| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
A lot of folks in the media who don't like this president. | |
| The media, the legacy media in particular, has published far more negative stories than positive. | ||
| But when you write or broadcast that there's going to be wild inflation or recession and you set people's hair on fire, that does possibly have impacts on consumer confidence. | ||
| And when you do that, Without justifiable data to back it up, as you've been doing that, some of you, it doesn't serve the purpose of this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You actually do harm when you do that. | |
| Okay, that's all I have. | ||
| I can't take questions because these guys got me going on something else, but I'll be back tomorrow. | ||
| Happy to get you. | ||
| If there's one, there's in it. | ||
| We got to go. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| What you need. | ||
| 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. | ||
| We're joined now by Al Weaver. | ||
| He's a staff writer at The Hill. | ||
| Al, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| It was a big win yesterday for Speaker Johnson and President Trump on passing of the bill. | ||
| Remind us of what's in the bill and how it came together, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So continuing resolution, it'll last until the end of September to the end of the fiscal year. | ||
| It has a couple of anomalies, a couple of things that would differ from what the Biden budget was. | ||
| It includes a little bit of a plus-up on defense spending, a little bit on border security. | ||
| And those are kind of the main things. | ||
| And also the big thing locally is that it'll cut about a billion dollars from the District of Columbia, which is something that Democrats are obviously not a fan of. | ||
| They are in a real tough situation right now. | ||
| And they don't like this bill. | ||
| But, you know, it's a big question they have coming up. | ||
| And how detailed is the bill? | ||
| I mean, does it delineate how that money will be spent or does that come at a later time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it does. | |
| It does. | ||
| But also, as we've seen, the administration is kind of doing what they want with it a little bit. | ||
| They can kind of, and that's part of the troubles that Democrats are having right now is they wanted language in the bill saying that we want to dictate how the government will spend it, that they will spend it. | ||
| And obviously the Republicans would not go for that. | ||
| They said that was a non-starter and kind of leaves us where we are right now in a tough situation. | ||
| Tell me a little bit more about the $1 billion that is not going to be going to the D.C. government. | ||
| How big of a chunk is that from their yearly budget? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, it's a solid chunk. | |
| It's obviously something that Democrats don't want. | ||
| Muriel Bowser met with the White House earlier this year, tried to get things on good terms. | ||
| Obviously, Trump has his own feelings about how the district is run. | ||
| He thinks that the federal government should have a little bit more of a say over the district's affairs. | ||
| Obviously, it's the one city, district, however you want to call it, that the government has direct control over of and has a real major say. | ||
| And so it's a sizable chunk, and it's not something that the Democrats are excited about one bit. | ||
| Who are some of the holdouts in the House, GOP, on the GOP side, and how were they swayed in the end? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| What convinced them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Rich McClintock was one. | ||
| Beth Van Diem was another. | ||
| Kat Kamack, who's a top member of Republican brass she, it seems like Trump really played a big role here. | ||
| He's the one who's really carrying the day for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| These are all big wins for Speaker Johnson when it all comes down to it. | ||
| But he wouldn't get these wins without Trump putting pressure on them, saying, hey, we need to be able to do this in order to pass reconciliation in the end. | ||
| So this is really a leverage play on Trump's end, and he's exerting it to, especially with these House members who will come to a degree, follow him blindly. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation, ask our guest Al Weaver a question. | ||
| You can do so. | ||
| Our numbers are Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202748, 8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202748, 8002. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Roll call says that Vice President Vance told House Republicans that the administration would put forward a rescissions package in order to codify spending cuts in an attempt to convince the GOP holdouts. | ||
| What can you tell us about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, yeah, they've been talking about that. | |
| That came up a couple weeks ago at a Senate Republican lunch. | ||
| I think Brand Paul brought that up to a couple of members. | ||
| And the Vice President Vance, when he was on the Hill, or Elon Musk, excuse me, it's Elon Musk. | ||
| And it was generally well received. | ||
