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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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| On this Monday morning, it's a look at the week ahead in Washington. | ||
| Eric Wasson of Bloomberg News is back with us. | ||
| And Eric Wasson, this week, it's all about the looming government shutdown potentially at the end of the week. | ||
| Deadline is Friday, midnight. | ||
| Where do things stand right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a bit of a game of chicken, actually. | |
| Over the weekend on Saturday, Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans released a stopgap bill through September 30th. | ||
| This would essentially freeze funding, although it's a small increase to defense, $6 billion, a decrease of $13 billion to non-defense. | ||
| But most state programs stay as they are, with some exceptions. | ||
| And they're going to put that on the floor as soon as Tuesday. | ||
| And this is really daring Democrats to vote against it and sort of take the blame potentially for a government shutdown that would start on Saturday morning. | ||
| Democrat leadership in the House is against it. | ||
| They say this just allows Elon Musk and his Doge operation free reign. | ||
| They've been pushing for language that would limit Doge, would specify certain levels of program funding, for example, that they could not violate. | ||
| That's not in here. | ||
| And then if it does pass the House, it would go to the Senate. | ||
| And they need at least seven, probably eight due to Rand Paul probably voting against it, Democrats to get this thing through with a 60-vote filibuster margin. | ||
| And that'll be a really interesting vote. | ||
| Come back to the House before you go to the Senate. | ||
| This is something that has the votes of enough House Republicans to pass because in recent time, we've seen some very narrow votes and even Mike Johnson, his team putting legislation on the floor and then having to pull it back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's going to be very similar to the House budget vote. | ||
| Now, the budget is different than spending bill. | ||
| It's fairly complicated. | ||
| I have to explain it to people a lot. | ||
| But the budget is a method that they're using. | ||
| It's an outline that will greenlight the tax cuts: $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, $2 trillion in entitlement spending. | ||
| That was a very close vote in the House. | ||
| It took President Trump arm twisting. | ||
| Members like Victoria Spartz at the very last minute switching their vote to an I. Thomas Massey, who's the conservative libertarian, has already come out against this CR. | ||
| He was a no also on the budget vote. | ||
| So I think it's going to be very similar. | ||
| There are people who are affiliated with the House Freedom Congress, not necessarily in it, who have real concerns about the deficit and who have never voted for a continuing resolution, a stopgap bill such as this is. | ||
| So it's going to be a really tight vote. | ||
| I think Hakeem Jeffries is potentially going to lose some Democrats. | ||
| There's some moderates that would say, hey, a clean CR, essentially a clean CR, meaning keeping funding about where it is, is what we've asked for in the past, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So we're looking at the Blue Dogs, Ghouls Camp Perez, and others who are in these swing districts who would probably feel the heat for any government shutdown. | ||
| So I think they could gain. | ||
| There's also Democratic absences. | ||
| Unfortunately, we had one member, Mr. Turner, pass away last week, right after the Trump speech. | ||
| Raul Grahalva is very ill, has not voted for most of the time. | ||
| So there's a bit of margin there. | ||
| So it's going to be a very tight vote. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think the House Republicans want to demonstrate that they can muscle this through because that gives them leverage. | |
| For years, they've had to say, we have to strike a deal with a bipartisan deal with Democrats. | ||
| We can't get it on our own. | ||
| We have rebels in our own caucus. | ||
| If they can get this through the House, then they have more leverage and talks going forward. | ||
| Okay, so come back to the Senate. | ||
| Who would be the seven or eight Democrats who would be most likely to support something like this or at least be targeted by Republicans to try to put a pressure campaign to pass something once it goes through the House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we can almost guarantee that John Fetterman will vote for this no matter what. | |
| He came out on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying he's not going to oppose a CR. | ||
| You have people like John Ossoff, who are in Georgia up for reelection in 2026, very vulnerable, perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Democrat. | ||
| People like Gene Shaheen, also, if she's running for re-election, which is not yet clear, in New Hampshire, it could be among them that we see these seven votes. | ||
| Come back to a potential shutdown and what it would mean with Donald Trump in control of the White House. | ||
