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unidentified
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Center in Houston. | |
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| We're taking a look at the week ahead in Congress with Eris Foley with The Hill. | ||
| She's a congressional reporter here joining us to talk about a lot of things when it comes to Congress, but efforts when it comes to the budget. | ||
| What's the main goal? | ||
| What does Congress have to do when it comes to budget matters? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, well, Republicans, I think the main goal, at least for budget reconciliation, there's hope in the Senate that maybe they could see a bicameral resolution, right, after these weeks of negotiations, finally see some text this week. | |
| Before then, that's a hope, but before then, there's, of course, interest in seeing what the Senate parliamentarian, the Senate's in-house referee determines when it comes to ruling how, whether Republicans can use a current policy baseline for reconciliation, which would kind of allow them to say extending Trump's tax cuts would be current policy and therefore wouldn't add to the deficit, despite what the Congressional Budget Office is seeing. | ||
| So the Senate starts the process first. | ||
| What will we see specifically from them this week when it comes to those actions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, well, both of them are, both chambers are negotiating, but right, the Senate is, there's been hope, right, reporting that Republicans are hopeful that they could be able to adopt a budget resolution and in both chambers, potentially before the April recess. | |
| That's very optimistic, though, right? | ||
| It's very ambitious. | ||
| Right, And to kind of kick off that process so that both parties, well, the Republican Party, but both chambers can get started on advancing Trump's tax priorities. | ||
| We've asked this question before a lot, but when you say reconciliation bill, exactly explain to the audience what it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, no, it's this really complicated process. | |
| It's not often used in Congress, but it allows the majority party to be able to pass major legislation within certain rules, right? | ||
| Typically spending tax changes without any buy-in from the minority party. | ||
| They don't have to worry about a filibuster on the Senate side. | ||
| They can get to pass something with a simple majority, and that's very important, right? | ||
| We saw Democrats use that in the last Congress, too. | ||
| So if I understand it, Craig, when it comes to the blueprint bill that was some tentative numbers announced last week, spending cuts at about $3 billion, increases in spending when it comes to defense, commerce, and environmental and public works, and Homeland Security and Judiciary. | ||
| When it comes to those broad numbers as we see them coming from the Senate, how does it compare to what the House is considering numbers-wise? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, the Senate's bills, the numbers are coming in a little bit lower, but the idea is that it would provide the Senate more flexibility, right? | ||
| They don't want to write in too high of a number, right? | ||
| A hard set number that they have to reach versus on the House side, you have conservatives that are dialing up pressure, right? | ||
| They say they've seen this game before. | ||
| Leadership promises significant cuts, and then they end up with some compromise deal that comes out of these conversations that do not, in their view, do enough to curb government spending. | ||
| And also then, so when the Senate finishes their numbers, the House finishes their numbers, then they have to come meet in the middle. | ||
| How does that process work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So there's still a lot of uncertainty as to what a compromise budget resolution could look like, but there's been reporting that there could be maybe a different set of instructions, right? | ||
| Different targets for the House to reach versus the Senate. | ||
| Senate can have more flexibility. | ||
| The House can also get what it wants, but it's still up in the air because we haven't seen text yet. | ||
| So there's a lot of moving parts right now. | ||
| And we'll see that play out this week. | ||
| You can ask questions about the process of our guests. | ||
| And if you want to ask her questions, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to ask via text, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Eris Folio, you've mentioned it many times, but tax cuts. | ||
| Is that going to be a must-have requirement for any legislation that goes through? | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, no, definitely, definitely. | |
| That's going to be something major that Republicans, no matter what action you belong to, moderate, hardline, right, mainstream, you are, you, of course, would want to extend the tax cuts. | ||
| I think the conversation right now is depending on what this resolution looks like, are they going to be able to gain permanency? | ||
| Are these tax cuts going to be permanent? | ||
| And that's a really big motivator on the Senate side as they're picking up these negotiations. | ||
| Because come the end of 2025, as I understand it, the current set of tax, certain amount of tax cuts expire. | ||
| So they're trying to preserve those legislatively in what happens here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So it puts a lot of pressure on them right now. | ||
| It's definitely, they're facing a ticking clock. | ||
| And then they also are trying to tack on the debt ceiling on top of all of this too. | ||
| And as we know, recent projections have shown that there is a wider range that they could have to worry about between maybe summer, sometime in early autumn of when we might see the X date. | ||
| But there's also a potential that the X date could come sooner, depending on what the tax revenue season looks like. | ||
| Thanks for the segue because I wanted to ask you about that X date and debt ceilings. | ||
| Remind, let's start with the debt ceiling. | ||
| What is it and why does Congress have to consider it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So it basically caps how much the Treasury can kind of take out to kind of, like it just caps our borrowing, right? | ||
| Like it caps how much the Treasury would have to take out. | ||
| But the idea is that the debt ceiling reestablished in January and they have a little bit of a window for the Treasury to be able to use these extraordinary measures to kind of provide some wiggle room underneath its cap. | ||
| But they only have, I think, only a few months, depending on what projections you're looking at. | ||
| But of course, these things can change depending on what how much spending kind of clocks in in the coming months, what tax revenue looks like. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| And we're in the middle of tax season right now, so at least leading up to it, that's going to be a big determining factor as well, I imagine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, tax season is definitely going to be, especially in light of also some of the recent changes that we're seeing at the IRS, some of the reports that are coming out about what type of impact some of these Doge changes, what they might look like at the IRS. | ||
