| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Wow, supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then the Hill Congressional reporter Michael Schnell discusses the latest on-House Republicans' budget reconciliation plan to advance President Trump's priorities. | ||
| Also, Republican Congressman Mike Flood, a member of the Financial Services Committee, on the House GOP strategy to advance President Trump's legislative agenda. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, February 12th. | ||
| A new CBS News poll asked respondents about what they wanted from Congress and how much they should oppose or support President Trump's agenda. | ||
| The results showed that as compared to last month, Democrats are looking for their members to push back more on the Trump agenda. | ||
| We'll go through some of those charts this first half hour and ask you, what's your message to Congress? | ||
| What's your level of confidence in your representatives to either support or oppose the administration's actions? | ||
| Here's how to call us. | ||
| Republicans, 202748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can send us a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Send your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll start with some of the charts from that CBS News poll. | ||
| And it says this: that this is what they asked Democrats. | ||
| Congressional Democrats' approach to Trump should be oppose Trump as much as possible. | ||
| In January, that number was 46%. | ||
| That went up to 65%. | ||
| Then the question of try to find common ground with Trump, 54% had responded with that in January. | ||
| Now only 35% say that Democrats should try to find common ground with Trump. | ||
| This was another question aimed at Democrats. | ||
| Confidence that congressional Democrats can oppose Trump effectively. | ||
| So those that said a lot stayed about the same. | ||
| Some was at 44% in January. | ||
| It dropped to 36%. | ||
| And those that said that their confidence level was not much or none was at 40% in January and then 48% now. | ||
| So here's what the question was for Republicans. | ||
| And it said, among Republicans, should congressional Republicans' approach to Trump be support when agree and push back when disagree? | ||
| 60% agreed with that. | ||
| 40% said that congressional Republicans should support whatever Trump wants. | ||
| So wonder what you think of that and where you would be in that, if you were asked those polling questions. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| Here's an article from ABC News about Elon Musk. | ||
| He said it says he was grilled about Doge transparency and conflicts. | ||
| He was in the Oval Office yesterday with President Trump, and here's a portion of that. | ||
| Everyone's very quiet, brother. | ||
| Are people over here as quiet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your detractors, Mr. Musk. | |
| I have to what? | ||
| Including a lot of Democrats. | ||
| I have detractors? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You do, sir? | |
| I don't believe it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non-transparent way. | |
| What's your response to that criticism? | ||
| Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. | ||
| The public voted, we have a majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. | ||
| We won the House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We won the Senate. | |
| The people voted for major government reform. | ||
| There should be no doubt about that. | ||
| That was on the campaign. | ||
| The president spoke about that at every rally. | ||
| The people voted for major government reform, and that's what people are going to get. | ||
| They're going to get what they voted for. | ||
| And a lot of times, you know, people that don't get what they voted for. | ||
| But in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's what democracy is all about. | |
| And I'll just show you this article from The Hill, and then we'll take your calls. | ||
| It says, GOP senators terrified of crossing Trump facing Musk-funded challengers. | ||
| The article says that the White House has signaled that Republicans who thwart Trump's agenda by voting against his controversial nominees or opposing efforts by Musk to freeze government funding and slash federal agencies such as USAID will pay a political price. | ||
| It says, and that's a threat that carries a lot more weight when Musk, the world's richest person, could easily pour tens of millions of dollars into a Senate Republican primary. | ||
| It says that Musk warned Republican lawmakers in December that he was compiling a, quote, naughty list of members who bucked Trump's agenda. | ||
| He also pledged shortly after Election Day that his political action committee would, quote, play a significant role in primaries next year. | ||
| And we'll go to the phones now and start with Mary, a Democrat in Fort Madison, Iowa. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The Supreme Court has the ability to reverse decisions they've made. | ||
| They see what's going on. | ||
| It's time for them to step forward now and reverse their immunity decision now before we have old people dying in the streets. | ||
| Mary, what do you think about what Congress can do? | ||
| Mary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think the Supreme Court holds the key to the whole thing as far as their immunity, giving him immunity to do anything he wants to do. | |
| It's time for them to reverse that decision. | ||
| They can do it. | ||
| They have that. | ||
| They need to do it now. | ||
| And what did you mean by old people dying in the streets? | ||
| What are you worried about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If they mess with Medicare and take away Social Security, I mean, what are people supposed to do? | |
| Just die in the streets? | ||
| I mean, they won't be any health care. | ||
| They won't be any money coming in for food or anything else. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Come on, Supreme Court. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do something. | |
| Here's William, a Republican in Orange Park, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I think Mr. Trump should be allowed to do whatever he wants to do. | ||
| But I got a question for you. | ||
| Who's the top law person in this country now? | ||
| Everything happens so fast, I can't keep up. | ||
| Who's the what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who's the top law person, like the sheriff or whatever, whatever, D.O.J. Who's in charge of that? | |
| You're talking about the Attorney General, Pam Bondi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I don't think she's worth spit if she don't bring charges against Schumer for going after two Supreme Court justices. | ||
| You want her to bring charges against Senator Schumer for what exactly with regard to this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He threatened two Supreme Court justices. | |
| How is he still walking around? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Here's Richard in Millsboro, Delaware, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm a retired federal worker as part of my career. | |
| A third of my career. | ||
| I was a retired federal worker. | ||
| I worked at EPA and I worked as a consultant also for part of my career, the rest of my career, I guess you could say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm also in a hospital bed for the last year and a half going on. | |
| And I guess I can't hear you. | ||
| Answer me if you're not mind. | ||
| No, I wasn't talking, Richard. | ||
| Just go ahead and talk right into the phone. | ||
| Don't look at the TV. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thanks. | |
| So what I was trying to say is I'm surviving by Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| And I am, you know, someone who is worried about, from a standpoint of the environmental progress that's been made over the last 50 years, that we will return to it, but we will lose some of that progress if the EPA isn't there and strong. | ||
| And I would like to add that as far as civil service goes, I worked in the government for 11 years. | ||
| And I'm proud to have done that work because the civil servants are the backbone of the government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're the people that get hired to do the work that Congress and the President pass laws to have the government do for the American people. | |
| Now, Richard, let me ask about waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Elon Musk is saying that that's what he's going after. | ||
| Do you think in the EPA, since that's where you worked, that there's wasteful spending, there's people abusing the funds that are supposed to be allocated for something else? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not on the grand scale, like they're alleging and making the American public believe. | |
| I think you can always find ways to improve the efficiency of organizations. | ||
| That includes both the private sector and the public sector. | ||
| But it's not a whole scale throwout, the baby with the bathwater kind of situation. | ||
| All right, Richard. | ||
| This is Dave in Santa Barbara, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Go ahead, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd just like to say a common sense approach is nothing wrong with that. | |
| And if they're trying to do that, why interfere? | ||
| You know, people want to interfere just because they want to interfere. | ||
| And it seems like they're pushing socialism over democracy and acting like dirty opposite, is what I'm saying. | ||
| So, Dave, the previous caller just said that they're, you know, you said that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. | ||
| Do you think that there might be a better way to go about finding efficiencies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're doing the best they can right now. | |
| They should appreciate that. | ||
| That's what's happened. | ||
| They don't appreciate the effort being made is 100% effort. | ||
| So why stall it or stop when it's doing it in a godly way? | ||
| There's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's something wrong with socialism where anything goes, and that's a miracle. | |
| Anything goes, not really. | ||
| That's not really how miracle works. | ||
| Anything goes. | ||
| Doesn't make sense. | ||
| All right, Dave. | ||
| Let's take a look at Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer yesterday talking about the threat of a possible government shutdown and the several legal cases against the Trump administration. | ||
| The trend is clear. | ||
| Donald Trump cannot bulldoze his way through the rule of law. | ||
| That's what the courts in America are saying. | ||
| Donald Trump isn't allowed to break the law to achieve those goals. | ||
| That's not how America works. | ||
| And my Republican colleague should not sit idly by while he does it. | ||
| Now, in five weeks, funding for the federal government will run out. | ||
| Let's remember that when there's talk about a Republican shutdown, President Trump and Republicans are already shutting down large chunks of the government. | ||
| Democrats do not want to shut the government down, but the Republicans are in charge, and they should fund the government. | ||
| Since the inauguration, President Trump and Republicans have been actively working to shut down the government entirely on their own. | ||
| CHCs, research institutions, export for farmers, protections for Americans. | ||
| Nobody's working harder right now to shut down the government than Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. | ||
| That was Senator Schumer yesterday, and we're taking your calls on this topic. | ||
| What's your message to Congress on the Trump agenda for about the next 15 minutes? | ||
| We got some comments from Facebook. | ||
| Michael says: yes, we Democrats need to let the American people know that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches exist to hold each other to account and ensure checks and balances. | ||
| Suzette said, Trump is doing the people's work and doing exactly what he was voted in to do. | ||
| Promises made, promises kept. | ||
| The Democrats certainly don't have a better plan to attack the problem of this nation's debt. | ||
| In fact, they have no plan at all other than to add to it. | ||
| Keeley says, of course they want to oppose him. | ||
| He's exposing all of their idiotic, selfish policies and their fraud. | ||
| That's why they didn't get elected. | ||
| And Edie said, I don't believe this poll anyway. | ||
| And here's Dolores, a Democrat in Collierville, Tennessee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Can you understand me, please? | ||
| I have had surgery. | ||
| My speech is in Paris, so please give me a few minutes. | ||
| Sure, go ahead, Dolores. | ||
| We can understand you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, baby. | |
| What the Republicans is doing to our country is just like my brother-in-law said, he's from Nigeria, how South Africa, how they did over there, the apartheid. | ||
| It's slowly happening here in our country. | ||
| He left away from over there and came here for freedom. | ||
| And he sees this happening all over again. | ||
| Trump and the Republicans, they are bought and paid for by those billionaires. | ||
| We can see it. | ||
| This man sit out there and lie, say he didn't know nothing about 2025. | ||
| He knew it all. | ||
| And these people are falling for it. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| The American people are the ones who are suffering. | ||
| He wants to take away Medicare, Medicaid, food from children, women's rights, voting's rights. | ||
| They want everything in America just like apartheid. | ||
| Please wake up. | ||
| And another thing, may I say right quick: here in Tennessee, they're killing people every day. | ||
| Even children, they're not saying anything about that. | ||
| Marsha Blackburn and the other Republicans, please put that out there. | ||
| Trump is taking on selling our country out. | ||
| Wake up, America. | ||
| He's not doing anything for the average person. | ||
| They put him in there and he's making fools out of them and laughing about it. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Steve, an independent in Lakeland, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Yes, I was calling, just like Elon said yesterday, are we a bureaucracy or democracy? | ||
| That's what I'm looking at. | ||
| Also, you're quoting that YouGov stuff on ABC. | ||
| I've been doing the UGov survey for over two years now. | ||
| And yesterday, when I done that, it was the most biased survey I've ever done. | ||
| All the answers to the questions were pigeonholed. | ||
| Wait, wait. | ||
| Explain that, Steve. | ||
| Explain that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The questions that were asked each time it was negative about President Trump. | |
| Like I said, I've been doing this for two years. | ||
| Not one time has YouGov ever done a survey with negative stuff about Biden and everything else. | ||
| And every answer, it was basically pigeonholed that I couldn't answer what I really wanted to answer. | ||
| Hold on, hold on. | ||
| Wait, let's talk about this, Steve. | ||
| I pulled it back up. | ||
| This is a CBS News YouGov poll. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Is it YouGov? | ||
|
unidentified
|
YouGov. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the one I've been doing for two years, and on your TV, on TV, it said ABC YouGov. | |
| No, it's CBS. | ||
|
unidentified
|
CBS. | |
| Okay, okay. | ||
| So here's the question: Congressional Democrats' approach to Trump should be so this is Democrats to work with Trump, not work against him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why are they against all this stuff? | |
| Money going to other countries on the state. | ||
| So the question is: should congressional Democrats oppose Trump as much as possible or try to find common ground with Trump? | ||
| Those are the two questions. | ||
| That's not pigeonholed when you're asking Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is pigeonholed. | |
| But you're only asking Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| So this is the one that's asking Republicans. | ||
| It says this. | ||
| So congressional Republicans' approach to Trump should be support when agree, pushback when disagree, or support whatever Trump wants. | ||
| So how is that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not how it was in the survey, ma'am. | |
| You're not listening. | ||
| Once again, that's I done the survey. | ||
| Are you sure you're doing the right one? | ||
| Because you said it was ABC. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, now you're insulting me. | |
| But you said it was ABC. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is CBS. | |
| Okay, sorry to insult you, Steve. | ||
| This is Julian in Stanford, Connecticut, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm doing okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, instead of asking all these hypothetical questions, right, why don't you post a list of USAID as to where that money was going? | |
| Why don't you post that? | ||
| Because most of these people that call you are CNN viewers and MSNBC viewers that don't know anything. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So why don't you post a list, Mimi? | ||
| How do you know all of our viewers are CNN and MSNBC viewers? | ||
| Are you not? | ||
| You're a viewer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, I'm not. | |
| I'm not because I know what's going on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But why don't you, why don't you find that for you? | |
| We'll try to find a breakdown of USAID funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, Mimi, Mimi. | |
| Why don't you post the list as to where that money is going? | ||
| I'm telling you, we're going to try to find it for you. | ||
| We're going to try to find information at the breakdown of that. | ||
| Julia, you got anything else for me? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you are a lovely woman. | |
| Clay in Augusta, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Clay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how you doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the Democrats, the Democrats have to just do just like the Eagles did, the Chiefs. | |
| Don't let up. | ||
| Don't let up. | ||
| Start talking about groceries. | ||
| Start talking about the price of eggs. | ||
| That's all he talked about was grossers and groceries. | ||
| So you can't let up. | ||
| That's how you win. | ||
| Let the American people know all the lies that this man told when he was running for president. | ||
| So just like this, real quickly, Ivan, what's his name? | ||
| Yvon Musk? | ||
| Musk, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This man is from South Africa. | |
| The United States destroyed his company, I mean, his country. | ||
| And don't you know Elon is trying to do the same thing for the United States? | ||
| He was 18 years old when we destroyed, what is that, apothecary? | ||
| So he is trying to do the same thing for the United States. | ||
| So please wake up. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| And thank you so very much. | ||
| And Julian wanted to see a breakdown of USAID spending. | ||
| This is a Newsweek article with that. | ||
| If you'd like to take a look, it says, what does USAID spend money on? | ||
| Here's a list of potential cuts. | ||
| So here's what it says. | ||
| I won't read all of them, but here's the top ones. | ||
| $16.8 billion for governance, $10.5 billion for humanitarian assistance, $7 billion for health. | ||
| And if you'd like a further breakdown of those, we'll try to find a little bit more information for you. | ||
| But there is, I believe it's USAspending.gov, but we will continue to look at that and provide the information as we get it. | ||
| John in Granada Hills, California, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I want the Republican Senate to start doing their job. | ||
| They have just laid down like weeds. | ||
| They are letting Trump jump all over them. | ||
| They are totally afraid. | ||
| It says the Republican Party that has this ideology. | ||
| If you don't do what King Trump wants, we're going to use Musk's money and get you out of office. | ||
| That would never occur to Democrats. | ||
| I mean, Republicans just don't understand the three equal branches of government. | ||
| And man, does this show not a single peep about Trump's latest, he wants to be a worldwide real estate agent and have a big deal going on in the Gaza Strip. | ||
| Not a single peep from the Republicans. | ||
