| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Why he can't just sign one of them executive orders and open the government. | |
| That's what he does for everything else, and nobody ever stops him from doing anything. | ||
| And my last thing I got to say is, I hope Mr. Johnson and the president live a lot longer than I do. | ||
| I hope they have a long life. | ||
| Because when I get up there at them pearly gates, I don't want to be standing behind them. | ||
| Because you've got to answer for every lie and every sin you've ever committed. | ||
| And Lord have mercy, I'll be standing there from now on. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Here's Woodrow in Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I feel sorry for that lady. | |
| She don't know the difference. | ||
| She thinks President Trump can just sign a pen and open up the government, boys. | ||
| You can live in this country all your life, but when you suffer for lack of knowledge, it's a powerful thing. | ||
| People don't understand. | ||
| President Trump can't go there and open up a government. | ||
| They think they can hold the whole world hostage about an insurance plan. | ||
| Hell, I don't get Obamacare when I try to get it. | ||
| They said I didn't qualify for it. | ||
| And so for Chuck Chuma and them to not want to go vote to shut the whole world down, we retired military, but to shut the whole world down because of some insurance, that's crazy. | ||
| And if he thinks that he hurting anybody other than the poor people who he saved fuck, he lying to himself. | ||
| But what they need to do is cut all of them people's checks off. | ||
| If they wasn't getting no money, they'll go sit down and do what's right. | ||
| But Chuck Truman, them, they're getting paid until somebody vote to do that. | ||
| And I heard a man call the other day and ask a question, but it was like, see, the guy that takes your place, he was scared ass and he was asking, is Congress getting paid? | ||
| Yeah, they get their money. | ||
| Are they on Obamacare? | ||
| Hell no, they ain't on Obamacare. | ||
| They get the best of everything. | ||
| So until they feel what the average Joe feel, I don't care what party you are, they ain't gonna never change their mind. | ||
| But to think you're gonna hold somebody, hold government hostage to be able to force somebody to go for insurance, that's ludicrous. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Corliss in Suffolk, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you a federal worker, Corliss? | |
| No, my family are federal workers. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a host of government family and military individuals that are extremely disappointed in the government, | |
| the shutdown that affects our own American citizens and have decided just to insult us by saying to the military, I'm a veteran, my husband's a vetted also, by saying to the military veterans also, thank you for your service, but we don't have anything for you. | ||
| But we're so discouraged by the foreigners that are in this country, and we don't even take care of our own American people. | ||
| The biggest insult in the world. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| We should be ashamed of ourselves getting this divided in this un-United States of America. | ||
| What a shame. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Senate Majority Leader John Thune was on Capitol Hill yesterday, and he was asked about the potential for the Senate to consider standalone bills to fund certain programs or pay federal workers. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you inclined to continue to put up these standalone bills that perhaps pay the military, to pay federal workers, to provide SNAP assistance? | |
| Or do you think it has to be done all in one fell swoop? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, this piecemeal approach where you do one off here, one off there, to make it seem, you know, more politically palatable to somebody or less painful, that's just a wrong way to do this. | ||
| There's just a simple way to do it, is to pick up the bill on the desk of the Senate and give us five more Democrat votes to pass it so that the president can sign it in law and end the shutdown. | ||
| I get the rationale. | ||
| People think about these issues in terms of, well, this one, let's do this one, this one, or this one. | ||
| But that's not the way to approach this. | ||
| The way to approach this is to just reopen the government. | ||
| I think the White House obviously is faced with a tough decision. | ||
| They have to figure out how do they reallocate, reprioritize funding, where it goes, where it doesn't go. | ||
| And they're doing everything they can legally and with the capacity that they have available to them to try and make this, I think, as painless as possible. | ||
| But there is a point at which they don't have that capacity anymore. | ||
| And I think we've reached that point. | ||
| I think they're at a point now where the government either has to open up, the White House can try and reallocate and move money around. | ||
| But I think in the one big ugly bill that Republicans passed in July, in addition to a nearly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, Republicans enacted the largest cut to snap in American history. | ||
| $186 billion cut. | ||
| They ripped food from the mouths of children, seniors, veterans, women, and families in order to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors. | ||
