Senate Republican side. | ||
| And she will be here today, even after she had to undergo surgery after her fall. | ||
| She said last night in a video that she's going to be here today. | ||
| Talk about the agenda for the Democratic leadership in the House and their ability to keep everybody in line. | ||
| Our viewers will note, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was masterful at that. | ||
| Republicans even say, I wish the Republicans would be like that. | ||
| Does that continue under Hakeem Jeffries? | ||
| Well, he did it pretty much did it in this Congress, the last Congress, in the 118th. | ||
| He did it pretty effectively. | ||
| Again, somebody who learned pretty closely from Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| I think that their agenda is trying to pick their spots, right? | ||
| Figure out where you have the most leverage to message against what they think are the most egregious Trump agenda items. | ||
| Message them publicly to the American voters. | ||
| You know, there's an election in two years. | ||
| They're going to try and take back the House. | ||
| And then I think it's also, you know, trying to find out who your new superstars are. | ||
| There's been a generational change in House Democrats. | ||
| A lot of the elder folks are leaving the ranking positions at top of the committees and more junior members are coming in. | ||
| Who are your superstars? | ||
| Who do you lean on to communicate the Democratic message ahead of the 2026 election? | ||
| Stephen Newcomb writes the Hill Leaders newsletter. | ||
| He's the co-author of it for Axios. | ||
| We appreciate you and your reporting. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Back to our calls with all of you this morning. | ||
| We're asking you, what's your message to lawmakers at the beginning of the 119th Congress? | ||
| We'll go to Curtis, who's in Des Moines, Iowa, an independent. | ||
| Curtis, thanks for hanging on the line. | ||
| What do you want to say to these decision makers? | ||
| So what I personally have to say is even though a lot of their constituents are either very scared or very excited about what's going to be passed in this upcoming session, I think that there's not really going to be anything getting done because we've seen in the past years, even in this last session, that Congress can't really work within their own parties, let alone reach across the aisle to pass something meaningful. | ||
| And like, sure, we've seen the House pass a few things, but I think the Senate is going to be, again, as usual, where a lot of those bills go to die because Republicans have a slim majority. | ||
| And I think their chances of getting the Democrats to agree to pass a bill with them are even more slim. | ||
| In the Senate, you're talking about. | ||
| In the Senate, Curtis? | ||
| Yeah, so you have, yep, you have 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, two Independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Angus Kink of Maine, who will be caucusing with the Democrats. | ||
| So there is speculation that you could see JD Vance sitting in the chair of the Senate chamber, breaking tie votes as VP Kamala Harris has done in the 118th Congress. | ||
| Rocco in Georgia, Republican, good morning to you. | ||
| Morning, how are you? | ||
| I'm doing well. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| We're at a very critical juncture in this country. | ||
| The enemies of our country look at everything that we do. | ||
| And if you look at the calendar, we have a presidential funeral coming up. | ||
| We have a presidential inauguration coming up and a presidential parade coming up, which means millions of Americans will be exposed. | ||
| And all the bad decisions that Joe Biden has made over the past four years are coming to fruition now at the same time. | ||
| The events in New Orleans over the weekend shows how exposed that we are. | ||
| And they have not, they cannot play games today. | ||
| You can't let a perfect be the enemy of good. | ||
| We got to take it step by step. | ||
| Get a speaker and then get things done as you go along. | ||
| But to delay everything is just putting Americans' security and safety at risk. | ||
| Rocco, what do you say, though, to Republicans like Chip Roy, Thomas Massey, who are upset about how Washington works? | ||
| They want to see more control over how spending is done here. | ||
| More control over the purse strings. | ||
| That is the responsibility of Congress. | ||
| I understand that, but at this juncture, when things change, all of a sudden, your perspective should change. | ||
| When you see Americans getting ran over by a truck because the security was not there, you know you have enemies of this country and all your complaints doesn't bring any of those 15 people back that were killed in New Orleans. | ||
| It just doesn't. | ||
| Rocco there in Georgia talking about all the events that are happening in Washington today, the opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| As he said, certification of the election is supposed to take place on Monday, January 6th. | ||
| That follows a busy week. | ||
| That precedes a busy week in Washington when there are funeral memorial services for the late former president Jimmy Carter. | ||
| And we will have coverage of all of that as well on C-SPAN. | ||
| Follow along on c-span.org on our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| We will have coverage of the remains of the late president as they make their way from Georgia to Washington. | ||
| He will lie in state here in Washington next week. | ||
| You will see the public as well as dignitaries coming through the nation's capital to pay their respects. | ||
| And you can watch it all on C-SPAN. | ||
| Sue in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an Independent. | ||
| Hi there, Sue. | ||
| Your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Yeah, well, first of all, your guest just said an egregious Trump agenda. | ||
| So I guess we know what his exios agenda really, really is. | ||
| Former Democrat. | ||
| And I want to say it has been horrible the last four years. | ||
| And I'm all for President Trump's agenda to protect this nation of ours from enemies that are even internal as well as external. | ||
| And I guess what I want to say is I don't like the leverage that can be had by the big money over all of these representatives of ours who are supposed to be representing the people, but in fact aren't. | ||
| I want to see Marjorie Taylor Greene become Speaker. | ||
| She would be excellent, and she is not afraid to speak, and she is representing actual policy. | ||
| Sue, she said she's going to support Speaker Mike Johnson today. | ||
| Do you think she should do that? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| I think she is, I think that's a leveraging issue. | ||
| I think that if your body is strongly represented with dual citizens, that is a big problem because we are no longer representing the U.S. | ||
| We are representing outside interests, other countries, big money, bankers, people that have leverage. | ||
| This is the problem. | ||
| Mancy and Chiproy, go for it. | ||
| Go for it, guys. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sue there in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Independent Clerk. | ||
| We are less than two hours away from that speaker vote. | ||
| Pedro Echeverria has more. | ||
| So we're playing the will they or won't they support game, I suppose, all morning. | ||
| And there has been some congressional media reporting on maybe where people are. | ||
| This is Michael Schnell of the Hill reporting today that when it comes to Representative Rich McCormick of Georgia telling her that, quote, it looks like he'll support Johnson on the floor. | ||
| It looks like that, yeah, when he asked if he'll vote for Johnson, saying that McCormick spoke to Johnson yesterday, said, quote, I feel like he's listening. | ||
| I don't see a better alternative right now. | ||
| We have a lot of work to do. | ||
| We start wasting it and start getting into the infighting we had last time. | ||
| We'll be right back where we started, and that's a very weak position to come from. | ||
| I think the more we realize it's about the Congress and not just the speaker, the faster we'll get the job done. | ||
| That's Michael Schnell there. | ||
| Chad Pergram, who is congressional reporter for Fox News, has this on Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee. | ||
| He was one of those that had not yet committed to Speaker Johnson. | ||
| This is where he is, at least in a recent interview, saying, when it comes to Representative Burchett, saying, I'm not committed to Speaker Johnson, still waiting on some conversations, but I would like to think that if we could get on that point, we could go, get on with the American agenda, which is why people elected us to do. | ||
| Going on to say, every time the speaker meets with us, I think it's productive. | ||
| I think it shows that he cares. | ||
| He is listening and he's attentive. | ||
| He's got 435 egos he's got to deal with, so I get it. | ||
| That's Chad Pergram there. | ||
| And then Frank Thorpe, we showed you a picture of the former offices of Senator Mitch McConnell. | ||
| Now a new name plate on that office is Frank Thorpe with a picture saying that Senator John Thune's name is placed on the Senate Republican leader's suite by the architect of the Capitol Workers, replacing Mitch McConnell's name, which had been there for 18 years. | ||
|
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The plaque is up over on the Senate side. | |
| A change in leadership over in the upper chamber. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune will take over the majority for the Senate, for the Republican Party over there. | ||
| That happens today at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We are simulcasting the Washington Journal this morning here on C-SPAN at noon Eastern time when the Senate gavels in. | ||
| We'll bring you over to that chamber on C-SPAN 2 here on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| We'll stick with the House floor because C-SPAN cameras will be in the room when the vote takes place. | ||
| It's the first order of business. | ||
| The House and only the House needs to elect a Speaker today for business to get underway. | ||
| No votes, no debate, no governing until they get a speaker. | ||
| We'll see if Speaker Mike Johnson has the votes to do it in one round. | ||
| Michelle in Niagara Falls, New York, Democratic caller, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| We're listening to you, Michelle. | ||
| What's your message to lawmakers? | ||
| Yes, well, I hope Mike Johnson does not get the votes to remain Speaker of the House because he tends to just do what the MAGA and the president-elect wants, and oftentimes that's not what's best for America. | ||
| And I feel that the Republican Party is breaking into two MAGA and regular Republican, which is a good thing because the regular Republicans align more with the center-leaning Democrats, which will finally get our country together and stop all the this side, that side. | ||
| And I feel America that will help get things done right for the people. | ||
| And I also wanted to say rest in peace to Jimmy Carter. | ||
| All right, Michelle's comments there. | ||
| Cheryl in Munford, Alabama, Republican. | ||
| Cheryl. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I would like to say I support Representative Johnson remaining the Speaker. | ||
| The Americans spoke loud and clear on Election Day, and we want work done, so there's no time to waste getting a new Speaker. | ||
| So leave Johnson in, and if they don't, let's put Elon or Vivek in and let them have to deal with those boys. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So Cheryl, if it goes past the first round, you would have your representative say the name Elon Musk. | ||
| Maybe after a couple rounds, yeah. | ||
| If they want to play, let's play. | ||
| But another issue I have is with all these illegals, I'm looking forward to those being dealt with. | ||
| And I think what the government needs to tell them is you need to, if you're here illegally, you need to contact a legal representative and say, this is where I'm located at. | ||
| So if the government has to come and search for them, they should lose any chance forever of ever entering or becoming a citizen. | ||
| If they turn themselves in and say, this is where I am, then they leave that door open. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Cheryl's message to lawmakers here on this opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| We'll hear from Sean next, who's in Jacksonville, Florida, an independent. | ||
| Hi, Sean. | ||
| Jay. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I have to tell you, 40 years ago, I was sitting where you're sitting as a C-SPAN staff member. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Sean, you're a former C-SPAN, huh? | ||
| On Capitol Hill? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Anyhow, getting down to business, the one thing I've noticed in Congress recently and last several years, you don't hear much talk about a balanced budget amendment anymore. | ||
| I know there was a business cycle balanced budget amendment introduced last year by the chairman of the committee. | ||
| But I would love to see that get some strength. | ||
| I think our deficit is at such a point that we ought to start addressing the deficit. | ||
| And even President Trump only talks a little bit about paying down the debt. | ||
| And, you know, it's like an afterthought. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I just don't see how we can move forward as a nation if we don't address this. | ||
| I think our debt is at 98% of GDP at this point. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Sean, that's his message to lawmakers. | ||
| He wants them to deal with the debt and deficits. | ||
| Today is the opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| The first thing that these lawmakers have to do is elect a speaker. | ||
| All Republicans, the Republicans, excuse me, are in the majority. | ||
| They have the majority in the House. | ||
| There's a dozen or so Republicans who we don't know how they're going to vote. | ||
| We know there's one hard no from Thomas Massey. | ||
| All the Democrats expected to vote for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| Let's listen to what he had to say in December talking about Republicans and their tactics for passing legislation. | ||
| What we've seen repeatedly amongst my extreme aga Republican colleagues is that they say one thing to the American people before the election and then do something different after the election. | ||