| It's just sickening how banal they have become that they just are nothing but a stamp pad for Donald Trump. | ||
| And this is Dennis in Hudson, Indiana, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Congress needs to get on board. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Democrats need to get on board or resign. | |
| Get on board or get out of the way. | ||
| And as far as these people like Chuck Schumer, why is Chuck Schumer not in prison for the crime he committed of trying to intimidate the Supreme Court from the steps of the United States Supreme Court? | ||
| Chuck Schumer is a felon and he should be prosecuted. | ||
| And how do we know that these Democrats all listen to MBC, MSNBC, and CNN? | ||
| Because they all dribble the same talking points, the same exact talking points you hear on CNN and MSNBC. | ||
| They need to wise up, quit listen to the idiot Democrats that are trying to control them and turn this country into a socialist country. | ||
| The reason the Democrats want to spend all this money is to get people dependent on the government because when they have them dependent on the government, they can tell them what they have to do. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Jim in Crown Point, Indiana, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Supreme Court. | |
| Chuck Schumer. | ||
| You got to turn down your TV. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you know that? | |
| Are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Yep, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to make the comment of I believe the Democrats should be working with the Republicans. | |
| And as a lifelong Democrat that is now starting to lean Republic, I'm tired of the rhetoric from Jeffries and Schumer about this is the Republicans' government. | ||
| This is the Republicans to finance the government not shutting down. | ||
| As they sit back and they do nothing, which I've opened my eyes to see that that's the way that they just want to sit back and blame the Republicans on everything, but they don't want to offer anything up. | ||
| And to hear Schumer, who's been in office for so long or in his position for so long, make these kind of comments. | ||
| But he sits back and he doesn't do anything except for try to block what we need to do. | ||
| We are the American taxpayers and we need transparency to know where our money is going. | ||
| And because we are the ones that fund the government, the government makes up our money just for their own agendas. | ||
| And we don't see, you know, we need to know where our money is going. | ||
| And the one last comment I want to make about eggs. | ||
| Everybody is so focused on eggs, but with this bird flu that's going around, these manufacturers have to kill these chickens and destroy these eggs. | ||
| So it's basically a supply and demand issue at this time, primarily why these eggs prices have gone up so much. | ||
| But nobody wants to talk about the real impact, you know, for why egg prices are so high. | ||
| They just want to blame people for it, but not look down to the root cause. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| So, Jim, you mentioned transparency. | ||
| One of the criticisms that the Doge activities are getting is that they're not being transparent. | ||
| They're saying we're finding all this fraud and abuse, but not really showing evidence for it. | ||
| What do you think of their transparency? | ||
| Do you agree with that criticism or you disagree? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I kind of disagree with it and agree. | |
| I guess I'm 50-50 because I guess, you know, we're only a few weeks into these investigations. | ||
| And maybe before they make their announcements about what they have found, they should maybe get a little bit more detail into it and then provide that information. | ||
| But as I listened to the clip from Elon and President Trump, you know, this morning that you guys played, and Elon came right out and told the reporters that, yes, there's going to be some mistakes made because they're moving quickly and they have no issues coming back and retracting those statements or those comments or those issues made. | ||
| So maybe I guess in that aspect, they should maybe slow down a little bit and be a little thorough and get the information out there right the first time. | ||
| But in this world that we live in, everybody wants the news right now. | ||
| And unfortunately, they break off of four words that a person may say, a small comment, and that just blows up into whatever it may be. | ||
| But yeah, maybe they should slow down a little bit and to get the information out there to the people. | ||
| All right, Jim. | ||
| Well, let's hear another portion of Elon Musk in the Oval Office yesterday where he talks about potential conflicts of interest. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Busk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. | |
| Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself? | ||
| What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency? | ||
| Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. | ||
| In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the Doge handle on X and to the Doge website. | ||
| So all of our actions are maximally transparent. | ||
| In fact, I don't think there's been, I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization. | ||
| And so, you know, and the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. | ||
| They're not, you know, what I mentioned, for example, about Treasury, just making sure that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out, is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the Do Not Paylist, which takes a lot to get there, that actually are not paid, which currently they are paid. | ||
| These are not individual judgment decisions. | ||
| These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. | ||
| So it's got nice deal with, like, say, a contract with some company of mine at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts. | |
| When it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president I know has directed you to look into. | ||
| Are you policing yourself in that? | ||
| Is there any sort of accountability, check, and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people? | ||
| Well, all of our actions are fully public. | ||
| So if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, Elon, that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there. | ||
| It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. | ||
| They'll say it immediately. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Including you yourself. | |
| Yes. | ||
| But transparency is what builds trust. | ||
| Not simply somebody asserting trust. | ||
| Not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency. | ||
| So you can see everything that's going on. | ||
| And then you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? | ||
| It's totally obvious. | ||
| And we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. | ||
| And we watch that also. | ||
| He's a big businessman. | ||
| He's a successful guy. | ||
| That's why we want him doing this. | ||
| We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this. | ||
| Back to the phones now to John in Donellan, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yeah, good morning. | |
| My message to Congress would be just actually stay out of the way and let these guys audit the federal government. | ||
| I mean, they've almost found up to $4 billion in waste and fraud a day. | ||
| I mean, you do the math on that. | ||
| That's quite a bit of savings per year. | ||
| I'm happy with what's going on. | ||
| This is what we voted for. | ||
| We want transparency in the government. | ||
| We're sick of the games and the bureaucracy. | ||
| I mean, you've got some of these judges who are putting holds on some of these programs that we're looking into. | ||
| Their daughters and sons work for USAID. | ||
| I mean, the corruption is deep in Washington, D.C., and we finally need to get a look at it. | ||
| And I like the fact that Elon Musk is in charge. | ||
| The guy's probably one of the smartest guys in the world. | ||
| Let him have a look. | ||
| They're mapping out systems, their programs. | ||
| We're following money around. | ||
| It's all transparent. | ||
| And what's crazy to me is why would anybody be against an audit of the federal government? | ||
| It's all of our tax dollars. | ||
| I mean, it makes me to believe that people are guilty, I mean, of hiding money or maybe wasting money or stealing money. | ||
| If I went to my wife and my wife was at the kitchen table and I said, honey, what are you doing? | ||
| She says, I'm doing the bills. | ||
| And I say, oh, can I look at them? | ||
| I think I have a way to save us some money. | ||
| And she screams in my face, you're a threat to democracy. | ||
| Yeah, I think we know what's going on. | ||
| Yeah, but John, you're her husband. | ||
| I mean, you have a right to see that. | ||
| I think that the criticism is we don't know who, like this, the Doge team, have they been vetted? | ||
| Who are they? | ||
| Are they government employees? | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| Do you think that there should be more transparency on who the people are on the Doge team and what their credentials might be? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I mean, if it makes you sleep better at night, but for me, I'm not too bothered because I have trust in President Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| And I don't think you guys who aren't taking a salary are looking to rip anybody off. | ||
| I think they're looking to try and balance this $36 trillion deficit before my grandkids and my great-grandkids don't have a country to even be involved in. | ||
| I just don't understand why people are up in arms about an audio. | ||
| What would you think those two guys would be doing? | ||
| I mean, do you think they'd be stealing? | ||
| What would they be stealing? | ||
| They're literally trying to save money for us taxpayers. | ||
| I mean, and when you look at it and you see USAID and they're sending 20 billion to Afghanistan for Sesame Street, and there's, you know, it's a million here for condoms in Uganda and 50,000 for sex changes in Cambodia. | ||
| And Mimi, the one thing I wanted to say is when you read what USAID, you know, the breakup of their budget, whatever you're reading from Newsweek, I mean, that really doesn't detail all the waste and fraud where that money was going. | ||
| And I suggest, and I recommend that anybody who really wants to know what's going on follow a guy on Twitter called Mike Benz, BNZ. | ||
| He got the breakdown of everything that's going on, where all our taxpayer dollars are going. | ||
| And again, I mean, you could go right to Doge. | ||
| They have the transparency right there, and you can break it down and read it as well. | ||
| I find it hard to believe. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Just real quick, since John mentioned the orders and the courts, it says there's an article here in the Washington Post tracking Trump's court, Trump's court wins and losses over executive orders and actions. | ||
| This is the Washington Post, so they are tracking all the different court cases and where they stand. | ||
| And then they have a breakdown of the details on each one. | ||
| If you're interested in that, you can look at that. | ||
| That's at the Washington Post. | ||
| Well, up next, we've got Congressional Reporter for TheHill.com, Michael Schnell. | ||
| She'll discuss the latest on House Republicans' budget blueprint to advance President Trump's agenda. | ||
| And later in the program, Republican Mike Flood of Nebraska. | ||
| He's a member of the Financial Services Committee, and he'll talk about issues from budget plans, immigration, and Doge efforts. | ||
| And we will be back after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It isn't just an idea. | |
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee meets to vote on whether to send Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director to the full Senate for consideration. | ||
| This comes after an initial vote was delayed by one week at the request of Democrats on the committee, who continue to call for a second confirmation hearing with Mr. Patel. | ||
| You can watch the committee vote live at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Non-fiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Michael Schnell, a congressional reporter for thehill.com. | ||
| Michael, welcome back. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| So let's talk about the House GOP plans. | ||
| House Republicans are trying to advance the blueprint to support President Trump's agenda. | ||
| What are the big priority policy priorities for the budget? | ||
| Yeah, very sprawling piece of legislation that House Republicans are trying to get this all done in the one big, beautiful bill we've heard so much about. | ||
| And this would advance a number of large parts of President Trump's domestic policy agenda. | ||
| That's including the extension of those tax cuts that were first implemented by Trump in 2017, in addition to additional funding for the situation at the southern border, in addition to energy policy, and then other promises that Trump has made on the campaign trail. | ||
| For example, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security. | ||
| So all those priorities and more, House Republicans are trying to cram into this big bill. | ||
| Speaker Johnson spoke to reporters yesterday about where negotiations stand. | ||
| Where do they stand right now? | ||
| Well, the plan is to have right now a markup of this piece of legislation on Thursday, but there are a couple problems. | ||
| A, there's no piece of legislation that's actually been released yet. | ||
| House Republicans have been engaged in these negotiations for weeks now for a budget resolution. | ||
| And of course, the budget resolution is the piece of legislation that, if passed by both the House and the Senate, would unlock this budget reconciliation process, which essentially allows Republicans on Capitol Hill to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate. | ||
| So the first step is pay. | ||
| But explain that a little bit more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The reconciliation process and how that is able to circumvent the Democratic opposition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| So this is something that can be used in Washington when one party has a trifecta, controls all levers of power. | ||
| Of course, now we right now we have Republicans who have control of the White House, the Senate, and the House. | ||
| So if they want to pass a big bill full of a lot of priorities that they know they're not going to get any support from on the other side of the aisle, for example, Democrats are not going to want to support a number of these tax extensions, border funding, some of the energy policy. | ||
| Republicans can use what's called budget reconciliation, which is this bit of an arduous process that, like I mentioned, if you can get everybody on board, allows you to circumvent the Democratic filibuster in the Senate. | ||
| So for most pieces of legislation, 60 votes are needed in the Senate. | ||
| Republicans right now only control 53 of those seats, which means that to get any of these big ticket items done in a normal world, they would have to get at least seven Republicans on board. | ||
| But if you use this budget reconciliation process, which can be used for various spending matters that deal with revenues, you can circumvent that opposition in the Senate. | ||
| So right now, we're seeing Republicans try to get going on this budget reconciliation process, the first step of which is passing a budget resolution, which the answer to which has so far eluded House Republicans. | ||
| And if you'd like to join our conversation, ask a question about President Trump's legislative agenda or the plans for the budget, you can give us a call. | ||
| The numbers are Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We can start taking your calls soon. | ||
| The Washington Examiner has this headline: House Freedom Caucus defies Speaker Johnson and releases own budget resolution. | ||
| What's going on with that? | ||
| Yeah, so for a while, I guess taking a step back, one of the biggest debates about the budget reconciliation process has been: do you advance Trump's agenda in one sprawling bill, a single package, or do you split it up into two different priorities? | ||
| The first of which, including border security money and energy policy, try to get wind on the board quickly for President Trump. | ||
| And the second of which deals with the tax cuts, because that's more of a thornier issue that's going to take longer to negotiate. | ||
| So, Senate Republicans have said we want to do one bill and they've moved ahead with that. | ||
| Speaker Johnson and top Republicans in the House have said, Well, we want to do, I'm sorry, Senate Republicans have said that they want to do two different bills, and they're moving on that plan. | ||
| First, border and energy, second, tax cuts. | ||
| House Republicans have said the best way to do this for our conference is to get it all into one big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Why one bill? | ||
| Why not the two bills? | ||
| Yeah, so it's a good question. | ||
| So, essentially, the idea here that Johnson, the way Johnson sees this, is that he has a very slim majority. | ||
| He's working with very few, very little room for defectors in the conference. | ||
| So, he feels that when you were working with a lot of different priorities, some of which some Republicans are going to hate, others some other Republicans are going to hate. | ||
| You know, you're going to turn off conservatives with some things, moderates with other things. | ||
| If you cram all these priorities together, there are sweeteners in there for all these different folks to support. | ||
| So, for example, if you're a hardline conservative, you may not love how much this package costs. | ||
| The cost goes up when you talk about those tax cuts and other provisions. | ||
| But conservative Republicans are up in arms about the situation at the southern border, and they would not want to be caught voting against additional funding for immigration and the border. | ||
| So, that's sort of Johnson's thought here: if we put all these together, we're daring Republicans to vote against this bill. | ||
| They may not like one part, but they love a lot of the other parts. | ||
| Republicans in the House think that that's the best way to do it. | ||
| Senate Republicans, though, say the tax cut part is going to be thornier. | ||
| It's going to take more time to negotiate. | ||
| We're already seeing that dynamic play out. | ||
| So, they want to give President Trump a quick win. | ||
| They want to be able to move a border and energy policy, something that Republicans are really largely united on, get that out of the way, and then take more time to deal with the tax cuts. | ||
| Well, speaking of Senate Republicans, let's take a look at a portion from Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham. | ||
| He spoke to reporters yesterday, and I'll have you respond. | ||
| I still want a one big, beautiful bill, but I cannot, after hearing what I heard today, not act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I talked to President Trump over the weekend. | |
| He wants to get results. | ||
| And after that briefing, if the Republican Party cannot provide the money to the Trump administration to do all the things they need to do to make us safe, we have nobody to blame but ourselves because we have the ability through reconciliation to do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I just want to do it sooner rather than later. | |
| Speaker Senator is a non-starter. | ||
| So, your plan is a non-starter. | ||
| So, how are you going to pass this? | ||
| Mr. Speaker, says it doesn't have a best with my colleagues to make America safe. | ||
| If you listen to what I heard today and you're hesitant to act, that would be a problem. | ||
| I heard Tom Holbin, pretty tough guy, begging us for money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I beg you to give me more resources. | |
| I heard Russ vote, the OMB guy, say, ICE is out of money. | ||
| All I can tell my House colleagues, whatever you need to do to get the one beautiful bill, do it. | ||
| Do it now. | ||
| You have my blessing, you have my support. | ||
| But if we can't do it quickly, we need to go to plan B. Reaction. | ||
| Yeah, so this has been Graham's feeling all along, saying, Johnson and I are united. | ||
| We're united with the president also. | ||
| We know what priorities need to get done. | ||
| We're very aware of what Trump's agenda is. | ||