| But we'll see how actually that can get through. | ||
| I mean, obviously they have this ability through reconciliation coming up that it's something Musk would like to do to, obviously he's going throughout the government and chopping agencies up when he can. | ||
| Whether it can actually happen, whether it's realistic is unclear. | ||
| Let's talk about the Senate. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And let's talk first about the timeline because there's not a whole lot of time between now and Friday at midnight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, it's not an easy one. | |
| Right now, the government shuts down at midnight on Friday night. | ||
| And they have this bill. | ||
| They have a little more than less than three days to go about this and figure out how to do about it. | ||
| Democrats in a really tough situation. | ||
| I don't think anyone envies being Chuck Schumer right now. | ||
| They have a couple of really bad options. | ||
| One of them is to capitulate to this bill in the eyes of some of their more progressive members, more solidly Democratic members. | ||
| And then there's other moderates who Schumer is kind of giving cover for and giving them the ability eventually to possibly vote for this. | ||
| We hear from a lot of members is, I really don't like this bill. | ||
| This bill is horrible. | ||
| This is an awful bill. | ||
| But they're not saying they're going to vote against it. | ||
| And that's really notable at this stage because right now Democrats don't have a lot of options. | ||
| A couple of the reasons why they're not coming out and saying what they're going to do right now is they're worried, like for example, if they were to go ahead and shut the government down, they don't know what Trump's going to do. | ||
| Trump's very unpredictable. | ||
| They don't know how long a shutdown would last. | ||
| A shutdown obviously costs the government many millions of dollars. | ||
| It means that federal government, federal, and federal employees who are already feeling the pinch of it under job losses and whatnot wouldn't get paid. | ||
| Military members wouldn't get paid. | ||
| And so they're in a real tough situation. | ||
| They're trying to figure out how to go about this. | ||
| But the other thing I'll mention is that the Senate has been in now for 10 weeks straight, and a lot of these members will want to break. | ||
| And Jeff Fumes speak loudly on Capitol Hill. | ||
| And so they're going to need, I believe Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, has already said he's opposed. | ||
| So is it eight votes that they would need on the Democratic side? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Eight votes. | |
| The one that's solid right now is John Fetterman, it sounds like. | ||
| Fetterman has made it known that he's not for government shutdowns. | ||
| He'll do anything to avoid a government shutdown, likely including voting for this if he has to. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers. | ||
| Mark is in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, first I'm caller. | |
| I'd like to say real fast, food insecurity. | ||
| If it's not waste, if it's fat, shut down the government, and that's it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Walter in Baltimore, Maryland, Independent line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| I'm a DC resident, former. | ||
| I'm in Baltimore, Maryland now, because of the regentification of D.C. | ||
| It is a direct result of the congressional control dating back to the 80s, 70s, and 80s when the federal government dumped crack on D.C. | ||
| But the point of this billion-dollar heist of the D.C. budget, Congress, by law, as your guest knows, has told legislative authority over D.C. | ||
| No bills pass the city council without congressional review. | ||
| My problem now is we are being robbed. | ||
| America is, not just D.C., but America is at the behest of a criminal Musk. | ||
| The other criminal, 45-slash-47, is a criminal, but the idea that our entire government is being held hostage is not right. | ||
| My way of the highway is not a negotiating point to begin with. | ||
| But if the Democrats fold on the billion dollars theft from D.C., how further will they fold on the multi-billion dollar and according to the thief Trump and Musk, the trillion dollars that they have not found yet for the tax breaks for the wealthy? | ||
| I wish your comment to be clear, sir. | ||
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Support the tax break for the wealthy. | |
| All right. | ||
| Al. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, and that's kind of the divide we're seeing right now. | |
| I think that kind of encapsulated it well. | ||
| So Democrats, say they go ahead and vote for this. | ||
| Enough Democrats go ahead and vote for this. | ||
| How much further is Trump and Elon Musk going to go? | ||
| That's a question that Democrats are asking. | ||
| They don't like the idea of looking like they've capitulated. | ||
| They want to show Democratic voters that they are strong in the face of what Trump is doing. | ||
| But up until now, the tough thing for them is that they haven't really had a chance to do it. | ||
| A lot of these nominations, for example, are through, you know, Republicans can jam through them themselves. | ||
| They don't need Democrats. | ||
