| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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All right, headed out, Ms. Door right here, right here. | |
| President Trump is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress next month to lay out his priorities and vision for the country during his second term. | ||
| We'll have live coverage of the president's speech on Tuesday, March 4th, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, along with a Democratic response and viewer reaction. | ||
| Her coverage will also stream live on our free C-SPAN Now video app and at our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| This week we're joined by Noticed Political reporter Daniela Diaz and Ms. Diaz start on the congressional budget. | ||
| Where are we as of today? | ||
| What's expected to happen this week? | ||
| Well, let's flash back a week because that's important in the context of where all of this is. | ||
| Senate Republicans move forward with their own version of a budget resolution, version, I should say, budget resolution, that would split up Trump's massive agenda on border security, on taxes, on energy legislation into two bills. | ||
| Now, what we're going to see today and tomorrow is House Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson, talk about having one big, beautiful bill. | ||
| That's really the drama that's taking place on Capitol Hill and has been taking place on Capitol Hill since the Republican trifecta entered office, was whether they can really enact this massive agenda that they want to push through a process called budget reconciliation, which means they wouldn't need Democratic votes to pass this legislation, this massive bill that they want to push forward. | ||
| So the drama here being Trump endorsed the House version for one bill. | ||
| Senate Republicans are moved forward with two as their plan B. | ||
| And we're going to see the House put this measure, their version, on the floor for a vote tomorrow night. | ||
| But right now, Speaker Mike Johnson doesn't have the votes. | ||
| Why is it important, two bills versus one bill? | ||
| What's the difference here? | ||
| Well, the problem being they need all the votes in the House Republican Conference. | ||
| And as you know, as I know, as our viewers know, there are a lot of personalities in Congress. | ||
| And so trying to get all of them united, because Republicans have such a slim majority and can only afford to lose one Republican vote behind a bill as important as this one to enact the Trump agenda. | ||
| That's why they want to push forward one bill in the hopes that if there's certain provisions in that measure, in that legislation that one Republican, two Republicans don't agree with, they agree with the others. | ||
| They can push that forward. | ||
| Of course, this legislation would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts, would have billions of dollars in border security measures. | ||
| But the other thing is they want to push this forward without trying to increase the national deficit by more trillions of dollars. | ||
| So that's really the discussion that's taking place and why we're seeing a lot of political infighting within the Republican Conference on both sides about how to handle this. | ||
| And when it comes to the congressional budget, the ongoing cuts by the Department of Government efficiency certainly playing into that process and what the federal budget could look like in the weeks and months and years to come. | ||
| President Trump on Saturday at the Congressional Political Action Conference spoke about his efforts to streamline the federal government. | ||
| This is a little bit of what President Trump had to say. | ||
| We're removing all of the unnecessary, incompetent, and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal workforce. | ||
| That's what we're doing. | ||
| And under the buyouts, we offered federal employees more than 75,000 federal bureaucrats, think of that, have voluntarily agreed to surrender their taxpayer-funded jobs. | ||
| We want to make government smaller, more efficient. | ||
| We want to keep the best people, and we're not going to keep the worst people. | ||
| And you know, we're doing another thing. | ||
| If they don't report for work, we're firing them. | ||
| In other words, you have to go to office. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Look at her. | ||
| If you don't report to work, you know, that's another scam. | ||
| Was President Trump on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference? | ||
| By the way, if you want to watch the conference in its entirety, you can do so on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| We're talking about the week ahead in Washington this morning, and we're asking you to join the conversation. | ||
| To do so, phone lines are as usual: Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, it's 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text this morning, that number, 202-748-8003. | ||
| We'll have you join us throughout this half hour as we're joined by Danielle Diaz of Notice this morning. | ||
| We've been talking about the ongoing budget, along with the budget and the reconciliation process. | ||
| There's also the appropriations process. | ||
| Remind viewers where we are on actually funding the government past 14 days from now. | ||