| It's completely and totally unacceptable. | ||
| And on top of that, now they're threatening to withhold funding that the Trump administration has in a contingency fund in ways that will deprive everyday hardworking American taxpayers of the nutritional assistance they need to put food on the table. | ||
| Minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, and checking in on Facebook, Shane says this, it's harder to steal from Americans if they're individual bills. | ||
| That's why neither party wants anything but omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. | ||
| Joe says, let's face it, the Democrats are not going to suddenly vote to pass the CR. | ||
| They have to get something different to vote on, and the House is where that will happen. | ||
| Leo says, keep fighting, Democrats. | ||
| You're fighting the right fight. | ||
| Let the Republicans continue to shut down the government for as long as they are willing to deny millions of Americans health insurance subsidies. | ||
| And Kyle says, could have guessed this leadership would not be able to get the job done. | ||
| They all feel pressure from Trump to do what he tells them to do, or else he will back someone to run against them. | ||
| They need to find a spine and do what is right for the people they represent. | ||
| And Joe is a federal worker in Virginia. | ||
| Hello, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Listen, I just want to simply say that they've had these, they had the president's budget since February. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They've told us for many years to learn how to work efficiently and effectively. | ||
| And we have to figure that out every day. | ||
| And yet they cannot do it day in and day out. | ||
| Every year, they have to put it all together. | ||
| They can't approve these bills in phases. | ||
| I can't understand that. | ||
| You know, apparently the legislation and a congressional investigation is too much work for them. | ||
| If they can't do both, then just stick to one. | ||
| Just pass the bills as they meet over them. | ||
| And this way, October 1st, everything rolls through without a problem. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And, Joe, can you tell us about your situation? | ||
| Are you still having to work? | ||
| Are you furloughed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am still working. | |
| No, I'm working right now. | ||
| I'm coming into the office every single day, you know, and I'm not going to get a paycheck. | ||
| But look, I've planned for this. | ||
| But my point is, there are other people who just don't plan for that. | ||
| They don't have that six-month reserve, right? | ||
| But my point is, if I'm late on a project, that's my job. | ||
| You know, I can get a bad performance review, but none of them get this, right? | ||
| So they're constantly late. | ||
| And instead, of approving these appropriations by department, by sections, they just wait to put it all together in one lump, one lump bill to then disagree on one issue that they cannot pass all of it. | ||
| It doesn't make sense. | ||
| Just do it in phases. | ||
| That's what we do if we have to get something done. | ||
| We take these projects, we roll them out in phases so that it's all done at the same time. | ||
| All right, Joe. | ||
| Here's Larry, Democrat, Georgia. | ||
| Hi, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I was calling in to say that God says so not the little children let them come into him. | ||
| So why Speaker Mike Johnson couldn't cutting off Medicaid and all this, stopping these people from serving the children because they need their health care and they need snap benefits. | ||
| These kids are really suffering. | ||
| And here's Todd, Tennessee Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Todd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I just wanted to state a couple things I haven't heard anybody talk about, but our government is over $30 trillion in debt. | ||
| The Democrats want a trillion and a half dollars to fund this Obamacare that is unaffordable every house where more than likely that's where the Epstein files, but who knows? | ||
| He's got plenty of time to golf. | ||
| And for my military veterans, one of which had spoke earlier after an elderly lady and said Trump couldn't do anything, well, guess what? | ||
| He's getting ready to shut down the commissaries. | ||
| If you would please speak about that, also, that commissaries are going to go private soon. | ||
| This is all stemming from him. | ||
| And for the other caller who said that the Democrats don't want to negotiate, well, when the Republicans said they want to negotiate it, did they do it over Skype? | ||
| Did they do it over the telephone? | ||
| Because they're not here on Capitol Hill. | ||
| So I'm not quite sure how that can be true. | ||
| Both sides are supposed to represent the people. | ||
| People have to go out and mass and vote and hold people accountable because clearly somebody that looks like the Speaker of the House has absolutely no testicular fortitude. | ||
| So Ken, when you said about the commissaries going private, what's the issue with that? | ||
| Why do you think that that's a bad thing? | ||