| This is the first time Democrats have actually really had a say in something. | ||
| And that's why they're kind of having this debate of whether do we use it? | ||
| Do we have leverage in the situation or do we not? | ||
| And at this point, they really don't have time to say, let's negotiate. | ||
| Let's change things. | ||
| Let's make something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, some of them want to. | |
| I mean, the fallback, if this were to fall back, if this were to falter, one of the ideas was that they would do another CR for about a month, and in that time, they could pass government funding for the full year, not at the Biden levels, but at current levels with different plus-ups and more reactionary to what's going on now. | ||
| But this is a big one. | ||
| Democrats yesterday had about an hour-long lunch, hour-longer lunch than they usually do. | ||
| They were really torn about this. | ||
| They have another long one today. | ||
| I'm sure we'll all be outside covering it like normal, but this kind of sums it up how this is not an easy one for them. | ||
| What are Republican lawmakers telling you about Elon Musk and his efforts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's mixed. | |
| It's mixed. | ||
| I mean, they like the general idea of going after waste, fraud, and abuse, as they put it, but they don't like it when it hits too close to home for them. | ||
| That's the prevailing. | ||
| But it's their projects being canceled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's for their projects, their state. | |
| Constituents being laid off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Their state, they're not a fan of that. | |
| I mean, we've seen that a lot with, for example, funding toward universities in various states. | ||
| They're not cutting those. | ||
| The general sense is, well, I'm not the biggest. | ||
| I'm not a fan of this. | ||
| But, you know, if we can't speak out of one mouth and then the other one, it's like we're just kind of mealy-mouthed about this. | ||
| Here's Vivian, a Democrat in Colliersville, Tennessee. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| What this government is setting up here doing, Trump, the Republicans and the House and the Senate is setting up there, setting America to fail. | ||
| They're selling us out to the rich. | ||
| They don't think about the jobs that they've been cut. | ||
| Majority of them are Republicans in Republicans' red states. | ||
| They're setting up here that Elon must run this, help run this country. | ||
| My brother-in-law is from Africa. | ||
| He was in there when they had apartheid, how they did people over there. | ||
| They're doing us the same way here. | ||
| They do not care how in the world can a person cut off money for child care, for counsel, for children, for sick people, for the elderly. | ||
| What kind of person is that? | ||
| Trump's sitting up there with himself. | ||
| The way he done did this country, he have lied, said he was going to make everything better. | ||
| Everything is worse, sir. | ||
| Wake up, America. | ||
| Look at what this man is doing. | ||
| When you talk about evil, that is the devil. | ||
| That man is the devil in the sky. | ||
| All right, Vivian. | ||
| Comment, Al? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I mean, I think that's part of the anger we're hearing from Democrats. | |
| And that's, you know, kind of this, you know, we, the House, one person made a point the other day that, you know, it's kind of easy for the House to go out and they can all vote against this without much fear of political retribution. | ||
| The Senate says it doesn't have that situation. | ||
| You know, obviously there's a filibuster. | ||
| They have to overcome this. | ||
| And so that's kind of why this problem we're seeing for them exists right now. | ||
| And has Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said anything publicly about what the plan is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not since the House voted. | |
| He did earlier yesterday afternoon. | ||
| He kind of said, we're going to wait and see what happens after the House passes it. | ||
| He was very coy. | ||
| He's very good at that as usual. | ||
| But it kind of underscores this problem he knows that his party has. | ||
| Alex, a Republican in St. Paul, Minnesota. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I just wanted to make a suggestion, which is, for instance, in Senator Slotkin's rebuttals to the State of the Union, she said everyone agrees that the government needs to be cut. | ||
| So why don't the Democrats come up with their own set of cuts that they think would be good for the government? | ||
| It could be from the Defense Department. | ||
| I think they'd find a lot of support on sort of the Republican side, especially as the coalitions have changed. | ||
| And if they do that, I think maybe we can actually move forward as opposed to just making it always that one side is just reflexively opposed to what the other one does. | ||
| The second observation is I think that a lot of your viewers would do good to kind of turn off the MSNBC and Fox News and maybe try to find some new media outlets because you just hear the rehashed opinions and their outrage machine and it's really preventing us from moving forward. | ||
