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Tuesday, a critical election night on C-SPAN. | |
| From coast to coast, key races that could shape America's future. | ||
| In New York City, a hard-fought mayor's race in the nation's largest city. | ||
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| All the results, all of the speeches, coverage that's straight down the middle. | ||
| Election night, Tuesday at 6 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Your democracy, unfiltered. | ||
| Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson hosts a press conference with Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez-DeReamer on the 35th day of the government shutdown. | ||
| Watch live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| A Monday morning roundtable now on this, the 34th day of the government shutdown. | ||
| Our guests are Daniel Bush, White House correspondent for Newsweek, Daniela Diaz, Congress reporter for Notice, and Daniela Diaz. | ||
| We're about to set the record for the longest shutdown in U.S. history. | ||
| The Senate returns today at 3 p.m. | ||
| Some movements last week in the Senate. | ||
| What were you hearing at that point, and how likely is that to continue and perhaps reopen the government this week? | ||
| When I was on Capitol Hill on Thursday, I specifically was looking for the moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans who have been part of these conversations about potentially opening the government. | ||
| I mean, from the very beginning, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that it would be rank and file that would potentially negotiate the end of this. | ||
| It won't be leadership. | ||
| It doesn't seem President Donald Trump is interested in having these conversations about extending the ACA subsidies, which is what Democrats are fighting for. | ||
| But it does seem like there's potentially some movement. | ||
| Now, a lot of that can change if President Donald Trump decides to fund SNAP benefits. | ||
| That would take some of the heat off Democrats and possibly stall some of these negotiations, these talks as they've been saying that they've been having, that they started last week, but will continue into this week. | ||
| But it's unclear truly where all of this will land. | ||
| Can I understand why he said rank and file are going to do this and not leadership? | ||
| In a Congress where leadership seems to control most everything, why punt this to the rank and file? | ||
| And who are the rank and file people you're talking about? | ||
| John, and it's not just, you know, it's three, it's Republican House, Republican Senate, and a Republican White House. | ||
| So they're really putting a lot of pressure on Democrats, a couple of Democrats that they hope, and by they I mean Republicans, to defect and try to fund the government with the CR that they've been putting on the Senate floor over and over and over. | ||
| But if you remember, let's flash back to what happened in 2019. | ||
| There were two shutdowns, 2018 into 2019, and basically it was rank and file that got the Congress to fund the government. | ||
| So they think this is the way to do it. | ||
| It's too politically toxic to have those kinds of meetings that we witnessed within Democratic leadership, Republican leadership, President Donald Trump. | ||
| It's going to be moderates in battleground states, potentially. | ||
| I'm talking Arizona senators, Nevada. | ||
| You know, Angus King is an independent who has been voting to vote for the CR. | ||
| Also, Republican senators Mike Rounds and moderate Democrats Gene Zahine. | ||
| I'm just naming off the list that's coming up to me on the top of my head, but they're going to be the ones that we're going to see in these conversations. | ||
| But also the Susan Collins and the Lisa Murkowski. | ||
| How could I forget those two? | ||
| They're key here, especially with Susan Collins being the top appropriator in the Senate. | ||
| So the pressure is on them and they're very eager to end this. | ||
| I mean, from the very beginning, they've been saying that. | ||
| Daniel Bush, so President Trump back in town after that very high-profile trip to Asia last week. | ||
| What are the chances he comes to Capitol Hill this week and this no longer becomes a rank-and-file thing, but the president is on Capitol Hill and trying to insert himself into these negotiations? | ||
| That's a good question, John. | ||
| We're waiting to see what role President Trump is going to take right this week. | ||
| We know that today into tomorrow, probably he is looking to be pretty focused on the elections tomorrow, which are going to be sort of a test for where the party's going into the midterm. | ||
| So that's the White House's focus in the next 24 to let's say 48 hours. | ||
| There was talk of President Trump coming up to the Hill to go to the Supreme Court for a big tariff hearing, which we may talk about a little bit later. | ||
| He said he's not going to do that. | ||
| So I think the expectation right now is that Trump is going to sit back, at least for the next day or two or three, and to Daniela's point, let Congress work it out. | ||
| And that's been the White House's position really all along, right? | ||
| They've said this is the shutdown is a Democrat shutdown. | ||
| That's what Trump and his top advisors keep calling it over and over and over again. | ||
| It's up to Democrats to reopen the government. | ||
| We saw Trump doing a truth social about that, putting out a truth social about that just yesterday. | ||
| Their position hasn't really changed. | ||
| They've been content, at least now for we're going on what this is going to be, day 35 tomorrow, to sit back and let Congress work it out. | ||
| So far, that hasn't happened, but that's not changing at the moment. | ||