| Well, right now, there is no top-line agreement between Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| That basically top-line means how much they're planning to spend to fund the government this next fiscal year. | ||
| Republicans are blaming Democrats, saying that they haven't brought forward any good faith negotiations, good faith top-line number in their last recent conversation. | ||
| Democrats are saying that Republicans are the ones that are not negotiating good faith. | ||
| Lots of back and forth between Republicans and Democratic appropriators in the last two weeks as they try to figure out how they're going to fund the government because government funding runs out on March 14th, and we're running out of time. | ||
| So we've been operating right now under a CR, continuing resolution as it's known up here on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Is there a potential for another one of those to kick the appropriations fight down the road, as it were? | ||
| That is definitely in the conversation. | ||
| But if you remember, Republicans hate continuing resolutions unless it cuts government spending. | ||
| The idea being that they actually put forward appropriations bills for all the government agencies and actually figure out how to properly fund these agencies, one of them being, of course, the Department of Defense. | ||
| Them, a lot of Republicans and Democrats arguing that you can't continue to always fund the Department of Defense by the same numbers that it's always been funded by. | ||
| You need to make sure that the numbers are appropriate to what they need each year. | ||
| So it could be a national security issue, and that's why they don't like using continuing resolutions. | ||
| And if you remember, flashback to, oh my goodness, a year ago, that's how Kevin McCarthy lost the speaker's job, is because he put forward a continuing resolution to continue fundering the government. | ||
| So lots of questions that they're trying to figure out, but really appropriators would like to see government funding bills that are, you know, cut spending, Republicans specifically, also aid to states that need disaster funding. | ||
| Those sorts of things are huge priorities as we continue through the year to address. | ||
| Can Congress this week sort of walk and chew gum on this? | ||
| Do appropriations for fiscal 2025, which is what we're in right now, and then also budget for 26 and all of that reconciliation process that you were talking about. | ||
| I mean, if we look at how Congress has functioned for the last couple of years, which you and I know very well, viewers know very well, they're not very good at handling a lot of things at the same time. | ||
| These are two major issues that they have to address in the next couple of weeks. | ||
| Of course, Democrats are not part of the budget reconciliation debate. | ||
| To be clear, that's a Republican issue, but Republicans have the majority in the House and the Senate and the White House. | ||
| So they have a lot on their plate, and it's likely that these two issues will collide. | ||
| That's what a lot of Democrats are saying. | ||
| That's what a lot of Republicans are worried about. | ||
| So expect a lot of drama on this. | ||
| When you say that Democrats are not part of the budget debate, explain why that is, why Republicans can do this without Democratic votes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm not going to try to be too in the weeds because it can get very nerdy very quickly. | ||
| But budget reconciliation is a process that the majority party can use in the House and the Senate to basically move forward legislation with a simple majority. | ||
| Bills already passed the House with a simple majority, so this is really what happens in the Senate. | ||
| Instead of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster, Republicans or Democrats, this is how they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, if you remember. | ||
| Flashback Democrats use this tool when they had the majority. | ||
| They can pass legislation just with 50 votes and they have the majority in the Senate right now. | ||
| But really, the only way that they can pass these measures is if their budget measures, if they can prove to the Senate parliamentarian who decides whether these bills can be passed using this process, have budgetary provisions. | ||
| So that is why they can pass these bills, or this massive bill with lots of provisions, without any Democratic votes. | ||
| But that's the trick here, too, right? | ||
| They need every single Republican in both chambers to get behind this legislation. | ||
| So it's going to be really, really tricky. | ||
| As we know, uniting conferences is very difficult in Congress. | ||
| It's another busy week on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Daniella Diaz is with us this morning as we take you through the budgeting and the appropriation process and the week ahead in Washington, D.C. Phone lines, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| This is Kevin out of Dunkirk, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Kevin, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, everyone. | |
| I just had a comment. | ||
| I delivered packages in Washington, D.C. for 15 years. | ||
| I was in and out of every single federal building, and all I seen was people playing video games on their computer all the time. | ||