| We could cut the Defense Department. | ||
| We could cut some other things in government. | ||
| And I think you'd find a lot of support on the Republican side. | ||
| So Alex, actually, the GOP bill has a $6 billion increase for the Defense Department. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So what I'm saying is that you're going to differentiate the political class from the base. | ||
| The base is fine with cuts to the Defense Department. | ||
| They realize that a lot of the defense spending isn't aligned to the actual defense needs of the country. | ||
| It's not that they're not national security hawks. | ||
| They just realize that we're kind of operating in an outdated way of doing things, you know, with sort of being the policeman of the world, et cetera. | ||
| So there's a calculation that has to do with what's politically expedient to the political class versus the base. | ||
| But sort of the Trump insight is that you can play to the base in the world of social media. | ||
| You can win. | ||
| So that would be my advice to Democrats and just to the country in general. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's get Al Weaver to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I understand his point, but the problem for right now is that this is a government run by one party, and they are having their full say. | |
| They are going. | ||
| For example, the reason why they're doing the CR the way they are is so they can unlock reconciliation to a degree. | ||
| That's a one-party exercise. | ||
| Democrats don't have a say in this right now. | ||
| That's why, and they're trying to move forward with this. | ||
| Speaker Johnson says he wants to want to pass a reconciliation bill by Easter, which is about a month and a half from now. | ||
| Explain that, Al, when you say unlocking reconciliation where they will not need Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They want to get Democrats. | |
| Well, they want. | ||
| Right now, in order to get this done, they view this as kind of an exercise of keeping everyone in unison, keeping everyone in line and saying that they want no distractions. | ||
| They want to get government funding out of the way. | ||
| They don't want to have to deal with this again. | ||
| For example, like under the idea of them passing another CR for another month, that takes them into April. | ||
| That takes them into the danger zone of where they would probably be dealing with reconciliation. | ||
| They want the decks to be cleared for that. | ||
| Here is Lynn in Green Lane, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Lynn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I can listen to people saying, you know, that the Democrats aren't doing anything and they're getting blamed for everything. | ||
| The Democrats are speaking their views and what they want done, but the Republicans don't listen to them. | ||
| They put down everything that they say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Any comments on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just kind of that Republicans kind of want the ability to not have to listen to them for a little bit. | |
| Here's Jodi in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm calling in regards more on the tariffs. | ||
| And with these tariffs on aluminum and steel and lumber and that it's going to hurt our country, especially those people that are trying to rebuild from wildfires, natural disasters, tornadoes. | ||
| Their costs are going to be a lot more than what their insurances will even pay out. | ||
| And these tariffs that Trump's putting on, it's hurting us Americans in the long run. | ||
| It's gutting our economy, getting rid of the Department of Education, gutting all of, I mean, several thousands of jobs that are lost. | ||
| It's like we're, and it's going to hurt eventually our farmers and our Detroit auto workers. | ||
| And our Congress hasn't done nothing as far as to help our people. | ||
| They haven't passed bills that are essential to helping families that are struggling. | ||
| It's a real thing, the struggle. | ||
| So that's all I had to say. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Yeah, the tariffs are a real problem right now. | ||
| And Republicans kind of realize this right now. | ||
| A lot of it is due to the uncertainty and kind of the whiplash that they see. | ||
| Do they just think it's not a good idea economically, or do they just not like the kind of the backlash that we're seeing in the market with the instability? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say a little bit of both. | |
| I mean, a lot of Republicans, especially the ones in office right now, they're still free traders, a lot of them. | ||
| I mean, there's obviously a fair amount that have come up under the age of Trump, and they're more pro-tariff and more, you know, more like pro-like, something like a trade war. | ||
| But a lot of these people are free traders. | ||
| A lot of these people think that tariffs are hurtful to the economy. | ||
| And right now they are seeing all this instability in the market. | ||
| They talk about stuff that, like Susan Collins yesterday is talking about, you know, a paper mill that is across the river in Canada and they have to go back and forth and it really hurts processing fees and that type of thing. | ||