| Daniela Diaz, 35 days tomorrow, 35 days is the number of the longest government shutdown during the first Trump administration, 2018 into 2019. | ||
| What are the key dates here to watch? | ||
| Obviously, tomorrow is an election day. | ||
| Likely this thing doesn't get settled on an election day, I would imagine. | ||
| So what are the key dates to watch for in the days and weeks, I guess, to come? | ||
| Well, to me, the most important date has just passed, and that was November 1st. | ||
| That was on Saturday. | ||
| That is when open enrollment for health care started. | ||
| And what Democrats were going to say were Americans seeing their premiums go up and would possibly be an inflection point in all of this as they see why Democrats were fighting against the stopgap measure that Republicans put on the floor from the very beginning. | ||
| Also, snap benefits. | ||
| I've heard that from senators all last week. | ||
| That is a major concern for them because they're not being funded and it started on November 1st as well. | ||
| So we're going to feel the pressure that they're probably got from their home states when they come back today. | ||
| They're flying in today, Senate votes at 5.30, as they always are. | ||
| Flying in today if flights are on time, I guess. | ||
| If flights are on time. | ||
| Look, last time there was a shutdown and it lasted as long as it did, it was TSA workers calling out because they weren't getting paid. | ||
| That really caused a lot of pressure for Congress to figure this out. | ||
| That could happen again. | ||
| By the way, asked Daniel about President Trump possibly coming to Capitol Hill and inserting himself. | ||
| Do Republicans want that? | ||
| Do Republican senators want President Trump up here and to take a more active role? | ||
| Or are they happy with the process that you started this conversation talking about the rank and file discussions moving to perhaps something more? | ||
| John, if you ask Democrats whether President Donald Trump should be part of this, they say yes because they say Republicans are not going to do anything to fund this government without a sign-off from President Donald Trump. | ||
| Do Republicans want President Donald Trump in this? | ||
| Probably not because of who we know as President Donald Trump and how these negotiations have gone over the past couple of weeks. | ||
| But it's probably going to require him okaying whatever Republican leaders agree with when it comes to whatever rank and file does negotiate should this shutdown end anytime soon. | ||
| Daniel Bush, come back to from the White House perspective. | ||
| So at the beginning of the shutdown, again, now 34 days ago, there was talk of perhaps one of the threats from the White House on this was if the government gets shut down, this is an opportunity for the Trump administration, the Office of Management and budget specifically, to go through with major mass federal government layoffs of what Doge didn't do. | ||
| They could kind of finish the task. | ||
| 34 days later, we've seen some cuts, some pink slips for federal workers, but we're talking about thousands and not tens and dozens of thousands. | ||
| Where is the White House on further cuts? | ||
| Has that effort subsided? | ||
| Could we see more coming in the days and weeks to come? | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| I mean, as you said, at the beginning, President Trump, OMB, others, they were threatening huge, enormous cuts, right? | ||
| We haven't, as you said, we haven't really seen that come to pass. | ||
| There have been some cuts. | ||
| They have taken an aggressive scalpel to some federal agencies. | ||
| It hasn't been the sort of chainsaw that Trump was talking about. | ||
| You know, federal workers are clearly in a very difficult place. | ||
| I hear from a lot of them, from sources, saying how hard it is week after week after week. | ||
| There's a lot of stress there. | ||
| And there have been more layoffs. | ||
| Trump has also talked a lot about going after what he calls Democrat programs, right? | ||
| That this is an opportunity, as you said, to make cuts to the social safety net, to other parts of the government that Republicans have long eyed, and they've done some of that too. | ||
| The reality is they can't undo government Doge style, you know, even in 35 days, right? | ||
| But they are using this as an opportunity to really put pressure on Democrats. | ||
| The SNAP benefits are a good example of that. | ||
| There is a fight in the last couple of days where a judge ordered the Trump administration to essentially release emergency funding, right, to SNAP benefits, to help people get food on their tables. | ||
| The administration is sort of slow walking that. | ||
| Trump said last night that if a court gives him clear direction, he's happy to do it. | ||
| We don't know exactly what that means. | ||
| We know exactly what clear direction he's asking for, right? | ||
| So they are really turning on the screws and trying to take this moment to sort of insert policy into this debate, which is frankly sort of different than what we've seen in the past, right? | ||
| Past shutdowns, there have been big fights over specific policies. | ||
| Think back to Ted Cruz forcing a government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| But even then, it was about one specific policy and a lot of other things sort of left off the table. | ||
| And this time it's different. | ||
| We're trying to pull back the curtain on this day 34, the government shutdown. | ||
| And a good time for you to call in if you have questions. | ||
| Two folks in the know up here on Capitol Hill and at the White House. | ||
| Daniel Bush is White House correspondent with Newsweek. | ||