|
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The House Republicans said they were going to protect Social Security and Medicare, and so did their presidential nominee. | |
| And now we learn after the election that House Republicans are planning to try to cut Medicare and Social Security and end it as we know it. | ||
| House Republicans said before the election that they were focused on improving the quality of life of working class Americans. | ||
| But after the election, they're focused on tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected. | ||
| For years, up until this election, the incoming president-elect has said that we're going to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it. | ||
| But now after the election, House Republicans are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to force everyday Americans and hardworking taxpayers to pay for their so-called border wall. | ||
| We all support, on the Democratic side, a strong, a safe, and a secure border. | ||
|
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We have a broken immigration system, and we need to fix it. | |
| We need to enhance our border security. | ||
| And we need to do it in a sensible, bipartisan way. | ||
|
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And Democrats are prepared to do just that. | |
| Keem Jeffries, the Democratic leader here in the House back in December, talking about the Republican majority. | ||
| Republicans take over in Washington in the 119th Congress for both the House, the Senate, and the White House. | ||
| We are live here from Capitol Hill this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| And joining us this morning is Congressman Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. | ||
| Sir, let's talk about these terror attacks, the terror attack that we saw in New Orleans and the bombing that explosives that took place in Las Vegas. | ||
| Both of these gentlemen with military backgrounds, your reaction to that. | ||
| Look, we have had threats to this country for quite some time from a variety of different sources. | ||
| And I think we don't yet know what the motivation was behind the Las Vegas attack, but it's pretty clear that radical Islamic extremism was the motivation behind the New Orleans attack. | ||
| We also had, I think they call themselves, the No Lives Matter group, where we discovered a cachet of weapons larger than any they had found this year at some place out in Virginia from someone who was also intending to do harm. | ||
| We have radical ideological extremists all across the spectrum. | ||
| What that means is we need law enforcement and the FBI to be tracking that and to make sure that we fully fund and fully support their efforts to protect this country. | ||
| Do keep in mind that at various times, Republicans, including Kash Patel, the guy who's picked to be the head of the FBI, have really undercut the FBI, talked about defunding it, talked about how they're part of the deep state. | ||
| Look, they're part of what protects us. | ||
| We need to support domestic law enforcement to root out these extremists before they attack, which by and large, they've done a pretty good job of stopping a number of attacks. | ||
| But as they always say, the terrorists only have to be right once. | ||
| So it's going to be a major challenge going forward for the country. | ||
| Is there a problem in our own military that folks who have served can become extremists? | ||
| I don't know for sure. | ||
| I mean, just say 99.999% of those who serve in the military never have this problem, okay? | ||
| We've also had a large number of attacks, you know, shootings that have been people who haven't had anything to do with the military. | ||
| So I think making a link to the U.S. service members at this point, I don't think it's warranted. | ||
| I think we need to root out this type of extremism all across the country, indeed across the world, wherever it threatens us. | ||
| You are the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. | ||
| You've served in this role as chair for many years. | ||
| What is on the agenda? | ||
| What does your committee need to tackle in this 119th Congress? | ||
| Yeah, I think we've got a very clear agenda. | ||
| Obviously, it's going to be challenged by what's going on in the White House and what's going on with the budget reconciliation process. | ||
| But it's really four items. | ||
| Number one, the Pentagon's got to get better at buying new innovative technology. | ||
| We've seen in Ukraine as the pace of warfare has picked up, drones, the ability to jam incoming missiles. | ||
| It's basically secure communications, information, drones, counter-drones, missiles and missiles defense, AI, machine learning. | ||
| A lot of these new technologies are crucial. | ||
| Pentagon's too slow to buy that. | ||
| You can't be innovating on a two- to three-year budget cycle. | ||
| Chairman Rogers and I are in complete agreement that we need to speed up that process. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, it's become clear we need to be able to produce critical munitions much in much greater quantity and much faster. | ||
| We've got to figure out how to speed up that process. | ||
| Number three, recruitment. | ||
| We have to be able to recruit and retain the best service members so that we can continue to have the best military in the world. | ||
| That's been challenged in recent years. | ||
| How do we get people to join and stay so that we can meet the numbers that we need? | ||
| Lastly, partnerships and alliances. | ||
| We cannot do this on our own. | ||
| The threats are coming from multiple places. | ||
| Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, various transnational terrorist organizations. | ||
| We need partners and allies, whether it's NATO, South Korea, Japan, wherever we can find partners and allies to meet these challenges. | ||
| So those are the four priorities that we have on the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| When it comes to support for Ukraine, additional weapons or money to buy them, what's your confidence level that that happens in the 119th Congress with Republicans controlling Washington? | ||
| Yeah, it's not high. | ||
| I'm really worried about the approach that Donald Trump and his supporters have taken to this. | ||
| Look, we need a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. | ||
| I completely agree with that. | ||
| This war cannot go on forever. | ||
| It has been devastating to Ukraine and devastating to the broader world in many ways as well. | ||
| But you don't get to a negotiated settlement if you don't fund Ukraine, if you don't give Ukraine the power to defend itself. | ||
| If Putin sees a defenseless Ukraine, he will not stop. | ||
| So when candidate Donald Trump said he opposed an additional supplemental to support Ukraine, he was basically handing Ukraine to the Russians and Putin. | ||
| Has he changed his mind on that? | ||
| Is he going to give Ukraine the power to defend themselves? | ||
| If Ukraine is strong, if Ukraine has security guarantees, then I think that forces Putin to the table. | ||
| It forces him to negotiate. | ||
| And then Donald Trump, the great deal maker, wants to go make that happen, good for him. | ||
| But there's going to be no deal to be made if we don't give Ukraine the power to defend itself. | ||
| You are not obviously going to vote for Speaker Johnson today, but is Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune the best leadership for Republicans to enact to get aid to Ukraine? | ||
| Oh, gosh. | ||
| I mean, that's a very low bar that you just sat in that question. | ||
| The best as compared to everybody else. | ||
| I mean, certainly both Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thun have said they support Ukraine. | ||
| I've had many, many conversations with Speaker Johnson about this and really pressed him on this point. | ||
| And he insists that he does not want to abandon Ukraine. | ||
| So I guess it gives us an opportunity. | ||
| The best, yeah, I don't know about that, but I think there is an opportunity with both of them to make sure that Ukraine does get funded. | ||
| We're going to press them on that issue. | ||
| What would you else do you want to see this committee do? | ||
| It sounds like you have a good relationship with the chair. | ||
| So given the agenda that you outlined, do you think that you can put something on paper and get it on the House floor quickly? | ||
| Is there some bipartisanship? | ||
| Well, we got a shot. | ||
| There is, however, a challenge. | ||
| I mean, look, the great thing about the Armed Services Committee, both from the House and the Senate, is we are bipartisan and we pass a bill every year, 64 straight years now. | ||
| And we are the most bipartisan committee in Congress, the only committee in Congress that gets its work done every single year. | ||
| And it's because we understand the importance of national security and we see it as a bipartisan issue. | ||
| And there is a culture on our committee. | ||
| The culture is we work together and we get it done. | ||
| You will see other committees where the culture is seek every partisan advantage you can get, insult the opposition every single day. | ||
| We don't really do that. | ||
| Believe it or not, Matt Gates served on the Armed Services Committee. | ||
| And even Matt was a reasonably productive member of the committee. | ||
| He didn't blow things up there in the way that he did on government oversight and elsewhere because he adapted to the culture that we have on the committee. | ||
| I believe that culture is fraying because on the House floor, the Freedom Caucus is insisting on a partisan defense bill before they'll even consider voting for it. | ||
| And then most of them don't vote for it anyway. | ||
| So will we be able to maintain that bipartisanship? | ||
| The bill that we passed this year, I did not vote for because it included partisan poison pills at the insistence of the Freedom Caucus. | ||
| Mike Rogers was very public. | ||
| He didn't want those things in there. | ||
| He didn't think they needed to be in there. | ||
| Speaker Johnson caved to the radical right-wing Freedom Caucus that wants it to be partisan for the sake of it being partisan. | ||
| Which one of those two things wins out this year? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We're going to work very, very hard to maintain that bipartisan, that bipartisan tradition keep going forward. | ||
| But it's going to be tested as it's never been tested in my 28 years in Congress. | ||
| You said your committee passes a bill every year. | ||
| It's no small bill, though, to describe what this, I mean, it takes hours for your committee to mark up this legislation. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| It's the National Defense Authorizing Act, which is basically oversight and authorizing funding for the Pentagon. | ||
| So this year, I think it was like $888 billion, roughly. | ||
| And then a whole lot of policy provisions. | ||
| And then because the defense bill passes every year, we typically take on authorizing legislation from other committees. | ||
| The Intel authorization bill was in there. | ||
| Frequently the Coast Guard authorization bill is in there. | ||
| The Foreign Affairs Committee authorization bill is in there. | ||
| And then a host of other issues. | ||
| So it's typically about a 4,000-page bill that is put together exactly in the how a bill, you know, what is it, how a bill becomes a law thing, the schoolhouse rock thing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| We go through committee, we have a long markup, we mark the bill up, it goes to the floor, we offer amendments. | ||
| The Senate, most of the time, does the same thing. | ||
| Occasionally they don't pass it off the full floor, but then we conference with whatever we've got and we produce a product that is bipartisan, bicameral, and the president signs it. | ||
| So it is the legislative process the way the legislative process was supposed to be. | ||
| Sometimes into the wee hours of the morning, this committee has been marking up the legislation. | ||
| Let's end with politics. | ||
| You said after the November election, you told the Washington state newspaper, the Democratic brand, party brand is broken and we desperately need to fix it if the party is ever going to have any hope of appealing to a majority of the people in this country. | ||
| Explain. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I mean, look, please understand there's a lot of different reasons why Democrats didn't win as many elections as they should have. | ||
| I basically think there's four. | ||
| Certainly, I think the Biden-Harris campaign and Biden's decision to try and run again for as long as he did was catastrophic. | ||
| And certainly the way they approached it really put us in a hole. | ||
| I also don't think we use the new media as effectively as the Republicans do. | ||
| And I also don't believe that we have sort of Donald Trump does a better job of presenting himself as an outsider. | ||
| Let's just say that. | ||
| He does it in a bizarre sort of way. | ||
| But the Democratic Party has become thought of as too much status quo, too much establishment. | ||
| All that being true, the fourth reason why we lost is because the extreme left of our Democratic coalition has come to dictate too much policy that is out of touch with the American people on immigration, on criminal justice, on drugs, on homelessness, on radical identity politics. | ||
| These are ideas that are pushed by the far left, and they insist that the rest of the coalition go along with it. | ||
| Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. | ||
| When we do, we alienate a significant chunk of the country. | ||
| When we don't, we alienate that coalition. | ||
| We need to deal with that. | ||
| Think of the number of states that Democrats are no longer competitive in. | ||
| Montana, Iowa, Ohio, Florida. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm not talking about even states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where it's difficult to win. | ||
| I'm talking about states that Barack Obama won. | ||
| Barack Obama won Indiana. | ||
| You see any Democrat winning a statewide race in Indiana anytime soon? | ||
| We have taken ourselves out of our ability to be competitive. | ||
| And I think a huge part of that is because of a far left agenda that has really poisoned the brand of the Democratic Party. | ||
| And we have to fix our brand if we're going to be able to win elections, in my view. | ||
| Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. | ||
| As always, we thank you for your time and spending some of it with our C-SPAN audience. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Happy to do it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We are live here on Capitol Hill talking about the opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| We're getting your message to lawmakers. | ||
| We'll continue with that conversation. | ||
| But first, an update on today's event from Pedro Echeverria. | ||
| Just to give you some latest news from political reporter, this is notices Riley Rogerson commenting on comments made by Representative Tom Massey. | ||
| Remember, he's the one lone no vote that has been registered, at least reported on, when it comes to the speaker's vote. | ||
| Riley Rogerson reporting that Representative Massey tells reporters he, quote, suspects a few more members will commit to voting against Johnson pretty soon. | ||
| However, Jake Sherman of Punch Bowl speaking with the congressional whip Tom Emmer leaving Johnson's office. | ||
| Here's part of that back and forth with Mr. Emmer starting and saying, I think he gets it on the first ballot. | ||
| Jake responding, why is that? | ||
| What are we missing? | ||
| I think he's going to be fine. | ||
| You're not missing anything. | ||
| Your job is to report all this stuff. | ||
| I don't think you're missing anything. | ||
| There's a bunch of people, Jake Sherman says, who are saying that they're not for him. | ||
| They're not sure about him. | ||
| Tom Emmer responding, can you tell me someone who has said no? | ||
| Jake Sherman saying, I can't tell you someone who has said no besides Massey. | ||
| And then Emmer finishing off by saying, yeah, so he's going to be fine. | ||
| Again, that's Jake Sherman there. | ||
| Billy House from Bloomberg with his shorter back and forth with the whip Tom Emmer, the Republican whip saying that he's confident, if confident that Johnson has the votes, Emmer responding, quote, yeah, oh yeah. | ||
| And then this from Matt Gates, former member of Congress, saying this and putting this out on X today, saying Mike Johnson will be elected Speaker today on the first vote. | ||
| People might like or dislike that. | ||
| I'm just reporting the news. | ||
|
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Gates, former congressman now with his own show, reporting, saying that he believes Mike Johnson has the votes. | |
| We will see, as Pedro Etcheveria was just telling all of you, it sounds like it's up in the air. | ||
| Does he or does he not have the vote? | ||
| Will it happen on the first round or not? | ||
| Will there be more rounds of voting today? | ||
| C-SPAN cameras in the chamber will capture it all. | ||
| The 119th Congress will gavel in at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We're live here up on Capitol Hill before all of the action begins, simulcasting the Washington Journal here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| And your message to lawmakers in the 119th Congress is the question for all of you and part of our conversation. | ||
| Mitzi in Huntsville, Alabama, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mitzi. | ||
| Hi, how are you today? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I would like to remind the House of Representatives that while everyone knows that President Trump was delivered a mandate to execute his agenda, the House and all of the other elected officials were also given a mandate to support that agenda. | ||
| I think sometimes after elections, the House seems to forget what their primary objective should be. | ||
| So then, the message I have for Thomas Massey is: Mr. Massey, please stop these silly theatrics like you can pull my fingernails out and I'll still not get behind Mike Johnson. | ||
| Mike Johnson is the only representative who can possibly get elected in a timely basis. | ||
| And I want Mr. Massey to remember that the 4th District of Kentucky will remember how he votes and how he behaves here. | ||
| And in 2026, he will have to account for his behavior. | ||
| Mitchie, those Thomas Massey, Chip Roy, they say they're doing exactly what they believe their voters sent them to Washington to do. | ||
| That their opposition to Mike Johnson is reflecting their voters because they're upset with how Washington spends money. | ||
| How do you respond? | ||
| Well, by obstructing this vote, they're not going to change anything because I don't think there is another representative up there who could possibly get votes to become the Speaker in any kind of timely manner to start working on this agenda. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And to the Democrats, can I give a message to the Democrats really quick? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I think the Democrat congressmen who would rather see Trump fail than America succeed, they need to please rethink that attitude. | ||
| And there are lots of cases in which they can work with the Republicans and try to do what's best for America. | ||
| And I would ask that they think about that. | ||
| All right, Mitzi, there in Huntsville, Alabama, calling on all Republicans in the House to put their support behind Mike Johnson. | ||
| She says that she believes they were sent here to Washington to do just that. | ||
| Punch Bowl News reported earlier this morning that all the freshman Republican members of Congress, those new Republicans elected in November, they are all behind Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| That's from Punch Bowl News this morning. | ||
| The dozen or so that right now have not said how they're going to vote, we will see what they do when the gavel comes down at noon Eastern time. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the room. | ||
| You can watch it right here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, or free video mobile app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| You can watch the Senate gavel in for the beginning of the 119th Congress over on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Mark in Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Mark. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Your message to lawmakers. | ||
| I like to see him put two bills on the floor. | ||
| The first one is to put a flat tax on all campaign donations from school board right on up to president. | ||
| And the second thing is I like to see him put a flat tax on all religious communities, all religious entities. | ||
| They get away with not paying tax for all this time. | ||
| It's not fair. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Mark's message to the lawmakers here as they are slated to begin the 119th Congress. | ||
| Johnny, Granite Falls, Washington, Independent. | ||
| Your turn. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm calling about the, I'd like to see Congress do something about the elderly homeless epidemic. | ||
| It's the fastest growing demographic in the homeless community, and people 55 and older are just being displaced from their homes, whether they're owned or rented, because they can no longer survive this housing market. | ||
| And it's not because of immigrants or anything like that. | ||
| It's because of corporate ownership of property. | ||
| There's plenty of housing space available, but people just can't afford it. | ||
| It's a personal thing with me because I'm going to be joining their ranks at the end of the month, and it's terrifying. | ||
| You know, I've been renting the same place for 30 years, and there's never been a problem. | ||
| I worked for 40-plus years and paid into Social Security, but a simple one-bedroom or studio apartment here would take my entire Social Security check. | ||
| And as far as getting subsidies, it's almost impossible. | ||
| The wait list is five to seven years. | ||
| And those of us who are as old as I am, I'm 73, we're probably not going to live that long. | ||
| And some places, as far as Section 8, they're not even taking new applications. | ||
| So I would really like to see Congress address that issue. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Housing is tops the agenda there for Johnny. | ||
| William in Sparta, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| William, what do you want the 119th Congress to work on? | ||
| William in Sparta, Tennessee, you there? | ||
| All right, William in Sparta. | ||
| All right, you have to listen and talk through your phone. | ||
| Can you mute that television? | ||
| Yes, ma'am, I did. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yes, this is Glenn from I'm calling for unity today in the GOP. | ||
| I'm calling for unities and for them to step up and be strong as a Republican and have a backbone and stand behind our president to be. | ||
| Why, William, would you like that to happen today? | ||
| Why is it important to you? | ||
| It's important to me because I have two children that we're raising, and I want to see their future bright. | ||
| I feel like this turmoil that's going on this day in our time, it's not good for the country. | ||
| It's not good for the future of our country. | ||
| All right, William in Sparta, Tennessee, a Republican. | ||
| He wants his party to get to work. | ||
| And to get to work, they have to elect a speaker. | ||
| It's the first order of business when the House gavels in at noon. | ||
| Nothing else can happen until they elect a Speaker. | ||
| No debate, no votes, no governing. | ||
| They can't even put the rules in place for the 119th Congress. | ||
| The members of Congress who were re-elected or elected for the first time and those that continue to serve in the Senate, the incumbents, they all are supposed to get sworn in today. | ||
| On the House side, though, if they don't elect a Speaker, those that are returning and coming to Washington for the first time do not take the oath today. | ||
| Their families have all come to Washington to watch that happen, to be part of the experience. | ||
| Some of them will be in the House chamber today as well. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will capture it all. | ||
| Travis in DeBerry, Texas, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Travis. | ||
| Hi, how are you today? | ||
| Morning. | ||
| We're listening to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| My suggestion is that Jonathan is not elected as a House Speaker because he's unreliable. | ||
| And I don't know who else might be available, but I act that the Democrats do not support anyone that is radical like that because the agenda is only for the rich and the poor is going to suffer. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Travis, the Democrats have said that all 215 will be here today, including the former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who just underwent surgery. | ||
| They say their party will show up in all of their numbers, 215, and according to news reports and Democrats, that they are united and they will all be saying the name of Hakeem Jeffries when Democrats are individually called in alphabetical order to stand up and say how they vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives. | ||
| Deborah in Mesa, Arizona, an independent, good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I have, when I think about this and I see that Chip and Massey and anybody else who wants to have wants to not vote in Johnson for Speaker, it seems like it's because they want to be the Speaker. | ||
| And to me, it seems like pride is getting in the way of a lot of things that need to go on there. | ||
| And it would just be nice if they would set aside their own wants and desires because Johnson has been a good speaker so far. | ||
| And I just appreciate what he's done. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| There is Deborah voting for Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| The vote will take place at noon Eastern time. | ||
| We are simulcasting the Washington Journal here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 when the House gavels in for the 119th Congress. | ||
| Here on C-SPAN, we'll bring you the C-SPAN cameras on the House floor. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, we'll bring you over to that chamber as they gavel in for the 119th Congress. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, if all Republicans show up today for the voting, he needs 218 votes. | ||
| An outright majority is what he will need if all the Republicans and Democrats show up. | ||
| Democrats have said they're all here. | ||
| We'll see how many Republicans vote and we'll see how many vote for Mike Johnson. | ||
| Stay here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, or free video mobile app, C-SPAN, now to watch the vote unfold. | ||
| Seth in New York, Republican caller, let's go to you. | ||
| Your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| You know, I just really hope, you know, I live in one of the New York 4, one of the national swing districts this year. | ||
| We've spent a lot of time with people like Congressman Emmer, the whip, and Speaker Johnson up here. | ||
| And I think Speaker Johnson has shown he can work with a complex and a sometimes problematic caucus. | ||
| He can maneuver it. | ||
| He can handle it. | ||
| He's also shown that he's willing to put investments in places like New York where we can and we have seen wins along with our great county chairman here in Nassau County, Chairman Cairo. | ||
| So I just hope the Republicans will come together. | ||
| We'll make sure to get through on this first ballot, no longer and not have again where we have to have 15 rounds last year in 2023. | ||
| And then again, we have to dispose of a speaker. | ||
| I think it's problematic. | ||
| I think we voted for this Republican Congress because of the sense of urgency of things, whether it's the economy, immigration, continuing turmoil in the Middle East. | ||
| The day, it seems like it's changing by the day there, and the threats here at home increase. | ||
| And I just hope that we can start January 3rd in this new Congress with a legislative might to make sure that we can really address these issues. | ||
| And I hope, and I was listening to Hakeem Jeffries before talk about border security. | ||
| We have a new member of Congress, Congresswoman from our South Shore, a one-term supervisor who's with a lot of money to sound like a Republican. | ||
| And the one thing that the left seems to be able to do is have this big tent, and none of them are threatening to not vote for Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| We see people like AOC go up to districts in upstate New York with Pat Ryan and campaign with him. | ||
