| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Man, as he has said, he's had more than 75 countries that the trade team has to respond to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd just like to end with this. | |
| For decades, Republicans and Democrats have said that these unfair trade practices are ripping off the American people, are ripping off our country, but nobody has ever done anything to address it. | ||
| We finally have a president here at the White House who is playing the long game, who is doing what is right for the American worker in our industries here at home. | ||
| And he has put together a fantastic team: Secretary Bessett, Secretary Lustnick, the entire trade team who will be focusing on negotiating these good deals to put the American workers first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we're going to get to work to do that. | |
| Thank you, Secretary. | ||
| What about the EU? | ||
| What about the EU? | ||
| They've been telling them this morning. | ||
| Why aren't they being treated like China? | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by William Hoagland. | ||
| He's Senior Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center. | ||
| We'll be talking about the GOP budget plans and reconciliation. | ||
| Bill, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much for having me. | |
| So, Speaker Johnson wants the House to finalize a vote on the budget resolution this week. | ||
| Broadly, give us an idea of what's included in that budget framework and how critical you think that would be to President Trump's agenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's important for the President's agenda because the procedures that we have to go through to adopt a budget resolution set up a process that allows for the consideration of legislation that would not be subject to a filibuster in the United States Senate. | |
| So, this is critical that the House adopt what the Senate adopted last week that sets up the process for doing reconciliation. | ||
| The Senate budget resolution that passed last week is before the House, and what the Speaker is asking is a vote on what the Senate adopted last week. | ||
| And what the Senate adopted last week was a framework. | ||
| I like to call it monopoly money at this point. | ||
| It's not real money yet, it's monopoly money. | ||
| But it set a framework for how much to spend, how much to raise in the way of revenues, how much or to cut in the way of revenues, how much to cut in spending. | ||
| And the only difference here, I've been with the budget committee for a long time on Capitol Hill. | ||
| There's a slight difference in the way this budget resolution is put together from past. | ||
| It leaves flexibility to the committees in the Senate and in the House to how much to do in the way of cuts and spending. | ||
| But if you were to look at it, and overall, the two budget resolutions, House and the Senate, and the Senate resolution specifically, will set up a process that would allow for the consideration of a tax cut in the neighborhood of $4.50 to $5 trillion over the next year. | ||
| These are the Trump tax cuts that would be made permanent, not new tax cuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not new taxes, make them permanent. | |
| And in that score, as I say, the budget adopting this resolution is critical so that the resolution that sets up the tax cut later on would not be subject to a 60-vote filibuster in the Senate. | ||
| So this is really important to the President's agenda, particularly on the tax cut side. | ||
| Now, there are some GOP critics in the House saying it's just not doing enough to address the debt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| The Senate resolution does not specify the level of cuts that the House would like to see. | ||
| The House has cuts of reductions in spending over the next 10 years of nearly $2 trillion, while as the Senate, at least what they had said was a minimal amount, was in the neighborhood of $4 to $5 billion. | ||
| And so it's setting up the process to allow for negotiations between that $2 trillion figure that the House wants versus a smaller figure that the Senate wants. | ||
| But at this particular point, I think the House members are upset that it's not the higher number. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Bill Hoagland, you can call us. | ||
| We're talking about the budget. | ||
| We're talking about spending, revenue, cuts. | ||
| Any question or comment regarding those topics, you can give us a call. | ||
| The lines are bipartisan. | ||
| So Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, you can call us on 202-748-8002. | ||
| What is the Bipartisan Policy Center's view on this budget plan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Bipartisan Policy Center, what do we do? | |
| Or what, I mean, do you have a view on the budget itself? | ||
| Do you think it's a good one? | ||
| Do you think it needs to be changed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have to be careful. | |
| It's bipartisan. | ||
| We want bipartisanship, of course. | ||
| I spent a long time working on the budget. | ||
| As I said, I worked on the Senate Budget Committee for nearly 25 years up here on the Hill. | ||
| This is, let me just put it this way. | ||
| These resolutions do not do the job that I think is necessary to reduce the deficit over the next 10 years. | ||
| We hope that this could be done in a bipartisan way. | ||
| Budget resolutions, reconciliation bills have become more partisan over the years. | ||
| I recall 1997 when we had a balanced budget agreement, which was worked out between Republicans and Democrats and President Clinton. | ||
| So I think we're sad that this is not being done more in a bipartisan way. | ||
| I will simply say that this budget resolution, if adopted, probably doesn't do the job to reduce the debt deficits that we are all concerned about at the Bipartisan Policy Center. | ||
| So if this does not pass the House, we're expecting votes soon, maybe even today. | ||
| What happens? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, quite frankly, what I'm reading and what I'm picking up here is if it does not, if they do not have the votes to pass this budget resolution to set up a streamlined, fast way of consideration of the President's tax cuts and other spending cuts, that the House may proceed on their own simply to put together bills that would reflect what they would like to see in the way of tax cuts and spending and basically pass individual bills. | |
| And they could do that outside of this budget resolution. | ||
| And they could, if they had the votes to pass those kinds of bills, then essentially they would go to, it would just be a bill, a bill that the Senate would consider. |