| He made it very clear. | ||
| But what we differ on is strategy. | ||
| And it's because what Graham said, Republicans feel an urgency to get the president more money on the border. | ||
| They feel an urgency to deal with a lot of these energy policies. | ||
| So they want to get that done quickly. | ||
| And that could probably get done in a quicker fashion because those are the non-controversial aspects of this bill. | ||
| The more controversial aspect is the tax cuts. | ||
| How long do you extend them for? | ||
| How do you deal with no tax on tips? | ||
| How do you pay for those provisions, which could be very expensive and add a lot to the deficit? | ||
| So what are some of those ideas to pay for this? | ||
| Yeah, so there are various tax cuts across the board. | ||
| They're looking at various spending cuts. | ||
| In the latest proposal put forward by House Republicans, it would be a $1.5 trillion floor for tax cuts with a target of $2 trillion. | ||
| Folks haven't really gotten into the details of what those areas of tax cuts would look like. | ||
| There's been some chatter about potential cuts to Medicaid, but that's something that would turn off more moderate Republicans. | ||
| But essentially, each committee has been tasked with looking where they can cut the funds needed to offset this bill. | ||
| But again, it all depends on how much it's going to cost. | ||
| And all these things have to be decided and discussed at least during the budget reconciliation process. | ||
| And that's why we're seeing such hang-ups right now in the House is because you're talking about really, again, really difficult, controversial, thorny issues. | ||
| So Lindsey Graham is saying right there, let's continue to have the discussion about tax cuts, but for now, let's get done what we can, border and energy. | ||
| But again, Speaker Johnson feels that the best way to do this is put it all together because he thinks that it'll be easier to get the tax cuts over the finish line if you're also having Republicans vote for border and energy. | ||
| What's the timeline in the Senate? | ||
| So today, Senate Budget Committee is going to be marking up that budget resolution that Lindsey Graham had unveiled. | ||
| It's going to include $175 billion for the situation at the border, $150 billion for defense. | ||
| Again, this is the energy and border package. | ||
| Later, tax cuts will be dealt with. | ||
| So the budget committee will advance this, and then at some point, the Senate will consider it on the Senate floor, and then it'll move over to the House. | ||
| Johnson has called this a non-starter. | ||
| I asked him about this plan yesterday. | ||
| He told me it's a non-starter. | ||
| He's still plowing ahead with this one big, beautiful bill idea. | ||
| But I will note, Johnson has plowed through a number of self-imposed deadlines. | ||
| The House Budget Committee was supposed to mark up this budget resolution last week. | ||
| That didn't happen. | ||
| Then there was supposed to be a markup yesterday. | ||
| That didn't happen. | ||
| The new plan right now is a markup on Thursday. | ||
| But again, there's a lot of skepticism about that. | ||
| Lawmakers don't even yet have their eyes on the budget resolution. | ||
| There's still debate about the particulars. | ||
| Another detail that I reported yesterday in this tax package is that the Ways and Means Committee would have $4.5 trillion to carve out those tax cuts to figure out those tax cuts, what they look like. | ||
| I then asked Jason Smith, who's the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the tax writing committee, what do you make of $4.5 trillion for this area? | ||
| He said anything below $4.7 trillion. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office has said that to extend, just extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| That'll cost $4.7 billion. | ||
| He said anything below that $4.7 trillion. | ||
| Big difference. | ||
| One letter, but big difference. | ||
| He said anything below the $4.7 trillion is not nearly enough. | ||
| And whoever proposes that is saying that President Trump's tax policy is wrong. | ||
| So we're seeing tensions flare right now. | ||
| We're seeing frustrations be aired because, again, Republicans are right now behind the eight ball. | ||
| They've been blowing through these self-imposed deadlines and they're trying to reach a really strong deadline tomorrow. | ||
| But there's a lot of skepticism if that can actually get done. | ||
| So, Stephen in Michigan is asking you, how is Trump going to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass his agenda unless they change the filibuster? | ||
| Yeah, so this gets back to what we were talking about with budget reconciliation, right? | ||
| Republicans are trying to use this budget reconciliation process to circumvent that 60-vote threshold in the Senate. | ||
| Now, this arduous process can be used for matters that involve revenues and change revenues and things like that, spending. | ||
| So, Republicans are trying to use it. | ||
| So, they're going to have to be essentially unanimous Republican support in the GOP conference in the Senate and the House conference in order to get this done, and then they'll be able to circumvent the filibuster. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers now. | ||
| We'll start in Warrington, North Carolina, independent line. | ||
| Shuron, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, they're talking about cutting everything for everybody. | |
| And on top of that, the old people is going to suffer. | ||
| This is what happened. | ||
| They're going to want to cut the Medicaid, the Medicare, the food stamp, the SNAP, or whatever. | ||
| They're able to cut it. | ||
| Besides them, Trump is not the president. | ||
| It's Elon Musk. | ||
| Trump is, Elon Musk is over there with a friend with Putin. | ||
| All he could do is weakening up the United States for Putin. | ||
| And how can a millionaire billion-ass be talking about something about money and know everybody's all about money? | ||
| Trump, Elon Musk, all about money. | ||
| They're not going to do anything. | ||
| And the people that don't know anything about government, I work for DCA and the government. | ||
| So everybody now is voting for them. | ||
| They're going to feel the raptor of Trump, Elon Musk, Putin. | ||
| All right, Shiro. | ||
| So how much fear is there of being primaried with Elon Musk's backing? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's a real concern. | ||
| You know, shifting the conversation a little bit to the Senate nomination process, for example. | ||
| The big three that we had heard about throughout this process were Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Pete Hegseth, right? | ||
| Those were the three, among the three most controversial nominees. | ||
| Pete Hegseth got through the Senate despite concerns. | ||
| Joni Ehren, somebody who is a stalwart opponent of sexual assault in the military, that's sort of been one of her key issues on Capitol Hill. | ||
| She found a way to support Pete Hegseth, and that was after this pressure campaign from the MAGA wing of the party. | ||
| Right now, we're seeing with Tulsi Gabbard that despite a lot of concerns about her 2017 meeting with former Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, previous comments she has made about Section 702, which is a really key part of the U.S.'s spying powers, in addition to comments about the Russia-Ukraine war. | ||
| There were some real concerns behind the scenes among Republicans, but a number of Republican lawmakers have found a way to support her. | ||
| She advanced on the House floor earlier this week in a party line vote, and she's likely going to be confirmed later today. | ||
| Same goes for RFK Jr. | ||
| He advanced through the Senate Finance Committee, including getting support from Senator Bill Cassidy, the chairman of that committee and a physician himself who had raised concerns. | ||
| So, you know, I talk about this all because the grip of the grip of the Trump White House is just so strong. | ||
| And look, we know that there are still some detractors within the House and the Senate, but particularly the House, when it comes to support for President Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tom Tillis, and some others. | ||
| But we're not seeing Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, but we're not seeing them flex their muscles too much because, again, the potential wrath from the Trump White House. | ||
| And the other thing I'll mention is that this current nominations process shows that elections really do matter. | ||
| In order for Republicans, a small group of Republicans to band with Democrats and tank a Trump nominee, it would take at least four Republicans to oppose. | ||
| That's a huge number when you're talking about the Senate. | ||
| And I talk about why elections matter because there were some really close Senate races in the last cycle. | ||
| For example, in Pennsylvania, if Bob Casey had beat Dave McCormick and that was a race that was determined by 15,000 votes, 0.2%, this would be an entirely different ballgame, very potentially. | ||
| So I think that this is just all showing that the grip on the Trump White House is very strong, but also the margins in these two chambers is really the entire ballgame. | ||
| We talked about the fear of being primaried. | ||
| Is there also, have any lawmakers mentioned a fear, like a fear of physical violence against them or their families? | ||
| I haven't particularly heard that. | ||
| I mean, there's always this concern about violence against lawmakers. | ||
| We have seen, unfortunately, a countless number of examples of folks of lawmakers being the target of some of these violent acts, sometimes violent attempts. | ||
| You know, the main one that comes to mind is that attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, when the attacker was looking for the former speaker. | ||
| So there's always this concern on Capitol Hill, but I'm not sure that folks are linking it particularly to some of these primary challenge threats and things like that when it has to do with legislation. | ||
| Let's go to Nicole, a Republican, and Byron Center, Michigan. | ||
| Hi, Nicole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Mine is more just a comment or a suggestion. | ||
| You know, we're talking about all these budget and Trump's budget and the GOP's budget, but we really haven't got to the bottom of what we're finding that we can get rid of, what's being misused, where our funds can be saved, what the disclosure of the audits that are happening. | ||
| And then a Republican just called in recently and said, you know, Washington Journal, do your part and show us what the USAD found in these things. | ||
| And very open-ended, you guys come back with this much for health and this much for humanitarian aid. | ||
| And, well, that's very broad. | ||
| Like, you would be doing very good justice, and everyone keeps talking transparency. | ||
| What is included in that humanitarian aid? | ||
| What exactly are you saying? | ||
| When you say health, what is included? | ||
| What exactly is that budget in health? | ||
| You're just saying health is not really giving us much. | ||
| And it's like me. | ||
| It's like, let's say I have an itemized grocery. | ||
| My husband sees our itemized, and I have $1,000 this month for groceries. | ||
| When you actually go and look at it, I'm spending all my $1,000 a month at the casino for food while I'm gambling. | ||
| Is it food? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it grocery money? | ||
| No. | ||
| So I think you guys trying to this much for health and this much for humanitarian aid is exactly what the American people are saying. | ||
| We're onto that. | ||
| We see through that now. | ||
| That tells us nothing. | ||
| We want to see exactly the breakdown of health, exactly the breakdown of humanity, exactly what is entailed in those. | ||
| And Nicole, I'll just mention to you the website called usaspending.gov. | ||
| If you want to take a look at that, that's got some good information as well. | ||
| Go ahead, Michael. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that when it comes to the budget and where these spending cuts could come from and where Republicans are looking to slash, we haven't exactly gotten fully immersed into that phase of this plan yet and this process yet. | ||
| Republicans are first just trying to figure out what these base numbers are, what the floor is for spending cuts, what the ceiling is for how much the tax cuts could add to the deficit. | ||
| How are they going to offset all of this? | ||
| Republicans are still first dealing with that before they're going to really nail into the details of what cuts are going to be looking like. | ||
| But I will note, I mean, Doge is such a big thing that's being talked about in Washington right now. | ||
| The Department of Government Efficiency, folks trying to cut wasteful spending in the federal government, obviously led by Elon Musk. | ||
| That's not just in the White House and in the executive branch. | ||
| We're also seeing the Doge effort translate to Capitol Hill. | ||
| For example, there's a Doge subcommittee. | ||
| We're going to see them have their first hearing today that's all talking about fraud in the federal government and rather wasteful spending in the federal government. | ||
| That panel is led by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| Again, the first hearing will be today. | ||
| So there's going to be a lot more discussion about these specifics right now as we sort of get past the numbers and we can start diving into the real details. | ||
| And this is Darrell in Mansfield, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Daryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to say thank you to you and all the professional journalists out there. | ||
| My question this morning is: why are they wanting to increase the national deficit another $4 trillion from, what, $17 to $21 trillion if they're saving so much money? | ||
| Yeah, so it's a good question. | ||
| Republicans don't want to increase the deficit in this package, right? | ||
| They want it to be deficit neutral. | ||
| We've heard from people like Chip Roy, Republican from Texas, say that that is his red line. | ||
| He's not going to support a package if it is not deficit neutral. | ||
| In fact, a lot of Republicans would even want this to be deficit reducing. | ||
| So what the big question is, is going to be how much are these tax cuts? | ||
| Republicans are also saying that because of the tax cuts, there's going to be growth in the U.S. economy, and that growth will help pay for some of these tax cuts and this other deficit spending. | ||
| This is all going to have to do with what's called dynamic scoring. | ||
| It's essentially the way that Republicans are going to score this package, judge this package, determine the numbers in this package and what the bottom line looks like. | ||
| But again, Republicans do not want this bill to add to the federal deficit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In fact, that's been one of the red lines that's been thrown out. | |
| And let's talk to Carlos in Miami, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Carlos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, no snow here in Miami, but I think there's four inches up there in Washington. | |
| I wish you all. | ||
| There is indeed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Some defend $20 million of American taxpayer funds being spent for Sesame Street in Iraq, and this is nothing new. | |
| We've heard about this for decades, but long-term, nothing will change. | ||
| And it will happen again and again until there's accountability. | ||
| And the type of transparency we saw in the Oval Office yesterday, you can see it on C-SPAN for 32 minutes, and it's worthwhile watching. | ||
| But again, until there's more revelations like this and investigations that include prosecution and punishment for wrongdoing and malfeasance, it's just going to continue. | ||
| Some people see Ellen Musk and his son in the Oval Office with Trump and disparage them, while some of us see an honest, transparent, real-world display of one Ellen Musk taking a break as a dad with the President of the United States in his office, | ||
| bringing sunlight to these dark, existential incompetence, fraud, malfeasance, graft, and corruption with the U.S. Treasury. | ||
| The image of Elon Musk in the Oval Office was quite interesting yesterday, especially with his son. | ||
| I think that just underscores the idea that Elon Musk is an unelected official, but he's a very key part of the U.S. government right now. | ||
| He's a close, a very close ally of President Trump, as a very large donor, is put in charge of this Doge committee, which seems this Doge group, which seems to have a lot of leeway within the federal government. | ||
| Whether people like him or not, he's a key power player in this current Trump administration. | ||
| It's going to be interesting to see how this relationship and how his impact continues to play out. | ||
| And he is doing a financial disclosure, but not making it public. | ||
| So how does that work? | ||
| Well, yeah, that will be an interesting dynamic to see play out. | ||
| It could change amid pressure. | ||
| We'll have to see what that is. | ||
| It's sort of, we saw this conversation about the tax returns with Trump during his first administration. | ||
| So it's going to be curious to see how that plays out, especially because he had just talked about this potential conflicts of interest and wanting to work against conflicts of interest when he was in the Oval Office yesterday. | ||
| So it's going to be a fascinating dynamic to follow. | ||
| Let's talk to Judy in Newport, Oregon, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Judy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Let's see. | ||
| I have a few questions. | ||
| I wasn't very convinced listening to Elon Musk talk about how he will recluse himself from his own interest. | ||
| I mean, they fired all the IGs of who's going to watch out for that. | ||
| And why do the Republicans have to get their tax cuts for the very well-off, for the corporations, for the millionaires and billionaires? | ||
| Why not just give a tax cut to people making under $400,000 and then wait until things straighten out? | ||
| I'm sure there's a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| I mean, there is. | ||
| Any huge amount of money spending like that, there's bound to be. | ||
| But they're only talking about the things that they don't want. | ||
| I mean, I'm sure it costs a lot of money for Melania to go from New York to Washington to wherever. | ||
| I'm sure a lot of these people spend a lot of frivolous money that we don't need to be spending, but they're not going to pick that apart like they're picking apart USAAID and, you know, and then they're making up a lot of stories, like the condoms in Gaza, which wasn't true. | ||
| They're making up stories, and people get on social media and they spread all these rumors and all these lies. | ||
| So why not just give tax breaks to the people making under $400,000 for now, and then come back to the big, huge tax cut that they want to give to their billionaires. | ||
| Okay, Judy. | ||
| So I can't speak to the motivation in terms of why Republicans are choosing one specific tax cut over another, but I can speak to the reason why there's such an urgency right now to extend these 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| A number of the provisions that are in there, which impact a lot of folks across the country, expire at the end of 2025. | ||
| That's why Republicans really feel right now that they are sort of facing the clock and racing the clock. | ||
| And this is why Johnson has laid out such an ambitious timeline, because if Republicans can't unite and extend the Trump tax cuts by the end of the year, a number of those provisions will lapse and there will be a real impact on American people across the country. | ||
| So this is, again, the reason why we have seen such an urgency in both chambers to get started on this process quickly and to try to work out the kinks early so they can make sure they can get something by the end of the year. | ||
| And you mentioned the Doge subcommittee hearing happening today. | ||
| I just wanted to mention to people that we will have that on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| That's going to be at 10 a.m. | ||
| You're going to be there. | ||
| I will be in the Capitol. | ||
| There are a lot of different stories to cover. | ||
| I'm not sure all the time. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| There's a lot going on, but I will definitely be keeping an eye on it. | ||
| Look, it's really interesting because, again, this is sort of, we're seeing this Doge initiative make its way onto Capitol Hill. | ||
