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On Friday, it's the 52nd annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. | |
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| And Michael Schnell is joining us. | ||
| Hi, Michael. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hey, Mimi, good morning. | ||
| So this meeting yesterday between President Trump and GOP congressional leaders that happened yesterday, what are you hearing happened during that meeting? | ||
| Yeah, well, we were told by Speaker Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise that there is some type of plan for how reconciliation is going to be carried out. | ||
| And look, that was significant because we know for the past few weeks, there's been this debate in the Capitol. | ||
| Will Republican leaders try to pass one reconciliation bill of Trump's policies? | ||
| Will they split his agenda into two separate bills? | ||
| So that's been the main question here. | ||
| House members, particularly Mike Johnson and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, they've been pushing for one single bill. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been pushing for two bills. | ||
| And publicly, President Trump has made his preference for one bill known, but he's kept the door open to both of them. | ||
| So this has been sort of the first step that folks are waiting for a firm answer on before we can move on to what exact policy is going to be in this piece of legislation or pieces of legislation. | ||
| Majority Leader Steve Scalise came back from the White House yesterday and told us that the agreement was on one bill. | ||
| John Thune seemed a little bit more uncommittal to that when talking to reporters after the meeting. | ||
| So this is still the main question of one bill or two bills, but it seems like they have the outline of a plan of how they're going to attack reconciliation. | ||
| House leaders, Republican leaders say that they want to pass a budget resolution, which unlocks the budget reconciliation process sometime in the week of February 27th. | ||
| So time, the deadline, the self-imposed deadline to get this process started and have these key decisions made is quickly approaching. | ||
| And Michael, what's the big deal between one bill or two bills? | ||
| Does it really make that big of a difference? | ||
| Well, there are questions of, A, can Republicans even get one bill over the finish line? | ||
| The budget reconciliation process is, of course, significant in the sense that it takes away the need to get Democratic support in the Senate. | ||
| It brings the threshold from passing a bill from 60 votes to just a simple majority. | ||
| But the House is sort of its own issue. | ||
| And even though the House has only needed a simple majority, Republicans are grappling with an ultra-thin majority. | ||
| Some point once Elise Defonic leaves the House to go serve in the administration, the breakdown is going to be 217 to 215, which means Republicans can't even afford to lose one of their members on a party line vote. | ||
| Now, when they're planning to vote on reconciliation, the margin will be a little bit larger because some special elections would have happened by then. | ||
| But still, it's even if it's a one- or two-person majority, that's extremely slim. | ||
| So, the concern in the House is that they're only going to get one bite at this apple, that if they get reconciliation over the finish line, it's only going to happen once because of the slim majority. | ||
| And then, the strategy here is that Mike Johnson is thinking that, well, I have some folks who don't like A aspect of reconciliation bill, B aspect, C aspect, but there are some big sweeteners in there, namely the immigration and border portion of this legislation. | ||
| So, House leaders are hoping that by putting those sweeteners in one single bill, some of those conservative Republicans who are against other areas of the legislation won't vote against it because they don't want to tank that immigration and border section. | ||
| That's the argument for one bill. | ||
| Two bills, though, is in the Senate folks are saying that they want to give President Trump an early win on the border, on immigration, and then deal with the more thornier issues down the road. | ||
| But again, there's that concern in the House of will we really get two bites of this apple. | ||
| You mentioned immigration and border. | ||
| What are some of those things that we know that they agree on that we will likely see in the bill? | ||
| Yeah, well, we're still waiting to hear what these real specifics are. | ||
| The members have been very tight-lipped about the actual policy that will be in there. | ||
| We've seen House Republicans for a few weeks now have a lot of listening sessions with different committees and different interest groups within the House Republican Conference, different factions within the House Republican Conference to kind of get an idea of what everyone wants to see. | ||
| So, we still don't know what details on what policy in particular is going to be in this reconciliation bill, but we can already see what's on the president's mind. | ||
| We saw his executive orders the eve, the night that he got inaugurated, things like ending birthright citizenship, reinstating Remain in Mexico. | ||
| So, we know where his priorities lie. | ||
| It's just a question of now what policy are we going to be seeing put into this GOP bill. | ||
| President Trump also revived the idea of recess appointments for his cabinet. | ||
| Where does that stand? | ||
| Yeah, that has sort of been something that was raised during the election to become the next majority leader of the Senate. | ||