| Couldn't even get anyone to sign for a package. | ||
| It was very inefficient from what I saw. | ||
| I can't say everybody, but I also knew a few people that worked in the federal government, and they would get these things called it's a clicker on their computer so the mouse would click every so often to make it look like you're busy. | ||
| So, Kevin, suffice to say, you agree with the efforts to reduce the federal workforce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I talked to one of my guys in my area that owns an automobile shop, and he said he's never seen so many federal employees going on these extravagant vacations in the past three years. | ||
| He's just never seen it. | ||
| Kevin, got your point, Dunkirk, Maryland. | ||
| We talked about in the first hour of the Washington Journal today just the reaction to that email from the Department of Government Efficiency. | ||
| I guess the email essentially came from HR at the U.S. government, but Elon Musk leading this effort. | ||
| Who are you going to be talking to this week in response to this effort and this deadline tonight for federal employees to respond with bullet points about what they accomplished last week? | ||
| You know, Republicans, who, again, have the majority in the House and the Senate have largely defended Elon Musk's efforts to cut down government spending and his Doge efforts, his steps that he's been taking to try to have less government workers or have them leave their jobs. | ||
| I think they're the ones that we are going to be asking questions, or I will in just a few hours because I'm going to head to Capitol Hill, asking them, do you think that he's gone too far? | ||
| And having federal workers prove in bullet points what they did in the last week. | ||
| And I mean, some of these measures, or some of these government officials that were asked to do this, could be disclosing government secrets. | ||
| We saw Tulsi Gabbard tell her office that they should not respond to this email because they deal with classified information. | ||
| We saw FBI Director Kash Patel tell his office, don't respond to this email. | ||
| I mean, is this going to be the extent of Elon Musk's power for cutting government spending in the federal government? | ||
| We are waiting to see whether Republicans say that maybe he's gone too far. | ||
| There's Lisa Murkowski over the weekend, her tweet that she put out, our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs that they perform. | ||
| The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn't it. | ||
| She has been very critical of Elon Musk and the Doge plan to cut government funding. | ||
| She's very concerned, and I spoke to her last week specifically about this, that the cuts to government funding that Musk is putting forward could affect energy projects in Alaska, where she's from, could affect wildlife conservation efforts in her state. | ||
| She is seeing the effects directly, and that is why she is speaking out against this. | ||
| And she's not the only one. | ||
| We've seen other Republicans come forward saying they are already sensing that back home, some of their government officials back home are being affected by this and losing jobs when they're essential and need to continue working for the federal government. | ||
| This is Victoria out of Chesterland, Ohio, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I hope everybody is satisfied with the way our country is going. | |
| What will it take to drain your accounts? | ||
| What will it take? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Victoria in Ohio. | ||
| Go to Craig in Florida, in Palm Coast, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Two million emails. | ||
| This is duplication of effort. | ||
| First of all, these guys are definitely being watched over by their supervisors. | ||
| And secondly, I just cannot imagine somebody sitting down into their office tomorrow morning opening up 2 million emails and doing anything with them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Plenty of discussion on this Doge effort. | ||
| What's been the most interesting part of this from your perspective on Capitol Hill? | ||
| You talked a little bit about that dynamic on Democrats responding and Republicans responding. | ||
| But at what point do you think it will, besides a Lisa Murkowski email, what will signal to you that something has shifted, that this has gone too far? | ||
| I mean, this email last week, or I'm sorry, over the weekend, from Elon Musk asking for federal workers to prove that they're working could be the power, the extent of his power and the hold he could have over the federal government when we're seeing leaders, Republican leaders like Kash Patel, like Tulsi Gabbard, others, tell their workforce don't respond. | ||
| Up until this point, we've seen those same people incredibly praise Elon Musk for moving forward on this process to try to cut the federal government workforce. | ||
| This could be the end of what they praise for what he's trying to do. | ||
| I mean, he himself tweeted over the weekend, federal workers are going to receive this email. | ||
| We expect them to respond or they will resign. | ||
| Well, that does, we'll count that as a resignation correction. | ||
| What we're seeing is that, regardless of that tweet from him, there will be people not responding in powerful positions who likely won't be losing their jobs. |