| And the nature of whether these are going to go on in April, it's tough for anyone to really plan ahead. | ||
| That's kind of the problem they're dealing with. | ||
| The Washington Post also says the headline, Republicans to Trump. | ||
| Maybe rethink the whole tariff thing, please. | ||
| It says few Republicans are truly vouching for Trump's tariffs and many hint at a hope that they just go away. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's true. | |
| Here's James, South Branch, Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I'd like to find out if we just quit paying for our, just paid for our citizens for Medicaid, okay, and not non-citizens. | ||
| Wouldn't that solve our problem with the Medicaid? | ||
| Medicaid's a big thing. | ||
| Medicaid's a big problem right now. | ||
| It's something that has come up a lot last weeks with this reconciliation package and how Republicans are going to find these cuts to possibly be able to fund this tax bill. | ||
| Do we know how much money in actual dollars is going to undocumented immigrants on Medicaid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not sure of that off top head. | |
| Carl in Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm really happy you were on the desk today when they announced the winners for the student camps. | ||
| It looks like you have a nice group of possible interns or candidates for internship at the Hill, Al. | ||
| And these are going to be our future politicians and journalists. | ||
| So I'm really happy you were there to announce that. | ||
| Tom Massey, I'm pretty sure he did not vote for the bill. | ||
| And now the president is talking about having him primaried. | ||
| Has he seen the numbers that he has in Kentucky? | ||
| These are Mitch McConnell numbers. | ||
| I don't know who would want to come out and try to face him in a primary because I'm assuming if you have a representative, he is representing the views of his constituents. | ||
| And there are a lot of like-minded people up there in that area where in his district, I'm in another district. | ||
| Morgan McGarvey is our representative. | ||
| But his numbers are just incredible. | ||
| So I don't know if he really wants to get into this fight. | ||
| Tom Massey in that area. | ||
| But I'm glad you all were on the air today. | ||
| I think that I've been waiting for the student cam announcement. | ||
| I'm glad you're following that, Carl. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Representative Massey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Massey, he's the one Republican who voted against it yesterday. | |
| And the caller is correct. | ||
| Trump has put Massey in his sights before, and Massey's won every time. | ||
| He's very strong in that area. | ||
| He's talking about a Senate run right now for McConnell's seat. | ||
| It's kind of floating there. | ||
| We're not quite sure whether he's going to go ahead with that. | ||
| There's a lot of people are going to run for that. | ||
| But in the district, it's really tough to take him down. | ||
| And Trump's tried. | ||
| He's failed. | ||
| It's one of the few things on the Republican primary side that he's really failed at. | ||
| And, you know, Massey's formidable in that area. | ||
| Tell us about the one Democrat that voted in support of the bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Jared Golden, Maine. | |
| That is one of the main battleground districts on the House side. | ||
| Golden's kind of always been the most moderate of the House members since he came in, or the House Democrats since he came in. | ||
| He's more pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment than most Democrats. | ||
| He wants to see government function to a degree. | ||
| That's his kind of calling card. | ||
| And he's a bit of an interesting cat in that regard. | ||
| Here is Bryce in Kerry, North Carolina, a Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I wanted to be more aware of what do you think is the largest government cut that we've heard? | |
| Sorry about that. | ||
| This is James in Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I think what I'm seeing is that I don't mind both sides. | ||
| I don't mind the government doing the waste fraud and abuse stuff, but just do it in the right place. | ||
| I'm also worried that we're not taxing the billionaires enough because if you do both, then we're winning. | ||
| Because if you trim some of the government like they're doing, but not as much and in the right places. | ||
| And then you tax the billionaires more because we've all been taught, even in high school, that we got to give back. | ||
| We had to do mandatory community service hours. | ||
| So why aren't the billionaires being made mandatory that they put their fair share back in to the people who they actually became billionaires off? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| Tax cuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to see that in the next couple of months. | |
| That's a big deal. | ||
| They're not going to cut their, you know, the Republicans, they've made this the number one priority of their administration right now. | ||
| This is the Trump agenda, and it's get on board or get out of the way for them. | ||
| Are cuts a bigger priority, you think, than cutting government spending? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| This is the number one goal. | ||