| Danielle Diaz, Notice Congress reporter. | ||
| Here's the numbers for you to call in. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We still have that line for federal workers that we're setting aside. | ||
| 202-748-8003. | ||
| Danielle Adiaz, as folks are calling in. | ||
| Come back and explain what happened with that vote in the Senate last week on trade authority for the president and just what that was about. | ||
| What I found most interesting about that vote, which I hope you all agree with me, is that there were four Republicans that sided with Democrats in opposing Trump's tariffs. | ||
| That is very notable. | ||
| You're seeing his own party feel very conflicted about what this tariff situation has been from the very beginning. | ||
| And also notable, those Republicans being Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul. | ||
| So it's really, really interesting to see even rank-and-file Republicans oppose a lot of the efforts that the Trump administration has made to fight back or to fight on the narrative on tariffs in the country, in the world. | ||
| And I mean, that major decision or hearing that we're going to see on Wednesday is also going to play a major part in how this all unveils in Congress as well. | ||
| Yeah, Daniel Bush, so preview that Supreme Court case that's happening 10 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Wednesday morning is when they're expected to begin arguments on it. | ||
| So tariff policy gets very weedy very quickly, but sort of in broad strokes, the Trump administration invoked an emergency power to impose global tariffs on all imports from all countries and then separately specific tariffs, right, on goods from particular countries. | ||
| This started a trade war with a lot of different countries spending months negotiating. | ||
| What the Supreme Court is trying to decide right now is whether the president has that authority to do that. | ||
| The Trump administration is arguing that the trade issue, the imbalance in our economy versus China in particular, is an emergency and that gives him the authority to do what he wants. | ||
| Supreme Court scholars and legal observers disagree. | ||
| They say that if you look at the Constitution, it very clearly states in plain English that Congress has the power to levy tariffs and taxes, not the president. | ||
| And we have seen presidents in the past invoke this kind of sweeping broad authority, right? | ||
| Richard Nixon did it. | ||
| George W. Bush did it. | ||
| In both of those cases, however, they invoke this Emergency Power Act to levy tariffs on a specific good for a short period of time. | ||
| In Nixon's case, just a couple of months. | ||
| In Bush's case, a little less than a year. | ||
| So what Trump is trying to do is something very, very different. | ||
| He's saying, I can impose tariffs on anyone in the world at any time over anything. | ||
| For as long as he wants. | ||
| For as long as he wants, right? | ||
| Legal scholars say, no, wait a second. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| The Supreme Court is going to make that decision. | ||
| You mentioned that he said now that he's likely not going to go to the Supreme Court, sort of an unprecedented move for a president to go to the judicial branch of government and sit there and watch an argument. | ||
| Do we have a sense of why he decided not to go? | ||
| Because originally it talked about at least leaving the door open to going. | ||
| So a couple of reasons. | ||
| I mean, one, it's obviously a security and logistical nightmare to have a sitting president come into the Supreme Court. | ||
| It changes the whole dynamic of the hearing. | ||
| That's part of it. | ||
| That's always a consideration when the president goes anywhere, right? | ||
| Another part is Republicans, even some publicly, Kennedy of Louisiana, for example, pushed back a little bit and said, we don't really want the president to be sitting in on a hearing because it presents the appearance of trying to pressure or bully the Supreme Court into ruling in his favor, right? | ||
| That's not what Republicans said we really want presidents to be doing. | ||
| The White House heard that message, I think, and from what I've heard, decided, you know what, let's take a step back. | ||
| Let's just let this process play out. | ||
| After all, the Republicans have a 6-3 majority of conservative judges on the court. | ||
| So the thinking is they have pretty good odds here, right? | ||
| So why insert President Trump into that situation, make it even more controversial than it already is? | ||
| Let's just sit back and let the process play out. | ||
| That's what the White House decided to do. | ||
| But of course, Trump could change his mind at any moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We've got two days until the actual case argument. | ||
| So we'll see what happens. | ||
| Taking phone calls this morning, again, Daniel Bush of Newsweek, Daniella Diaz of Notice are our guests. | ||
| And Charlotte out of the Hoosier State Republican line is our first caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I wanted to make a remark about the SNAP benefits because so many people are in such turmoil about this. | ||
| But I do want to mention the children are not going to starve. | ||
| The children who go to school get breakfast, lunch, snacks, and many times dinner. | ||
| I know I grew up in the inner city. | ||
| I know how that works. | ||
| But I just wanted to say so many people are so upset about that, and the children are going to be getting food. | ||
| And the other question that I really wanted an answer to is, and I'm really confused about this because people are talking about having Trump come in and make a decision or some way sway something. | ||