| This is militarytimes.com with the headline Pentagon takes steps towards potentially privatizing commissaries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what then happens again is that, so if you've, I don't know if you've ever been on a military base, you have family members that are, but it's, it's, you know, the prices are a little bit lower and accessibility is a little bit better. | |
| That kind of helps or the need to not need to leave the base sometimes. | ||
| It makes things more accessible. | ||
| And also, it's more competitive in that sometimes, you know, you might be able to get something cheaper off the base. | ||
| So you think privatizing them, you would lose that advantage of being able to get for the military service members living on base to get something to get their groceries and their goods cheaper. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, to an extent. | |
| Sure, it could be. | ||
| I mean, I mean, if Walmart comes in also, you know, now it starts to sway certain things into, you know, businesses into a different place where they have access. | ||
| We got it. | ||
| Here's Mary, Florida Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey there, that made no sense at all. | |
| Just no sense. | ||
| Privatizing the commissaries he objects to so that they can go off post and buy stuff at private places like McDonald's and Burger Kick. | ||
| That made no sense. | ||
| Did that make sense to you? | ||
| Look, I'm a veteran too. | ||
| And I'll be 66 this month, right here, like, you know, tomorrow. | ||
| And I get $1,300 a month, $1,324 in Social Security. | ||
| So I am $24 over the poverty line. | ||
| My food stamps is $23 a month. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And thank God I have already paid off my home. | ||
| But my electric bill is about $100 a month. | ||
| Whereas when Biden was president, I had the highest power bills I had had in 26 years. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And all this mess about the ballroom. | ||
| My God, it doesn't cost you a dime. | ||
| I don't, you know what an oxymoron is, you know, the Affordable Care Act that's not affordable. | ||
| The insurance companies are the largest crooks in the world. | ||
| And I do not understand why the Democrats don't even say it is insane to have the prices going up like they are. | ||
| Well, I've paid $600 for a flu shot in the hospital. | ||
| My husband paid $800 for a pneumonia shot in the hospital when we got a copy of our itemized bills. | ||
| I've got a gastroenterologist that charges $46,000 for a 15-minute endoconoscopy colonoscopy. | ||
| Mary, sorry to cut you off. | ||
| Are you guys not on Medicare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
$100 million a day. | |
| Are you not on Medicare, Mary? | ||
| I have Medicare. | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| But that's not my problem. | ||
| It doesn't come out of my pocket. | ||
| It's what they are charging. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is going a couple of months ago that were from the pharmaceutical industry in a hearing, and they were saying that they paid $50 billion a year for all these advertisements you see about medications, and then they turn around and write it off on their taxes because they think it's educational. | |
| All right, Mary, let's talk to Randy Millington, Michigan, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I'd like to start out by thanking you and all the other men and women it takes to bring us this great program. | ||
| You're doing a great service for the nation. | ||
| Sorry, Democrats and Republicans in the Oval Office and say, let's settle this thing. | ||
| If they wanted to, it could be settled in a few hours. | ||
| They need health care. | ||
| We should have universal health care. | ||
| What's the matter with these? | ||
| I mean, you see that FAA guy, he comes in there and he starts criticizing, trying to help the people around them when he should be talking to the president and to Mike. | ||
| Whatever his name, Johnson, comes out every morning and doesn't know anything. | ||
| Anyway, that's all I have to say. | ||
| All right, Frank. | ||
| And here is RR on X who says this. | ||
| My thoughts are the same as they were 28 days ago. | ||
| The people in this country need health insurance. | ||
| Not extending the subsidies will be devastating for the middle class. | ||
| And Tillman on X says, my thought is I am not impacted, and I wonder why the government is so bloated. | ||
| It can go this long being partially shut down. | ||
| Armand in Lakeland, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPIN. | ||
| I'm in agreeance with most of the callers that I've been hearing, and it's amazing that everybody is saying the same thing that I'm thinking, mostly everybody. | ||
| This shutdown is on the Republicans, and for the simple reason, all these tax breaks that they've given the rich and wait a minute, there's over a trillion dollars that they gave for tax breaks for the richest people in the country that they didn't need. | ||
| Where do you think this country would be if they put those tax dollars towards the health care? | ||
| If we had universal health care and everybody had health care, single payer, whatever. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| The insurance companies. | ||
| Whoa, everybody is working for the insurance companies in the pharmaceutical industry and the hospitals and the doctors. | ||
| And everybody has got their hands in the till right now. | ||
| So nobody can get health care. | ||
| Nobody can get food. | ||
| And we're going to, you know, we're just screwing the country up. | ||