| I think that's the same type of mentality and method and offensive tactics we need in this Congress. | ||
| And I think Mike Johnson will continue to invest in races across the country where we can win and grow the majority, hopefully, two years from now and have a lot of bills to deliver to President Trump's desk. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Seth throwing his support behind Mike Johnson for speaker. | ||
| Back to Pedro Echeveria for more on this new Congress. | ||
| This comes from polling organizations. | ||
| The data that released from them in the last couple of days, the one from YouGov takes a look at what people think about the effectiveness of Congress in the next two years, despite what's happening with the current speakers race when as 32% of all citizens that were polled by YouGov said that this Congress coming up will accomplish more in the next two years. | ||
| Only 17% saying they'll accomplish about the same amount, 31% saying they're not sure. | ||
| You're probably not surprised by the fact that Democrats, only 10% of those said that this Congress will accomplish more. | ||
| 64% of Republicans say that it will accomplish more. | ||
| And Independents, 23%. | ||
| Also, the Pew Research Center put out information taking a look at the religious composition of the 119th Congress coming up. | ||
| They highlight the fact that Christians will make up 87% of voting members in the Senate and the House of Representatives combined in the 2025-2027 congressional session. | ||
| That's down from 88% in the last session and 92% a decade ago. | ||
| It further highlights the fact that there'll be 461 Christian members of Congress when the 119th Congress meets, compared with 469 in the previous Congress and 491 during the 2015 to 2017 session. | ||
| It will be the lowest number of Christians since the start of the 2009-2011 congressional session, the first of which Pew Research Center conducted this analysis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
19th Congress by the numbers. | |
| We are live on Capitol Hill this morning here for the Washington Journal and a conversation with all of you. | ||
| We want to know what is your message to lawmakers as we are less than two hours away from the gavel coming down on a new Congress. | ||
| We are approaching the top of the hour here on the East Coast. | ||
| We will continue with a conversation until they gavel in and out. | ||
| They'll do that a couple of times on the 118th Congress. | ||
| And then they will officially gavel in at noon Eastern time, the 119th Congress. | ||
| Until then, we continue with all of you and your thoughts on Washington and the 119th Congress. | ||
| Annie in Chicago, a Democratic caller. | ||
| Annie, lawmakers are watching. | ||
| They have gathered here on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Many offices tuned in to C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 watching us this morning. | ||
| So what is your message to these lawmakers? | ||
| I guess it's going back to a basic civics lesson in that the Congress is not there to just serve a president. | ||
| It's there to serve its constituents. | ||
| And I find that the 118th was probably one of the most ineffectual Congresses, at least on the House side. | ||
| And I would like to avoid that repeat. | ||
| I would love to see more of the moderates, left or right, come to the center. | ||
| I'm not really confident about Johnson. | ||
| I think he is just a, you know, puppet of the current, I mean, of the incoming president, and it scares me a little bit. | ||
| I just hope they listen and civically apply what their job is there, which is to represent us and best represent us. | ||
| And that may mean going against the president at times. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Annie wants to see some bipartisanship legislation passed and sent to the president's desk. | ||
| It's going to be a busy Washington here in January. | ||
| It begins today with the opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| On Monday, January 6th, they are slated to certify the electoral results here in Congress. | ||
| It's written out as part of their responsibility here for the federal government. | ||
| That cannot happen, though, until a speaker is elected. | ||
| No business happens in the House of Representatives until they have a speaker. | ||
| Following today, and if they elect a speaker, and following the certification of the election results, then you have in the coming weeks nomination confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's picks to serve in his cabinet. | ||
| You have the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20th. | ||
| And in between all of that, services for the late President Jimmy Carter happening in Georgia next week and continuing here in Washington when his casket will lie in state here in the nation's capital. | ||
| Here on C-SPAN, coverage of everything, all of that, wall to wall. | ||
| And you can find it online at c-span.org and our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| Glenn is in California and independent. | ||
| Glenn? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Your message to lawmakers. | ||
| I would really not vote Johnson in as Speaker. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| He was horrible. | ||
| He held up all the financing. | ||
| He is just not a good speaker. | ||
| Nobody trusts him. | ||
| I don't trust him. | ||
| I was a Republican. | ||
| I am now Independent. | ||
| And I would never vote for the man. | ||
| Okay, so you were a Republican, now an Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What made you switch to be an Independent? | |
| Donald Trump. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| I cannot support an insurrectionist. | ||
| I just can't. | ||
| And I would really love to see Democrats and Independents do an insurrection on Donald Trump. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Lees in Rome, Georgia, a Republican. | ||
| Lees, good morning to you. | ||
| Well, that's Liz. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Les, good morning. | ||
| But what I want to see this year, finally, I want to see some unity in In our Congress. | ||
| The one thing that the Democrats have always done, they work together no matter what, whether it be by strong arm from Nancy Pelosi or whoever, but they do, when they vote, they vote in unity. | ||
| I want to see the Republicans work together that way this year to get something done with the majorities they've been given and to support our president's agenda that will be great for this country if they will support it. | ||
| But you've got the folks like Chip Roy that I heard this morning talking about he was sent there to make change. | ||
| But if you've got two or three people like him that want to make change, do they not realize that when they do the things that they're trying to do now to stir the pot to cause the problems that when they want to get these three items through that they want to make the change, they've got to have the support of these people that they're going against today to buck the system. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Caller in Rome, Georgia, hang on the line. | ||
| I'm going to go back to Pedro Echeverria because he has an update on Chip Roy and I'll come back to you and get your reaction. | ||
| Les, thanks for the segue on Chip Roy. | ||
| This is from Kristen Holmes with CNN. | ||
| She puts on her ex-feet saying, ahead of today's vote, Trump tells me he's confident in Mike Johnson's success, confirmed he's been in touch with Republican holdouts, including Representative Chip Roy. | ||
| Quote, Chip Roy will do what's right for this country, Mr. Trump said in a brief interview. | ||
| Also, he said that he's not eyeing anyone else for the speaker's position. | ||
| That's Kristen Holmes. | ||
| Also, Rhys Gorman from Notice in a conversation with Representative Don Bacon saying, quote, this is in light of calls from some saying that Chip Roy should be the head of the Rules Committee. | ||
| Don Bacon is quoted as saying, putting Chip Roy in charge of the Rules Committee is like putting Stalin in charge of amnesty and diplomacy. | ||
| So there's an idea. | ||
| This is Rhys Gorman going on to say that if you want an idea of how unpopular Chip Roy Rules Committee Chairman would be amongst moderate members, back to you, Greta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, let's go back to our caller in Rome, Georgia. | |
| You just heard there President-elect Donald Trump saying, he predicting that he believes Chip Roy will fall in line. | ||
| Caller, what do you think? | ||
| I sure hope he does, and the others too. | ||
| This is the one time, because like you say, until we get a speaker, nothing happens. | ||
| And we've got to have a speaker that works with both sides of the aisle. | ||
| Jonathan has shown he can do that and he can be an effective leader if they will just work with him and get things done. | ||
| And that's, I just, when we went through this fiasco that we went through the lifetime trying to elect a speaker, and we put up with all of that, and I sat and watched it time after time after time. | ||
| And the frustration that as a voter that I see that the party that I've been supporting for many years can't work together to get things done in our Congress. | ||
| And that's what I want to see this year. | ||
| I want to see some unity in the Republicans and to be able to work with some of the Democrats too to get things done to make this country a whole lot better than it has been being over the last four years. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Caller. | ||
| He says that he wants Speaker Mike Johnson to get the gavel today when the House gavels in at noon Eastern time. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be there to capture it all and show you the conversations that are happening on the floor during that first round and any rounds that may follow if they cannot elect a speaker on the first vote. | ||
| Adrienne in New York, Democratic caller, your message to the 119th Congress. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I know I stand with Chip Roy, although I'm a Democrat. | ||
| A few months ago, he asked his GLT on the floor. | ||
| Name one thing you have done. | ||
| Name one thing. | ||
| GOP could not name one thing they have passed. | ||
| And I feel like he needs to stand by his decision by not voting for Mike Johnson. | ||
| I don't think Mike Johnson would be a good speaker. | ||
| He's a puppet from your previous caller. | ||
| The agenda will just not pass. | ||
| And I stand with my Democrats. | ||
| Okay, that was Adrienne there in New York saying she stands with Chip Roy. | ||
| Let's listen to what Chip Roy had to say earlier this week laying out his concerns about Mike Johnson as speaker. | ||
| I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president's agenda. | ||
| I respect, like Thomas, that President Trump supports Mike. | ||
| I like Mike. | ||
| He's a good friend. | ||
| But let's consider what happened the week before Christmas. | ||
| We violated the 72-hour rule twice, which means we didn't have time to read a bill. | ||
| We had to have Elon and Vivek and the president and JD come in to kill a 1,500-page monstrosity, to cut it down to 100 pages. | ||
| It still spent $110 billion unpaid for. | ||
| And do my colleagues say, oh, but that's all just discretionary spending? | ||
| We also passed $200 billion that is taking money out of Social Security, transfer it, which will hasten the bankruptcy of Social Security by six months. | ||
| That was all the week before Christmas, Ashley. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| That's not how we should do business. | ||
| We racked up $300 billion of additional deficit spending after the election. | ||
| We spent $1.7 trillion last year with more Democrat votes than Republican votes. | ||
| We gave another $61 billion to Ukraine. | ||
| My friend Victoria, she's from Ukraine. | ||
| She has a heart for the Ukrainians, but she understands giving $61 billion to Ukraine after Mike Johnson promised to secure the border first, that's a problem. | ||
| So we need to have a plan before January 3rd. | ||
| The Speaker needs to speak to it if he wants to have all of our support. | ||
| Congressman Chip Roy earlier this week talking about his concerns with electing Speaker Mike Johnson in that top post yet again for the 119th Congress. | ||
| You heard him say we need a plan before January 3rd. | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| It's Friday, January 3rd, 2025, opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| And Chip Roy does, we don't know how he will vote today. | ||
| He has expressed opposition to Mike Johnson serving as Speaker yet again in the 119th Congress. | ||
| We know Thomas Massey is a hard no. | ||
| There could be a dozen or so Republicans who are opposed to Mike Johnson serving in that top post. | ||
| It will all unfold at noon Eastern time right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| This morning here on the Washington Journal, we're live from Capitol Hill, just a few steps away from the Capitol Dome. | ||
| We're in one of the House office buildings, the Cannon Rotunda. | ||
| The media has gathered. | ||
| It's getting noisier and busier here up on Capitol Hill because lawmakers have arrived, their staff, the media, as I said, all watching Washington and Capitol Hill to see what happens with this speaker vote. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts on the 119th Congress, the speaker vote, and your message to the lawmakers. | ||
| We'll go to Peter, who's in Bolton, Massachusetts, an independent caller. | ||
| Peter, go ahead. | ||
| Hi, I'm on. | ||
| Am I on? | ||
| Yes, you are. | ||
| We're listening to you. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| I think, like the previous caller, that there should be some unity, first off, to get a good conservative speaker in there in place of Mike Johnson. | ||
| Challenge yourselves. | ||
| See if you can do it, Congressman, and get going because the thing that's got to stop is this chaos marketing. | ||
| All these cabinet members that are being submitted by Humpty Dumpty Trumpty are just not good. | ||
| Get the great people in there that do the job like Liz Cheney and get everybody to watch Servant of the People on Netflix that tells the story of Zelensky, because that is what's happening to our country. | ||
| Peter, you're a conservative. | ||
| I am an independent, formerly a Democrat from years ago, and I was raised around a bunch of Republicans. | ||
| These values that are happening here these days are absolutely nuts. | ||
| So I like the way the Democrats work. | ||