| And we saw the candidates agree to it, including somebody like John Thune. | ||
| You know, it's just rather not agreeing to it, but saying that they would do everything that they can to confirm Trump's cabinet nominees in a swift manner. | ||
| We then hadn't really heard much about this idea of recess appointments. | ||
| There's a lot of questions about how this would actually look practically, logistically, with the legal concerns surrounding it could be. | ||
| But it's definitely something that I'm interested to see if that's more of a discussion up on Capitol Hill this week. | ||
| I will note, though, Trump did get his first cabinet nominee, Marco Rubio, confirmed it was a unanimous vote in the Senate, and Senate leaders are getting ready or are teeing up more votes. | ||
| We're seeing some of those nominees be dispatched out of committee and likely going to make it to the floor soon. | ||
| John Ratcliffe for CIA director, Pete Hegseth to be defense chief. | ||
| So, expect to see more of these nominee votes in the coming days. | ||
| The question of recess appointments, though, we'll see if we hear more about that this week. | ||
| Going back to Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, there have been new allegations that have been leveled against him. | ||
| He denies those allegations of abusing his second wife. | ||
| What are you hearing about that? | ||
| And is that impacting his nomination at all? | ||
| Yeah, Democrats are outraged by this new development, this new affidavit that was given to lawmakers that then leaked into the press. | ||
| Democrats are concerned. | ||
| They have been concerned with Pete Hegseth's nomination this whole entire journey. | ||
| It's why his vote out of committee was on party lines. | ||
| Pete Hegset's vote out of committee. | ||
| But I think the real question is: did this information come to the table just simply too late? | ||
| We've already seen Pete Hegsley's confirmation hearing. | ||
| We already saw his vote in committee. | ||
| One of those key holdouts, Joni Ernst, Republican from Iowa, had announced that she would support Pete Hegseth after that hearing. | ||
| I mean, there are still a few outliers, a few folks who haven't said where they lean one way or another: Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Todd Young. | ||
| So, realistically, if all four of those Republicans vote against Pete Hegseth, you know, he will not be able to be confirmed as defense secretary in the Senate because of the margins there. | ||
| But I think it's a big question of will those four ultimately vote against him. | ||
| And I think that the other folks are pretty locked in. | ||
| They have said that they're going to support him. | ||
| And I don't know that they would backtrack on that after reading this affidavit. | ||
| Look, it's of course a possibility, but I think at this juncture, it's unlikely. | ||
| And I think a lot of folks are going to be asking, well, did we receive this information just simply too late? | ||
| You had a chance to talk to Speaker Johnson about President Trump's January 6th pardons. | ||
| What did he tell you, his reaction, and other reaction among the GOP in Congress? | ||
| Yeah, he said that he hasn't had an ability to review it yet. | ||
| He didn't have a specific reaction, sort of deflecting the question to not comment. | ||
| We will try again today, assuming that he has had a moment to review the pardons that President Trump signed on the first night of him being in office. | ||
| But the reaction from the House Republican conference is mixed. | ||
| I heard spoke to a lot of folks yesterday who said this is the president's prerogative. | ||
| He has the ability to issue pardons and commutations as president, and this was his decision. | ||
| I've had a lot of folks who say that the January 6th rioters were being unjustly held and unjustly prosecuted. | ||
| And then I've heard some folks say that this was the wrong decision, and that particularly the violent protesters, people who were accused of violently assaulting police officers. | ||
| And I will note, there were more than 600 January 6th protesters who were accused of violently assaulting law enforcement officers who were released as part of the sweeping pardon. | ||
| There were some folks who said that this was not the right decision, and they wish it was looked at on a case-by-case basis. | ||
| So, truly, a mixed bag when you talk about reaction from the House Republican conference. | ||
| We did hear from Senate Republicans, the usual suspects, the more moderate folks who are not the biggest fans of Trump, express their displeasure with this decision. | ||
| But overall, a mixed bag for Republican reaction to that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, thanks for all those updates. | ||
| Michael Schnell, congressional reporter for The Hill. | ||
| You can see her work at thehill.com. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| Thanks, Mimi. | ||
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up Thursday morning, USA Today Justice Department correspondent Bart Jansen will talk about President Trump pardoning January 6th offenders and former President Biden's preemptive pardons for members of his family, his administration, and supporters. | ||
| We'll also talk about future policies under President Trump and other news of the day with Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Jimenez and Democratic Congresswoman Judy Chu and federal news network reporter Drew Friedman on President Trump's executive actions aimed at the federal government workforce. | ||
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