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unidentified
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Coverage. | |
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| And thank you. | ||
| Joining us now is Rhys Gorman, politics reporter for Notice. | ||
| We're going to talk about the week ahead in Congress. | ||
| Rhys, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| Congress is back. | ||
| They have been out on recess. | ||
| The House has been out this week. | ||
| One of the things that they are taking up on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune are going to start talking about reconciliation, coming to an agreement on the budget. | ||
| Remind us where things currently stand, how far apart they are, and the challenges of coming to an agreement. | ||
| Right now they're really far apart. | ||
| And so basically the Senate has passed their kind of two-bill strategy. | ||
| The first bill really on their plan, which Lindsey Graham kind of spearheaded, is just kind of border energy funding, kind of the more, the promises that Trump made on the campaign trail, kind of funding those, giving those initiatives forward. | ||
| And then they're going to deal with, they want to deal with tax later on down the road. | ||
| They want to push tax to a later date because, I mean, objectively, even Mike Johnson would say this, well, it is easier just to get this funding through, this border funding, this energy policies. | ||
| It's easier to get that through. | ||
| But in Johnson's head, the House has passed a one-bill strategy, which includes the same thing the Senate bill does, plus tax, you know, no tax on tips, extensions of the TCJA, and all that stuff that kind of is more, not necessarily controversial, but harder to kind of get through. | ||
| And Johnson's idea is that they're going to use this border funding and energy policies as kind of sweeteners to get Republicans on board because they need near unanimous near unanimous in the House, can only lose a couple votes in the Senate. | ||
| So it is very, very tight margins right now. | ||
| So Johnson's thinking is we're going to need some of this, these more kind of red meat issues, border energy funding to kind of get Republicans on board with the tax bill. | ||
| But they're far apart right now. | ||
| They haven't really, the Senate has not moved on either one. | ||
| Both the House and the Senate have passed their bills. | ||
| It has not moved on the House bill yet. | ||
| They've moved on their bill. | ||
| The House has not moved on the Senate bill yet. | ||
| They moved their bill. | ||
| So now there's kind of got to come together and figure out a compromise. | ||
| And I mean, there's some senators that have said they won't vote for a reconciliation package unless the TCJA is permanently made permanent. | ||
| Johnson obviously has said that he wants to do that. | ||
| Jason Smith said, obviously, they want to do that. | ||
| But I mean, that costs a lot of money. | ||
| And there's Republicans in the House that think that they can't do that because of the price tag on it and because of the amount of cuts that some of these conservatives are kind of demanding in order for them to get their vote. | ||
| Something else that they will be debating is increasing the debt limit. | ||
| Speaker Johnson wants that to be part of the reconciliation package. | ||
| Where do Senate Republicans stand? | ||
| Yeah, I think the debt limit, especially, I mean, Mike Johnson has said that that's what he wants. | ||
| Obviously, conservatives have said that's what they want, but that's going to be very tough to get done. | ||
| I mean, it's already tough enough. | ||
| I mean, there's some Republicans that have never voted for a debt limit increase. | ||
| And obviously, this is a partisan bill. | ||
| So usually you need Republicans. | ||
| I mean, we saw what happened last Congress with Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| He needed Democrats to get this debt limit across the finish line. | ||
| And reconciliations is a purely partisan bill. | ||
| I mean, it'd be extremely unlikely if any Democrat vote for this bill. | ||
| And so they're really kind of thinking about doing this just on their own and just raising the debt limit within reconciliation. | ||
| But again, that's going to be tough because that has a price tag attached to it. | ||
| Then there will be some Republicans, especially in the House, that say we're going to need to see some cuts to this before we can vote for it. | ||
| So that just adds on. | ||
| And it's just very, very difficult right now. | ||
| It's a lot of give and take, where it's like, yes, would it be nice to raise the debt limit in reconciliation? | ||
| Obviously, because it's kind of got to get it over with. | ||
| But at the same time, that just throws in a whole other kind of slew of problems that they're going to have to deal with. | ||
| A lot to work out. | ||
| They're starting this week today. | ||
| What's the timeline? | ||
| When could we expect to see a final bill or passage? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, so reconciliation, they want to have kind of a bill done around by the time they go on Easter recess, which is about a two-week recess, and then they want to have a bill done by Memorial Day. | ||
| And that's a very, very ambitious timeline, but that's kind of what they're looking for. | ||
| That's kind of what they're going for. | ||
| That's what they've been saying that they want to do. | ||
| And it's an ambitious timeline, especially just given how slow things have been moving already and how tenuous this process has been and how many, how much kind of negotiations and arm twisting is going to happen. | ||