| There was a lead editorial in the Washington Times today, it was the editorial board, saying that if there's a shutdown, then essential government employees stay on the job and non-essential government employees go home and don't get paid until there's a funding bill. | ||
| And it would almost make the point that there's essential and non-essential government employees, i.e., what's happening at Doge is something that the wider federal government has efficiencies and has people who are just not essential. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indeed, you know, there's an upcoming reduction in force process going on initiated by OMB and OPM that does use the last big government shutdown, which was under President Trump 35 days in 2019, where you saw essential and non-essential. | |
| And those who were deemed non-essential during that shutdown will be the first targeted for potential layoffs. | ||
| Since that shutdown has occurred, there's now in permanent law that after a shutdown, all employees, essential and non-essential, will get back pay before Congress had to proactively pay the non-essential workers. | ||
| So I think it does make that point. | ||
| OMB has a lot of flexibility in who they define as essential and non-essential, so they could go in and really add a lot more people to this list potentially if they saw fit. | ||
| That had some Democrats certainly nervous about what would happen in a shutdown. | ||
| One of the interesting things about the CR, and we're still, I'm sorry to use technical term, but the stopgap bill through September 30th, is it doesn't contain earmarks, first of all, the normal congressionally community-funded projects that lawmakers direct specific spending down to the program and project level. | ||
| But it also doesn't contain all the report language. | ||
| This is stuff that really, where it's not in the law itself, but it's always attached to the law. | ||
| And usually agencies, traditionally, until Trump have followed that. | ||
| And then Patty Murray, the top appropriator on this top spending panel Democrat, said without that report language, Doge would be even more empowered, potentially in the courts, to make these kinds of cuts and changes without congressional approval. | ||
| Eric Wasson with us in this segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| It's Monday. | ||
| It's our usual week ahead in Washington look. | ||
| And this week it's particularly important because there's a potential shutdown at the end of the week. | ||
| If you have questions or comments, now's the time to call in. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Let me stay in the agencies for a little bit longer. | ||
| As we get closer to these shutdowns, the agencies often put out their shutdown plans. | ||
| What are those going to look like in a second Trump administration? | ||
| Are they even going to put those out? | ||
| Would that give us some insight as to where Doge might begin looking as they go beyond USAID and some of these agencies that have been the early look for Doge? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a really good question. | |
| I mean, I think we'll see Friday, if we have not made advance on a shutdown bill, that the OMB will release that. | ||
| OMB so far, they cooperated on the stopgap bill. | ||
| They're acting a lot like a traditional OMB would with regard to the shutdown, at least as far as advising on what's called anomalies. | ||
| And remind people OMB and their role here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
OMB is the White House budget office. | |
| They're basically in charge of this whole show. | ||
| And controversially, the head of OMB is Russ Vogt, who has this unitary executive theory and backs the idea of impoundments. | ||
| So this is not something that's yet been tested, but something that I've been watching very closely, which is that Doge and OMB with these reductions in force and firing of probationer employees is, they're allowed basically, everyone agrees to fire people. | ||
| You're allowed to find efficiencies. | ||
| But the big question is, can they just pocket the money? | ||
| Can they put it back to the Treasury? | ||
| There's a 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which says no. | ||
| You've got to go to Congress and do this fast-track bill called residions. | ||
| And last week was very interesting. | ||
| Elon Musk came to the Senate lunches and Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, and others said, look, you've got to follow this process. | ||
| Let's not have a constitutional crisis on impoundments here. | ||
| Bring a bill that says, okay, we cut USAID contracts by 83% and let's rescind that money, put it back into the Treasury. | ||
| So Elon Musk says he's on board with that. | ||
| That'll be interesting. | ||
| It could be a way to sidestep what would otherwise be really a Supreme Court case on whether the administration cannot spend money. | ||
| Now, the interesting thing about this, there's two laws that govern appropriations. | ||
| Anti-deficiency, which means you can't spend money Congress hasn't given you. | ||
| That's a criminal violation. | ||
| If you go out there and an agency employee and start spending money in a bunch of stuff that you don't have the money for, you could go to jail. | ||
| Impoundment, there is no criminal penalty. | ||
| So interestingly, you could get a slap on the wrist. | ||
| You could be told this is a no-no, but no one's going to go to jail. | ||