| And I'm confused because I just thought we had a no-kings rally. | ||
| And now the Democrats seem to want to, you know, do you want a king? | ||
| Do you not want a king? | ||
| Do you want him to come in and solve the problem? | ||
| Or do you want to let Congress do it and do it the way democracy had said by obeying the laws and following the rules? | ||
| Do we want a king? | ||
| Do we not want a king? | ||
| Charlotte, could I ask you, since it came up yesterday from the president's true social page, do you have any views on the filibuster? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's a bad idea to get rid of it. | |
| Daniela Diaz, do most members of the Senate think it's a bad idea to get rid of it. | ||
| They do. | ||
| I was on Capitol Hill last week talking about, asking people about the filibuster, and then on Thursday night after senators left back to their home states, that's when we saw the Truth Social post from President Donald Trump saying, we need to get rid of this. | ||
| It's time to fund the government. | ||
| And then doubled down on it last night. | ||
| And then double down on it last night. | ||
| It would be completely unprecedented to do this. | ||
| I mean, Republican senators are very aware of what this could mean going forward if they were to do something like this. | ||
| I mean, we saw Senator Bernie Moreno made a comment about potentially nuking the filibuster last week. | ||
| That's how this whole thing started. | ||
| And then Trump obviously talked about it as well. | ||
| But you saw. | ||
| John Thune back on October the 10th gave this defense of the filibuster to reporters on Capitol Hill saying this is a bad idea. | ||
| And he said it again and again following now that we've renewed this conversation about the filibuster and possibly getting rid of it. | ||
| He's saying again this is important for us to keep. | ||
| It maintains bipartisan negotiations in the Senate. | ||
| And also they are aware of what happens after November 2026. | ||
| I mean, there could be a potential switch in majorities and it could be politically terrible for them if they were to get rid of the filibuster if Democrats had power. | ||
| I mean this is all part of the negotiations that they're having when it comes to when this comes up, which honestly comes up every once in a while. | ||
| This is not the first time I've talked about it and won't be the last time I talk about it. | ||
| But there's no eagerness for Republican senators to get to get rid of this. | ||
| Daniel Bush, Marco Rubio served a long time in the Senate. | ||
| JD Vance served in the Senate. | ||
| Have they said anything about this filibuster issue? | ||
| It would be interesting to hear a senator say. | ||
| Yeah, that's a really good question. | ||
| We haven't seen them come out publicly, at least not as of this morning. | ||
| It's something Rubio tries to sort of, as Secretary of State, stay away from domestic politics and get too in the fray. | ||
| And we wouldn't expect them to disagree with their boss. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| If anything, they're going to back Trump up. | ||
| But I think if you take a step back here, I mean, this is really an example of a Trump-era divide between institutionalists on the one hand and Trump world on the other, right? | ||
| We have your John Thunes, people who have been in the Senate for a long time from both parties, right, who have argued, don't blow this system up because then when the opposite party's in charge, they can do whatever they want, right? | ||
| This is an important check and balance on the power of the Senate. | ||
| Trump has long blown up norms, or tried to, that he doesn't like, and this is an example of him saying, I don't care all that much about the way that Washington works if it doesn't work for me. | ||
| I want a really big change. | ||
| It's going to be interesting to see how that dynamic plays, and it seems like the argument that he's making, or at least has made, on true social from following this, is that they're going to do it anyway the next time they get back in power. | ||
| So we got to do it now before they do it. | ||
| Is that resonating from what you can tell on the Hill? | ||
| Is Danielle saying not yet? | ||
| I mean this is. | ||
| This is one of the only examples of an issue that Republicans will push back to Trump on right. | ||
| For a lot of other things they go along with the president's agenda. | ||
| They often agree with it. | ||
| This is one particular issue where, if this bills, If Trump begins to put more and more pressure on Republicans on the Hill, I expect that more Republicans are going to come out publicly and say, no, we don't want this. | ||
| So this, the trade vote that we talked about, where at least four broke with the president on trade tariffs, are there any other places you're watching to see kind of cracks in the Republican Party and alignment between senators and House members and the president? | ||
| The shutdown. | ||
| I mean, there's pressure when you talk to Republican senators that they also feel that something needs to be done about funding the government. | ||
| And right now, while President Donald Trump is putting pressure on nuking the filibuster, I mean, he's not talking to Democratic leaders, and he's basically leaving it up for Congress to deal with it on their own. | ||
| I mean, last week, he wasn't even in the U.S. while a lot of these conversations were starting. | ||
| And obviously, he's backed, but it's about to be a record shutdown. | ||
| And I would say today, not much has changed from when this began on October 1st. | ||
| And the House has been gone since September 19th. | ||
| I mean, Republicans are feeling that pressure as well. | ||
| And while they will publicly always stand with President Donald Trump, privately, they are saying we need to solve this and as soon as possible. | ||