| So it's going to be really tough, but we'll see. | ||
| The timeline is obviously they want to have a bill ready to go by Easter, have it agreed to. | ||
| They go on their two-week recess. | ||
| They come back and they deal with it then. | ||
| It's kind of the thought process right there. | ||
| It is the Senate Democrats have had a tough time after Leader Schumer supported the short-term CR. | ||
| What's the latest on working with his party, not just in the Senate, but also the Democrats in the House? | ||
| Yeah, so I mean, Chuck Schumer had met with Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, last week, where Jeffries came out and kind of expressed that he does support Schumer. | ||
| That's after the Friday press conference where he refused to answer those questions, where he said next question multiple times. | ||
| And that kind of is what threw some of these through the Democratic Party into chaos was this kind of refusal to support Chuck Schumer by minority leader Jeffries. | ||
| And also there have been some House members that said they think it's time for Schumer to step down, to move aside. | ||
| There's been no senator has directly called for Schumer to step down yet. | ||
| There's been some that kind of like toe the line of just have given kind of vague answers. | ||
| But what we're looking at here is, I mean, Schumer is not going to step down. | ||
| He made that very clear on the Sunday shows yesterday that he thinks that he is the best man for the job. | ||
| So it'd be, he's not going to step down, but he's going to have to really ease the concerns of some of his members in the caucus as well as some House members as well who are kind of like calling for him to step down. | ||
| And that's kind of what we're going to see right now going forward. | ||
| Rhys Gorman with Notice is our guest for the next 20, 25 minutes or so. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| C-SPAN has been airing Democratic and Republican town halls from across the country for the past week or so. | ||
| The parties have had a sharp tone. | ||
| They've taken a lot of heat, both parties have, from voters and constituents. | ||
| Is there a sense that those events are resonating with members of Congress? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Republicans are mostly just blaming this on kind of left groups like Indivisible, so on and so forth. | ||
| That's kind of who they're blaming on. | ||
| Now, you have seen some soften their stances at these town halls when they're pressed with questions. | ||
| They've really tried to cater to some of these folks to kind of take the tone down a little bit. | ||
| But the people, I mean, and Richard Hudson, the chairman of the NRCC, came out and said a couple weeks back that he does not believe that his members of his conference of the Republican conference should be holding in-person town halls because of these protests that are going on. | ||
| So I do believe that these are not necessarily having an entirely desired effect on Republicans. | ||
| They seem to just be blaming this on far-left activist groups in their words. | ||
| And Democrats, I mean, they do seem to be trying to explain to the people who show up and protest that, hey, I'm on your side. | ||
| Like, I know that you don't like Elon Musk. | ||
| I also don't like Elon Musk. | ||
| That's kind of what they're trying to get at. | ||
| And they're also really, really getting hit on the funding bill. | ||
| A lot of Democrats had to take questions about Chuck Schumer, about the party. | ||
| We saw Glenn Ivey in Maryland at his town hall. | ||
| We saw other Democrats across the state that really got peppered with a bunch of questions and came out and basically did, that's when they took a turn on Chuck Schumer. | ||
| So we're really looking, and they are having an effect, but the Republicans especially, who these people are mostly trying to affect, right? | ||
| I mean, Democrats, for the most part, are on their side with a lot of what they're saying. | ||
| Republicans are not necessarily heeding these calls and more so just brush them off as protests and from antagonist groups, not necessarily their constituents all the time. | ||
| We have some callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Steve and New Jersey Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| You know, a lot of the rallies, if you will, stem from Elon Musk trying to cut the deficit. | ||
| And I remember just recently hearing a report, I think it was Lawrence O'Donnell saying, oh, Elon Musk talks about America going bankrupt. | ||
| America can never go bankrupt. | ||
| And I was shocked that he thought that. | ||
| So I'm wondering whether you think that. | ||
| I mean, I think we owe more than $100,000 per person in the country. | ||
| I mean, can America go bankrupt, number one? | ||
| And number two, if it can, why isn't everyone pressing the panic button and saying, we have to stop America from going bankrupt? | ||
| Yeah, I'm no great economist, but America, it would be really bad if America did go bankrupt. | ||
| There is trillions of dollars in debt, so it's not necessarily like it's in a great financial place anyways. | ||
| But right now, I mean, bankrupt, I mean, America does have, we have a lot of production, we make a lot, we sell a lot, we have trade, and we are a very, we're a country that a lot of members and politicians will argue that we are very fiscally sound comparatively to the rest of the world. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean, if America does go bankrupt, that would be very bad. | ||