| They get things done. | ||
| They should just clean out all these chaos marketers and get moving, do their jobs. | ||
| Every time I see a congressman local in my state, I say, please get in there and do your job. | ||
| That's what I want the Congress to do. | ||
| I hope everybody heard me say this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Peter's there in Bolton, Massachusetts, an independent, formerly a Democrat, he says, now an independent. | ||
| We're watching here this morning from Capitol Hill. | ||
| What happens with this speaker vote? | ||
| The House will gavel in for the 118th session here in just a few seconds. | ||
| We're going to bring you to the floor when they do so. | ||
| There is the House floor door. | ||
| So we're going to go. | ||
| We expect this to be quick, and we're going to come back and pick up our conversation with all of you. | ||
| If you're watching us on C-SPAN 2, you're going to get live house coverage as well here on C-SPAN. | ||
| The house will be in order. | ||
| The Chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker. | ||
| The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., January 3rd, 2025. | ||
| I hereby appoint the Honorable Steve Womack to act as Speaker Pro Tempore on this day. | ||
| Signed, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben. | |
| Would you pray with me? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. | |
| You, O God, made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows the time of its setting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now, as this 118th Congress sets down its last gavel and the journals are sealed and archived, we give you thanks that in your eternal mercy Mercy, you have allowed us your goodness to pass over us and privileged us to call on your name for the strength we have needed to sustain us in these years. | |
| You have been exceedingly gracious to us and have shown us your steadfast loving kindness time and again. | ||
| Grant then that all who labored in this vineyard, who gave of their countless hours and unwavering energy, would receive your own well done. | ||
| The silent champions of the clerk's office, the stalwart sentries of the sergeant of arms staff and the capitol police, the anonymous artisans and authors, the unheralded men and women whose patient dedication to the people's house has kept the lamp lighted and the nation's business principled and proper. | ||
| Receive, O Lord, the work of our hands and grant us the reward of your blessing on the legacy of this 118th Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In your eternal name we pray. | |
| Amen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the Journal of the Last Day's Proceedings is approved. | |
| The Chair will lead the House in the Pledge of Allegiance. | ||
| I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. | ||
| One nation, individuals, with liberty to take justice for all. | ||
| Under Clause 5D of Rule 20, the Chair announces to the House that in light of the resignation of the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Jackson, the whole number of the House is 429. | ||
| Blazed before the House a communication. | ||
| The Honorable, the Speaker, House of Representatives, sir, as I prepare to be sworn in as Governor of Puerto Rico, I hereby make my official resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives effective 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, January 1, 2025. | ||
| Enclosed is the letter I transmitted to Governor Pedro R. Peri Luisi of Puerto Rico. | ||
| It has been an honor to represent the people of Puerto Rico in Congress for the past eight years. | ||
| It has also been a privilege to serve with you and our colleagues in the House during this time. | ||
| I look forward to continuing working together in my new role as governor. | ||
| Signed sincerely, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colón. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No other communications. | |
| Pursuant to Clause 12A of Rule 1, the Chair declares the House in Recess subject to the call of the Chair. | ||
| A quick pro forma session for the 118th Congress. | ||
| We are in the closing minutes of that Congress. | ||
| They will gavel back in close to noon and then close out signing die the 118th Congress. | ||
| A few minutes later, they will gavel back in for the beginning of the 119th Congress. | ||
| We're live on Capitol Hill this morning, awaiting the beginning of the 119th Congress because the first order of business is electing a Speaker in the House. | ||
| Only the House votes for Speaker. | ||
| Will Mike Johnson have the votes? | ||
| You will first hear from the members of how many are in the chamber. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be there to capture the faces and the voices as they stand up to elect a speaker. | ||
| What name do they shout out? | ||
| Will it be Mike Johnson's name in unity from the Republican Party? | ||
| We know the Democrats in unity, all 215, will say the name Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| We are all watching here in Washington and around the country to see what happens. | ||
| But before all of that, we're getting your thoughts on this 119th Congress, and we want to know what your message is to these lawmakers. | ||
| David in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is a Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I think it's with this historic narrow margin that the Democrats or the minority have a chance to influence legislation. | ||
| Obviously, unity is extremely important. | ||
| I do want to mention, though, that I have concerns as a centrist who became a Democrat after following or preceding actually the 2016 election. | ||
| I am still a centrist. | ||
| I have concerns over the squad and their allies in the House that sometimes make it difficult for Democrats in other areas of the country, such as Iowa. | ||
| And I would like to please hex them and others in the party of that persuasion to hold down their rhetoric. | ||
| If we don't, I'm afraid four years from now, we're going to be listening to a president-elect JD Vance. | ||
| Well, what do you mean, hold down their rhetoric, David? | ||
| Which rhetoric are you talking about? | ||
| Well, we've heard from various members of the squad when they start spouting something that is very left of center, that just turns off the people in particularly the upper Midwest. | ||
| And I specifically, well, I remember when Representative Omar said defund the police just prior to one of the elections. | ||
| And I specifically can point to certain congressional districts in the upper Midwest in Wisconsin and Iowa where Democrats lost seats because of that statement. | ||
| That's David's thoughts there in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Democratic Caller. | ||
| More of your calls coming up here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| But first, I want to show you what Speaker Mike Johnson back in December had to say when he spoke with reporters about the mood here in Washington and the legislative road ahead. | ||
| A palpable sense out there that this is a new day in America. | ||
| It's not just a catchphrase. | ||
| We feel that. | ||
| We sense it everywhere we go. | ||
| And American families are ready to see an America First agenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we're excited about that. | |
| You hear a lot of talk about the agenda and how it will be formulated and come together right out of the gates in early January. | ||
| We're working on that right now. | ||
| In fact, House Republicans are already working to enact that agenda. | ||
| We met, as you know, last week. | ||
| We brought Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy here to discuss how we cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. | ||
| And it was a very productive series of meetings. | ||
| We had a smaller group discussion and then the larger one in the congressional auditorium. | ||
| Thank you all for being here for that. | ||
| We're continuing to lay the groundwork for our very aggressive first 100 days agenda in the Congress that we've all been planning for for a long time and talking about for a while. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, back in December, we're live here on Capitol Hill and joining us this morning is Congressman Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, chair of the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| Sir, we know you're close to leadership and you support Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| Does he have the votes today at noon Eastern? | ||
| He does. | ||
| Look, he's going to get more votes than any other Republican could get. | ||
| So if you can't vote for Mike Johnson, you're effectively saying you're not going to be a Republican speaker or there'll be a coalition speaker. | ||
| And I think President Trump's endorsement is certainly extraordinarily helpful. | ||
| And look, everybody knows Mike. | ||
| Everybody likes Mike. | ||
| Everybody respects Mike. | ||
| So if you can't vote for him, honestly, I don't know who you would vote for. | ||
| Does he get the votes on the first round? | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| You know, we might have some people that vote one way and then reverse their vote on a second thing. | ||
| But in the end, look, there's only one possible alternative. | ||
| We're not going to elect a Democratic speaker. | ||
| And again, if you can't vote for Mike Johnson, you're basically going to push us toward a coalition, Speaker. | ||
| That'd be an enormous mistake. | ||
| What do you mean by a coalition, Speaker? | ||
| I mean you'd have to have somebody who could get Democratic votes because the Republicans that can't vote for Mike Johnson do not have a candidate. | ||
| They do not have an alternative. | ||
| There's nobody they're pushing. | ||
| So they're basically saying, I don't want a Republican Speaker. | ||
| I want a coalition speaker. | ||
| I think that'd be an enormous mistake. | ||
| The president's told us out of those of us that are in the majority, the person he thinks is the right person, the person he thinks can lead us and be successful in implementing his program. | ||
| I would just urge my colleagues that are on the fence to recognize that and vote accordingly. | ||
| What is happening right now behind the scenes with the Speaker? | ||
| You know, I think a lot of people are trying to leverage the Speaker, trying to extract concessions either for themselves personally or for some ideological point they want to make. | ||
| The Speaker's been very consistent. | ||
| He said, I'm not making any backroom deals with anybody. | ||
| This is very different than two years ago in that regard. | ||
| And I think that's the appropriate stance. | ||
| If you don't know whether or not you like Mike Johnson by this point, you've had a year plus to see him as Speaker. | ||
| He's delivered. | ||
| He's gotten things done. | ||
| He's kept the government open. | ||
| He's prepared to work with the president. | ||
| The president said, this is the guy I want. | ||
| So I don't know what else you need unless you're holding out for something for yourself. | ||
| Well, there is reports that Representative Chip Roy would like to, and others who are opposed to Speaker Mike Johnson, would like Chip Roy to serve as chair of the Rules Committee. | ||
| Is that a good idea? | ||
| Well, that's up to the Speaker. | ||
| These are quite literally his appointments, nobody else's. | ||
| But I trust the Speaker. | ||
| He said, I've not made any backroom deals. | ||
| I don't think he had. | ||
| And, you know, he'll make that decision after he's elected Speaker. | ||
| And that's appropriate. | ||
| But, again, any advice I have for the Speaker, I deliver in private, not on television. | ||
| What about spending and how spending is determined here in Washington? | ||
| That's a big problem, no question about that. | ||
| Most of it's on the mandatory side of the budget, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. | ||
| We need to make some reforms there. | ||
| That doesn't mean we need to cut things. | ||
| There are people there that shouldn't be collecting. | ||
| I actually think Doge will give us some pretty good suggestions, but long term, you can't balance the budget on the appropriated part of the budget. | ||
| It's just not large enough. | ||
| It's only $1.7 trillion. | ||
| It's strange to say only, but we spend roughly $6 trillion a year. | ||
| Most of that is on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. | ||
| It's not in the appropriated budget. | ||
| And the appropriated budget is about half of its defense. | ||
| I don't know anybody that wants to cut defense. | ||
| Another big chunk is on the southern border. | ||
| I don't know anybody that wants to cut that. | ||
| Another big chunk is for veterans. | ||
| And most people think we ought to keep our commitment to veterans. | ||
| So you can make some savings there, but you can't balance the budget on that. | ||
| Some of those that are opposed to Speaker Mike Johnson say it's the way you pass legislation for spending in Washington. | ||
| They want to see these appropriations bills come to the floor one by one and get voted on individually as chairs. | ||
| They have more of that than anybody else did. | ||
| I mean, we actually had all of them out of committee. | ||
| They were all at the appropriated or the fiscal responsibility act level. | ||
| Some of them were below that. | ||
| So the whole package was actually less spending than Speaker McCarthy, who I certainly supported and believe in, agreed to. | ||
| And people still couldn't vote for that. | ||
| So at some point, you have to decide, do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? | ||
| And I would suggest that people that can't commit to vote for Mike Johnson have decided they'd rather be part of the problem than part of the solution. | ||
| Wait, a viewer earlier this morning say, why do they always pass these continuing resolutions and why do they always take it to the 11th hour? | ||
| Well, I think that's because they're not following the rules of the conference that they belong to. | ||
| These things are supposed to be settled in conference. | ||
| There's nothing wrong. | ||
| Who's not following the rules? | ||
| They're not following the rules of their conference. | ||
| The Republicans. | ||
| The Republican conference. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I mean, we've picked our nominee. | ||
| He got overwhelming support inside the conference. | ||
| You're supposed to express any disagreement you have in the conference. | ||
| If you disagree, fine. | ||