| I'm also curious to see how Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene handles herself. | ||
| I mean, remember, just about four years ago, she was stripped of her committee assignments when she had just come to Congress because she was such this lightning rod and such a controversial figure. | ||
| Four years later, her close ally, Donald Trump, is in the White House. | ||
| She's in a Republican majority in the House, and she's wielding a subcommittee gavel. | ||
| It is a drastic turn of events for Congresswoman Greene over the past four years. | ||
| So I'm curious to see how she conducts herself today, how she handles the committee. | ||
| And then on the other side of the aisle, there are a lot of other, let's say, colorful lawmakers, loud lawmakers on the other side. | ||
| Congressman Robert Garcia, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. | ||
| These are folks who are not afraid to never shy away from confronting Congresswoman Green and becoming a bit combative and loud in these hearings if they hear something that they don't like. | ||
| So it's going to be a fascinating display today. | ||
| And let's talk to Christina in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Christina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You know, she just said something about it's going to be a, you know, an interesting display or something like that. | ||
| I've got a couple questions and then something to say. | ||
| This administration, they plan on upholding the Constitution, right? | ||
| Is that your question, Christina? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's one of them. | |
| Yeah, that's one of them. | ||
| And what's your other question? | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, well, it depends on our answer because in the Constitution, it doesn't state nothing about a democracy, okay? | |
| We're a republic, and you know, every person, well, when I grew up, we pledged allegiance every day to, you know, our republic. | ||
| And I hear you guys talk about the budget, and it's amazing to me that we can have a government that can regulate every individual's spending and where they go and what they're doing and all this other stuff. | ||
| But we have elected officials that are supposed to be there to protect and defend the people, okay? | ||
| And you guys can't even act like grown adults. | ||
| You act like a bunch of middle school children that are in there debating and yelling and screaming and this and that. | ||
| And why I asked the first question is because democracy means a small group of people dictate and make all the decisions for all the mass amounts. | ||
| Now, that's what we got going on right now. | ||
| And we need individual transparency and we need to have action now. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We can spend billions of dollars in Ukraine and over here and over there and on immigrants, but we can't bring that money back to the people. | ||
| I don't care who's in the office. | ||
| What I care about is my children's future and what's going on right now. | ||
| So, Christina, can I ask you a quick question before I let Michael respond? | ||
| When you said that democracy is a small group of people making decisions for everybody else, can you explain that a little bit more? | ||
| Because I guess some people consider democracy being, you know, people vote and whoever gets the highest number of votes, they get to represent the rest of the people. | ||
| Explain that to me a little bit more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you've got to think about it this way, okay? | |
| I've been studying law, and, you know, the Declaration of Independence, it tells us right there that we're all created equal. | ||
| And it doesn't matter if you're in a government position or an organization or whatever. | ||
| We're all created equal. | ||
| Now, when government becomes destructive to the ends where it's harming the well-being and the safety of its people, it's time to either alter it or abolish it. | ||
| And that's the people's choice, okay? | ||
| And isn't that a democracy, Christina? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're raising our voices and we're trying to get our concerns out, but nobody's listening. | |
| You guys are playing this ping-pong game with us dividing us, you know, psychologically out here. | ||
| And so then you guys can continue, not you personally, but they can continue to keep up this ruse and this scheming for the people. | ||
| It's very easy. | ||
| Any person knows that if you're going to go in and clean up a place, you're going to have individual accountability, okay? | ||
| You're going to have transparency where everything goes. | ||
| And if the government's doing their job, we should have no problem being able to have community meetings for the people to figure out where we want our money to go and what we think is important for the American people. | ||
| Because the government's job is to protect and defend us, to make sure no foreigners come in and stuff like that. | ||
| Our job as the people is to work together to create prosperity and futures for our children so humanity lives on. | ||
| All right, Christina. | ||
| Comment, Michael? | ||
| I would say that the president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. | ||
| So that is, of course, the intention of the president. | ||
| And I don't know where else to go from there. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I want to show you House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar talking about the state of funding negotiations and the possibility of a shutdown. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. | ||
| If they want to keep government open, they should keep government open. | ||
| We are working with them. | ||
| Chairwoman Rosa DeLora will lead our efforts to negotiate and work through issues just like we have for many years through multiple Congresses. | ||
| That is our plan. | ||
| That has always been our plan. | ||
| If Republicans need votes, they can come to us and we are happy to negotiate. | ||
| There is, and I said this last week, there's very little appetite to help Republicans when we don't trust that Donald Trump is going to spend the resources that we've allocated for education, for health care, or even, we don't know, for our defense. | ||
| With Elon Musk and his unelected friends running through and combing through the federal system, we don't have those assurances. | ||
| These are not advisory bills. | ||
| This is not advisory spending levels. | ||
| This has the full weight of law as described by the Constitution. | ||
| We are standing up for the Constitution and our Article I responsibilities. | ||
| Representative Aguilar, they're saying that there's very little appetite to help Republicans when we don't trust that Donald Trump is going to spend the resources that we've allocated. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| Well, government funding by nature is going to have to be bipartisan because there's a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. | ||
| And for something like government funding, you can't use budget reconciliation for that. | ||
| So Democrats and Republicans, regardless of what it looks like, are going to have to come together and vote on something together to keep the government funded. | ||
| By the way, that deadline is just around the corner. | ||
| It's March 14th. | ||
| It's very quickly approaching. | ||
| So Aguilar, I kind of take it as flirting with the idea that there could be a shutdown come next week, next month, because again, if he's saying that Democrats don't have an appetite to help Republicans with anything, well, they're going to need to help Republicans with government funding because again, by nature, by definition, it's something that's going to require a bipartisan vote. | ||
| But we're hearing a lot of frustrations up on Capitol Hill from Democrats about the types of things that Doge is doing, for example, dismantling the USAID, dismantling CFPB. | ||
| There's real concerns and anger about this. | ||
| So the appetite among Democrats to sort of provide the votes for a pretty standard bill like government funding is low, as we're seeing. | ||
| But I think that when push comes to shove, I'm not sure that I can see Democrats forcing a shutdown. | ||
| It's not really in their nature. | ||
| It's not really in their blood to do something like that. | ||
| Shutdowns also have impacts across the country. | ||
| So I don't know if I see that happening, but the fact that Democrats are taking this stance right now and expressing how they feel, it just underscores and displays the true anger and frustration they have with how things are currently going. | ||
| Okay, one more call and then we'll let you go. | ||
| Mike in Stockton, California, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And kudos to both of you who have a bias towards journalism. | ||
| I think you guys are doing a great job. | ||
| Wasn't that just the other day when a journalist got in some kind of trouble with the White House for not saying the Gulf of America or something like that? | ||
| I think that's just one question I had. | ||
| And I just can't help but think about when Mike Johnson made his first speech when he became the speaker and he says how the Constitution says all men are created equal. | ||
| And then he turns to the left or to the right and he says, but we're not made equal. | ||
| And I'm going, you're created equal. | ||
| What do you mean, not made equal? | ||
| And why are you trying to divide us like that? | ||
| I mean, there's so many in clandestine groups in America. | ||
| Like, what's this new, like the Crowdboys group that just popped up? | ||
| That's against the American Constitution. | ||
| And I think it's completely wrong the way Donald Trump was saying for the South Africans to come over here, the white ones, because they're being treated bad. | ||
| Well, just the other day, the white South Africans mocked them and they don't want to come over here. | ||
| I mean, that was not true anyway. | ||
| Why is that Republican lady saying they're scrutinizing everything Democrats feel our list? | ||
| All he has to do is go in there. | ||
| Oh, I found $100 million over here with not showing any proof. | ||
| I want the journalists to sit there and let us see where is the proof what they're talking about. | ||
| From now on, don't let them just say stuff to us. | ||
| I want to see it. | ||
| Somebody needs to call them out. | ||
| Show me the proof. | ||
| Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Last comment. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I think it would be great if politicians and lawmakers and people of influence would back up their claims of what they're saying with evidence. | ||
| I'd love to see the proof also as a reporter. | ||
| So I endorse that idea. | ||
| And I believe that the story that he was referring to at first was that the White House had shut down access for an Associated Press reporter because the Associated Press had not abided by the new Gulf of America name rather than Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| Of course, very in favor of press access. | ||
| I think that all journalists should be able to perform their job and do their duties, but the fallout from that will certainly be a story to keep an eye on. | ||
| All right, Michael Schnell, congressional reporter for The Hill. | ||
| You can see her work at thehill.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for getting through the snow and coming in this morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| And later in the program, we'll speak to Republican Mike Flood of Nebraska, a member of the Financial Services Committee on issues related to the budget plans, immigration, and Doge efforts. | ||
| But first, it's open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| Listening to programs on C-SPAN through C-SPAN Radio is easy. | ||
| Tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio, and listen to Washington Journal daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Important public affairs events throughout the day. | ||
| And weekdays, catch Washington today. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN anytime. | ||
| Just tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| C-SPAN, created by Cable. C-SPANshop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | ||
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org. | ||
| On Thursday, President Trump's nominee to serve as Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. | ||
| She led the agency that deals with small businesses during the first Trump administration and is a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment. | ||
| Watch the confirmation hearing live starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3 on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Non-fiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee meets to vote on whether to send Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director to the full Senate for consideration. | ||
| This comes after an initial vote was delayed by one week at the request of Democrats on the committee, who continue to call for a second confirmation hearing with Mr. Patel. | ||
| You can watch the committee vote live at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea, it's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open forum and we are going to be taking your calls shortly. | ||
| A couple of things, though. | ||
| I want to make sure you know that Tulsi Gabbard will face a final vote in the Senate for her confirmation this morning at 11 a.m. | ||
| That's for the position of Director of National Intelligence. | ||
| That's going to be on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| So that's this morning at 11 a.m. | ||
| There's also the first meeting of the House Doge Subcommittee that will be led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. | ||
| And you can follow the C-SPAN networks for that. | ||
| A couple other things, but first I want to tell you about the release of American Mark Fogel. | ||
| This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| And this is his picture here on the airplane on his flight home. | ||
| He has arrived in the United States. | ||
| It says, Russians free American left out of the prisoner swap. | ||
| He was a high school history teacher and he spent 1,277 days in Russian custody. | ||
| And he flew back with President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. | ||
| It says, here's the White House statement. | ||
| By tonight, Mark Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump's leadership. | ||
| Fogel's arrest for flying into Moscow with medically prescribed marijuana became a fraught test of Washington's efforts to determine which Americans jailed overseas were worthy of rescue. | ||
| And it said that he was 63 years old, worked at the elite Anglo-American school in Moscow. | ||
| Let's go to the phones now. | ||
| This is Gwen in Portland, Oregon, Independent Line. | ||
| Gwen, you're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| It's Gwen, not Gwen. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Glenn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's okay. | |
| I wanted to talk about the tax situation that everybody is so concerned with. | ||
| Let's start with that the income tax is a regressive tax and shouldn't exist at all. | ||
| But if we go back to when the income tax was initiated back in 1915, the minimum income at that time for taxes was $100,000 per year. | ||
| So if we project that forward, that would mean that taxes for individuals wouldn't start until you were making $4.2 million a year. | ||
| That's not going to happen. | ||
| But again, as I say, the income tax is a regressive tax and shouldn't exist. | ||
| If we change the tax code and initiate a net worth tax on everybody, businesses and individuals, we would generate enough income that in five years we would completely eliminate the national debt, the entire $17 trillion. | ||
| And Glenn, what do you think that percentage should be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
From then on. | |
| What should the percentage be of that tax that you're recommending on net worth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We would start at 1% and go up to 10%. | |
| All right. | ||
| Elaine in Akron, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Elaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am a first-time caller. | ||
| And the reason for the call, I wish you could reference Eric Lipton. | ||
| He's a New York Times journalist. | ||
| His article yesterday listing all of the investigations of Elon Musk's businesses and his elimination of those government entities so far. | ||
| It's quite extensive, and it would show the American people a lot of what Mr. Musk is about. | ||
| And that's the reason for my call. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Mark in Amanda, Ohio, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Mimi, thanks for the time. | |
| That last caller, the Democrats, you must have forgot the four years that Biden was in office. | ||
| Look at all the things he did. | ||
| And that's why we're in such trouble today. | ||
| But my main reason for calling is about the Doge with Elon Musk. | ||
| I see Elon Musk must have had more IQ than the whole Democrats together. | ||
| If you look at everything, it was somebody 150 years old to getting Social Security. | ||
| Who's cashing, who's getting the deposits? | ||
| They ought to be prosecuted for that. | ||
| And it seems like they're getting close to uncovering so much. | ||
| The Democrats are in panic mode. | ||
| And President Trump, look what he's done in the first three weeks of his office. | ||
| I mean, it's unreal. | ||
| I'm 69 years old. | ||
| I've never seen anybody move so quick. | ||
| The guy's 78. | ||
| He gets three hours of sleep at night. | ||
| And he keeps, he's like, he's better than the Energizer Bunny. | ||
| Look what he's done. | ||
| He's got the gentleman freed from Russia just last night. | ||
| And when Elon had this press conference with President Trump in the old office last night, he had his child with him. | ||
| I think that was a good move. | ||
| But it was funny, the press did not ask a question until he asked them to. | ||
| And usually they're going to yell out, but they were afraid of Elon Musk. | ||
| They're afraid what he might say because he might just embarrass them. | ||
| And I just felt sorry for the Democrats. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, Mark, I want to ask you because the caller just before you, as you mentioned, mentioned the New York Times articles about this. | ||
| So I pulled one up and I want you to respond. | ||
| It says, Elon Musk's business empire scores benefits under Trump shake-up. | ||
| It says that government investigations into Mr. Musk's companies are stalling amid President Trump's firings and Biden administration resignations. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you mean, how come the CIA or FBI never investigated Biden for taking millions from China, from Russia, from Moss, the mayor of Moscow? | |
| How come that was never investigated? | ||
| How come the assassination attempts on President Trump, the two attempts, you don't hear nothing about it? | ||
| So is your response, Mark, that we should not look into, that the government should not investigate Musk's companies, that all those should be dropped, that they're invalid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, anybody, I can accuse anyone of anything. | |
| I don't mind the investigations, but, you know, I can accuse anybody of anything. | ||
| It's not proven until the point's proven. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| You know, just because someone writes an article doesn't make Elon Musk guilty. | ||
| I mean, where did this gentleman do his research? | ||
| Is he politically motivated? | ||
| I bet he is. | ||
| You know, anybody can accuse anybody of anything. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Alexander in White Plains, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Alexander. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes, I'm calling in because this is my first time call as well. | ||
| I was just wanting to state some of the things that we're dealing with with President Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| One of the main things I'm concerned about is he continually disavows himself or separates himself from the Project 2025, which has obviously been a great, you know, basically a lie. | ||
| And he's appointed the same guy he said he had nothing to do with, didn't know anything about it, to the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
| Yes, I think that's crazy that people can still accept anything this person says. | ||