| Trump is there. | ||
| Not only are they trying to cut it again, they're trying to make them permanent. | ||
| That was something they couldn't do in 2017. | ||
| Senate Republicans have a mechanism they think where they can make that work, make that stick. | ||
| House Republicans, a little more, they have more questions about it. | ||
| They think they could probably cut them for about eight to nine years. | ||
| But this is going to be the biggest show in the next couple of months. | ||
| Here is Sheila in Youngstown, Ohio. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It is a five-alarm fire. | ||
| And the reason Democrats sound crazy is we're so scared. | ||
| The guy who called, who's on SSI, please refer to a Bloomberg report of 3-11 when Musk says entitlements is the big one to cut in Trump's dodgy push for Social Security and Medicare as key targets. | ||
| He said there will be steep reductions. | ||
| Elon Musk said Social Security was a Ponzi scheme. | ||
| I'm so scared for, I mean, once these things are gone, you're not going to be able to help because he's also ruining the stock market. | ||
| So people who had a median income won't be able to help the people who have no food to eat. | ||
| So please pay attention. | ||
| All right, Sheila. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Social Security is a big one. | |
| I mean, Elon Musk came out and talked about that the other day. | ||
| But the one thing I would say is that of all the things that Trump has talked about in the past, he talks about a lot of things with certainty. | ||
| One thing is that he doesn't want to cut, does not want to cut Social Security. | ||
| He's made that known ever since he ran in 2016. | ||
| Some Republicans have floated, you know, brazen retirement age, stuff like that. | ||
| He's always been a, no, we've got to keep it for senior citizens. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Al Weaver, staff writer for The Hill. | ||
| You can find his writing at thehill.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll start with Speaker Mike Johnson making remarks right after the vote yesterday. | ||
| Well, this was a big vote on the House floor. | ||
| The Republicans stood together and we had one Democrat vote with us to do the right thing and that is to fund the government. | ||
| This was a clean CR. | ||
| It freezes funding. | ||
| It's a responsible thing to do. | ||
| And we're ensuring that troops continue to get their paychecks and TSA agents continue to do their work and be paid. | ||
| And essential workers on the border and elsewhere are doing their jobs. | ||
| It's shameful what happened on the Democrat side. | ||
| They engaged in a misinformation campaign. | ||
| They put out talking points about the bill on Friday before the bill was even filed, which was Saturday afternoon. | ||
| They've been lying and misrepresenting the facts about what's in the bill and the American people can read it for themselves. | ||
| It's only 99 pages long. | ||
| We did our job today and it's shameful that they will stop at nothing. | ||
| They will suggest that this bill is something that it's not and they will run out the clock to shut down the government in a desperate attempt to stop the America First Agenda. | ||
| But I will tell you that President Trump and Republicans in Congress will stop at nothing to deliver on that agenda. | ||
| We are going to continue to work hard. | ||
| We will continue to stick together and get this job done and it's an essential one. | ||
| Now that the government funding bill has been passed out of the House, we send it to the Senate and it falls on the desk of Chuck Schumer. | ||
| He is the leader of the Democrats on that side and he must determine whether he wants to fund the government, do the responsible thing, or whether he wants to shut the government down. | ||
| And I certainly hope that there are enough Democrats in the Senate who have a conscience who will do the right thing by the American people and take care of business over there. | ||
| That was a speaker yesterday. | ||
| We want to hear from you. | ||
| And here's the Washington Examiner that says House GOP passes stopgap funding bill with the help of Trump Vance pressure campaign. | ||
| It says the House passed the CR, which freezes funding levels until September 30th, 217 to 213. | ||
| All Republicans except Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky voted in favor of the spending bill, which raises defense spending by about $8 billion and lowers non-defense spending by about $13 billion. | ||
| Here's House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on the floor Tuesday before the vote criticizing the bill. | ||
| But Republicans have done nothing to lower the high cost of living. | ||
| No bill, no executive order, no administrative action. | ||
| That's the broken promise. | ||
| We were told by President Trump that costs were going to go down on day one. | ||
| Grocery prices haven't gone down, they've gone up. | ||
| Inflation is up. | ||
| You know what's going down? | ||
| The stock market. | ||
| Because President Trump and House Republicans are crashing the economy in real time and marching us to a possible Republican recession. | ||
| That's what's confronting the American people. | ||