| Put up a candidate, vote however you want. | ||
| But once we make a decision as a conference, I think you're obligated as a member of that conference to support that decision on the floor. | ||
| And we have a few members that don't understand that this is essentially a team sport. | ||
| When the team makes a call, the president's made a call, you ought to be supportive of that. | ||
| What do you mean they don't understand it? | ||
| Is that a, you've been here for many years. | ||
| Is that a new phenomenon? | ||
| It's relatively new. | ||
| We've actually seen it beginning with Speaker Boehner when we had people trying to use the motion to vacate as leverage against him to extract things the majority didn't want to do. | ||
| Same thing happened with Speaker Ryan. | ||
| It certainly happened and eventually took out Speaker McCarthy. | ||
| So again, people have to decide, am I part of this team or not? | ||
| If you're part of the team, you vote for the person that the team overwhelmingly wants and that the incoming president said he needs. | ||
| To me, it's as simple as that. | ||
| And if you're holding out after that, you're asking for something special for yourself or something that the majority of the conference hasn't agreed to. | ||
| And again, I just think that's an inappropriate way to behave. | ||
| The conference gives you your committee assignments. | ||
| If you're going to be successful, the conference has to buy into it. | ||
| So you ought to honor the rules of the conference. | ||
| And the conference has selected Mike Johnson. | ||
| Well, Thomas Massey has said he's a hard note. | ||
| There's nothing you can do to convince him. | ||
| And then you have somebody like Victoria Spartz, the Republican from Indiana, who said, no, I don't want a committee assignment. | ||
| So what do you do in that situation? | ||
| She hasn't said that. | ||
| I mean, they have to make their individual decisions, and I respect that. | ||
| They are their decision. | ||
| On the other hand, look, if you're going to run for office and say, as a Republican, then you ought to respect the rules of the Republican conference and vote accordingly. | ||
| If you say, I don't want to be part of the conference, you should tell that to your voters ahead of time. | ||
| Or you say, I don't want to serve on any committees, you're giving up the influence of your district on very important areas of legislation. | ||
| So again, I don't understand the approach, but the numbers are small enough that a few characters can exert a lot of leverage. | ||
| And we'll see what happens. | ||
| But I think, again, Mike Johnson, the overwhelming support, has the overwhelming support of Republicans, and all Republicans ought to adhere to that. | ||
| Well, as you said, I mean, it's a small margin today when this vote takes place. | ||
| So what is the magic number? | ||
| Do you know how many people are going to be there? | ||
| Well, it depends on how many people show up. | ||
| I assume most members will show up because, honestly, if you don't get sworn in, you don't get paid. | ||
| So that's a powerful incentive for even the most recalcitrant. | ||
| So I assume each side will have all of its members here, or most of them. | ||
| If they're not here, there's probably a really good reason, an illness, a crisis in the family. | ||
| But we're going to have to live with that the next two years. | ||
| So if everybody's here, then what's the magic number? | ||
| The magic number is if everybody's here, it's probably 217 because we don't have every seat filled, but we can't afford to lose more than one member. | ||
| Okay, so if Thomas Massey is a no, who else are you watching? | ||
| C-SPAN cameras are going to be in the team. | ||
| Not going to get into naming names, but look, it's the usual suspects, so to speak. | ||
| The people that like the drama, like to be on television, want to exert some leverage. | ||
| It's the same group. | ||
| So again, Congress didn't work as well as it should have last Congress because of that. | ||
| I hope the 119th is different. | ||
| If we're going to pass what's a very aggressive agenda by President Trump, we're going to have to work together. | ||
| And that means sometimes you're going to have to vote for things that aren't 100% what you would like. | ||
| I've never seen a bill that was 100% that I liked. | ||
| So that's just part of the nature of the beast. | ||
| But you've got to learn that. | ||
| And again, you don't accomplish anything positive as a lone actor. | ||
| You can do a lot of destruction in a marginal, but you can't do anything that's any good for the American people or your constituents. | ||
| I think you owe your constituents and the American people better than that. | ||
| Before we get to the agenda, Congress can't get to the agenda either until they elect. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| If we don't have a speaker, we can't do anything else. | ||
| That was one of the great dangers of the three-week period in the last Congress that we went through. | ||
| I mean, shortly after we vacated the chair, we had the attack on Israel. | ||
| Literally, we couldn't do anything to help Israel for three weeks. | ||
| Now, it took a little longer before we knew what they needed, and we got things done thanks to Speaker Johnson. | ||
| But same thing could happen now. | ||
| We live in a dangerous world. | ||
| The inability of Congress to act is a danger to the Republic. | ||
| And so anybody that's thoughtful should want to have a speaker so we can function. | ||
| Will leadership call a meeting this morning before the vote at noon? | ||
| No, I think a lot will depend on what happens on that first ballot. | ||
| But again, the stakes couldn't be more obvious. | ||
| You either support President Trump or you don't. | ||
| You either support the conference that you're part of and abide by its rules and it's chosen its leader or you don't. | ||
| And if you don't, then I think you owe an explanation to the American people as to why you can't do what's expected of you. | ||
| And tell us who you think would be better. | ||
| Nobody's done that. | ||
| And honestly, whoever it is, they're not going to get as much Republican support as Mike Johnson. | ||
| So it's a blindingly obvious choice. | ||
| You'd have to be almost deliberately obtuse not to know what to do. | ||
| Let's end on the agenda. | ||
| Tell our audience this morning, what will Republicans in the House do? | ||
| You have the majority. | ||
| I think, well, look, we have a national mandate expressed through the presidential election. | ||
| President Trump's the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. | ||
| He's the first Republican to win this level of electoral votes since 1988. | ||
| He said pretty clearly what he wants to do. | ||
| He wants to secure the border. | ||
| I suspect that will be job number one. | ||
| He's got people in place to do that, assuming the Senate acts, and I think they will and approves those people. | ||
| Number two, he wants to do a reconciliation package that will secure the Trump tax cut from 2017 and let us go further. | ||
| Number three, he wants some fiscal discipline. | ||
| In the end, that's going to take not just dealing with appropriations, but dealing with the larger issue of mandatory spending. | ||
| And I think the people that are looking at that, you know, on Doge and in Congress, know it's going to take some tough decisions there. | ||
| Those will come later. | ||
| They'll probably have to be bipartisan. | ||
| But long term, I think those are the things the president wants to accomplish. | ||
| Emily Brooks, Capitol Hill reporter, saying with less than an hour to go, one well-placed source tells me that if Speaker Johnson does not win on the first ballot, the House will likely move into at least one more vote. | ||
| I would hope so. | ||
| That would give people that did not vote for the Speaker. | ||
| And look, this is not the Democrats problem. | ||
| This is a Republican problem. | ||
| Give the Republicans that don't vote for him another opportunity to do the right thing. | ||
| And hopefully they'll do that. | ||
| But it'd be a lot easier if they just did the right thing on the first ballot. | ||
| Tom Cole, thank you very much, as always, for talking to C-SPAN. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| You guys are the best. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| And we're going to go back to Pedro Echervaria, who's got an update for us on what's happening in the Senate today, the first day, day one of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Part of the job of the Vice President of the United States on days like this is to swear in new members of Congress and other members, too. | ||
| This is from Time magazine. | ||
| As of today, this is the headline I want to show you. | ||
| Kamala Harris heads to Capitol to swear in senators who won't even say her name right. | ||
| This is by Phil Elliott, reporting for Time. | ||
| He reports that when Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at the Capitol on Friday to swear in the new class of senators, many of the smiling politicians handing her their family Bibles will be the same ones who for months have been telling crowds that she was a threat of the American way of life. | ||
| At campaign rallies on social media and in interviews, some spent months falsely claiming she wanted to ban Christmas from the calendar, bring dog meat to immigrants' stoves, or rig the election by inviting undocumented immigrants to flood polling places and cast illegal ballots. | ||
| Of the four senators taking oaths on Friday, who also spoke at the Republican convention in Milwaukee last year, three of them couldn't even be bothered to pronounce her name correctly when they took a moment to ridicule her. | ||
| It's an inelegant relity that every vice reality that every vice president faces in their role as the president of the Senate, one that is particularly raw for those like Harris, Al Gore, and Richard Nixon, who lost their presidential bids but still had to return for a final few weeks of the grind at the Capitol. | ||
| There's more there, but that Phil Elliott has that story at Time magazine. | ||
| When it comes to other events at the Senate side today, earlier we told you about how Chuck Grassley, the Republican from Iowa, will become President Pro Temp. | ||
| He put a post on X about the position saying, today, I'll be sworn in once again as President Pro Temp of the Senate, an honor traditionally given to the most senior member of the majority party with my leadership, Iowa, is number one in the Senate. | ||
| Last time in Iowan was President Pro Temp was Senator Albert B. Cummings, 1999 to 1925. | ||
| Again, Chuck Crassley putting out there, The Hill highlights the fact that as of today, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, becomes the longest serving black senator in U.S. history. | ||
| Scott was appointed to the Senate in 2012 by then Governor Nikki Haley after former Senator Jim DeMint resigned. | ||
| At the time, he was the first black Republican senator since 1978 and the first black Republican senator from the South since Reconstruction. | ||
| Senator Scott putting out his own ex-comments on the milestone, saying, this milestone reinforces the staggering progress we've made and experienced in America. | ||
| I'm so blessed to be a South Carolinian where people consistently judge not on the color of one's skin, but by the content of your character. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we are live back here up on Capitol Hill. | |
| We just heard from Emily Brooks in a tweet about the latest on the speaker race, and she's joining us now. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here. | ||
| What have you learned? | ||
| Well, I think that going into this vote, which is going to happen in a little bit over an hour, we still don't know if Speaker Johnson can lock up the votes. | ||
| It seems very likely that he will fail the first ballot, barring some surprise on the floor when these dozen or so holdouts would surprise, say that they are supporting him. | ||
| However, they are looking for concessions on spending issues, on process commitments, even throwing out the idea of making Representative Chip Roy chair of the House Rules Committee, which Speaker Johnson has indicated he's not going to do. | ||
| He doesn't want to wheel and deal, sort of like Speaker McCarthy did two years ago. | ||
| So with that in mind, highly likely that he will fail at least the first ballot. | ||
| If that happens, I'm told that very likely you go to a second ballot. | ||
| pretty much immediately and at that point leadership will have a better idea of if this was a just somebody needed to voice their opinion to vote against Speaker Johnson or is this going to require some more negotiation and then we'll figure out where to go from there. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber to capture that vote and then the movement after if they go to a second vote right away who will you be watching in the chamber? | ||
| Where should our cameras be? | ||
| What should they be showing? | ||
| You should absolutely be looking at Chip Roy. | ||
| I think that he is looked at as the House Freedom Caucus member who historically in the past has been a key negotiator in very tricky issues with leadership and is somebody that has been elevated a lot by the House Freedom Caucus. | ||
| And of course House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris by nature of being chair he also has a very important position there. | ||
| Victoria Sparks is another undecided vote who has not committed to Speaker Johnson and I think she is probably the biggest wild card of the bunch of who we do not know how they will be voting. | ||
| She has sort of had a history of taking positions that are a little bit odd and not unexpected, has a history of making a decision, making a big announcement, and then reversing decisions of course later. | ||
| And so she's very hard to predict and hard for leadership to predict as well. | ||
| And there are about a dozen according to news reports, folks like you who cover Capitol Hill. | ||
| Are there more than 12 that are possibly against Speaker Mike Johnson? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| There could be more than 12. | ||
| I mean these are people who, you know, we haven't gotten an answer one way or the other. | ||
| However, it was just the holiday break. | ||
| Members left after being frustrated by the short-term spending bill. | ||
| And maybe, you know, there are some members who have not said specifically that they're going to vote for Speaker Johnson, but they're still unsure. | ||