| So it would be a very interesting sort of confrontation. | ||
| Potentially, they're going to sidestep this by going to Congress sometime later this year. | ||
| House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole is very open to this with a rescissions package. | ||
| Interestingly, the Trump administration, number one, tried it and couldn't get that through. | ||
| This is why we enjoy having Eric Wasson on this program to help explain these constitutional issues, these congressional issues. | ||
| And it's not as important as the constitutional issues that you just brought up, but the palace intrigue side of this. | ||
| So Marco Rubio sends this tweet this morning announcing the 83 percent cuts at USAID. | ||
| And then make sure at the very end to thank Doge and then his own staff and hard work. | ||
| That tweet coming in the Monday after there were some reports last week of a dust-up between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio that Donald Trump had to step in and have a dinner with them over the weekend to settle things. | ||
| What's your read on all that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, it's interesting the interpersonal interactions between them. | |
| I've covered Marco Rubio for many years in the Senate, you know, and he's well respected. | ||
| He won confirmation with 99 votes. | ||
| And Elon Musk is much more controversial. | ||
| So it's an interesting battle on the personal side, but also legally. | ||
| And before the courts, the administration has been arguing that Elon Musk is not the head of Doge, that Doge is not doing these firings, because certainly he's not appointed and confirmed. | ||
| So that could be a constitutional violation right there. | ||
| And in the wake of this dust up, potential dust up, the president also basically made clear this is the agency heads who are going to be firing anybody. | ||
| I think that serves their legal case pretty strongly in the courts. | ||
| Let me get you some callers and there's plenty for you. | ||
| This is Chris Woodbridge, Virginia Independent. | ||
| Chris, you're on with Eric Wasson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and happy Monday. | |
| How is everybody today? | ||
| Chris here, 28-year-old African-American. | ||
| I just wanted to bring some concerns to Mr. Walking today. | ||
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| I do trust my federal government. | ||
| I'm only 20 years old, as I said. | ||
| I've only voted so many times, but I do trust my federal government. | ||
| I thank everybody that is a part of the DOD, civilian active duty, whatever you play a role in our government, I thank you. | ||
| But the government shutdown. | ||
| So we've had a few of these occurrences more in the last decade, I'd say, more than I've seen with my own eyes. | ||
| And I just want to ask, are there any more prevalent negative impacts to this continuous and consistent pattern in an organization like the United States government? | ||
| And then with ideas like those coming into play so rapidly, are there any determined or excuse me, are there any guidelines or parameters that are going to combat this and assist us with continuing our fiscal year and staying on track? | ||
| And then if that is not the case and we are putting too much faith in these private corporation ideas, is there anything that the constituents of the United States can do to call our local legislation to attest to what is going on or to just try and mediate what's going on in any way, shape, or form? | ||
| And lastly, I would just like to say the government shutdown again with the multiple occurrences and the continuation of the pattern. | ||
| Does this situation affect our allies and their financial diplomacy as far as foreign entities? | ||
| Do we need to be worried about how we affect their dollar and not only ours and our government? | ||
| Thank you and have a good day. | ||
| Chris, thanks for the questions. | ||
| A few there. | ||
| Where do you want to start? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quite a few. | |
| So are shutdowns and continuing resolutions a bad way to run the government? | ||
| Certainly. | ||
| I think everybody agrees with that. | ||
| A shutdown is very disruptive. | ||
| And the stopgaps are not ideal. | ||
| The full appropriations process where they supposed to do 12 individual bills is a chance for Congress through its oversight power to go in and update, especially contracts. | ||
| And we are seeing in this stopgap actually for defense, Defense Department has never operated in its history under a full year stopgap measure. | ||
| So they've gone in there and given the new Defense Secretary flexibility to move money around and to try to start some new weapons buys. | ||
| It's especially important for defense contractors that these new weapon systems, especially we're looking at Virginia-class submarines, ships, can get underway. | ||
| And the stopgap normally would prevent that. | ||
| They've put some wiggle room language in here. | ||
| But nonetheless, throughout the rest of the agencies, they don't have that ability to update contracts, to move, you know, if programs aren't working to end them and move them around. | ||