| And when he's been known to be an incessant and pathological, actually, liar, why would anyone, why would anyone want to get rid of fact-checking if, in fact, he doesn't lie as much as his people believe he does? | ||
| And it's been exposed. | ||
| So it's really that we're not really thinking. | ||
| This is a situation that's a virus. | ||
| We're in dire straits here with people who will accept anything this person says. | ||
| And he's been proven time and time again not to be truthful. | ||
| And these Republicans, I think they really don't understand the gravity of this situation because we're heading into a dictatorship if we're not already there. | ||
| When you have control of the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and everything that has any power, they control it now. | ||
| And if they have been threatened to say, well, if they don't vote with him on every little single thing that he wants to do, regardless of who it hurts, and regardless of how much money it takes out of the budget, they just spoke about a $4.7 trillion tax, what is it? | ||
| Tax relief tax cut for billionaires and millionaires. | ||
| You're not going to see any of that. | ||
| I'm a so-called middle-class person, and I live here in Maryland, and my prices are going up crazy. | ||
| And they're talking about don't consider yourself, don't concern yourself with the price of eggs. | ||
| That's what they talked about prior to this election. | ||
| The price of eggs, the price of eggs, that's all you can hear the Republicans talk about. | ||
| Even the guys that I know down here who are Republicans, they are not hearing, they don't want to hear facts. | ||
| They have been basically duped by this guy. | ||
| And I don't understand why these people won't wake up. | ||
| We're heading into a dictatorship, people. | ||
| Let's talk to Lewis now, a Republican in Lucasville, Ohio. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is my first time calling. | |
| I just want to reply to this gentleman before me. | ||
| The egg prices are due to the agriculture secretary under Joe Biden. | ||
| She ordered massive killings of chickens because they say they have the avion flu, although we've seen no evidence. | ||
| Same thing with some previous callers. | ||
| They want the evidence. | ||
| Okay, the Doge that everybody's talking about and concerned with right now. | ||
| That was actually started under President Obama, but it was under a different name. | ||
| It was USDS, if I'm correct. | ||
| And he had people working there that were not elected officials. | ||
| You can go back and read it. | ||
| And to the gentleman that called in or woman that said there was an article in the New York Times, we know the New York Times is so trustworthy on their print. | ||
| There have been lots of stories there that have come out to not be true. | ||
| The media, we can't believe anything they tell us because they tell us nothing but lies. | ||
| Just like when Trump was in his debate and he brought out the thing about the Springfield situation with the Haitians killing and eating animals, it is a fact because I know people that live there. | ||
| They say they actually saw it. | ||
| They saw him eating people's cats and dogs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't live in Springfield, but I know people that do, and they said it was, in fact, true. | |
| Because look, the people that live in Haiti, that is their way of eating. | ||
| That's their survival. | ||
| They eat what they kill. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| It's true. | ||
| So a lot of us eat what we kill as far as like chickens and dogs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cat and dog are delicacies. | |
| I'm sorry to tell you. | ||
| Cat and dog are delicacies in some countries. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| The question was: was it happening in Springfield, Ohio? | ||
| And was it Haitian immigrants taking people's cats and dogs? | ||
| That was the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not accurate. | |
| That's the accuracy. | ||
| I am accurate. | ||
| I don't live in Springfield, but I do know people that live there. | ||
| It's the same thing across. | ||
| There's so much going on. | ||
| The media, the media, if they would get back to telling the news and stop with all their opinions, get back to the news, like the days of John Chancellor and David Brinkley, the people we'd be better off. | ||
| As far as prices, well, we've got a lot to consider there. | ||
| Prices were already going up when Joe Biden was in office. | ||
| And who was our president for the last four years? | ||
| I mean, was it Joe? | ||
| Was it not? | ||
| It came out that he was mentally incompetent because he couldn't stand trial, they said. | ||
| And the Democratic Party sure didn't want him to run for president again. | ||
| But then they put Kamala, and she wasn't really elected to run either. | ||
| She didn't have not one single primary. | ||
| So let's just get things straight. | ||
| Doge was started under Obama. | ||
| You know, look it up. | ||
| 2014. | ||
| Donald Trump, they just changed the name, went in and changed some things around in there, but it was actually started under Obama. | ||
| Look it up. | ||
| I've already done that. | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| Here's ABC News reporting that Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, visits NATO as allies await U.S.-Ukraine planes. | ||
| It says U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on the first trip to NATO by a member of the new Trump administration. | ||
| If he comes to the podium or speaks, we will show that to you. | ||
| He is there right now. | ||
| We're watching that and we'll bring you anything that's newsworthy on that front. | ||
| Here's Dawn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, just to reply to the previous caller, I have family that lives in Springfield, Ohio, a lot of family. | |
| And they did see Haitians taking ducks from the park and cutting their heads off. | ||
| That's what they told me. | ||
| But I was calling because I'm just, you know, I don't understand why the Republicans are not wanting to, why they want to decrease the deficit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I get it, but it's money for our border and for tax cuts. | |
| So it's like we have all this waste, fraud, and abuse that they're finding with Doge with money being spent on things that do not help the American people. | ||
| So I don't understand why they just can't get it together and, you know, vote for increasing that money and giving it to the border to Tom Hooman. | ||
| Also, I don't understand the concern with Elon Musk doing an audit. | ||
| I don't know why anybody would not want their tax dollars accounted for. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy to me. | ||
| Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. | ||
| Then Trump is a businessman. | ||
| So who else would you want to do an audit or try to figure out where the waste, fraud, and abuse is coming from? | ||
| And as far as Elon Musk, I heard you say that his investigations that they're doing, I think those investigations were started under Joe Biden, and they were started after he acquired Twitter, now X, and he was targeted. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I don't think that it's serious because I feel like he was targeted, just like Mark Zuckerberg and everybody else who's come out and spoken about the Biden administration, how they were targeted for censorship and everything else. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| All right, Don. | ||
| This is Gary in Sterling, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you, Mamie. | ||
| A famous American once said, waste not, want not. | ||
| That's the way I feel about that plastic cap on milk or juice carton. | ||
| We need to call the 800 number on your milk or juice carton. | ||
| Tell them to get rid of that. | ||
| That's a waste of good, high-quality plastic. | ||
| It's also an impediment, an obstacle to getting to the product. | ||
| We need to do something about this plastic. | ||
| This is plastic that we don't need. | ||
| It's easier to open the milk carton up by folding the ears back, and then you get it. | ||
| I know you've called about this before. | ||
| We've talked about it. | ||
| You told me it made you matter than a wet hen. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| So, but here's my question for you, Gary. | ||
| If this is really the biggest problem that you're having, then maybe life is really pretty good. | ||
| I mean, it's just a little bit of plastic on the milk, Carton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, the biggest problem I got is people not believing in logic, reason, and common sense. | |
| You know what logic is? | ||
| Like, you know, natural gas is half the price of diesel fuel or gasoline. | ||
| And all these Amazon, FedEx, UPS, they're all using gasoline. | ||
| It's half the price. | ||
| Say could go as a price to the consumer if they switch to natural gas and so it can be produced. | ||
| Why are they all flatulating around like this? | ||
| This isn't right. | ||
| They need to do something for it. | ||
| You know, that's all everybody's cost of gasoline. | ||
| 30% of the fuel goes to commercial use, and yet they produce 70% of the pollution and transportation. | ||
| All right, Gary. | ||
| And as I mentioned before, Secretary Hagseth is in Brussels right now. | ||
| This is a live look at NATO headquarters. | ||
| He is going to be meeting with that's the first trip by a member of the new Trump administration to NATO. | ||
| So he's got meetings there. | ||
| He's going to have talks with UK Defense Secretary John Healy, and he will meet the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO headquarters there in Brussels. | ||
| Over 50 countries have collectively provided Ukraine more than $126 billion in weapons and military assistance. | ||
| Here's James in Norfolk, Virginia. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You know, what I want to know is this Dodge guy, Musk, he could be stealing our money and putting it in an account. | ||
| They got these guys, let's say, these young guys doing computers. | ||
| I ran the computers of the police department. | ||
| Nobody could touch those computers unless you vet it. | ||
| No low-weight Dodge enough to touch them. | ||
| I don't care if you got $5 billion, $100 billion. | ||
| It's wrong for him to be in those other guys, so many crooks messing with our computers. | ||
| Well, they can tell us anything they want to tell us. | ||
| They can lie to us and say that USAD, this and that, they stopped the people's money. | ||
| They're freezing, they starving. | ||
| It don't make sense. | ||
| This country got billions of dollars and they got people starving, and the money was appropriated by Congress, not by Trump, by the Congress. | ||
| How many beans they got, which wasn't a whole lot of money? | ||
| They got the people frozen. | ||
| And now they're wondering why the judges are doing what they're doing. | ||
| If I'm the judge, I look at the Constitution. | ||
| They're wrong. | ||
| Congress isn't one that was supposed to appropriate and stop money flowing. | ||
| Not Dodge or those must. | ||
| And he thinks it's funny. | ||
| When he gets to stop it one day and lose some of them billions, he'll see what happens. | ||
| What goes around comes around. | ||
| Don't make no sense. | ||
| And people loving him. | ||
| And then those crooks, the computer boys, 25, 19 years old, taking advantage of our money. | ||
| We don't know what they're doing with it. | ||
| All right, James. | ||
| Here's Larry in Southport, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| I just wanted. | ||
| I'm gone a while ago that mixed up budget. | ||
| And Schumberlast, when the budget came up, said that pediatric cancer research would be on the Republicans if they shut down the government. | ||
| But Schumer had that bill in his possession since March of 24, which could have been brought to the House and Piracy City any given time. | ||
| And You said, Larry, you said pediatric research. | ||
| Is this an NIH funding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's what, ma'am? | |
| So I didn't hear you. | ||
| Were you talking about pediatric research? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The bill has been sitting on Seamus' desk, like I mentioned prior to this. | |
| And then he puts it into budget at the last minute. | ||
| And 400-something pages end up about 15 with all the pork that's in there. | ||
| And I imagine both sides had a little pork in it. | ||
| But then the Democrats won't accuse the Republican of shutting down the governor and hurting children. | ||
| And that is how deceiving the Democrats are. | ||
| I hate to say it in that nature. | ||
| And now they're going panicking and hit the streets. | ||
| We're going to fight the streets. | ||
| We're going to fight here. | ||
| If that was Trump or another Republican, they'd be crucified. | ||
| And then again, the news media, people listen to news media, right or left, instead of doing any research for themselves. | ||
| And this USAID millions of dollars going to Yemen, which is a cash group, Odus that are rocking and firing at our cargo ships. | ||
| 100 and over a million going for a drag, transgender opera in Brazil. | ||
| I mean, it's on the non-10 million when Hamas was in control of Palestine. | ||
| It's 100 million a year given to them without any audit or without anything which came with building our military up with it. | ||
| All right, Larry. | ||
| And this has just come out from Axios. | ||
| The Consumer Price Index shows inflation heated up in January. | ||
| This article says that inflation moved higher in January. | ||
| The CPI rose 0.5%, while a measure that strips out energy and food rose 0.4%. | ||
| That's according to the Labor Department. | ||
| That's just come out today. | ||
| It's a warning to the White House and the Fed about inflation's potential staying power across the economy. | ||
| The CPI rose 3% in the year through January, compared to 2.9% increase in December. | ||
| It says that inflation progress has been bumpy in recent years. | ||
| We're going to cut away just for a few moments to take a look at Secretary Hegsa. | ||
| I'm honored to join all of you today. | ||
| And I appreciate the opportunity to share President Trump's approach to the war in Ukraine. | ||
| We are at, as you said, Mr. Secretary, a critical moment. | ||
| As the war approaches its third anniversary, our message is clear. | ||
| The bloodshed must stop, and this war must end. | ||
| President Trump has been clear with the American people and with many of your leaders that stopping the fighting and reaching an enduring peace is a top priority. | ||
| He intends to end this war by diplomacy and bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the table. | ||
| And the U.S. Department of Defense will help achieve this goal. | ||
| We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling Allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield. | ||
| We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. | ||
| But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. | ||
| Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering. | ||
| A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again. | ||
| This must not be Minsk 3.0. | ||
| That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. | ||
| Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. | ||
| If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5. | ||
| There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. | ||
| To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine. | ||
| To further enable effective diplomacy and drive down energy prices that fund the Russian war machine, President Trump is unleashing American energy production and encouraging other nations to do the same. | ||
| Lower energy prices, coupled with more effective enforcement of energy sanctions, will help bring Russia to the table. | ||
| Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. | ||
| As part of this, Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine. | ||
| Members of this context. | ||
| That's Secretary Hegseth in Brussels. | ||
| That's happening live right now at NATO headquarters. | ||
| We will have his full remarks for you on our website and on our app. | ||
| You can go to c-span.org. | ||
| And we will continue with your calls. | ||
| Beverly in Bellwood, Illinois, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my name is Beverly. | |
| I'm calling regarding the Doggy show yesterday, Doggy and Tyler Show in the White House yesterday. | ||
| This man was not elected, and they made a big issue over Kamala running for president because she was not primary. | ||
| This man was not even elected as a co-president or vice president. | ||
| So I find it very disturbing that we should be subjected to him giving a press conference in the office of the president while the president sits there writing, you know, and like Elon is in control of everything. | ||
| I think we have a co-president with Donald being in the shadow of Elon. | ||
| So if the Republicans have problems with Kamala running as a candidate for president, I don't see how they don't have a problem with this co-president who did not run for anything and could not be president other than a co-president with Trump's side because he's not even a natural born citizen here. | ||
| And I just feel like he might be a DEI Higher because he's been diagnosed and has he says he's a self-diagnosed Asperger syndrome. | ||
| So maybe he's a DEI hire of our president. | ||
| That's my comment for today. | ||
| And here's Monty in Phoenix, Arizona, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I was listening to a little bit of Hartbread speech at NATO, and it kind of reminded me of McInmarray just a little bit back during the Vietnam conflict. | ||
| How's that, Monty? | ||
| How did it remind you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're not going to send any troops. | |
| You know, so anyway. | ||
| Well, you know, he did say European and non-European troops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, what do you make of that? | |
| I heard what he said. | ||
| As far as I'm concerned, that's fine. | ||
| NATO should, the European nation should pick up a little bit more of the responsibility. | ||
| That's for sure. | ||
| But what I wanted to say was about this thing with some lady called in about republic and democracy. | ||
| Back when I was in school, in high school, I had a teacher that explained that our republic is a constitutional democratic republic. | ||
| We have a constitution that's the framework. | ||
| The democracy part is that we vote on our representatives that are sent to a forum to represent us, but they're not sent to just represent certain groups. | ||
| Washington warned against this in his farewell address about factions which have turned into political parties. | ||
| And what we're seeing now, I think, is the fulfillment of his warning: don't do it. | ||
| But we have gone ahead and done it. | ||
| And so now both parties are starting to adopt kind of an authoritarian view of how they get to run the country if they have majorities in certain places. | ||
| And that's not my view of how it was supposed to be, because the Constitution is a framework which allows us to self-govern. | ||
| It doesn't sell out all the laws, you know, that we should have. | ||
| It says, you know, you guys figure it out as you go and do what's right and that's for everybody concerned. | ||
| But as far as these things with immigration and stuff like that, I agree with that. | ||
| That should have never happened. | ||
| So I'm really pleased that that's happening. | ||
| But I get a little bit concerned when I hear that they want to raise the debt ceiling. | ||
| When one of the big conversations that everybody had was how much debt we're in right now. | ||
| And now they're talking about raising the debt ceiling. | ||
| And what do you think is the best way to handle that, Monty? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you. | |
| I mean, it's either going to be more taxes or less spending. | ||
| Where do you fall? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're going to have to do less spending. | |
| Okay. | ||
| They're going to have to probably leave taxes where they are. | ||
| But they're going to have to start doing less spending before they can start talking about reducing taxes and that type of thing. | ||
| And the other thing was that in the tax cuts, as I recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like corporations' tax cuts were made permanent, while other tax cuts were just up until the end of 2025. | ||
| The end of this year, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| All right. | ||