| But the universe of 12, mostly members of the Freedom Caucus, along with Victoria Sparks, Tim Burchett, some of those members are the people who were going in and out of Speaker Johnson's office yesterday. | ||
| There are, of course, some members of the House Freedom Caucus who say they are going to support him on the House floor. | ||
| That includes, I'm told, this morning, Representative Ana Paulina Luna, who was one of the members two years ago who withheld support for Speaker McCarthy. | ||
| So that is probably a good sign for the Speaker. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Green says she's going to back Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| She threatened to oust him earlier this year. | ||
| What do you make of her reversal? | ||
| I think her support for Speaker Johnson now, and she not only made a vote to, tried to force a vote to oust him, she was extremely critical of him for months and months. | ||
| She was one of his biggest antagonists, even at one point a bigger antagonist than Thomas Massey, I think. | ||
| But I think her support for him now is a major indicator of the influence that President-elect Trump has on this process. | ||
| Above all else, Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to be a scene player for the Trump team. | ||
| She put out a video on X last night sort of reiterating her desire to stop infighting, have Republicans coalesce, and not delay the Republicans taking control of Congress and implementing the Trump agenda. | ||
| How deep does that influence run, though, with folks in the Freedom Caucus? | ||
| First, define what the Freedom Caucus is, and then talk about their influence in this 119th Congress. | ||
| Yeah, so the Freedom Caucus, created in 2015, sort of designed to be an antagonist of leadership, try and get the most conservative policies possible, | ||
| but not through some other conservative caucus tactics like being more of a think tank or exchange of ideas, but using aggressive legislative tactics to try and put a pressure on leadership in order to extract those kind of concessions and things that they want. | ||
| So historically, the Freedom Caucus has done things like been leaders in negotiations on spending issues. | ||
| They were key in the pushing out Speaker John Boehner many years ago. | ||
| And then also, of course, many of them withheld support for Speaker Kevin McCarthy two years ago. | ||
| So that group is also very individualistic. | ||
| There's a lot of variety among the members of what exactly they're looking for. | ||
| They're not all cohesive as a group. | ||
| It was concessions that Kevin McCarthy made to folks in the Freedom Caucus that put in a rule that allowed just one member to offer a motion to vacate. | ||
| Now in this rules package for the 119th Congress, if they get to it today and if it passes with Republicans because Democrats won't vote for it, now it would take how many Republicans to provoke an ouster of the Speaker. | ||
| Now that threshold would increase significantly to nine members. | ||
| So that's a pretty significant threshold to get nine members willing to trigger a vote on ousting the Speaker. | ||
| And of course with a slim margin now, that essentially would mean that the Speaker would automatically be ousted, assuming that they would in fact vote to oust him. | ||
| How did that come about? | ||
| The nine. | ||
| So the number, it was negotiated very much. | ||
| There were a lot of more governance-minded, I would say, anti-chaos Republicans in the Republican Conference who for a long time after Speaker McCarthy was ousted wanted to raise that threshold to prevent that exact kind of situation from happening again. | ||
| So in November, when after the election, there were a number of internal House Republican rules, suggested anti-chaos measures, would do things like punishing members by kicking them off committees or things like that if they went against the vast majority of the conference on things like leadership or voting down procedural votes. | ||
| In exchange for pulling those proposed changes, the House Freedom Caucus and the Main Street caucus leaders, along with Speaker Johnson, negotiated this agreement concession to raise the threshold to nine members, which is very interesting because two years ago, as you mentioned, this was a very key ask of the holdouts on Speaker McCarthy. | ||
| But this time around, it seems like a settled matter. | ||
| Everything that I'm talking to is saying that the nine seems pretty locked in. | ||
| Speaker Johnson is not wanting to change the rules package or really deliver any kind of side deals. | ||
| So what sort of concessions is he willing to make? | ||
| because he did tell reporters he was open to ideas. | ||
| I think it's difficult because it's a lot more nebulous. | ||
| So Speaker Johnson does not want to do things like committing to changing the motion to vacate threshold. | ||
| He does not want to do things like committing to put Chip Roy as chair of the House Rules Committee. | ||
| But what these members are asking for are things like commitments on spending reductions. | ||
| And if you have new spending, offset that with a vote on spending reductions. | ||
| If you have votes that are controversial, don't rely on Democratic support to push them through. | ||
| If there's a big bill coming and being designed, these members want to be more of the process. | ||
| They don't want to feel blindsided by what was largely negotiated by staff on something like the continuing resolution budget agreement back in December. | ||
| That was very much a point of frustration for those members. | ||
| So those are the kind of commitments they're seeking. | ||
| But like I said, it's sort of hard for Speaker Johnson to fulfill those requests if he's not going to make side deals and if these are more like promises and commitments about how he will operate rather than something tangible these members can go to and say yes this is what is going to be happening. | ||
| What does the conference want to want the Speaker to bring to the floor as the first piece of legislation? | ||
| What will it look like? | ||
| Well there are a number of bills that in the rules package will be authorized to be brought up quickly. | ||
| One of those is something that Representative Thomas Massey said that he did not like and that would be sanctioning the ICC for how it has handled matters related to Israel and Gaza. | ||
| But there are a number of Republican-led pieces of legislation that passed the House in the last Congress that they will quickly bring up for a vote. | ||
| But really, it's not so much the first piece of legislation that is going to be the marker for House Republicans. | ||
| It is going to be the major reconciliation bill that is going to include a lot of Trump agenda items, potentially tax cuts, border policies, even as they were talking about in December, potentially a debt limit increase coupled with $2.5 trillion in spending reductions. | ||
| So that is a huge piece of legislation that will bypass the Democratic filibuster in the Senate, but it will have to have unanimous Republican support almost in the House in order to pass and it will be very difficult to get there. | ||
| Emily Brooks, will you be in the chamber for the speaker vote? | ||
| Yes, I will. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What's it like when you're in the chamber during a consequential vote like that today? | ||
| Well, it is so interesting because you can see, as your viewers will be able to see on the C-SPAN cameras, everybody talking and talking to each other. | ||
| I'll have a pretty good vantage point of the Republican side. | ||
| And I'll be looking at who is Speaker Johnson talking to. | ||
| I know I was just remembering back two years ago, Kevin McCarthy, he was sitting in his seat as he was going through ballot after ballot that failed. | ||
| And he was sitting down, sort of letting it happen, not looking frazzled. | ||
| But will Speaker Johnson be talking to people as he's doing that? | ||
| Will he have some deputies or people negotiating on his behalf and for him? | ||
| That's what I'll be looking for. | ||
| Will we see arms being twisted? | ||
| Never say never in this House. | ||
| All right, Emily Brooks, we'll be following your reporting with the Hill newspaper. | ||
| You can follow it as well at thehill.com. | ||
| Can follow her on X at Emily Brooks News and at The Hill. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We're going to continue here in the Washington Journal right up until noon Eastern time. | ||
| We are simulcasting on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2 this morning. | ||
| The Senate will come in quickly at around 11:45 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| And then we will go to that. | ||
| We'll come back. | ||
| We expect then the House to gavel in close to noon to then gavel out of the 118th Congress. | ||
| A few minutes later, they'll come right back and they'll gavel in for the 119th. | ||
| We'll split off at that point. | ||
| Live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, live coverage of the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You can also follow along at c-span.org or on our app, C-SPAN now. | ||
| Back to calls. | ||
| Dean in Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Dean, your message to lawmakers. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| We just have to listen to Donald Trump. | ||
| I mean, that's the bottom line. | ||
| I mean, he made the gracious decision of appointing Elon Musk in Vivek. | ||
| So that was amazing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Dean, you're saying get behind Speaker Mike Johnson? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I mean, I come from Pennsylvania, small town called Clarion. | ||
| So the community has my back, and they would respect every decision I make. | ||
| So you say you think the Republican Party needs to be more like your community. | ||
| Get in line. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, respecting the Democrats. | ||
| Like, we all need to respect each other. | ||
| Bottom line, work together to make this nation better. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Witten in Arkansas, Republican. | ||
| Thanks for waiting, Witten. | ||
| It's your turn. | ||
| Oh, that was terrible. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Caller, are you there? | ||
| Next, we'll go to Arkansas, Republican caller. | ||
| Are you with us? | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yeah, I agree with the other callers with regards to the 119th Congress. | ||
| There has to be unity with the Republican Party. | ||
| However, I do understand where Congressman Chip Roy and others are coming from and they're hesitant to vote in Mike Johnson. | ||
| Congress was attempting to pass that huge spending bill a few weeks ago with money going to all kinds of absurd studies and places. | ||
| Mike Johnson has to stand his ground with the Democrats. | ||
| He can't let them get their way with everything. | ||
| But I do believe Donald Trump will keep Mike Johnson under close observation with this and ensure they're both on the same page. | ||
| So having said that, I urge the 119th Congress to vote in Mike Johnson so that they can get to work and certify the presidential election and swear in new members because they only potentially have two years to do so with Republicans holding both chambers. | ||
| All right. | ||
| A little civics lesson there from our caller in Arkansas. | ||
| The election of the Speaker must take place first at the beginning of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Nothing else can happen unless they elect a speaker in the House. | ||
| Only the House votes for the Speaker. | ||
| The Senate will carry on. | ||
| They'll gavel in the 119th and go about their business today. | ||
| The Vice President, Kamala Harris, will be swearing in the members of the Senate for the 119th Congress. | ||
| You will be able to watch that over on C-SPAN 2 today, gavel to gavel. | ||
| We will also have the ceremonial swearing ins coverage of that on C-SPAN 3 on the Senate side. | ||
| So look for that as well today. | ||
| The House, if they can elect a Speaker, will then carry on with their business. | ||
| And they will have the swearing in en masse of their members on the House floor. | ||
| They will also have ceremonial swearing-ins, putting their hands on the Bibles with their families in tow. | ||
| Many of them have their families and friends here in Washington on this opening day of the 119th Congress. | ||
| We're about five minutes away from the Senate meeting to formally gavel out the 118th Congress and prepare for their new session. | ||
| We expect that around 1145 a.m. Eastern time. | ||
| The House will follow suit closer to noon. | ||
| And then at noon, we'll split off here. | ||
| We'll bring you live coverage of the Senate over on C-SPAN 2 and stay right here for C-SPAN for coverage of the House floor. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber when they go to vote for Speaker of the House. | ||
| Lucy in Mobile, Alabama, Democratic caller. | ||
| Lucy, good morning to you. | ||
| Do you have a message for lawmakers in Washington? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| And I agree with the other caller a while ago that even in Alabama, we know that that is bread state. | ||
| But I'm a Democrat and I have analyzed Mike Johnson's demeanor. | ||
| I think he's a wonderful person. | ||
| He's trying to do his best to bring the nation together. | ||
| So I think, like the other caller, it is important that Democrats and Republicans come together and work together for the nation. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We're going to see that. | ||
| So I thank you so very much. | ||
| All right, Lucy. | ||
| Lucy in Mobile, Alabama, Democratic caller. | ||
| Let's go back to Pedro Echavari with more on today's agenda. | ||
| Focusing on the Senate, as a lot of people will be paying attention to the House. | ||
| But here's what to expect when the Senate does gavel in and start the work of the 119th Congress. | ||
| It will start with that swearing in that you heard talk about newly elected and re-elected senators, the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, expect to that. | ||
| Once they establish the presence of a quorum, they'll adopt their administrative resolutions, their standing orders, and then the process of legislative work happens when they agree to date when bills and joint resolutions may be introduced. | ||
| And then also the election of that President Pro Temp, the senator from Iowa. | ||