| President Trump has made calls to impeach federal judges. | ||
| What is the interest among congressional Republicans? | ||
| I believe there's a bills that have been introduced in the House. | ||
| Is it something Senate Republicans would take up? | ||
| Yeah, there have been bills introduced in the House. | ||
| Now, this is something, I mean, would the Senate take it up? | ||
| Now, if these bills were passed, the Senate would have to take it up. | ||
| They would have to hear the impeachment just based on the nature of impeachment. | ||
| If impeachment does pass out the House, the Senate is required to at least hear the articles. | ||
| Sometimes you could table them, whatever, but they do have to at least hear them. | ||
| But Republican leadership really wants to avoid putting a bill on the floor to impeach judges, mostly because they know it's not going anywhere. | ||
| It's going to take up floor time. | ||
| They're going to have their members take these very controversial votes, especially some of the more vulnerable members, where, I mean, even there's been some Republicans that have said, I don't see what these judges have done legally wrong. | ||
| Like, they have not broken a law. | ||
| They're making these decisions, make these cases that don't necessarily agree with what Republicans want or Trump agenda, but they don't necessarily believe that they broke the law. | ||
| So Republican leadership is going to be putting a bill on from Darrell Issa that would hinder and kind of tie the hands of judges to kind of do some of these injunctions. | ||
| But they really want to avoid a lot of these impeachment resolutions from coming to the floor. | ||
| Phil in Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Phil. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, how are you doing today? | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Phil. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I just want to say that I think Elon Musk, a lot of people aren't sure about him, but Elon Musk has enough money where he doesn't need anything from anybody. | ||
| If you can't see that he's trying to save the country from going bankrupt, then there's seriously something wrong. | ||
| And a lot of the Democrats are just upset because, you know, they don't like, they don't want anything that Donald Trump does. | ||
| They're going to knock it no matter what. | ||
| And one would wonder why, if they're the Democrat of, if they're a good party, why would they be happy about the country heading in a like direction? | ||
| It seems like they're embarrassed about their party because everything they touch, they make a mess with. | ||
| It's chaos, it's drama. | ||
| Nobody wants to be around all that stuff. | ||
| We're trying to. | ||
| Your response? | ||
| Any response to Phil? | ||
| Yeah, I didn't hear a question. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| This is something else happening in the House this week, the House Oversight Subcommittee. | ||
| They're going to take up. | ||
| They're going to have a hearing on how FEMA responded to Hurricane Helene last year. | ||
| What exactly are they looking to examine? | ||
| So I reported on that last week, that basically they're looking at, there's been a lot of kind of bipartisan criticism of FEMA of how quickly the response took place, how the response did. | ||
| They believe that there was definitely could have been better, that there were a lot of people in North Carolina that were without power, without water, without the ability to leave their homes for a long time. | ||
| And so they really want to approach and talk to these people about why that was, kind of dig in and provide oversight, which is the name of the committee, onto how FEMA could be better. | ||
| They're going to have a number of some local emergency managers. | ||
| They're going to have some national people that kind of work for FEMA. | ||
| And they're going to have country music legend Eric Church who also be there, who is from North Carolina, who has really spearheaded a lot of these recovery efforts from hosting a music festival with all the beneficiaries being North Carolina, et cetera. | ||
| So they really want to provide some of this oversight to see where FEMA could do better, where they lack. | ||
| This is also something that, I mean, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also been very critical of FEMA. | ||
| Trump signed the executive order making this committee, this task force, to look about how FEMA could be better. | ||
| He also signed an executive order that gives more stuff that usually would fall to FEMA. | ||
| He gave the states the power to do it. | ||
| In his words, he believes that the states, or in the executive order, rather, the states know what their state needs better than what the federal government. | ||
| They could probably do it faster. | ||
| They could do it better. | ||
| So he signed that executive order. | ||
| So there has been a lot of criticism and scrutiny on FEMA and their response, especially to North Carolina, given how long the citizens in part of the state were stranded following the hurricane. | ||
| And as they examine this, the situation and how it played out, could it affect future funding and operations at FEMA? | ||
| I think definitely, especially given just no government agency's funding is necessarily fully safe right now is what we're seeing. | ||
| So there definitely could be some government funding, maybe some legislation to change some things about FEMA. | ||