| Back to the Phone's Falls Church, Virginia, just across the Potomac River. | ||
| Matt is a Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a comment and then a question. | |
| My comment is: it seems right now Donald Trump is acting like our modern Gilded Age president who combines the corruption of the Grant administration with the racist toe-tapping of the Hayes administration and the foreign policy of the McKinley administration. | ||
| I don't think in our modern era we've had a president who has taken us back so far in their demeanor and overall ethics as we have since the late 1800s. | ||
| But now my question, do you think the Republican Supreme Court will actually go against Donald Trump on tariffs? | ||
| Or do you think they'll just rubber stamp him as they've been doing since most of them are appointees or sycophants? | ||
| That's my question. | ||
| And Matt, stay on the line after we get an answer. | ||
| I want to come back to you for a second. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Well, that was stretching back to some 19th century history. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| There's a couple of different options that the Supreme Court can do here, right? | ||
| They can uphold all the tariffs. | ||
| That would be controversial because on the point, again, as I said earlier, of who has the power to levy tariffs, the Constitution is very, very clear. | ||
| It's in there in black and white. | ||
| However, in talking to sources on this issue for the last couple months, the Supreme Court could give Trump a partial victory. | ||
| They could say, you know, you don't have the power to levy unlimited tariffs on everyone, but you can do it in a more tailored way. | ||
| That could give, and it would depend on exactly what country, what goods, et cetera. | ||
| But they could say, you know, you can't invoke your emergency power indefinitely, but you can against particular countries if you prove that there is a more legitimate national emergency, something like that. | ||
| So there is an opportunity of the Supreme Court to sort of split hairs here a little bit, give Trump a partial victory, allow some of the tariffs to be in place. | ||
| What is less likely, law experts tell me, is that Supreme Court will just summarily throw everything out because historically the president sometimes has had the ability to impose tariffs. | ||
| So 6-3 majority, but we don't really know. | ||
| Matt, since you bring up a trio of 19th century presidents, Grant McKinley and Hayes, got to ask you, who's your favorite president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| I don't really think too much about who my favorite president is because I think instead of looking towards like large figures to be like the pinnacle of what Americans should be, we should look at the little guy who's built up systems to help those big figures. | ||
| So, you know, I think there's some good people who've been president, but I don't have a favorite. | ||
| Matt, thanks for the call from Falls Church. | ||
| Daniela Diaz, let me give you Rhonda from the Keystone State Independent. | ||
| Rhonda, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I just want to ask a question: like, they're saying if Trump has the power to open up SNAP benefits, is that short-term or long-term? | ||
| And also, I heard it's coming out of some kind of disaster fund. | ||
| So, what do we do if there's a disaster in our community and we need SNAP? | ||
| And one more question. | ||
| I feel that the Democrats are extorting Republicans because they're saying make costs come down, but they want to keep wasting money. | ||
| Daniella Diaz, do you want to start on the SNAP questions? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, what we've seen the administration do is reappropriate funds, adding to the tariff conversation, to a lot of the conversations we're having today. | ||
| It's always been Congress's job to appropriate funds. | ||
| So, what we're seeing is the administration try to solve these short-term problems in the hopes that the government will be funded at some point, and there will be funding for disasters once they solve the short-term issue of SNAP benefits. | ||
| So, that's what we're seeing with this. | ||
| We saw it with how Trump found a private donor for military spending to fund the military. | ||
| I mean, it's how the administration is trying to kind of plug the holes while the shutdown is still playing out, but there's still a lot of very effective people federal workers that are not getting paychecks as well. | ||
| For SNAPs, in particular, we're talking about $5.5 billion in contingency funds. | ||
| And as I understand it, the funds were used to help cover SNAP during that 2018 to 2019 shutdown, but now they're tied up in the courts, right? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And the argument from a lot of lawmakers is that this is the first time SNAP has never been funded. | ||
| I mean, they've been able to fund it even during a shutdown, what we saw happening in Trump's first administration when there were two shutdowns. | ||
| So, this is unprecedented. | ||
| And that's why a lot of lawmakers are very, very concerned about what this could mean for Americans in general. | ||
| I mean, millions of people have SAP benefits. | ||
| And then, also, just adding to the caller earlier who said children will not starve. | ||
| There's 40% of children that take that on SNAP benefits as well with their families. | ||
| So, this is a major, major issue. | ||
| Roughly one in eight Americans receive SNAP benefits. | ||
| About 42 million Americans get funding in some way from SNAP. | ||
| This is Carrie out of Milwaukee, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Couple questions about SNAP for your guests. | ||