| Let's talk to Pamela in South China, Maine at Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| Well, I tell you, my honest opinion of the whole situation is quite simple. | ||
| I voted Democratically. | ||
| I've always been an Independent, but this past election I did vote Democrat. | ||
| What I will say to the people of America is this. | ||
| Both the Democrats and the Republicans need to stop. | ||
| all the rhetoric. | ||
| They need to work together because let's face it, in the end, they are hired by the American public and they are supposed to be representing us. | ||
| At this point, as much as I did vote Democrat, I personally feel that the Democrats and the Republicans are equally at fault for what's going on because they're so busy going along their own party's agendas. | ||
| They're not meeting in the middle and coming to a common agreement as to what needs to be done. | ||
| As far as being a Democrat, we absolutely need to cut a lot of the waste in government. | ||
| There is no question about that. | ||
| But I also truly strongly feel that I think why so many Democrats are upset right now is the way in which the Republicans are going about it. | ||
| I think they're trying to usurp the Congress. | ||
| I think they're trying to usurp anybody that's got any say in what is about to take place. | ||
| And I think what the Democrats are also upset about is they would like to have some accountability from these people for what they're actually doing. | ||
| I think if we had that, I think people would be less upset and less nervous about what is currently going on. | ||
| But I really believe the bottom line is we've got to stop all the political crap and we've got to start working together to make this country work as well as we can make it work with all with everybody without all these hidden foolish agendas. | ||
| You know, you've got the extreme left pushing their agenda. | ||
| You have the extreme right pushing their agenda. | ||
| And there's no medium ground here. | ||
| And I think that is going to ultimately be the biggest negative in what's going on right now. | ||
| I will say I'm on supplemental security income and quite frankly, I'm a little concerned about what's going on. | ||
| You know, there's a lot of us folks in Maine that are very, we're elderly. | ||
| There's a large elderly population in the state of Maine. | ||
| And, you know, there's a lot of people I'm talking to that are petrified of what's going on. | ||
| So I just wish everybody in Congress would get together and stop this foolishness and figure out a common answer to everything instead of all this infighting. | ||
| It's just, it's so counterproductive. | ||
| All right, let's go to the Republican line to Brookshire, Texas. | ||
| Tiny, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you this morning? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good. | |
| Yes, I agree with everything that President Trump is doing. | ||
| He's fighting, as Biden says he was fighting for the soul of America. | ||
| He is fighting for the soul of America because Biden was sending the soul of America straight to hell with all of his policies. | ||
| And as far as them talking about the money and everything, sending all our taxpayers over to foreign nations for DEI, for homosexuals, all of that. | ||
| I am against that. | ||
| Anytime the Democratic Party, they want to say the Republican Party wants to destroy democracy, they are the ones who are destroying democracy. | ||
| Anytime you have an abortion clinic on the outside of their convention for when they was there and having sex change, that is a strike on democracy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
God created two genders, not 96. | |
| And anyone that support anyone that says it's okay for a man to go into a woman's bathroom and play on a sports team, it's something wrong with them and those that support him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's something wrong with them to do that. | |
| That is not in the will of God. | ||
| And I am happy and I'm praying for Trump and I hope he and I know God will let him succeed. | ||
| And here's Ron in St. Petersburg, Florida, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| My first problem is with Elon Mutts. | ||
| He's receiving $20 billion in government contracts and Trump is putting him in charge of doing an audit. | ||
| I think he should be vetted before he can even be put in that position. | ||
| $20 billion in government contracts. | ||
| So is he going to audit himself? | ||
| No, I don't think so. | ||
| And Trump, when he's talking about people cheating the government and taxes, isn't that the reason why he had those 32 convictions, felonies? | ||
| And my last thing is Trump talking about going in and owning Gaza. | ||
| This is the president who's against immigrants coming into America. | ||
| And he's going to take Gaza from the people who actually live there and make them immigrants. | ||
| And that's pretty much all I got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Ron, you did mention the president's remarks about Gaza. | ||
| King Abdullah of Jordan was in the White House yesterday talking about that, and the two leaders held a press conference. | ||
| Let me show you a portion of that right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have to keep in mind that there is a plan from Egypt and the Arab countries. | |
| We're being invited by Mohammed bin Salman to discussions in Riyadh. | ||
| I think the point is, is how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody? | ||
| Obviously, we have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan. | ||
| And we're going to have some interesting discussions today. | ||
| I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children that are either cancer children or in a very ill state to Jordan as quickly as possible and then wait for, I think, the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the president to work on Gaza challenges. | ||
| So you're heard. | ||
| Excuse me, Wayne, just please. | ||
| I didn't know that what you just said, 2,000 children with cancer or other problems. | ||
| And that's really a beautiful gesture. | ||
| That's really good, and we appreciate it. | ||
| And we'll be working on the rest with Egypt. | ||
| I think you're going to see some great progress. | ||
| I think with Jordan, you're going to see some great progress. | ||
| Three of us, we'll have some others helping, and we're going to have some others at a very high level helping, and the whole thing will come. | ||
| It's not a complex thing to do. | ||
| And with the United States being in control of that piece of land, a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time. | ||
| And the Palestinians or the people that live now in Gaza will be living beautifully in another location. | ||
| They're going to be living safely. | ||
| They're not going to be killed, murdered, and having to leave every 10 years because I've been watching this for so many years. | ||
| It's nothing but trouble. | ||
| Everyone's being killed. | ||
| They're being robbed. | ||
| It's like living in hell. | ||
| And they're going to end up having a great home, great families that don't have to get mugged and killed and beaten up and harassed by Hamas and everybody else. | ||
| And I know we'll be able to work something. | ||
| And what you just said about the 2000 is fantastic. | ||
| It's so beautiful. | ||
| It's music to my ears. | ||
| But we're going to be able to work something. | ||
| And I know we'll be able to work something also with, I believe, not 100%, but 99%. | ||
| We're going to work out something with Egypt. | ||
| That was in the Oval Office yesterday, and this is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Today, Jordan's King dodges Trump on Gaza plans. | ||
| It says Mideast countries leader sidestepped whether he would accept Palestinians. | ||
| It said he's the first Arab leader to come to the White House since President Trump called for taking control of Gaza and relocating its 2 million residents, dodged a public confrontation but avoided endorsing Trump's improbable plan. | ||
| Jordan's King Abdullah II, next to him in the Oval Office, Trump vowed once again to, quote, take Gaza, prompting Abdullah to shift uncomfortably in his chair and to emphasize that Arab governments would counter with their own plan for post-war Gaza this month. | ||
| Quote, I have to look into the best interests of my country. | ||
| Let's wait until the Egyptians present their ideas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's King Abdullah. | |
| And let's talk to Bubba in Memphis, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, ma'am, for taking my call. | |
| I just got a couple things. | ||
| You have Democrats calling in, and they're talking like he's going to take Social Security away, Medicare. | ||
| You never correct them. | ||
| I mean, that's not true. | ||
| When Republicans call in, a lot of times y'all like to fact check them and challenge them. | ||
| But Democrats can kind of get away with anything. | ||
| You just had a lady calling in talking about Musk being a DEI hire. | ||
| He's not even hired. | ||
| He's not making any money. | ||
| So, Bubba, I mean, I think that's an opinion. | ||
| She's saying that, I think she's saying that he got his job because he's self-described as Asperger's. | ||
| So I mean, we really can't fact-check opinions, and we can't fact-check the future. | ||
| When somebody says they're going to cut Social Security, we can't say, no, that's not true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You do challenge Republicans on their opinions. | |
| But anyway, I've been noticing that. | ||
| But the Democrats have had a couple rallies or whatever you want to call them, making speeches and throwing out the elf bomb several times. | ||
| Several different of them have. | ||
| And I haven't seen y'all show any of that on your program. | ||
| Democrats or Republicans who you want shouldn't be acting like that, but Republicans, I've never seen them act like that. | ||
| And I mean, they act like they're spoilt kids. | ||
| They should be more grown up in what they're acting. | ||
| But I wish you would show that to probably maybe some of the Democrats that probably hadn't seen it. | ||
| And that's all I got to say. | ||
| Anyway, have a good day, babe. | ||
| You too. | ||
| Roseanne in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I'm just weighing in on when the inauguration took place and you had all the big tech people there who donated like a million dollars for the ceremonies or whatever. | ||
| I mean, they're looking forward to having him sign into law, again, a big tax break for the corporations. | ||
| And when it comes to the voters having voted for probably the biggest thing they were worried about was inflation, well, you can't do anything about inflation because no laws or legislation has ever been passed to stop big business or owners of businesses to not gouge the public. | ||
| So it's up to the consumer to not buy the product at this point. | ||
| Otherwise, they're still going to do what they do unless the consumer decides not to buy it. | ||
| And then they might walk back and go, well, geez, maybe we're charging too much. | ||
| But as far as having him as a president, excuse me, Trump, he's fixed bankruptcies. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| How can that be good? | ||
| How can you sit there and go, oh, he's a great American businessman? | ||
| The rest of the people, the average American, couldn't get away with doing anything like that. | ||
| And I thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And Roseanne mentioned big tech donating to President Trump's inauguration. | ||
| This is a group called commoncause org that lists who's donated and how much. | ||
| Amazon, $1 million. | ||
| Meta, so these are all $1 million. | ||
| Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Toyota, Ripple, which is cryptocurrency, $5 million. | ||
| The Uber CEO, another $1 million. | ||
| Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, $1 million. | ||
| Apple CEO, $1 million. | ||
| And OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, $1 million. | ||
| You can see that at commoncauseorg if you'd like to see those details. | ||
| And this is Carla in Tohoka, Missouri, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Carla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Well, Amy, I'm 92 years old, and I was a former librarian. | ||
| So we like to deal in facts. | ||
| And I'm sitting here listening to all this argument about those. | ||
| Every president has executive powers. | ||
| Every single president has used it. | ||
| Secondly, at least three in my lifetime have done these audits of the federal government. | ||
| The first one I remember was during Ronald Reagan, 1982. | ||
| It was called the Grace Commission. | ||
| You can look it up. | ||
| I looked it up on C-SPAN. | ||
| And that went on the shelf with nothing done about it. | ||
| The next one was Obama, and it had a big, long title. | ||
| It was just to look like a word saddle. | ||
| That's not a derogatory term. | ||
| I just don't remember the whole long name of it. | ||
| And that was in 2011. | ||
| And it went on the shelf. | ||
| So now President Trump is trying. | ||
| He's appointed this ad hoc committee to do this. | ||
| So what? | ||
| I mean, I think all the Republicans, Democrats, confused, whatever your category you fall under. | ||
| They all should just, these are facts. | ||
| So I think people just better quit arguing about it and get on with it. | ||
| That's all really I have to say, Mimi. | ||
| You're doing a good job. | ||
| Hang in there. | ||
| Thanks, Carla. | ||
| This is Brent in Hurricane, Utah, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| Hey, Brent, before you start, you guys don't get hurricanes in Utah, do you? | ||
| Like why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot of wind in this certain area, and that's why they call it hurricane, but it's a beautiful country. | |
| We have a lot of Parks out here, Zions and Bryce Canyon, people. | ||
| It's beautiful out here, but we do get some wind. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead with your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my dear. | |
| I'm having a problem with common sense in this country. | ||
| You know, Republicans and Democrats have spent us into oblivion. | ||
| And, you know, I know the Department of Education has been getting billions of dollars over the years, and yet our math scores are in the tank for kids. | ||
| And, you know, just this simple math question: when the government takes in $4.5 trillion into the coffers, and yet they spend $6 trillion, it seems to me like common sense has gone out the window. | ||
| What are we supposed to do about that deficit? | ||
| I think the Republicans are trying to do something, but I haven't heard any Democrats comment on any of the waste and fraud that has been found so far. | ||
| This is madness. | ||
| It has to stop. | ||
| And I just think common sense has gone completely out the window. | ||
| All right, Brent. | ||
| And this is Bradley in North Richland Hills, Texas, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like to talk on the issue of the press conference that Pete Hegseth was holding with NATO. | |
| And what he had touched on was that Russia was going to be allowed to hold on to the territory that they captured back in 2014. | ||
| But Zelensky said. | ||
| This is what he said, Bradley, so everybody's on the same page. | ||
| He said, for Ukraine, pre-2014 borders are unrealistic. | ||
| So that Ukraine would not go back. | ||
| He said it's not realistic for Ukraine to have the same borders it had before 2014. | ||
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And on that, when he said it, Zelensky already made it quite clear they were not going to allow Russia to keep any of it. | ||
| And President Trump said that he would offer security provided that we get minerals from Ukraine. | ||
| So it sounds like they're going to allow Russia to stay there. | ||
| I mean, on our part. | ||
| But Ukraine, I don't think, is going to accept that. | ||
| So what do you think is the solution, Bradley? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it sounds like a deal. | |
| The question is, when President Trump says we will offer security, the question is, in what form? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here's Javid in Bronx, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Am I pronouncing it right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Javid. | |
| Javid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I just wanted to talk concerning Pete Hagsett, not necessarily about the press conference that's going on right now, but the executive order that Trump laid out about two weeks ago, I would say, to build on the Iron Dung for America, the Israeli bombs that he wanted to build around the country. | ||
| I feel like it's not being properly publicized. | ||
| I feel like it's a lot of fear-mongering to campaign, put it in your political program that you want to have bombs be built around the country for no apparent reason. | ||
| You're not telling the public why you want to have these things done. | ||
| You're not giving a clear idea or understanding as to where you want to build these bombs at in the first place. | ||
| The bombs are very expensive. | ||
| They're like about a million plus a piece to make. | ||
| And nobody wants to properly publicize that, either Republican or Democrat, neither the media. | ||
| Nobody's talking about it. | ||
| And I want to understand why, because if we're building bombs, who are our enemies that we're fighting? | ||
| Who are these bombs for? | ||
| Are there for our potential and therefore our offense? | ||
| So I just want to understand what is the deal with that and what is going on with that. | ||
| So Iron Dome is a defensive weapons system, Javed. | ||
| But I did find this in USA Today. | ||
| It's an article from yesterday. | ||
| It says, will Trump's Iron Dome missile defense make Americans safer? | ||
| It's complicated. | ||
| It says that although the U.S. has developed limited defenses designed to stop a small missile attack from the likes of North Korea, the January 27th order called the Iron Dome for America directs the Pentagon to plan, quote, a next-generation missile defense shield to guard against any threat from any foe. | ||
| Trump's order invokes former President Ronald Reagan's strategic defense initiative, which detractors labeled Star Wars. | ||
| So you can read more about that, Javed, on USA Today, talking about the Iron Dome for America. | ||
| Eddie in Millbury, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| Jordan should take him back. | ||
| It's Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lemon that attacked Israel a number of times, causing the refugees to scatter to Gaza. | ||
| But as far as scatter to Gaza, weren't the Palestinians already in Gaza? | ||
| You're talking historically, Eddie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Historically, Gaza had a population in the 40s of about 500,000. | |
| After the wars with Israel, it went up to 2 million. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| That's why the refugees are there. | ||
| That's why they should be taken back. | ||
| But my call is about eastern Ukraine. | ||
| That Gutmanchef gave it back if the Stalin stole it. | ||
| Another problem is our $2 trillion deficit. | ||
| They're not talking about it much at all. | ||
| Why are we killing babies? | ||
| We should turn those portions into clinics and get rid of Obamacare. | ||
| The taxes are enormous to ensure somebody with pre-existing conditions. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And here is Bill in Safety Harbor, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having taken my call. | ||
| I think basically the problem with our government is the union, and we will never conquer it. | ||
| It's too big. | ||
| I've seen it over the past 40 years start with young kids that would get summer jobs at little towns, and they would put a man with them that's full-time, and he would give them two or three-hour breaks. | ||
| And that's how they were broken in in the workforce. | ||
| The union does not give you productivity. | ||
| They're destroying us. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Philip in Springfield, Massachusetts, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is my second time calling, and I watch you every day. | |
| And there is a lot of fear that I'm experiencing some politics. | ||
| I just hope that President Trump can do the right thing. | ||
| And maybe we can all get a stimulus check for the savings that they're getting for the people from Doge. | ||
| And I like to know why I get so many letters in the mail for people asking for donations from St. Jude to the veterans to everybody. | ||