| But definitely, I think government funding is something that everyone's going to have to look at, every agency, not just FEMA, solely because of the state of things right now about how with Doge and all the agencies, some of them getting disfunded. | ||
| Let's talk with Anthony in Baltimore, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just wonder, does he know who the last president was to balance the budget? | ||
| I do not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did not know that. | |
| That was Bill Clinton. | ||
| Do you know the last Republican president to balance the budget? | ||
| I do not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dwight D. Eisenhower. | |
| And the president that's in office now, in his last term, raised national debt almost $8 trillion, something like that. | ||
| The Republicans are always against raising the national debt when Democrats are in office, but never when Republicans are in. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Responding to what the caller was talking about, the back and forth over funding and how much goes out, increases, tax. | ||
| What do the current members of Congress feel about possibly raising the debt ceiling? | ||
| Is there interest in actually doing that? | ||
| There's interest is a not necessarily interest, more of a necessity that they realize that they have to do this, not necessarily that they want to do this. | ||
| Trump at one point called for the elimination of the debt ceiling just to get rid of it. | ||
| There are some members of Congress, to the caller's point, Trump did raise the national debt by significant numbers and whenever they did have full control of Congress and control of Washington. | ||
| But now look at there are some members who, yes, there's going to be a lot of spending, but there are a handful of members who will vote against a lot of spending and not afraid to buck the party. | ||
| Thomas Massey, who we've seen, there's some members who say they are against a lot of these bills and then end up voting for it whenever Trump calls them and talks to them. | ||
| But there are some fiscally conservative members who, at the end of the day, will vote against some of the things that raise the national debt, but there are few and in between. | ||
| The main one who's the most consistent one is Thomas Massey, who consistently votes against bills he does not view as fiscally conservative enough. | ||
| And while the other members seem to express concern that a bill is not fiscally conservative enough, then as Trump calls them, tells them to vote for it, they tend to fall in line and just do whatever he tells them to do. | ||
| You said that the hope is that a bill could be passed by May when we are looking at a reconciliation funding bill. | ||
| Do we know the X date for government funding when government funding could run out? | ||
| Yes, so government. | ||
| Yes, so they passed a CR that will last for the rest of the full fiscal year. | ||
| So it would end in kind of last day of September, I believe, going to October 1st at midnight was when the government will shut down if they do not take care of this. | ||
| When will they take care of it? | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| This seems to be they always tend to wait to the last minute here historically. | ||
| And so they're going, they say they're going to start working on top line, start getting appropriation bills done so they can get it before. | ||
| They also said that in December, we saw what happened with this Wait to the Last Minute Again. | ||
| So there's not a lot of optimism that they will get this done prior to a week, a couple weeks before the actual government funding deadline in September. | ||
| Greg in Washington, D.C., line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I want to talk about the need for Democratic leaders to go beyond just statements and hearings. | ||
| We're watching core Democratic norms erode, and many of the rights we took for granted are under direct threat. | ||
| At a certain point, a lot of Democrats and progressives feel speeches and press conferences aren't enough. | ||
| We feel it's time for our leaders to meet this moment with the same moral face that defined past movements, like the civil rights movement, where elected officials didn't just legislate. | ||
| They marched, they got arrested, they stood shoulder to shoulder with people, actual people. | ||
| Civil disobedience isn't radical when democracy itself is on the line. | ||
| It's necessary. | ||
| And we feel we need to see the Democratic leaders physically standing in the way of injustice, whether that means protesting voter suppression or standing at abortion clinics to protect access or walking out of chambers where illegitimate proceedings are taking place. | ||
| If they're not willing to put themselves on the line, like so many everyday Americans already are, and then they are not truly our leaders and they are not truly leading. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we need leaders right now, not just managers. | |
| So I'm wondering if there is any movement or if you've heard anything about Democratic leaders actually choosing to partake in civil disobedience rather than just talking about their outrage. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, there's definitely Democratic members of both parties, both chambers rather, that agree with your statement there that they want their leaders to do more. | ||
| And that's why you've seen a lot of outrage against Chuck Schumer because they believe that he caved to Trump, that he caved to the Republicans, and they in his name was that he did what he thinks that he believes that he did what was best for the country by avoiding a shutdown. |