| The last time that the government was shut down for so long under Trump, for like 30 days or whatever, whenever that was 2017, 2018 or whatever, was SNAP at risk then of being cut off for folks who need it? | ||
| And if it wasn't, is it an issue this time because SNAP is funded under one of the appropriation bills that had not yet passed in both the House and the Senate? | ||
| And then, lastly, how hard would it be to get SNAP funded or under the same category like Medicaid, which would not be affected in a government shutdown? | ||
| So, I don't understand exactly why SNAP is funded different from other low-income things like Medicaid. | ||
| And why is it an issue now if it wasn't last time? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And Carrie, and I know we just had a SNAP conversation here. | ||
| Maybe this will help. | ||
| This is Treasury Secretary Scott Besant that was being asked about on CNN's State of the Union yesterday about whether these emergency, these contingency funds, the $5.5 billion that we just talked about, would be used to cover SNAP. | ||
| This was his response to Jake Tapper. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, but there is this contingency fund. | |
| And as recently as September 30th, the Agricultural Department had a memo saying that these funds, the contingency funds, I think it's about $5 or $6 billion, could be used to pay these benefits. | ||
| Now, it would only be two or three weeks, but that's a lot for people who need the food. | ||
| Well, President Trump just, as I said, President Trump just truthed out that he's very anxious to get this done. | ||
| And it's got to go through the courts. | ||
| The courts keep jamming up things. | ||
| Democrats are in the middle of a civil war, and they should just open the government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is the easiest way to do this. | |
| Is the administration going to appeal the ruling by the judge? | ||
| Is that what you mean by the courts need to weigh in? | ||
| Because the courts have weighed in. | ||
| No, but there's a process that has to be followed, so we've got to figure out what the process is. | ||
| President Trump wants to make sure that people get their food benefits. | ||
| So it could be done by Wednesday. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| And five Democrats. | ||
| We just heard, you know, this $5.5-ish billion dollar pot of money is not unlimited. | ||
| It doesn't mean that SNAP benefits could be funded forever. | ||
| You know, the thought is, well, two or three weeks, maybe, maybe up to a month. | ||
| But to the caller's point, you know, this is not, this money, you know, won't last forever. | ||
| It's not sort of appropriated in a different kind of way where it's always guaranteed to be there. | ||
| This is an issue that Congress revisits. | ||
| And the Trump administration, as we heard from the Treasury Secretary right there, is putting it back on Democrats. | ||
| They're saying, if you want SNAP benefits to not be affected, reopen the government. | ||
| And this is, frankly, a difficult issue for Democrats, right? | ||
| Because SNAP benefits are such an important part of the social safety net. | ||
| As you said, one in eight Americans rely on this, on this really crucial benefit. | ||
| It's something that Democrats have championed for decades. | ||
| And now all of a sudden, unprecedented, as you said, it goes away. | ||
| This is a difficult issue for Democrats to defend. | ||
| Republicans are putting Democrats on the defensive and saying, yes, you may care about health care. | ||
| This is what you've claimed this whole entire shutdown fight is about. | ||
| But what happens now when we, as we were talking about earlier, right? | ||
| Trump said he was going to go after Democratic priorities. | ||
| SNAP is off the table. | ||
| What are you going to do now? | ||
| And it puts Democrats in a very, very difficult place because the longer this goes on, there will be lines at food banks and food pantries, right? | ||
| There will be people who will be very, very hurt by this. | ||
| And at what point do Democrats say enough is enough? | ||
| You know, it could be days, but it could be weeks. | ||
| And that's going to be very difficult politically as it drags on. | ||
| Just like we're seeing the endless footage of lines at airports already, it'll be endless footage of cars lining up at food banks. | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| And then the question is, who is to blame? | ||
| And I do want to say that we have seen some polls coming out in the last week or so saying that increasingly a majority of Americans are not happy with the Trump administration for handling this. | ||
| And it is interesting because typically the party in power does get the blame from voters. | ||
| For the first couple weeks, this shutdown seems to be sort of 50-50. | ||
| The public didn't seem to love the position the Democrats were taking. | ||
| But as this goes on, it would be an anomaly if the party in power doesn't end up getting more of the blame, right? | ||
| That's what typically happens. | ||
| And that is also pressure that the White House is feeling. | ||
| They're looking ahead to 2026. | ||
| Trump is very focused on these midterms. | ||
| He does not want to lose control of Congress. | ||
| And we know one thing, the White House follows polls very, very closely. | ||
| If these sort of polls continue to come out, if this doesn't end in a week or two, that might be a pressure point on the Democrat, excuse me, on the Republican side, on the White House side to say, we need to come to the table. | ||
| We head to Arlington, Texas. | ||
| Independent line, Lisa. | ||
