March 23, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
08:19
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I am currently self-isolating. | |
| I'm doing my radio show from home, and if TV comes up, we're looking at Skype options, but we're at the house. | |
| All right. | |
| I hope you enjoy your house. | |
| I mean it. | |
| Learning to love it. | |
| Yeah, you're learning to love it, exactly. | |
| All right, so you tweeted out the following. | |
| Via senior GOP aide, the Schumer-Pelosi now pushing these demands amid pandemic-fueled economic collapse. | |
| 1. Unprecedented collective bargaining powers for unions. | |
| 2. Increased fuel emission standards for airlines. | |
| 3. Expansion of wind and solar tax credits. | |
| What does that have to do with alleviating people's suffering during this time? | |
| Nothing. | |
| So I got a source reaching out to me this morning with that information, and I said, look, you know, how solid is this? | |
| I have no personal knowledge of these negotiations, which is a lot of shuttle diplomacy with Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, with Chuck Schumer, and then back to the Republican leadership. | |
| And this source said, our policy team knows what they're doing. | |
| They have vetted this information for you for publication. | |
| So I tweeted it. | |
| And it got a lot of traction. | |
| I got some pushback from people saying, oh, I'm a conservative. | |
| I'm not a real journalist, that type of thing. | |
| Who's your source? | |
| So on and so forth. | |
| What I can tell you is, since I tweeted that this morning, Senator McConnell, the majority leader, went on the floor. | |
| And confirmed my reporting in his speech, his opening speech of the new session. | |
| Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas also tweeted that he can confirm, based on his knowledge of negotiations, that that is true. | |
| So what we're hearing, Dennis, from the Democrats right now is, and Chuck Schumer said this this morning, this is a Republican-only bill, which is why they're objecting to it. | |
| And that is, and I use this word carefully and deliberately, that is a lie. | |
| Over the weekend, there were multiple working groups, three to five working groups in the Senate, including Republicans and Democrats, working on various elements of the bill. | |
| The two biggest elements of the bill are direct payments to American workers and loans to small businesses. | |
| And there's no questioning, there's no disputing that those were agreed to on a bipartisan basis. | |
| We even know the specific senators who were involved. | |
| Especially on the small business component of it. | |
| The Democrats decided for a number of reasons, one of which was Speaker Pelosi flying back from the West Coast and blowing the whole thing up, saying, no, no, I'm going to do my own bill all of a sudden. | |
| The Democrats are now trying to pretend that this is a GOP-only partisan bill that they had rammed down their throats. | |
| They had no What can be said to give Democrats the benefit of the doubt on some level, which I'm loathe to do, but let's just be fair. | |
| If they wanted to say... | |
| That the corporate, quote-unquote, bailout part of this bill, which keeps growing, it's $1.6 trillion, $1.8 trillion, somewhere in that range now. | |
| If they were concerned about the strings attached, and there are strings attached, they're pretending that there are none, blank check, no rules, that's not true. | |
| But if they felt like that language needed to be tightened up and wasn't sufficient, fine. | |
| I think they can come out, they can say it, they can make that argument. | |
| I think they can probably win that argument on some level. | |
| But instead they decided, To filibuster the legislative vehicle for a bill they themselves had helped negotiate while pretending that they hadn't helped negotiate it and pretending like it would involve no help for anyone except for big corporations. | |
| And that's the impasse where we are right now. | |
| Schumer thinks... | |
| That there's going to be some sort of a deal struck sometime today. | |
| There's a very heated debate going on right now on the Senate floor, a very high level of tension for the U.S. Senate. | |
| And I guess they're going to try to vote, a so-called cloture vote, which needs 60 votes. | |
| They're going to try again this afternoon, probably around 1.30 Eastern. | |
| 1.30 Eastern, that's in 20 minutes. | |
| Yep. | |
| So that was the time frame that was at least announced. | |
| The immediate result of not passing a bill was the further decline of the U.S. economy. | |
| Just having you react to that. | |
| Yeah, so the markets are down right now. | |
| They were down about 900 points. | |
| The Dow was down 900 points earlier today. | |
| It's back up, although it's still in negative territory. | |
| I think the markets are still holding their breath, hoping that this logjam ends with the votes today. | |
| today, I think that this game of chicken with some of these ancillary demands like fuel efficiency standards for airlines and labor union collective bargaining, if that stuff gets jettisoned, they do a few tweaks around the edges and then everyone can claim victory and they do a few tweaks around the edges and then everyone can claim victory and I suspect that's probably what's going to happen. | |
| Pelosi's rolling out her own bill at 2 p.m., but basically everyone seems to agree there's no time for that, and it's going to be a much more partisan, much longer, complicated bill. | |
| So that seems like a non-starter. | |
| All right, well, let me understand. | |
| Please remember that point. | |
| I need to understand something. | |
| The House is in charge of budgets. | |
| Is that not correct? | |
| Correct. | |
| So what is the Senate doing? | |
| I believe, and this happens sometimes, where the action... | |
| So, for example, the first phase of this was a relatively small spending bill, if I'm recalling correctly, $8 billion or so a few weeks ago. | |
| Last week, the House passed Phase 2, which was $100 billion or so. | |
| The Senate Republicans had some issues with it, but because time was of the essence, they passed it. | |
| Then, because the Senate and the 60-vote threshold was the bar to clear, the negotiations between the administration, the Trump administration, and Congress focused in the Senate, and it really got to work over the weekend. | |
| My understanding, Dennis, is that they're using sort of the frame of a House bill to But it has to be passed by the House. | |
| Oh, yes, definitely. | |
| Right. | |
| Even if the Senate votes yes today on the 60-vote threshold, it crosses that threshold, it still has to be approved by a Democratic-controlled House. | |
| And I think it will be, because if, again, I'm getting ahead of myself assuming that the Democrats finally... | |
| I see, right. | |
| Then there would be moral pressure on the Democrats in the House. | |
| There would be massive pressure. | |
| If Chuck Schumer is able to... | |
| You know, get a concession or two and say, okay, we've improved this bill enough and a bunch of his members vote for it in the Senate and it's overwhelming. | |
| Pelosi would have no leverage, no appetite, and the whole world is screaming at her to pass it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Okay, I'm going to continue with Guy Benson. | |
| By the way, folks, I mean, there's another issue here. | |
| None of this is meant to depress you, but we're printing the money. | |
| It's as simple as that. | |
| It's sort of monopoly. |
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