The House Republicans and Biden Administration are navigating the latest debt ceiling agreement. Sean covers the latest and gives his take on the language of the bill... language that keeps trickling in as details unfold. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Thank you, Scott Shannon, and thanks to all of you for being with us.
I hope you had a great Memorial Day.
Our great thanks and honor to all those that sacrificed everything for all of us and gave us the ability to barbecue, hang out with our friends and family and loved ones, and just have a great free day because they gave it all for us.
Anyway, glad you're with us.
800-941-Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, issue obviously number one is this budget deal announced, what, late Saturday night or Sunday, whenever it was, with McCarthy and Biden.
You know, it's one thing I want to just stand back and make sure that everybody understands nobody has read the fine print of the bill, and everybody's giving their version of what the headlines are.
Headlines without specific language, and I'm not sure if the clock started yet in terms of giving the bill because McCarthy promised his caucus they'd have 72 hours to review any bill before they vote on it.
You've got a lot of people passionately against.
You got some people surprisingly for.
And one of the best things I think we can do on this show is put both of those sides on in the next hour.
We got a great lineup for you.
I think it's going to be Duke Gingrich on one side.
He thinks this deal is historic in a lot of ways based on previous deals to raise the debt ceiling, you know, versus somebody from the Freedom Caucus like Chip Roy or Scott Perry.
So anyway, we'll have both of them.
I'm going to just give you an analysis of what this is.
Do I think ultimately, whatever the bill manifestation is, that we will have some type of deal to avoid the debt ceiling default?
Yeah, but as I explained long before the Memorial Day weekend, there's not going to be a default.
It would be on paper a default, but America would not be reneging on its financial obligations to pay off our debt.
And even though we don't have the money to borrow, they still take in a lot of money each and every month.
Would it be difficult?
Yeah, all of this is because Joe Biden disappeared for 97 days, because Joe Biden said from day one he wouldn't negotiate a deal.
And so they're now going to have to twist arms.
The left is livid about it.
Conservative Freedom Caucus members are livid about it.
My gut tells me I don't know why I thought that McCarthy going into these negotiations had the better hand by far because he already passed a debt ceiling increase bill and it was scored out by the CBO and it saved $4.8 trillion.
And it also enabled a bunch of other things of which I'll go into great specificity and detail here in a second.
So, you know, you got on the left, you got, you know, people like Chip Roy saying, you know, Republicans should not take this deal.
Ron DeSantis ripping the deal.
We're careening towards bankruptcy.
And the question is, you know, did Republicans give too much in terms of negotiation for a president that had no choice?
Eventually, they would have to go along with where they are.
Now, apparently, it's only a 99-page document outlining a complex debt ceiling, quote, compromise called the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which never trusts the name of a bill because it's usually a lie.
So that means nothing to me.
That would raise the debt ceiling until January 1st, 2025.
Initially, I would have preferred that they have this debate a year from now, and that would shift the original Republican bill from March 31st, 2024.
That would then relieve Congress of debt-related concerns until the next presidential election.
Now, the act would reduce non-defense discretionary spending.
This sent Lindsey Graham over the edge for fiscal year 24 below the levels of fiscal year 2023 with $121 billion allocated to veterans medical care.
And then on defense spending, the bill would cap at Biden's proposed fiscal year 24 request $886 billion.
The problem with all of this is we've got a new axis of evil that we're confronting.
China basically told America over the weekend, and I doubt anybody's reporting it, to take a hike after Biden and his administration tried to smooth the waters and they called for a defense summit.
China just said drop dead basically to the U.S. and refused their request for a meeting between their defense chiefs on the sidelines of annual security forum from the Singapore, in Singapore this weekend.
The Pentagon even acknowledging all of this and the decision by China to formally snub our Pentagon and, frankly, Biden embarrassed Biden again, yet again on the world stage.
Stage shuts the door for now a meeting that we desperately need at this time.
You have a simulated attack that China's putting out where they destroyed the U.S. Navy's largest warship.
Nearly every surface vessel was shattered by the attack and eventually all sank in the simulation put out by China.
They blew up the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, with hypersonic missiles in a menacing simulation, which Chinese researchers say proves the U.S. Navy warship could be destroyed with certainty.
Okay, so they're getting more aggressive by the day, and China basically sticking the middle finger in Joe Biden's face, just like they did with their spy balloon, just like Russia did by taking out a drone.
We do have one update.
The Ukrainians send drones over Moscow and bomb Moscow.
By the way, one of my suggestions from early on, if they're going to fight a war, fight it on their territory too.
Let them feel the heat in this.
So, you know, I can give you the pluses, the minuses, who's for, who's against all of this, and the reasons why.
I think it's going to be more interesting, though, in the next hour to have both sides on.
But I'll give you the summary of it.
You know, Chip Roy, for example, saying this is not a good deal, some $4 trillion in debt, at best, a two-year spending freeze and no serious substantive policy reforms.
And he laid out on his Twitter account that, you know, it's a financial debt ceiling deal in terms of limit, save, and grow as passed.