| But they have all the money. | ||
| Trump has all this money to rebuild $350 billion to rebuild the White House into his own little palace. | ||
| And $40 billion to Venezuela and Argentina, yeah. | ||
| I mean, if we were putting all this money into our own country and our own people, do you think we'd have all these problems? | ||
| A lot of the Republicans, they sit there and they say, because they're in the government. | ||
| Most of them that are in the government and have government jobs are in the Republican Party anyway. | ||
| Not as many Democrats are in the federal government. | ||
| But even the federal government, they're going to get their health care. | ||
| They're not losing their health care. | ||
| They're losing their paychecks, but their health care goes on, doesn't it? | ||
| So they still have health care, so they don't give two cents about the people who are losing their health care. | ||
| All right, Armand. | ||
| Let's talk to Christopher in Chicago, a federal employee. | ||
| Good morning, Christopher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ma'am. | |
| I just want to say a few things. | ||
| I don't know the specific data or analytics or statistics about this government shutdown. | ||
| I'm not trying to blame which party. | ||
| I'm just coming from a more personal aspect and experience. | ||
| I work at one of the airports here in Chicago, and I can already tell you that the morale for some of my fellow federal officers are already down. | ||
| I would say the average American doesn't have $500 to $1,000 in emergency savings for whatever reason. | ||
| And I won't say this person's name out of confidence, but one of my fellow officers was explaining that a monthly expenses is $2,560 a month, and they had $5,000 in savings, which is great under normal circumstances. | ||
| But what's $5,000 minus $2,560 after this month won't even have enough to cover for this month? | ||
| This is a serious thing, and it's real people and real families affected. | ||
| And thank God I have a loving wife that doesn't work for the federal government that's able to carry the load for us right now. | ||
| But you have some families that both work for the federal government. | ||
| So what are your coworkers doing to make up for that, or have they not had to do that yet? | ||
| What are you hearing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, right now, ma'am, we're not getting paid. | |
| This will be our second check not getting paid starting next week. | ||
| So if we don't get paid November 8th, that means we'll have to hope that the governor opens on November 22nd. | ||
| That'll be the third check right before Thanksgiving. | ||
| If we don't get paid by November 22nd, Thanksgiving is wrong for the families. | ||
| That's just a small example of what's going on out here. | ||
| Morale is really starting to drop and it's already being call-offs. | ||
| I could just imagine it'd be more call-offs or people might have to start looking for outside work. | ||
| All right, Christopher, let's hear from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. | ||
| She was interviewed by CNN yesterday and she was talking about those lawsuits against the government for the suspension of SNAP benefits. | ||
| I find it extremely rich that the elected Democrats of California and New York and Washington and Oregon, and by the way, all governors that I work with in USDA on a lot of these different programs, you know, the SNAP waivers and getting healthier food into SNAP, et cetera. | ||
| But I find it very rich that they are suing the Trump administration because their friends on the Hill won't vote yes to keep the government open. | ||
| Again, this is not complicated. | ||
| We're not asking for more tax cuts. | ||
| We're not asking for, you know, any myriad of more secure, more money for securing the border, you know, the issues that we disagree on. | ||
| We're not asking for any of that. | ||
| We just want to keep the government going and then we can have these negotiations alongside that. | ||
| But again, I believe that they have been very clear up on the hill, the Democrats have, that they want to use this and they want to use those who are the poorest among us as leverage points to expand their policy agenda. | ||
| And there's no doubt about that. | ||
| And you and I could have a big discussion about ACA and subsidies and 400% of poverty level and what that looks like. | ||
| And I'm happy to do that another time. | ||
| But at the end of the day, what they are doing is holding these programs hostage so that they can move forward what most Americans would say should not be appropriate for policymaking using taxpayer dollars. | ||
| Back to the phones now to Sonia in Lady Lake, Florida. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| I agree completely with what Brooke Rawlins just said as far as not holding those programs as leverage, especially SNAP programs, et cetera. | ||
| But one thing that I get so tired of hearing is that people are saying that they are having, that we as citizens are paying for the upgrades of the East Room because we are not. | ||
| I've heard President Trump say from the very beginning that he is paying for that himself. | ||
| Yes, and private donations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And private donations. | |
| That's right. | ||
| But they love to say that that is coming out of the budget or that that's money that's being taken from other places, which it is obviously not. | ||