| Thank you for waiting. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to know how Do the Republicans or anybody or Congress, you know, expect for air traffic controllers to go to work without pay and then to come back and say when the shutdown is over, you're still not going to get paid. | ||
| But they want them to come to work, you know, and be happy to be there without getting paid. | ||
| But I'm going to tell you what they're doing. | ||
| They're getting jobs so that they can support their families. | ||
| So they're going to go to the job that's going to pay them. | ||
| Why don't they have something, you know, that will pay the air traffic controllers, TSA, those people that are essential and have to go to work. | ||
| I don't think it's fair for them to have to go to work and not get paid. | ||
| And for Republicans to think that the shutdown is just on the Democrats, you know, keep calling them the left and whatever, you know, it's not the Democrats. | ||
| They're going to get blind also is what I'm really trying to say. | ||
| And to say that you're going after programs that are just Democrats, there's no program that you can mess with that's not going to affect the Republicans too. | ||
| It's not a Democrat-Republican thing. | ||
| It's an American people thing. | ||
| Lisa, thanks for the call from Texas on the snap question. | ||
| We showed Scott Besant on the air traffic control question. | ||
| Maybe a good time to show Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary. | ||
| He was on ABC's this week yesterday. | ||
| This is about a minute of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How close are we to this point where you might have to close airspace or airports as we watch air traffic controllers calling in sick? | |
| Well, so first off, if you look at other shutdowns, our air traffic controllers, God bless them, they've been coming to work. | ||
| They're frustrated, but by and large, they've come. | ||
| They're not getting paid. | ||
| And so I can't predict, Martha, what's going to happen in the future. | ||
| But as each day goes on, and again, it's not you miss a paycheck, but every day you have expenses, food and gas, and then bills come in, whether it's Netflix or your YouTube TV. | ||
| The expenses continue to roll and the pressure continues to grow. | ||
| And the problem is these controllers, a lot of them are new controllers or they're trainee controllers. | ||
| They don't make a lot of money. | ||
| And so they may be the only person that is bringing money into the household. | ||
| They have to make a decision, do I go to work and not get a paycheck and not put food on the table? | ||
| Or do I drive for Uber or DoorDash or wait tables? | ||
| Those are the real thoughts and conversations these controllers are having. | ||
| So as I look forward, I hope Democrats are going to come to their senses and open the government back up. | ||
| But I would just tell you, as bad as it is, the numbers you just gave, we will look back. | ||
| If the government doesn't open in the next week or two, we'll look back as these were the good days, not the bad days. | ||
| Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy yesterday on ABC's This Week, Daniella Diaz on Congress and air traffic controllers. | ||
| I mean, it's a real issue. | ||
| We were just talking, I was talking with Daniel before this. | ||
| This is clearly could be what adds the real pressure for them to negotiate the end of the shutdown. | ||
| I mean, it's what happened in the last shutdown that went on for 35 days. | ||
| Air traffic controllers were starting to call out sick. | ||
| It was around the holidays. | ||
| It really affected holiday travel. | ||
| But I think the more important thing that I really feel when we talk about the shutdown is that it has real consequences on real people who are working, trying to feed their families, just trying to manage day to day. | ||
| There are hundreds of thousands of people that have not gotten a paycheck in the last month. | ||
| I mean, this is going to have massive consequences on the economy. | ||
| Maybe we're not seeing it right now, but we will see it soon. | ||
| It was the same thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the holiday season. | |
| And the holiday season. | ||
| It's the same thing we saw last time as well, the last shutdown. | ||
| And what's different about that last shutdown, we're about to pass that 35-day marker tomorrow that will mean this one will actually be the longest shutdown ever, is that was always a partial shutdown, what happened in 2019. | ||
| There were still parts of the federal government that were being funded. | ||
| This is a full shutdown that we're in currently. | ||
| We're no part of the federal government unless it's the Trump administration finding appropriations for certain parts, as we just discussed. | ||
| Most people are not being funded. | ||
| Most agencies are not being funded. | ||
| People are not getting paychecks. | ||
| On that point, Daniel Bush, there was an editorial in the, I think it was the Washington Post. | ||
| It was fairly early on in the shutdown, arguing that shutdown should be more painful, that there are too many aspects of the federal government that remain open because people are considered essential employees, and that if a shutdown were to happen and no air traffic controllers were allowed to work and airports were completely shut down, then Congress wouldn't dare take this step of shutting down the government. | ||
| I wonder your thoughts on that, on efforts to kind of limit the impact of the shutdown as much as possible, making these shutdowns happen more often. | ||
| Well, that's been an argument for years, right? | ||
| Make it as painful as possible, as quickly as possible, and that will bring Congress and both parties to their senses. | ||