And the GOP deal is going to save around $2.5 trillion less, he thinks, when it's ultimately scored out by the Congressional Budget Office.
You know, Ken Buck of Colorado is now out there floating a vote against McCarthy, which I predicted would happen, a motion to vacate, they call it, which was part of the deal when he became Speaker that he made with the more conservatives, the more conservative Freedom Caucus and other conservative groups.
Chip Roy is saying that, you know, during his press conference that he's going to oppose the bill.
He said not one Republican should vote for this deal.
Byron Donalds is saying Washington is lying again.
The bill has no cap in raising the debt just to date in the future.
We have no idea what the numbers are going to look like.
And that's what makes, for me, reporting on this a little more difficult.
Ken Buck is reportedly floating to force a vote to remove McCarthy using the motion to vacate, which any one member of the Republican caucus can initiate at any point in any time, basically a no-confidence vote.
So, who was it that called it a turd sandwich?
That was, I believe that was, I think it was Ralph Norman.
No, that was, maybe it was, I'm not sure.
Anyway, but you have Ralph Norman saying the deal is insanity.
He said a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to.
You know, we're not going to bankrupt the country.
Go ahead, play it.
The Republican.
Play it.
Yeah, go ahead.
I keep it.
The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder, and we are working hard to try to put it back together again this weekend by making sure that this bill gets stopped.
I want to be very clear.
Not one Republican should vote for this deal.
Yes.
Not one.
If you're out there watching this, every one of my colleagues, be very clear.
Not one Republican should vote for this deal.
It is a bad deal.
No one sent us here to borrow an additional $4 trillion to get absolutely nothing in return.
All right, so that's on that side.
I think one of the biggest complaints McCarthy's ultimately going to have with this bill is, as he's out there trying to sell this thing, is the promise that he made to defund Biden's massive $80 billion turbocharging of the already weaponized IRS.
That's not going to go over very well.
House Republican Freedom Caucus members are saying this is a career-defining vote.
And by the way, Dan Bishop did become, I just see this in front of me now, the first Republican to publicly support ousting McCarthy over this debt deal.
And we've told you about the others.
Now, on the other side of this, just to be fair, you know, because, look, we got $31 trillion in debt.
If we don't do something dramatic, when does it stop?
You know, if you look at the negative, if you look at what people are saying and what McCarthy's side is saying, that it'll stop out-of-control inflationary spending.
Okay, roll back non-defense discretionary spending to fiscal year 2022 levels.
That's definitely a win, no doubt.
Enacting consequential reforms in terms of work requirements for SNAP, although there were some concessions that they weren't as burdensome as originally proposed and originally in the House bill, clawing back tens of billions in unspent COVID funds.
That would be a win, $400 million from the CDC, but there's a lot more that could have been taken back.
The other side will argue.
Enact a law in the first ever statutory administration's pay go.
PayGo is actually a pretty good win.
You have to pay to move forward, to spend more money.
Okay, but you also can't control future Congresses, so it's not as appealing as you might think.
And, you know, and then there are other people that support it too.
I think the most outspoken conservatives that I see supporting McCarthy, Stephen Moore, who wrote Trump Anomics, says McCarthy's debt deal is a step in the right direction.
It wasn't what the House passed.
Why the pressure to negotiate as much as they did?
I'm having a hard time understanding.
But he said, you know, strict spending caps for 2024, green light on new energy permitting, no new student loan bailouts, reinstituting work requirements for welfare, a rescission of some $50 billion in unspent COVID money on new limits of the president's job-killing regulations.
Okay, we lose maybe, you know, $10 billion of the $80 billion.
No, I'm sorry.
Is it $10?
Yeah.
Okay.
If you look at the debt ceiling aspect of this, you've got instances here where, hey, they could do a lot better.
Why did they, I don't understand why they didn't hold strong on the IRS money.
That makes no sense for me because the deal will lift the current $31.4 trillion into 2025 while capping non-defense discretionary spending at $704 billion for 2024.
So there's some things here.
Washington Times praised it.
The New York Post praised it.
The Washington, the Wall Street Journal praised it.
Newt Gingrich joining us later on the positive side on this.
He said it's a dramatic victory, and he gave very specific reasons.
And that he says that nobody would have believed it was possible to cut spending, reestablish work requirements, reform permitting for energy and infrastructure and more.
The debt limit deal is a dramatic victory.
I'm just having a hard time giving you an answer.
For those of you out there, I tend to think that this is too much of a concession by a long shot, and that McCarthy held a much stronger hand than he played here, and that Joe Biden had cornered himself, painted himself into a corner, and even saying that they breached the deal kind of took away a lot of the Republicans' leverage.
I'll go over more of the aspects of this, but I really can't give you the full analysis because it's always in the fine print.
You know, the little headline talking points that I've only been able to see, as everyone else has been able to see, don't do this bill justice.
You actually have to read the bill to know what's in the bill.
So I'm trying to be just objective in telling you what the arguments are.
So you've got a split here.