| And so now we have this partisan, reckless spending bill that we're being asked to consider on the floor today. | ||
| Bipartisan negotiations were underway. | ||
| Rosa DeLaura was at the table working to reach an agreement consistent with the Fiscal Responsibility Act that was passed by Republicans and Democrats and then signed into law in 2023. | ||
| But when Donald Trump says jump, StreamMAG Republicans say how high. | ||
| And he ordered the Republicans to leave the negotiating table to try to jam this far-right, extremist bill down the throats of the American people. | ||
| And he mentioned the stock market going down. | ||
| This is CNBC with the headline: Dow drops more than 450 points, SP 500 post-back-to-back loss over Trump tariff uncertainty. | ||
| And we'll hear from callers now. | ||
| Here's Kevin up first in Omaha, Nebraska, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is Kevin Patello, and I was just calling about I don't see bickering back and forth between both sides, and there never seems to get anything done. | |
| So I think it's time the Democrats and Republicans all sit down like they're supposedly going to do with Ukraine and Russia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't see anything going to happen with that. | |
| But anyway, I just wish for the best for our country, and thank you very much. | ||
| And you have a good evening, Mimi. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You have a good morning, Kevin. | ||
| Here's Joe, Portland, Connecticut, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, I'm glad it's passed. | ||
| But one thing I'd have to say, Mimi, is we have four more years of President Trump being in office. | ||
| And are we going to do this every day, 365 days a year, complain about Trump? | ||
| Give this administration a chance. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| I think most Americans want that. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| And here is Richard, San Francisco, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, wow. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| This is a reckless. | ||
| I mean, Trump has had devastating results, not even this little more than 30 days, right? | ||
| He's tanking the economy. | ||
| He's using tariffs as a way to manipulate, I don't know, trading agreements. | ||
| He's that's okay, so it's mainly about trade. | ||
| This bill may freeze spending at certain levels, but there's a hidden agenda. | ||
| In fact, it's not even so hidden in terms of the impact it could have later, which is go after entitlements because those are the big funded programs, which Trump said he'll never, you know, never deal with, never go after Social Security or Medicare, Medicaid. | ||
| And so it's been such a reckless abandon of chaos and actually destruction just like in 30 days. | ||
| I mean, domestically, he's tanking the economy singly-handed with the tariffs. | ||
| And I just got a new heater today. | ||
| I'm already affected by the tariffs. | ||
| How's that, Richard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The parts are, they say, up 8 to 10% already, just in parts for the heater. | |
| So I ended up getting a new heater. | ||
| The company told you that? | ||
| The company that you bought it from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| And they passed on that 8% to 10% to you. | ||
| So you paid an extra. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is for every kind of part from outside the country, and no matter what it is. | ||
| I mean, that includes everything that comes to the United States through these tariffs that he's imposed. | ||
| I mean, I'm just going to say the other thing. | ||
| He's a disaster on foreign policy. | ||
| He's obviously had some, you know, listen, he was trying to build a tump tower in Moscow way back when. | ||
| He got $5 billion worth of Russian loans through Deutsche Bank to bail him out of bankruptcy. | ||
| I'm saying, you know, so no demands on Russia, who is the aggressor who is occupying. | ||
| So, Richard, let's go back to the bill. | ||
| It's at the Senate now. | ||
| How do you think Democrats, since you're a Democrat, how do you think Democratic senators should vote on it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, unfortunately, they're between a rock and a hard place because, you know, I think duly they should vote. | |
| I mean, just based on what's in this bill and how much it can lead to cuts and let's say especially Medicaid, because they're not looking for waste or fraud. | ||
| There's very little waste or fraud. | ||
| This is about attacking the people that work for the federal governments, you know, without any kind of sense about who they're cutting when and how. | ||
| And it's, you know, they have an agenda. | ||
| I mean, how are they going to pass their tax cut of $4 trillion? | ||
| They have to try to cut spending. | ||
| Well, that's going to affect everyday people in all kinds of ways. | ||
| I mean, from veterans to health care to programs that help everyone in general. | ||
| And here's the ironic thing is that almost all of the red states get more federal funding than they return to the, you know, than they return to the federal government. | ||
| I mean, they are most dependent on federal funding. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And Richard, regarding what's happening in the Senate, here's Punch Bowl news that says, what's it going to be, Chuck Schumer? | ||