| But I just, you know, I do not understand, and again, I don't understand, like others, I agree a lot with what has been said this morning. | ||
| But I just, from the very, very beginning, when Bernie Sanders came on and said, This is what our requirements are in order to keep this shutdown from happening. | ||
| And he said it was one point something, I believe he said trillion. | ||
| I may be wrong. | ||
| Maybe it was not that much. | ||
| But he listed all of those items, the health care for illegals, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. | ||
| And he said, this is what it will take in order for us to vote to keep the government open. | ||
| And they have held by it. | ||
| But, you know, and that is truly holding the Republicans ransom. | ||
| And he was, and he laid it out. | ||
| All right, Sonia. | ||
| Here's Cynthia, Texas Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Cynthia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, I do believe that this is a Republican shutdown because in the beginning, with the Big Beautiful bill, they were not doing any negotiations so that the American public could see it. | ||
| They did all that behind closed doors. | ||
| And then they couldn't even get half of their Republican people to sign on to the bill. | ||
| So that's why they gave that $50,000 for hospitals so that Susan Collins would then finally vote for them. | ||
| So see, they can't even get their own people to vote for the bill. | ||
| And then they want to bully, which is not what this is about. | ||
| This is supposed to be we come together, we exchange ideas, and we do what's best for the country, not for the party, not for those individuals that are up there getting paid, while all of us don't. | ||
| And also, we're supposed to be a God-fearing country. | ||
| So where is the God? | ||
| Here in Texas, they are making us post the Ten Commandments. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| Your president is lying. | ||
| He's cheating. | ||
| He's coveting others. | ||
| What the hell is that all about? | ||
| I think that the Republicans need to get their stuff back up there and do what they're supposed to and actually get together and talk about things together and do something for our country. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Mike, Rockford, Illinois, Independent Line. | ||
| Mike, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The talking points on the shutdown needs to be doven into a little deeper. | ||
| The Clean CR is the biggest oxymoron I ever heard of. | ||
| We haven't had a budget since 1997. | ||
| That is 27 years ago. | ||
| What is in that clean CR would make the ring kissers and the bootlickers lose their minds? | ||
| Also, another point we needed for more. | ||
| China not buying our agriculture overnight. | ||
| They spent $18 to $14 billion on our ag last year. | ||
| Zero this year. | ||
| We have 300,000 Chinese students in our colleges. | ||
| Instead of stressing out our farmers, how about if we tell these 300,000 Chinese students to pack their bags? | ||
| Also, the SNAP thing. | ||
| Federal government pays 20% of SNAP. | ||
| The states pay 80%. | ||
| Why is the cuts like 80, 100%? | ||
| That does not make sense. | ||
| Let's dive into that one with a show maybe. | ||
| And this other thing with Obamacare, Kenny's confirmation hearing, no word of what was happening in that confirmation hearing. | ||
| He's changing the business plan of the health insurances from pay-as-you-go to what's it called, value-based health care. | ||
| How about if we have a show on value-based health care? | ||
| How he wants to take all the info from the private health care and try to make it a healthier system by stealing all the data from the golden goose, which is the 80% of an employer-based health care system that the government's been eyeballing for years. | ||
| And now they're working towards it with their clothes down. | ||
| All right, Mike, and here's Becky Lumis, Minster, Massachusetts Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| First of all, there have been many people complain about the right now. | ||
| I believe the Republicans are first listed, their phone number. | ||
| You swap it out every single month. | ||
| It doesn't matter to Republicans whether they're on the top of the list or the bottom. | ||
| They just want people to call on the right line. | ||
| And so you don't need to swap it out every time. | ||
| That might prevent some people from calling on the wrong line. | ||
| Secondly, I'm calling because last week I tried to call in when Lori Turhan, Representative. | ||
| She's not actually my district. | ||
| I have a different one, but the next town over is represented by her. | ||
| A Democrat. | ||
| Becky, we're running out of time. | ||
| If you could just kind of get to the point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There, there is no Republican members. | |
| I wanted to ask her: how about the closing of the maternity ward in Lemonster? | ||
| How about the closing of the hospital in her district, the whole hospital in her district in Ayr, Massachusetts? | ||
| That was done prior to Trump ever coming into office. | ||
| Biden was in office. | ||
| So Democrats have very forgetful minds. | ||
| Got it, Becky. | ||
| And later in the program, we'll talk to Vermont Democratic Representative Becca Ballant to discuss the government shutdown and Democrats' strategy during the shutdown. |