| So I think traditionally, Congress agrees that it's a bad way to run the show, but the deadlock that happens between the parties, the need for bipartisan agreements led again and again to these funding cliffs and these continuing resolutions. | ||
| As far as contacting congressmen, I think that's actually showing to work. | ||
| Tom Cole is the head of the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| He was very concerned with Doge and Elon Musk recommending the closure of three, at least three federal buildings in his Oklahoma 4th District. | ||
| And he revealed over the weekend that he had gotten those reversed. | ||
| So I think we're going to see a lot more of that, especially if you have Republican members that the administration will be sympathetic to. | ||
| Contacting them, if you find out the Social Security Office in your area or a federal building or other services, we've seen a lot of cuts to the Indian Native American school system. | ||
| They might be able to get reversed for people who can get to the ear of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. | ||
| I think there were some other questions there. | ||
| What about what it means for our allies and the yeah, well, I think that the real thing there is the end of USAAD, which many people, including Marco Rubio, were big supporters of. | ||
| This is the idea of soft power. | ||
| You know, the United States spends a lot on its military, would probably have to spend a lot more if it was going to use purely hard power sort of posture. | ||
| And in Africa, especially, you see China and other nations rushing in there, Russia as well, to gain influence, a lot of critical minerals and resources there. | ||
| And to the extent that USAAD, especially in Africa, is spending to combat the AIDS crisis, other health emergencies, the sudden withdrawal of that money is going to not only hurt the U.S. reputation, but lead to global instability, I would suspect. | ||
| Can I ask a very basic question? | ||
| So the fiscal year, we're in fiscal 2025 and it's September to September, right? | ||
| So we're about six months into the fiscal year, a little less than September. | ||
|
unidentified
|
October 1st to September 30th. | |
| To September 30th. | ||
| So what is going on with fiscal 2026? | ||
| Is there anything happening now to avoid getting into this situation again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's the thing. | |
| You keep backing up and it leads to a continuous vicious circle. | ||
| Basically, the president's budget is the start of the process. | ||
| That's supposed to be on the second week of February, and we're going to see that delayed now until May. | ||
| That's actually pretty typical for a first administration. | ||
| So they need to bring that up. | ||
| That's going to be his vision. | ||
| In the past, the President Trump talked about major cuts that were never made, and actually the deficit ballooned under his presidency. | ||
| But that normally would then go get reviewed, and the appropriations committees would start with their hearings. | ||
| They usually have a hearing for every agency. | ||
| They have a bunch of subcommittees, and then they draft their bills. | ||
| Supposedly, during the summer, they're supposed to pass individual bills and have that all wrapped up the start of the September end of September. | ||
| Probably we're already on track to miss deadlines again, but they're going to try. | ||
| They say they have unified control. | ||
| Republicans are going to put forward some deep cuts. | ||
| I do think, even though I actually think the shutdown risk this week is a bit small because they could pass short term if they can't get the long term through, in 26, the risk is going to be high because that's where you're going to see the administration really push to permanently end USAAD, to permanently curtail all the programs they don't like, and Democrats may have a fight on their hand and lead to a shutdown. | ||
| Forgive me, what would be a short-term fix to this problem to avoid shutdown on Friday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So I think people are on the Hill are talking about a six-week stopgap. | ||
| There's what's called a sequester, which is an automatic spending cut for any short-term bill. | ||
| This is actually something that Thomas Massey, who is one of the rebels on this long-term deal, got into law. | ||
| And that's after April 30th. | ||
| So they really don't want any short-term or past that, but they could back up against that deadline, give themselves some motivation to maybe complete the full bills. | ||
| This isn't a scenario where Mike Johnson really can't get the long-term stopgap through the House, and they have to go bipartisan. | ||
| And then we see some sort of wrangling going on for a couple of weeks on that. | ||
| Michael, in the Bay State, in Chatham, Mass Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd like to have your guest speak to the inefficiency of government. | ||
| Specifically, with technology, the government was set up with all these NGOs and the distribution of money, which is very inefficient on its face. | ||
| What unions don't want is they don't want you to discover automation technology or anything. | ||
| We're going to delete this here and take you live now to Capitol Hill, where the U.S. House is gabbling in for general speeches. | ||
| You're watching live coverage of the house here on C-SPAN. | ||
| The House will be in order. |