| That's Chuck Grassley, the oldest member of the Senate, and now the President Pro Temp of the 119th. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Senate, that is what you will see when they gavel in here at noon Eastern time. | |
| Before that, in just a couple of minutes, the Senate is going to be gaveling in to close out the 118th Congress. | ||
| You're watching here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| We're simulcasting the Washington Journal, and we will bring both networks to the Senate floor here in just a few minutes when they gavel in to close out the 118th. | ||
| We'll come back and continue here on the Washington Journal right up until noon Eastern time. | ||
| At that point, the House will gavel in and take that speaker vote. | ||
| We are going to hear from Betty in Illinois and Independent. | ||
| Betty, good morning to you. | ||
| If you could make it quick, we expect the Senate to be gaveling in. | ||
| We've got a couple of minutes. | ||
| I want to say that I saw your interviews with McHenry and Oshu, and they were absolutely fantastic. | ||
| And you got them to say a lot of things I don't think they were supposed to say. | ||
| Anyway, I think that they should just go ahead and get Johnson in and then fight down the road just so we can get this over with. | ||
| I mean, it's so terrible to see them infighting. | ||
| And one other thing I wanted to say is, when did we elect Musk and Vivek? | ||
| I don't remember talking about them before. | ||
| Anyway, Grata, Happy New Year. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| Betty, before you go, are you still there? | ||
| Yeah, I'm here. | ||
| You said you wanted to just do this speaker vote in the first round so that they can get about their business. | ||
| What should be the first thing that they do here in Washington in the 119th Congress? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I looked up that ICC thing that Emily brought Betty, it sounds like you oppose. | ||
| I'm going to leave it there, Betty, because as we said, the Senate meeting to formally gavel out the 118th Congress and prepare for the new session. | ||
| For those of you watching on C-SPAN, we take you live to the Senate floor for a brief session, live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| The Senate will come to order. | ||
| The Senate stands adjourned. | ||
| Signe died. | ||
| I'm good, thank you. | ||
| And that is it for the 118th Congress in the Senate. | ||
| They have gaveled out a quick pro forma session from them. | ||
| They're again expected to come back at noon Eastern time. | ||
| And you can watch gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Here on C-SPAN, we are simulcasting on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2 this morning, the Washington Journal. | ||
| On C-SPAN, we will have minute-by-minute gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House floor. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras will be in the chamber. | ||
| We will be controlling what you see and how the vote unfolds. | ||
| Will Speaker Mike Johnson get the votes? | ||
| He can only afford to lose one if all those that we expect to show up today do so in the House chamber. | ||
| So that is at noon Eastern time when that vote will take place. | ||
| If they can elect a speaker, then they can go about their governing business. | ||
| They will then vote on a rules package for the 119th Congress. | ||
| And you've learned this morning that that rules package includes a language that says the Speaker of the House a privileged resolution to vacate the chair cannot be brought forward unless there are nine Republicans in support of doing so. | ||
| So the threshold for dethroning the Speaker has been raised from one in the 118th Congress to nine Republicans, it has to be Republicans in the 119th Congress. | ||
| So that is day one of the House of Representatives and you can see it there. | ||
| That is the order of what you will see when they gavel down on the gavel in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Let's go to Margarita in Florida, Democratic Caller. | ||
| We're taking some a handful of calls here, Margarita, before we get to the House. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Regarding the 119th Congress, I would like them to leave Social Security and Medicare alone. | ||
| I worked for 50 years and that was a trust I paid into that trust. | ||
| It's easy for them to fix the problem because all they have to do is raise the cap of Social Security. | ||
| That's all they have to do because no matter how much you make, you're entitled to Social Security. | ||
| You're entitled to Medicare at age 65. | ||
| So leave us alone. | ||
| I do believe if the 119th Congress does Anything to negatively affect Social Security and Medicare that in two years, a lot of the Republicans that are in office now will certainly be kicked out because those that are 65 and older, I believe, is the largest voting group. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Margarita there in Florida saying don't touch Social Security. | ||
| She does not want that on the agenda for Republicans in control of Washington. | ||
| They have a trifecta. | ||
| They control the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2025. | ||
| We will see if they can retain control after the next midterm election. | ||
| That's two years from now. | ||
| In the meantime, we are just minutes away from the vote on who will lead the Republican Party in the House. | ||
| Who will become Speaker? | ||
| Will it be Mike Johnson? | ||
| Does he have the votes? | ||
| The first round begins shortly after noon Eastern time. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras are in the room. | ||
| You'll be able to see the conversations that happen as the vote takes place in the chamber. | ||
| So keep it here on C-SPAN on our online at c-span.org, or you can watch on the go with our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| Scott in Morristown, Tennessee, a Republican. | ||
| Scott, good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd like to say the Republicans step it up and quit fattening with each other and try to get something done for the people and not allow the Democrats to keep wasting the money and putting more in their pockets than they are in the American people's. | ||
| They say it's what the American people want, but it ain't all the American people that vote to have their money put in things that overseas and things like that. | ||
| We all got different outlooks on that. | ||
| And they need to come up with an idea to make things better for all American people, not just one side. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Scott's there in Tennessee, a Republican caller. | ||
| Roberts, an independent in Norfolk, Virginia. | ||
| Robert, we are just minutes away here from this speaker vote in the opening of the 119th Congress. | ||
| It's day one. | ||
| So what is your message to lawmakers? | ||
| Hello, Greta. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yeah, I just want to see them get together and unite. | ||
| Go ahead and vote in Mike Johnson. | ||
| The election is over. | ||
| We need to get the country together. | ||
| I want to see Congress get to work on extending the tax cuts, get these prices and the stores down. | ||
| I mean, this food and everything is too high. | ||
| I want to see them get into some deregulation responsibly, but do some deregulation and also get back to energy independence. | ||
| We need to use everything that we can use. | ||
| Again, use it responsibly. | ||
| But those are the three things I want to see really come out early this year. | ||
| All right, Robert with a to-do list for this Republican majority in the House and the Senate and control of the White House. | ||
| Chuck in Connecticut, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Chuck. | ||
| Hi, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| What I'd like to see happen is there's a problem solvers caucus I'm very supportive of. | ||
| I've been very active in no labels. | ||
| And the problem solvers caucus, I think, has an opportunity to use some of the Democrats' ability to vote for the speakers, with Speaker Johnson, as a way of encouraging bipartisanship with the Republican Party. | ||
| This will keep President Trump and the Republican Party from beholding to the extremists and the Republican side. | ||
| And I think it will usher in a beginning of a bipartisan effort by President Trump and the Democrats to work closely together. | ||
| That's my hope. | ||
| All right, Chuck, a close watcher of Congress, you can tell, referencing the problem solvers caucus. | ||
| There we go, in Washington, a group that works for bipartisan agreement. | ||
| Veronica in Keaton, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Veronica. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I'm wanting Representative Massey to vote yes for Johnson. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Because they need to come together. | ||
| We are from Kentucky, and we put Massey in there, and we want him to vote yes for Johnson. | ||
| Okay, Veronica putting her support behind Mike Johnson. | ||
| Does he have the votes in the first round to become Speaker? | ||
| If not, we learn from Emily Brooks of the Hill that she has been told they will go right away to a second round to see if then Speaker Mike Johnson has the votes to retain the top post for Republicans in the 119th Congress. | ||
| There are about a dozen or so Republicans that will be watching in the chamber with our C-SPAN cameras today. | ||
| You get to follow along here on C-SPAN, online at c-span.org, or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, the conversations that are happening, the huddles in the chamber, and the actual vote itself, all live, part of our C-SPAN coverage. | ||
| Robert in Rogers City, Michigan, an independent. | ||
| Hi, Robert. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I got us wanted to say that Elon Musk and Rams Farmie are lobbyists. | ||
| They have no actual position to influence Mike Johnson. | ||
| Mike Johnson's a weak. | ||
| He's not bipartisan. | ||
| The Democrats were bipartisan on the bills for the Ukraine and all them type of things. | ||
| And he broke his word there. | ||
| And he's not reliable. | ||
| And everybody keeps forgetting about the 2025 thing Trump's got in line. | ||
| They never speak about the people, they speak about Donald Trump. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Robert in Rogers City, Michigan, an independent caller. | ||
| We believe that the House will come in to formally gavel out of the 118th Congress in just a minute or maybe less here as we simulcast here on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You're watching the Washington Journal. | ||
| We've been live from Capitol Hill this morning. | ||
| And at noon Eastern time here on C-SPAN, we'll bring you live coverage of the House and that speaker vote and over in C-SPAN 2 live coverage of the Senate. | ||
| The Senate will go about gaveling in the 119th Congress and their business, their legislative business and procedural agenda that they have to do to get the 119th Congress underway. | ||
| On the House side, we'll see what happens because nothing gets done until they elect a speaker. | ||
| No debate, no vote, no governing. | ||
| So keep your channel here if you're interested in watching that speaker vote on C-SPAN live gavel to gavel coverage of the vote with C-SPAN cameras in the room. | ||
| Lowell in Illinois Democratic Color. | ||
| Lowell, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Happy and healthy New Year to you and all your viewers. | ||
| Ah, same to you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So obviously, I'm calling on the Democratic side. | ||
| I have no problem with the unity portion. | ||
| I've heard a couple people which I agree with. | ||
| You know, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk were not elected. | ||
| Obviously, or not obviously, I'm not a Donald Trump fan. | ||
| If we remember four years ago what happened, January 6th insurrection, that was real. | ||
| So for anyone to not say that, that doesn't sit well with me. | ||
| I have no problem with unity, but in this world, there is not helpful to the United States when you have a cult-like mentality. | ||
| I think there should be bipartisanship. | ||
| All right, Lowell. | ||
| I'm going to bring you, I'm going to stop you there. | ||
| The House is gaveling in to close out the 118th Congress. | ||
| Live coverage here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Pursuant to the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, the chair declares the second session of the 118th Congress adjourned. | ||
| sign a die. | ||
| There was the Speaker of the House of the 118th Congress gaveling down the 118th, and we expect then the House will come back in just a minute or two to gavel in the 119th Congress. | ||
| Micah Solner is reporting that Speaker Mike Johnson says, I think we're there feeling confident he will have the votes to be speaker on the first ballot, but he adds that it says nothing if he loses the first round. | ||
| If he loses the first round, we've learned from Emily Brooks that they expect to go right away to a second round. | ||
| If he loses that round, we'll see what happens. | ||
| Stay here on C-SPAN because our cameras will be in the chamber for this vote. | ||
| They will gavel in the 119th Congress at noon Eastern Time. | ||
| We are just a few minutes away. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2, we'll bring you the opening day of the 119th Congress of the Senate. | ||
| For those of you watching on C-SPAN, we'll take you live to the House floor. | ||
| C-SPAN has received permission from the Speaker to use our own cameras in the House chamber for the Speaker's election. | ||
| And as many of you know, cameras are otherwise controlled and operated by the House of Representatives, not by C-SPAN. | ||
| The major storyline of the day that we've been talking about all morning here on the Washington Journal, the election for House Speaker. | ||
| President-elect Donald Trump endorsed current Speaker Mike Johnson last week, but Johnson still faces opposition within his own party to retain that post. | ||
| Like last time, there could be multiple rounds of voting. | ||
| That will be the first order of business when the House convenes for the 119th Congress in just a few minutes. | ||
| So stay here on C-SPAN for live gavel-to-gavel coverage. | ||
| And as I said, for those of you watching C-SPAN 2, you'll be taken live to the Senate floor. | ||
| Vice President Harris will preside. | ||
| Senators will be sworn in, and we'll hear from the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. |