| Government funding runs out in two days. | ||
| The House is gone and Senate Democrats face a stark choice. | ||
| Provide the votes for a GOP-authored continuing resolution they've been trashing, or the federal government shuts down. | ||
| It says Senate Democrats don't want to shut the government down, but also don't want to look like they're helping President Donald Trump. | ||
| And they are agonizing over how to handle what has become a truly unenviable situation. | ||
| And here's Robert in Clearwater, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hello. | |
| Thanks for taking a bit big link. | ||
| You know, long weeks of votes in the day, they're not good. | ||
| Trump enough time to do what he's supposed to do. | ||
| I believe that in the long run, things will come down. | ||
| And if he can stop that war, that would be the best thing in the world. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| And let's take a look at GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise. | ||
| This was during the debate on the continuing resolution yesterday. | ||
| He accused Democrats of opposing that CR because they hate President Trump. | ||
| And yet, here they are on this floor talking about things that aren't even in the bill, trying to scare people, talking about cuts to veterans in the bill, and maybe because they just didn't read the bill, it's only 99 pages long, I would urge them to go read it. | ||
| They might actually vote for this bill in the next hour because they'll realize, in fact, the cuts that they're talking about are not true. | ||
| They're not in the bill. | ||
| There's an increase for veterans in this bill. | ||
| You know what else is in this bill, Mr. Speaker? | ||
| And I want to applaud, again, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and his members for negotiating something that's been needed for a long time, and that is the largest pay raise for our junior enlisted military personnel in over 40 years. | ||
| Now, if somebody doesn't think our men and women in uniform deserve that pay raise, maybe they'll vote no. | ||
| I'm proud to say I'm going to be voting yes to support our men and women in uniform who've been waiting for that raise and deserve it. | ||
| How can you justify a no vote on that, Mr. Speaker? | ||
| That's actually in the bill. | ||
| As they talk all day about what's not in the bill, because they were against it before it was even written, if they actually read this bill, again, only 99 pages, it's a pretty quick read, you would find out that pay raise for our troops is in the bill. | ||
| Stronger funding for our veterans is in the bill. | ||
| But why are they voting no, you would ask? | ||
| Just because the name of the president is Donald Trump. | ||
| I think the people of this country are fed up with that kind of hatred that consumes people here in Washington. | ||
| Again, when you watch the State of the Union address, and the president is not even talking about his agenda, he's introducing and paying tribute to a 13-year-old boy who just beat cancer. | ||
| And they couldn't even stand up and applaud that on their side because of the person who said it. | ||
| If the hatred is so consuming that you can't even support what's great about America, maybe you need to reevaluate what's important in doing these jobs. | ||
| We are elected to represent the people. | ||
| And if the president, no matter who he is or she is, has a great idea, you support it. | ||
| Back to the calls now. | ||
| Here's Kim in Champaign, Illinois, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| I'm very concerned about this budget. | ||
| You know, once it was passed, after it was passed last night, I heard that it was passed. | ||
| I, you know, in looking through the reports on the budget, specifically through the New York Times and the Washington Post, and I hope you comment on these stories. | ||
| You know, this budget is not like regular spending budgets. | ||
| Our representative didn't delineate or outline explicitly what the funds are to be used for. | ||
| So my concern here is that it really just gives President Trump a blank check to really do to allocate the money as he pleases. | ||
| My concern would be that, you know, he's not going to explicitly say, you know, hey, well, you know, blue states get no funds, red states get all the funds, but perhaps, you know, look at be a little more nuanced. | ||
| Hey, I like this project that's going on in this district that might happen to be a red district in a blue state. | ||
| Or I like this funding that's going on at the University of Alabama. | ||
| But I'm going to, you know, for instance, we're taking, like, we just found out recently that the soybean grant for the U of I that was being used to part of USAID, mind you, that those millions of tens of millions of dollars have been now because, and that was going towards helping farmers in underdeveloped countries and using our farmers here locally in Illinois to do that, | ||
| to teach them how to be more resourceful in planning soybeans. | ||
| Another concern is that in looking at it, the Republicans also kind of tucked in there a little known provision where they seed away their power to cancel these tariffs that are so harmful to our economy, to all our retirement funds right now. |