| There's been reporting from the Washington Post on this too, about how that could have an impact on what the receipts are looking like on the tax side this season. | ||
| So a lot of, yeah. | ||
| You mentioned it, but I just want to read what the federal, what the CBO said, the Congressional Budgets Office saying that the budget office estimates that if the debt limit remains unchanged, the government's ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will probably exhaust it in August or September of this year. | ||
| The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and the amount of revenue collections and outlays in the intervening months could differ from the CBO's projections. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, yeah, it depends. | |
| I mean, there's a lot of, there's just a very wide range. | ||
| It's something that projections right now are a little, right, a little vague. | ||
| There's like a multi-month range, whether you're looking at the CBO, you're looking at the recent projections from the Bipartisan Policy Center. | ||
| It's one of those things that the closer you get to the X date, the more precise the projections become. | ||
| But that's also kind of scary, right? | ||
| When it comes to the budget itself, if I'm a Republican, say on the House or Senate side, am I automatically going along with everything that leadership will try to sell as far as not only the cuts are involved, but spending decisions as well? | ||
| Is that automatically a buy-in for all the Republicans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, no, and I think we also saw that too, right? | |
| Even when it comes to them trying to pass appropriation bills in the last Congress. | ||
| This Congress, it might be different though, of course. | ||
| You have a Republican Senate, you have a Republican White House. | ||
| And I think there's just a really huge appetite amongst Republicans to actually finish a lot of this work that they have set out. | ||
| And they want to make big changes. | ||
| They want to extend these tax cuts. | ||
| They want to see, right, like they want to see change on the fiscal side. | ||
| They want to see spending cuts. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| If you have questions about this process, the week ahead in Congress, 202-748-8000, 1 for Republicans and Independents, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Two text us your questions or comments as well at 202-748-8003. | ||
| I imagine since the Senate and the House, both Republican hands, Democrats now have to kind of figure out how they move forward or what their strategy is when it comes to efforts relating into what a final budget looks like. | ||
| How much wiggle room or flex do they have? | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, on being able to. | |
| Exactly, at least making some influence. | ||
|
unidentified
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You said on the Democratic side. | |
| On the Democratic side and the House and the Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
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Democrats can make this as painful as possible, right? | |
| Like they can slow down a Votorama. | ||
| They could force very painful votes. | ||
| We saw in the last Votorama, they were able to force votes on Medicaid cuts, on Doge cuts. | ||
| And we know that not all Republicans are on board with some of these changes that we've seen coming from maybe more of the right flank in the conference. | ||
| So they could make this a very politically painful Congress. | ||
| I mean, process, they could, again, raise pressure on a lot of more conflicting areas for Republicans in those types of politically tough areas. | ||
| You said Votorama. | ||
| I don't know if our audience may know that term or not, but describe it for us. | ||
| And particularly, do we see perhaps this week in the Senate on that side of Votorama, so to speak? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It really depends, right? | |
| Like it's, everything is a wild card right now. | ||
| I mean, but you could, you know, I think that's the hope. | ||
| Again, this is the hope. | ||
| There's a lot of optimism whether or not it's going to happen is, you know. | ||
| But again, it's very ambitious. | ||
| But if you do see a Voterama this week, it would be just a series of votes, a very like late night marathon voting session. | ||
| You have senators, right, who are going to be very tired, very sleepy, and they're going to have a series of votes on probably a lot of amendments from Democrats that, again, are forcing consideration on tough issues. | ||
| Let's hear from a caller. | ||
| This is caller. | ||
| Caller, go ahead. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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There would be a down payment of 12041 today. | |
| Oh, sorry, wrong number. | ||
| You could call in callers. | ||
| Keep calling on the lines if you have questions for our guests. | ||
| We'll talk about other issues besides budget. | ||
| When it comes to what happened with the Signal Chat last week, what's the sense of Congress of what are the next steps, so to speak, when we hear about the Signal Chat and the reaction from the White House, the reaction from the various people involved? | ||
| What's the Congress's sense of where things should go forward? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, of course, if you're a Democrat, you would probably say the next step is some of these officials need to be fired, right? | ||
| But a lot of Republicans have been pretty much echoing what Trump has been saying, right? | ||
| This is a mistake. | ||
| You know, people shouldn't be fired. | ||
| People, you know, you can add the wrong person to a chat all the time. | ||
| But there are some Republicans who are concerned about the contents of these messages, right? | ||
| Like, is this confidential? | ||
| Are these types of details about a planned attack considered confidential? | ||
| And some Republicans would say so. | ||
| And there's been some GOP appetite, some have signaled even this weekend, and further investigation into how this happened. | ||
| And also, should officials be using these types of apps to have these kinds of conversations? | ||
| Bob joins us from Mississippi, Independent Line. | ||
| Bob, you're on with our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| Many projections about the fiscal condition of our country, but there are two things that are certain. | ||
| Congress has no stomach for passing a balanced budget, and we're $36 trillion in debt. | ||
| What is the ladies' opinion on Congress's ability or their move to pass a balanced budget and to start reducing this horrible debt that we've gotten ourselves into? | ||
| That's Bob there in Mississippi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I think a balanced budget might be a bit of a lift right now, right? | ||
| And I think some Republicans have also acknowledged that, but they see kind of, you know, at least the spending cut side, there is a reason why so many Republicans, particularly fiscal conservatives, are demanding significant cuts to federal spending to ride alongside tax cuts and to write alongside the debt ceiling. |