| I can't help anybody because I'm on a Social Security, so I do the best I can. | ||
| But it just seems that this shouldn't be happening with all these billionaires out there, and maybe they can share the wealth to people and figure out a system that can go. | ||
| The only thing I can think of is the stimulus that we got years ago. | ||
| That helped me out because I'm on a fixed income, and I just want to say you're doing a good job. | ||
| And thank you for your time. | ||
| Thank you, Philip. | ||
| And this is Speaker Johnson from yesterday. | ||
| He was pushing back against allegations that the administration's Doge efforts are illegal. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| There's no identified leader of the party. | ||
| They don't have a clear vision. | ||
| They seem rudderless. | ||
| In hopes of finding themselves, they've latched onto this new shiny object called the rule of law. | ||
| Well, we'd like to welcome them to the concept. | ||
| It would be admirable if they hadn't spent the last four years with their heads buried in the sand while Biden literally trampled over the rule of law with no objection. | ||
| In fact, many Democrats cheered that lawlessness, like when the Biden administration unconstitutionally forced the middle class to pay the student loans of doctors and lawyers, when they illegally mandated that private companies implement vaccine requirements, when they radically rewrote Title IX to undermine women's rights. | ||
| Those things were actually illegal, and the Democratic Party cheered it. | ||
| They didn't oppose it at all. | ||
| President Trump, by contrast, is taking legitimate executive action to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in all these federal programs. | ||
| That's what the American people demand and deserve. | ||
| That's what they voted for. | ||
| They voted for a real analysis and a real change, transformational kind of change in the way the federal government works. | ||
| And the only people who take issue with it are these same congressional Democrats who never before had any issue with unelected staff or even bureaucrats running the White House for the last four years. | ||
| That's not what's happening here. | ||
| The president has empowered his new cabinet secretaries and the Doge effort and all of these branches, divisions in the executive branch of government to go and find where the abuses have taken place. | ||
| And every time something new is unearthed and uncovered and we share it with the people, they applaud that this has been discovered and they want us to keep going. | ||
| And that's what's going to happen. | ||
| And we are in open forum for about 15 more minutes and going to hear from Stephen in Quincy, Illinois, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Several days after his inauguration, excuse me, Donald Trump pardoned a man by the name of Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for operating the Silk Road, | |
| which was an illegal drug operation that used the dark web as its marketing place and cryptocurrency as its method of payment or finance. | ||
| Ulbricht was the darling of the cryptocurrency crowd who poured $175 million into the 2024 election cycle. | ||
| He was also admired for some crazy reason by a large number of the members of the Libertarian Party whose votes Trump pursued several weeks before the election. | ||
| He was also a darling of Elon Musk, who I don't have to describe. | ||
| Ulbricht also had targeted for murder five of his competitors in the cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin trade. | ||
| Now, Trump campaigned for stopping the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States, which I agree with 100% in regard to his attempts to stop the smuggling. | ||
| It's the most dangerous drug there is. | ||
| Why in the world would he pardon the largest fentanyl drug dealer in U.S. history? | ||
| I'm a former prosecutor, and I think this is just a disgrace and has not been on the radar of the news media. | ||
| Surprise, surprise. | ||
| Well, Stephen, here is some information for you on that from CNN, CNN.com. | ||
| Trump says he pardoned founder of Silk Road Criminal Marketplace. | ||
| That happened on January 21st, so the day after he took office. | ||
| It says Ulbricht, who was accused of creating the shadowy e-commerce site, the Justice Department has described as, quote, the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet today. | ||
| He had been serving a life sentence on charges related to the operation. | ||
| Quote, this is from Truth Social from President Trump. | ||
| I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son Ross. | ||
| He called Ulbricht's sentence, quote, ridiculous, claiming it was disproportionate to the crime. | ||
| He went on to express frustration with the legal figures involved in Ulbricht's conviction, referring to them as, quote, scum, and accusing them of being among the same individuals responsible for the quote weaponization of government against him during his time in office. | ||
| If you'd like to find out more about that, it is on CNN.com that article that Silk Road Marketplace was shut down by the FBI in October of 2013. | ||
| And this is Andreas Gates Mills, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So, where do I even start? | ||
| I've been listening to today's program. | ||
| Let's start with this. | ||
| We just heard on your program the President of the United States arguing for ethnic cleansing and arguing for the force repatriation, | ||
| not repatriation, actually arguing for expelling the Palestinians from Palestine. | ||
| What does that sound like to you? | ||
| Is that a really democratic person, democratic with a D, or is it some deranged individual that thinks he's God and he can move three million people out of a vast area, a gigantic area, but it's a large area of neighboring neighboring to Israel. | ||
| Is that really a person that cares for democratic values, someone advocating on a worldwide basis with the biggest bullhorn in the universe that there should be ethnic cleansing in Palestine? | ||
| So, Andres, you're calling on the Republican line. | ||
| Did you vote for President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course not. | |
| Of course not. | ||
| You've cut me off before when I have dared mention National Socialism. | ||
| This guy, this team he's got in power today, are running like madmen to be able to take over this government and make Trumpism a reality in this nation. | ||
| That's where I'm coming from, because I have seen it since the day he walked down that damn elevator. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| This guy is a national socialist. | ||
| I'm sorry, he's a national socialist bent on becoming a dictator. | ||
| Mind my words, we will see what happens in the next presidential election. | ||
| In the meantime, the only thing we suckers have to worry about is the next election to take the Congress, either all of it or at least half of it, away from him. | ||
| We have 18 months or however many months it is until the next midterms to stop this clown from taking us down where he's already showing us and telling us he's going. | ||
| He is going down to become, try to become a dictator. | ||
| And I don't say that lightly. | ||
| I happen to have lived under a military dictator. | ||
| No, never mind one. | ||
| Three military dictatorships, a party dictatorship. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| I come from one of them banana republics. | ||
| I know what a dictator feel likes, feels like, and talks like. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And this guy, that's what he's doing. | ||
| Like I said, I just pointed out to you, he, your president, is advocating for displacement of the Palestinians and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. | ||
| Andreas, we got that point. | ||
| And we will be joined next after the break by Republican Mike Flood of Nebraska, a member of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| He'll talk about issues related to the budget, immigration, and Doge. | ||
| We also just wanted to let you know we did have a Democratic lawmaker who was scheduled to appear on today's program, but he had to reschedule. | ||
| So we'll be back after the break with Congressman Mike Flood. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It isn't just an idea. | |
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee meets to vote on whether to send Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director to the full Senate for consideration. | ||
| This comes after an initial vote was delayed by one week at the request of Democrats on the committee, who continue to call for a second confirmation hearing with Mr. Patel. | ||
| You can watch the committee vote live at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Non-fiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are joined by Representative Mike Flood. | ||
| He's a Republican of Nebraska and member of the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Congressman, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you very much. | |
| Good morning to you. | ||
| A lot of snow here in Washington, D.C. There is indeed. | ||
| You serve on the Financial Services Committee and it has oversight of the Treasury Department. | ||
| You recently met with Treasury Secretary Besant about Elon Musk's role in the federal payment system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you tell us what you discussed with him? | |
| Well, you know, basically two things. | ||
| I asked the Treasury Secretary what kind of access does Elon Musk have to the federal payment system because it is a question I'm getting quite often from people that live in the first district of Nebraska. | ||
| And he assured me that Mr. Musk has read-only access looking at payments that have already occurred in our federal payment system and that only two employees at the Treasury system, one of whom he personally interviewed, managed that system going forward. | ||
| And so I shared that with my constituents in a letter which has since become public. | ||
| And I also just said, you know, as a member of the legislative branch, I very much respect Article 1 authority and the power of the purse belongs in Congress. | ||
| At the end of the day, we have to work with the executive branch to deliver tax cuts to the American people and spending cuts to the American people. | ||
| And I feel like we're on the right path to do that. | ||
| And can you tell us about the individuals that Mr. Musk has employed to review that data from the various agencies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know many of them personally. | |
| There's one from my district, actually, an extremely smart young man, Mr. Faraday. | ||
| He has been earning the news for, you know, earning news and news coverage for some of his other feats. | ||
| He's got an extremely bright mind. | ||
| I think he successfully decoded ancient scrolls using artificial intelligence. | ||
| So at the end of the day, as somebody who represents Lincoln, Nebraska, I'm extremely proud of him. | ||
| I think Elon Musk has demonstrated through his career that he can find innovative ways to solve very difficult problems. | ||
| And there's good in that. | ||
| It's good to be looking at our spending. | ||
| It's good to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| It's good to make sure that the American taxpayers are getting the value for their dollar. | ||
| And at the end of the day, I'm somewhat frustrated that there's been such a pushback on looking at our federal spending. | ||
| This is the number one question I get when I go to the VFW club in Columbus, Nebraska. | ||
| How are you going to rein in this crazy spending? | ||
| Now we see a president willing to slay this dragon. | ||
| And there's an article here from The Hill that came out yesterday with the headline, Judge Adjusts Ruling Blocking Musk and Doge from Treasury Department Payment Systems. | ||
| It said that the federal judge clarified the ruling preventing Musk's Doge from accessing the Treasury Department's payment system. | ||
| It does not extend to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. | ||
| Are you comfortable with the access that the people around Musk has and the oversight of those individuals that they would not download personal information or make any adjustments? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we expect people's personal and confidential information to be safeguarded and protected. | |
| That is an absolute. | ||
| And I think on the same line, you have to give the Treasury Secretary the ability to run the Department of Treasury. | ||
| And here in this case, we've got Elon Musk, who technically works for the White House, working to look at the payments that have already occurred. | ||
| How is that any different than a state that has a state auditor? | ||
| You know, in my home state of Nebraska, we have a state auditor who is aggressive and on it and working 24 hours a day to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| And it makes our system better. | ||
| I think this is good for the American people. | ||
| I think this review is very positive. | ||
| And quite frankly, as we're trying to extend the 2017 tax cuts here in Congress, we need to identify programs that we can eliminate to find the pay fors to make those tax credits work or tax cuts work. | ||
| I wanted to show you, Congressman, the Republican Senate leader, John Thune, yesterday, he was asked about legal actions against the Trump administration and whether it should comply with future rulings. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chan, can I get your reaction to JD Vance's comment over the weekend that judges are not allowed to control the legitimate power of the executive? | |
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| And do you think the president and his administration should comply with federal court rulings? | ||
| Well, I think what you're seeing right now is the natural give and take between branches of the government. | ||
| We have three branches to our government, as you all know, and the courts have a way of mediating or refereeing, if you will, some of the disputes between the Article I and Article II branches of the government. | ||
| I think that's what you're seeing here. | ||
| And I think this is a process that will continue to play out. | ||
| But do I believe that the courts have a very valid role and need to be listened to and heard in that process? | ||
| The answer is yes. | ||
| And Congressman, just to clarify the question of the reporter, followed Vice President JD Vance's comments on social media saying, quote, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. | ||
| Your response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, listen, there's a natural tension between the three branches of government, whether it's at the federal level or the state level. | |
| And I know this firsthand. | ||
| I was the Speaker of the Nebraska Legislature. | ||
| I'm now a member of Congress. | ||
| Article 1 clearly gives Congress the power of the purse. | ||
| The executive branch clearly has enumerated authority that extends into running the government on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| Here's one of the things I think is important to talk about. | ||
| As President Trump comes into office, his administration will not be more vulnerable in this first two months because he's getting his leadership in place. | ||
| The Green New Deal, for instance, the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| We know there's a lot of folks out there trying to pull money out of the U.S. Treasury for grant programs and running basically on the system right away to try and get that money out of here. | ||
| I think President Trump was right to pump the brakes. | ||
| At the end of the day, the American people elected Donald Trump to impose his platform, which clearly is not in sync with some of the grant programs that the federal agencies were doing. | ||
| You can't let the courts micromanage the executive branch, but I agree with Leader Thune. | ||
| The court's rulings are to be respected. | ||
| But we also have to remember: you may have a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. that rules one way. | ||
| You might have a federal district judge in Colorado that rules a different way. | ||
| Ultimately, these things work their way through the appellate system and ultimately land on the Supreme Court's desk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm confident that the three branches of government will maintain their autonomy. | |
| The courts will do what they have to in interpreting the Constitution. | ||
| And President Trump is going to do what he needs to do as the chief executive of this country to cut federal spending, to work with Congress to deliver reconciliation with us and provide an extension to his 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| And Congressman Mike Flood, a Republican of Nebraska, will be with us until almost the end of the program. | ||
| You can start calling in now if you'd like to talk to him. | ||
| Republicans are on 202748-8001. | ||
| Democrats are on 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Congressman, since you mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act, I wanted to ask you about a bill that you introduced called Ending Green Giveaways Act. | ||
| And this would roll back funding for targeting so-called environmental and climate justice challenges. | ||
| Can you tell us a little bit more about that bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the EPA's own inspector general said this was littered with poor language, this act, and that it didn't make any sense. | |
| And that we had people that were drawing down money for purposes that weren't meeting even the intent of Congress. | ||
| This is just an opportunity, I think, for the Congress, and this is part of our job with oversight, to put the brakes on some of the things that were happening under the Biden administration. | ||
| This Ending Green Giveaways Act has resonated with people across the United States. | ||
| Even folks that really care about renewable energy were like, what is environmental justice? | ||
| What are we doing here? | ||
| What are we trying to accomplish? | ||
| At the end of the day, what matters to Americans is: do we have energy independence? | ||
| Can we afford to heat our home or to cool our home in the summer? | ||
| Do we have enough energy to run our businesses? | ||
| Are we experiencing brownouts? | ||
| The idea of environmental justice, that's part of, in my opinion, the woke Biden agenda that fits right in with DEI and everything else that the American people have clearly rejected. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers, Congressman. | ||
| This is Kenneth in De Plain, Illinois, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Congressman. | |
| I hope you are well. | ||
| I just want to say, do not give these people a cut of money. | ||
| Kenneth, you got to watch that language, please. | ||
| But he was saying don't give them a break. | ||
| I'm assuming he means don't negotiate or cooperate maybe with Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll tell you what, obviously, this reconciliation process will be a Republican-driven legislation, and it's going to entail the border wall, spending cuts, tax cut extension, and energy independence. | |
| But let's not forget, we have the expiration of the government funding on March 14th. | ||
| That will need to be bipartisan. | ||
| You know, I'm on the House Financial Services Committee. | ||
| We're looking at how to increase housing supply. | ||
| That will be bipartisan. | ||
| At the end of the day, reconciliation is going to go a different track, but everything else we get done, given the fact that we only have 53 Republicans in the Senate, will require bipartisan solutions. | ||
| And so moving forward, I'm confident that we can really put our fingerprint on this 119th Congress with Donald Trump's big win and a majority in the House. | ||
| But there will be a number of very important issues that will require Senate Democrats at a minimum to accomplish the mission and to run our government. | ||
| And where are you on the budget process? | ||
| Are you in favor of Speaker Johnson's plan to try to put everything in one bill, or do you lean more towards the Senate bill and breaking it up into two pieces? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I very much agree with Speaker Johnson. | |
| I think this should be one bill. | ||
| There's a lot of complicated legislation that will be in this. | ||
| Everybody needs to be in the same boat. | ||
| It's been difficult in the past to unify each and every Republican in our conference. | ||
| And I think the only way to get across the finish line is to put everything in one bill, let the Senate have it, pass it, send it to the president, and get this done by Easter. | ||