| No one will want air traffic to ground to a halt. | ||
| No one will want people immediately to be on lines at food pantries, right? | ||
| That is an argument. | ||
| It typically is not the way that it works. | ||
| Obviously, Democrats push back against that, and even Republicans as well. | ||
| It would create, were it to happen, very difficult political circumstances for both parties. | ||
| It's something they want to avoid. | ||
| But also, if you take a step back again for a second, this is a function of how polarized these parties are. | ||
| Because even if you could very swiftly somehow shut everything down in one day, would that really bring Republicans and Democrats together? | ||
| 20 years ago, maybe, 40 years ago, yes. | ||
| Not even that today? | ||
| But not even that today, I don't think. | ||
| And that's why this shutdown, to your point, is so different. | ||
| I've covered these shutdowns now going back to Obama's second term, and they followed a particular pattern, right? | ||
| First couple days, first week, both parties dig in, they make their arguments, they message, they blame the other side, then they sit back for a couple days and wait for the first polls to come out. | ||
| They get a sense, gauge where the public is, and then that gives them their leverage points going forward to negotiate. | ||
| But after that first couple days of messaging, both parties behind the scenes begin to have a conversation, right? | ||
| And as you said earlier, those talks just didn't happen. | ||
| Four weeks, and they're starting now, but this is a month in here. | ||
| And it just goes to show you how polarized our country is, how divided Congress is, how unwilling these sides is, how unwilling these sides are, both parties, to really do the work of figuring this out. | ||
| We're 40 minutes in here to this segment. | ||
| We've got about five minutes left. | ||
| Let me try to get a couple more callers to the Granite State Thaddeus, Berlin, New Hampshire. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing, man? | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Hey, how are you doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just have a question. | ||
| Every day, there's some of us that leave the prison system without any help. | ||
| And it seems like when we try to go get EBT, it seems like we may be shut down now and we have no rehabilitative services. | ||
| Will that truly affect all of us? | ||
| Danielle Adiaz, something you cover some of those other services? | ||
| I mean, all services are at a halt currently. | ||
| Because the federal government is essentially not funded right now, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to try to get any of the services that they normally get. | ||
| And the people that are helping, if they're essential, speaking to the fact that maybe shutdown should be more painful, there's still people working without paychecks. | ||
| Now, everyone's human. | ||
| Not getting paid for four weeks may not make you even the most efficient at your job if you are an essential worker currently operating right now. | ||
| That's the concern right now for what we're saying about air traffic controllers or TSA workers. | ||
| It's affecting every part of the federal government. | ||
| Clearwater Beach, Florida, George Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'd like to bring the subject back to tariffs and how the tariffs in the Trump's first administration were considered successful and to the point where even throughout the entire Biden administration, he did not relinquish them but kept them in place. | ||
| And now it's become an issue again. | ||
| If we're going to bring our country back to manufacturing and things, we have to unfortunately bite the bullet because it's literally impossible to compete against Chinese pricing and things of that nature. | ||
| So those are two subject matters that I'm concerned about. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's George in Florida. | ||
| Daniel Bush, you want to take that in the final minute or two we have left? | ||
| Well, very quickly, the caller is right. | ||
| In Trump's first term in office, he put more targeted tariffs in, including steel and aluminum, on Chinese imports, among others. | ||
| The Biden administration did not rescind those. | ||
| That was a sort of sea change in U.S.-China relations. | ||
| And the Trump administration is doubling down on that even further. | ||
| He just returned from a trip to Asia where the White House struck a deal with China on a range of things to lift some of the reciprocal tariffs that both countries have started putting on each other. | ||
| China agreed to buy more soybeans, which was a big win for Trump and in particular his Republican base in rural states that rely a lot on soybean exports to China. | ||
| So we saw some movement on that. | ||
| But the difference, again, between the tariffs in the first term, the tariffs in the second term is these are sweeping, they're global, they're not just going after China, but really all of our trading partners. | ||
| We've seen the Trump administration over the last couple months try and negotiate some deals. | ||
| They've announced some of them, but these deals are coming out more slowly than the White House would like. | ||
| So, you know, we'll see how quickly they can get to a place where they can declare sort of a full-blown victory on their tariff war. | ||
| The government is shut down, but it's a very busy time for Congress and White House reporters. | ||
| I want to thank Daniel Bush of Newsweek, Danielle Adiaz of Notice. | ||
| We'll let you get to your week of work, and we'll see you again down the road. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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