| That would be the best case scenario. | ||
| Here's Chuck in Charleston, West Virginia. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Chuck. | ||
| Chuck, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I regret to say I think democracy is disappearing right before our very eyes. | ||
| We had Chip Roy and Elon Musk both saying that Trump should just ignore the courts. | ||
| Our vice president, JD Vance, he said judges aren't even allowed to rule against the president. | ||
| I'm quoting him directly. | ||
| He said, when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. | ||
| And now there doesn't seem to be any enforcement. | ||
| There doesn't seem to be any accountability. | ||
| And Trump can just ignore the Supreme Court if he wants, and not a single Republican like yourself will object for fear of being primaried. | ||
| He said he'd be a dictator on day one, and now day one has stretched out into three weeks. | ||
| So to you and all the MAGA people out there who are listening, if you're content to have Trump be our dictator, at least have the guts to say so. | ||
| Congressman, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that is not an accurate description of what's happening here. | |
| Yes, the president has a federal district court judge that has stopped parts of his agenda. | ||
| And the president, I believe, said yesterday that they will appeal and they will go through the process. | ||
| This is the beginning of the Trump administration, and I understand how difficult some of this change can be for members of the other party. | ||
| And some of the hyperbol that you're hearing are people winding themselves up about things that have gone much further than the truth. | ||
| In this situation, we have a president who has a mandate from the American people to cut spending. | ||
| He has hired Elon Musk and a Treasury Secretary to look at the prior federal payments. | ||
| They are exposing a spending regimen that is out of sync with what Americans want. | ||
| And quite frankly, for a country that has $36 trillion in debt, we can't afford it. | ||
| People send me notes all the time. | ||
| My Social Security, let me tell you something. | ||
| If we don't get this under control, we will have a crisis much bigger than Social Security. | ||
| We will have a debt crisis. | ||
| We are going down a very, we're going to a very bad place if we don't get control of federal spending. | ||
| And so I have complete confidence that the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch will each exercise their constitutional authority. | ||
| There will be friction. | ||
| There will be conflict. | ||
| And our system will work. | ||
| And I want to add one more thing. | ||
| When President Biden took office, he had in his mind, and I think clearly the support of a lot of people, they wanted to forgive everyone's student loans. | ||
| Clearly unconstitutional. | ||
| Clearly. | ||
| That went to the Supreme Court. | ||
| The Supreme Court said, you don't have the power to do it. | ||
| And what did he spend the rest of his time in the White House doing? | ||
| Undercutting and doing everything in his power to forgive student loans. | ||
| To the tune of about $5 billion per month, we were racking up that debt on top of a $36 trillion deficit. | ||
| I remember being extremely frustrated that the president seemed to not pay attention nor respect the Supreme Court there. | ||
| You'll find that this president, Donald Trump, he's going to put his best foot forward. | ||
| He's going to push the limits and he's going to test the courts. | ||
| And I'm confident the courts will apply the law and the Constitution and our three-tier system of government will prevail and we will be fine. | ||
| And I know that change is hard, but we will get through this and it will ultimately make us a better, stronger, more financially stable country. | ||
| And Congressman Flood, you mentioned increasing housing supply. | ||
| What is your plan for reducing the cost of housing for Americans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm the brand new chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, and I'm working with Chairman French Hill. | |
| I think at the end of the day, we have to encourage localities to include affordable workforce housing in all parts of the community and not let them get sidetracked onto a certain part of town where they don't have access to good schools or amenities or things like that. | ||
| We have to look at these housing and urban development programs and make sure we're prioritizing housing supply. | ||
| We have to look at this home insurance crisis that we have right now. | ||
| Some people are paying more in their premium for home insurance with their property tax than they are on their principal and interest. | ||
| And JD Vance said recently at an event I was at in Florida that the number one issue that he hears about from adults ages 20 to 30 is their inability to get into a home. | ||
| And I think we need to refocus and redirect our federal housing and urban development funds to prioritize housing supply. | ||
| Give that money to municipalities so that they can get the real estate, put the streets in, put the sidewalks in, put the trees in, and get those lots to beginning homeowners on top of some down payment assistance and increase our supply while also looking at manufactured housing, which is a real option to bring the price down. | ||
| And stick-built manufactured housing, you can't even tell they weren't traditionally built. | ||
| Here's George in Columbia, South Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Hi, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning, Mr. Flood. | ||
| Mr. Flood said the right thing the first time he started talking. | ||
| To Congress is the power of the purse. | ||
| Simple as that. | ||
| They make the laws to spread the money to the state and city government. | ||
| So the power of the purse, if you throw a lot of money, then the Congress passes along. | ||
| The president has to sign the law. | ||
| So, and then when the president signs the law, it goes into action, right? | ||
| So how can you go back as a president and reduce the money that was assigned by the Congress? | ||
| So that is a legislative, that's a legal matter. | ||
| But I want to know one thing about Elon Musk. | ||
| He's from South Africa. | ||
| I know he was young when apartheid was going on, but was he for apartheid or was he against apartheid? | ||
| And about in C-SPAN, never take donations, because if you take donations, a guy like Elon Musk gives you a billion dollars, you will be just like Donald Trump. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congressman Flood. | ||
| I had a little trouble hearing some of that, but let me respond to the first part about Article 1, spending authority in the United States Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We appropriate the dollars. | |
| The executive branch then deploys those dollars as per Congress's instructions. | ||
| I think it's important to note that under the Biden administration, the Congress, and I did not vote for this, gave grand authority to agencies like the EPA and the Department of Energy to make unprecedented grants and federal spending available to grantees and applicants that want the money. | ||
| And ultimately, it gave the president, in this case, President Biden and then now President Trump, the ability to decide who gets a grant and who doesn't. | ||
| And so I think it's important to remember, it's not as simple as Congress told you to give the money to ABC. | ||
| Congress told you to give the money for these purposes, and then the executive branch has to make a decision as to who gets the grant. | ||
| And so I do think the executive branch has some authority and discretion about how to do that. | ||
| And it just so happens that Donald Trump doesn't agree with environmental justice programs or maybe an overdependence on wind energy or solar energy, whatnot. | ||
| And I think that is something we should have foreseen given the fact that he campaigned on that and is now the president. | ||
| I do believe that Congress has to be more prescriptive if we want our will carried out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that is something that I've said ever since the Chevron decision last year. | |
| If Congress's will is to be followed, we need to be more prescriptive in what we pass and send over to the president for signature. | ||
| And that burden is on us. | ||
| And I think we are up to the task. | ||
| You know, the fact that we're working literally day and night on this reconciliation package underscores the importance of Congress's role in our government and how important it is for us to extend the tax cuts, build the wall, provide more detention space, cut spending, and provide energy independence. | ||
| All of that's going to come together only with a Congress that works together in reconciliation to send it to the president. | ||
| Representative Flood, we've got a question for you on X from Mimi who says, why haven't the Republicans on the finance committees not been doing an audit before Musk? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's important that you know every single committee of jurisdiction in the House of Representatives and the Senate, we regularly do oversight over all of the federal agencies that are before our jurisdiction. | |
| So for instance, the FDIC. | ||
| Last year, there were Wall Street Journal reports about fraud, abuse of public funds, misbehavior. | ||
| We immediately brought in the chairman of the FDIC and we brought this all to light and we unpacked it. | ||
| Each agency has inspector generals. | ||
| What I do appreciate about what President Trump has done here, this reminds me of what my state auditor does in my home state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Getting somebody to look at the entire picture globally, to go through the ins and outs using data and analysis and artificial intelligence. | |
| We have the benefit of somebody that's going to uncover opportunities for us to save. | ||
| And as Americans, we should celebrate that. | ||
| We should go to bed at night worried about our $36 trillion debt and wake up in the morning satisfied that somebody is looking at where those dollars are going. | ||
| And to be quite honest, Congress has a responsibility with oversight and this work that Doge is doing is going to help inform our appropriations process and our effort. | ||
| Let's talk to Grant, who's in Lincoln, Nebraska, independent. | ||
| Grant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Representative Flood. | |
| You're my representative. | ||
| The RNC likes to claim that it's the party of fiscal responsibility. | ||
| Yet here we are again with another omnibus bill for the budget that's supposed to be passed in, I believe, 12 separate bills. | ||
| I distinctly remember RNC members complaining about these exact types of bills. | ||
| So how do you square that circle? | ||
| And given that, does the RNC plan on prioritizing next year's budget bills getting passed, considering you're already five months late on getting this year's budget passed? | ||
| I get sick and tired of nothing but finger pointing when it comes to these types of introspective questions. | ||
| And doing that doesn't make you any better than the PNC members. | ||
| You end up pointing your finger at to the stack from the fact that the RNC's practices are, in fact, not fiscally responsible at all. | ||
| The RNC is getting ready to brag about cutting spending, but that's not going towards bringing down the deficit for the debt. | ||
| It's getting offset with reducing tax revenues, with tax cuts. | ||
| So the RNC doesn't actually care about the debt or the deficit. | ||
| They just use it to campaign. | ||
| And if you don't believe me, just look at the debt increases during the Republican-controlled Congress. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, first of all, thank you very much for the call from Lincoln, Nebraska, where they got some snow last night as well. | ||
| I don't agree. | ||
| The Republican Party has stood for addressing our debt and appropriating more responsibly. | ||
| A couple things to clarify. | ||
| First of all, the only way we're going to get out of a $36 trillion debt is to pair spending cuts with tax cuts. | ||
| A tax increase at the end of this year would not help us grow our economy, and without growth, you can't bend the arc of our terrible $36 trillion deficit. | ||
| As it relates to the appropriations process, when I came into Congress and the 118th Congress started, our goal was to pass 12 appropriations bills. | ||
| We were able to pass seven last year. | ||
| The Senate passed zero. | ||
| Under Chuck Schumer, they didn't take up any appropriations bills on the floor, and nor did they pass any. | ||
| And so we find ourselves in a situation now where we have to scramble to get the government funded by March 14th. | ||
| I want to get to a place where we pass all 12 bills. | ||
| I know John Thune over in the Senate wants to get to a place where we pass all 12 bills. | ||
| And a reminder, this will be bipartisan. | ||
| And so ultimately, it's on all of us. | ||
| And there's enough blame to go around. | ||
| To your point, I can tell you that since I've been in Congress, this has been a priority of mine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've voted for those bills. | |
| I've advocated for cuts. | ||
| I've put amendments in to cut spending. | ||
| And ultimately, we're going to fund the government on March 14th, and our 2025 budget will unfold with both Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| But this isn't like our home state of Nebraska, where our budget does not have any debt in it. | ||
| We're prohibited under the state constitution from doing that. | ||
| You know, I've had to cut a billion dollars out of that state budget back in 2010. | ||
| I know how it works, and I know why it's frustrating to come to Washington and not see it work the same way, because I know the way we do it back home is the best way. | ||
| Representative Flood, we've got a question for you on text from Puerto Rico. | ||
| And this says, Does Representative Flood support President Trump's decision to try and shutter the federal Department of Education? | ||
| I'm a university student who is currently studying thanks to the help of FAFSA. | ||
| And I'm worried that due to his agenda, I won't be able to study anymore. | ||
| Would you go against any attempts that threaten our youth's education? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I do think the best government, especially for our young people, is the closest government. | |
| And I think there's a lot more things the states could do with block funding. | ||
| But that said, I'm very supportive of the student loan system we have in America. | ||
| I do think it needs reforms, but I also know that there's a lot of people that would never get the chance to go to college without a student loan. | ||
| And when you talk about scrapping the Department of Education, there are agencies within that department that I would want to make sure are taken care of and are placed in an appropriate place, maybe Treasury, because we're dealing with loans and federally backed loans. | ||
| But, you know, it's one thing to say abolish the Department of Education. | ||
| I think there's a lot of value in sending those dollars directly to the states so that they can do a better job with them. | ||
| But there's also a number of functions the Department of Education has, like student loans, that we have to make sure are handled responsibly and that a student like this gentleman from Puerto Rico continues his ability to further his education because that's in the best interest of this country. | ||
| All right, one more quick call for you. | ||
| This is a Republican in Valley Cottage, New York. | ||
| Peter, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Congressman. | |
| The Democrats claim that tax cuts increase the deficits and increase the debt. | ||
| You guys rely on the CBO predictions to say how much debt will be accumulated because of tax cuts. | ||
| CBO came out last week after seven years of the 2017 tax cuts claimed that they were off by $1.9 trillion in revenue that was taken in regarding the tax cuts. | ||
| In 2017, corporate tax rates were reduced to 21%. | ||
| In 2017, $225 billion were brought into the Treasury for corporate taxes. | ||
| This year, past 2024, it's over $500 billion. | ||
| So the CBO does not use dynamic scoring to anticipate the increase in revenues coming in as a result of tax cuts. | ||
| Could you please address it, Congressman? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That is a very astute point and a very observant American citizen right there. | ||
| We have a complex and frustrating relationship with the CBO. | ||
| That is as easy as I can say it. | ||
| We have been struggling with this in the House, in our internal discussions about what we get credit for and what we don't. | ||
| When we grow the economy, it's absolutely frustrating to try to accomplish this reconciliation process with a CBO that we feel a lot of times is out of touch with how it actually works and they're not held to account at the end of the day when they're off by a trillion dollars. | ||
| And so we have explored making sure that we're doing our own scoring so that we can combat some of the narratives of the CBO. | ||
| When we send this over to the Senate parliamentarian, we want it to be as accurate as possible. | ||
| We're interested in integrity and accuracy, and we aren't confident we'll get that with the Congressional Budget Office. | ||
| And so I don't have a quick solution because they are not an agency that we can go around. | ||
| We have to go through them, and so we have to make our best case and do our best job to sell our plan to the American people. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, I know you need to get over to your committee hearing, so we will let you go early. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much for having me. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| And we've got about four minutes until the House gavels in. | ||
| We will stay with you. | ||
| I want to mention this from Punch Bowl News. | ||
| It says, MTG prepares for fighting in first Doge hearing. | ||
| It says four years after being completely stripped of her committee assignments, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, is spearheading one of the most high-profile subcommittees in Congress. | ||
| The Georgia Republican, who chairs the House Oversight Committee's Doge Subcommittee, argues that Elon Musk's idea for the Department of Government Efficiency is the top interest of not only Republicans in Washington, but everyday Americans. | ||
| Quote: This has become the number one topic across the country. | ||
| It is the hottest topic, and people are so engaged in this. | ||
| Well, that is set to kick off today at 10 a.m. | ||
| So, in about four minutes, we will have live coverage of that House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE. | ||
| That is on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| So, that will be getting underway, and you can see live coverage. | ||
| If you miss it, you can, of course, see that on our website or on our app. | ||
| A couple of other things for your schedule. | ||
| This is now for tomorrow, at Thursday at 9 a.m., there's going to be the vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director. | ||
| So, that is a vote to send his nomination to the floor of the Senate. | ||
| It comes after an initial vote that was delayed by one week at the request of Democrats on the committee who continue to call for a second confirmation hearing with Mr. Patel. | ||
| So, you can watch that committee vote live. | ||
| It's 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Also, tomorrow, but at 10 a.m., is President Trump's nominee to serve as Education Secretary, Linda McMahon. | ||
| He testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. | ||
| She served as the head of the Small Business Administration during the first Trump administration and is a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment. | ||
| You can watch the confirmation hearing live starting at 10 a.m. Eastern, also on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| And that is also on our website, c-span.org, and on our app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| Well, this is the front page of USA Today. | ||
| You might have seen this news about the Mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams. | ||
| It says this, the article says, Trump brand of justice landing like a hammer. | ||
| Relationships, alliances, and vendettas have the Capitol circling its wagons. | ||
| This is on the front page of USA Today. | ||
| It says this: There's a new sheriff in town, and he lives in Mar-a-Lago. |