Now, as for the rest of the Republican caucus, as I called around this weekend and just take people's temperature, people are all over the map.
And the biggest part of, you know, the biggest majority now are people that are saying, I want to read the bill.
That's what most people are telling me, which I think is actually responsible.
Let me tell you what I don't like about what we're hearing about this deal is, and by the way, there are ongoing meetings with the Republican caucus now, and it's fairly unanimous.
There are no budget caps after 2025, only what they call non-enforceable appropriations targets.
That is meaningless to me, absolutely meaningless.
When you factor in agreed upon appropriations adjustments, the deal holds non-defense spending flat in 2024.
This is why Lindsey Graham's so upset about it.
The number of people that are subject to the snap work requirements, when you get to the bottom line, it's a great talking point.
It roughly stays the same.
At the president's assistance, the snap changes are only temporary.
It maintains a lot of Biden's environmental protections.
The budget agreement keeps in place Biden's plan to provide student debt relief, but he can't go any further.
That was cut by the Republicans.
How do we possibly afford this with $31 trillion in debt?
You know, the administrative pay go rule for regulations, that's a win, but it expires after two years.
Now, you also have issues involving future Congresses.
You can't control their spending separate and apart.
It only removes $20 billion of the $80 billion given the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act.
And so far, at least the headline on the final agreement does not include rescinding every remaining COVID-19 or American Rescue Plan dollar and protects funding for housing assistance and other pet projects that the Democrats want.
that's a lot of negatives and that's why i think the republican freedom caucus among others is furious about this exposing government waste and abuse of your liberties every day Sean Hannity is on right now.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we've got both sides in terms of the Republican battle over this budget deal that McCarthy hammered out with Joe Biden and the Democrats.
There's a lot of passion and anger on both sides.
I've not seen the 99-page bill.
I guess the devils are in the detail.
So you just, we're working off talking points from both sides.
And there's too much here that just reeks of a typical, you know, Washington split the baby, let's not go all the way ever, you know, deal on fiscal responsibility.
At some point, you've got to ask, when are they going to go all the way and balance their budget and live within their means and stop the insanity of the billions of dollars in new Green Deal socialist spending that is now infecting every single department within government, including the Defense Department?
At what point do they just say, enough's enough?
We can't rob future generations.
That's what conservatives are saying.
And at the end of the day, here's the dilemma for McCarthy.
He's got, okay, do you want to get blamed for the full faith and credit of the U.S. government going into default?
First of all, I don't believe that would have happened anyway.
Secondly, and there are a lot of financial experts and economists that agree with me.
If it did happen, you can blame the guy that said there'd be no negotiation and disappeared for 97 days.
That would be Joe Biden, your president.
Anyway, we'll get back to that in a second.
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So, you know, I'm reading all of this, and Linda, you and I were talking about it all day.
And I think you're falling into, as much as you love Newt Gingrich, you're falling on the side of, you know what, Republicans had a better hand than this.
And that's just simply how I look at it.
And then I'm reading the New York Post, and I'm reading their analysis of this, and they say it's a win for McCarthy.
And the Wall Street Journal says a win for McCarthy.
And Steve Moore says a good start.
And Newt Gingrich says a really good start, historic in many ways.
The Washington Times, again, conservative.
The debt deal scores a win for the GOP.
I'm just not sure why they felt compelled to negotiate at this level.
Here's the big question for me, and I'll ask Kevin McCarthy on TV about this tonight.
He's on tonight.
Gingrich is out there saying it was a victory for McCarthy, but then everybody in the Freedom Caucus is saying this is a horrible deal and not one Republican should support it.
We're trying to get our copy of the 99 pages so we could read the devil, which is always in the details.
And what are you saying, Linda?
I can't talk.
Oh, he just sent one to me.
So technically, I'm just going to talk on the air because it's easier.
So technically, nobody has the final and approved version of the 99 pages.
There's bill text that was released yesterday online.
It's not the official or final bill that's been voted or legislated on because it's in the rules committee first before it goes any further.
But that is what's out there.
And then we have the 10 final points.
So basically right now, you know, we've got this bill text, you know, and it kind of goes through some of the things that, you know, we're looking to talk about.
I think the thing that, you know, we find ourselves confused about and trying to figure out at this point is, you know, why we capitulated.
You know, we passed a bill that had, you know, things that conservatives really cared about.
You know, this bill in particular, one of the main things is that, you know, it gives the breakdown of how much we're going to cut and how much we're supposed to get back over the course of six years.
Unfortunately, they are not beholden to do all six years.
They're only beholden to do two years.
And then within those two years, they're allowed to add more on as they see fit.
So when Peter Doocy asked President Biden that question yesterday and says, well, what if we need more money for the military?
Or what if we need to allocate more funding to one department over another?
He said, well, we'll find the money.
And he's actually correct because this bill allows him that freedom to add even more trillions of dollars to an existing debt.
And this goes back and forth to what we talked about before, which is that, you know, we have Kevin McCarthy saying, you know, $31 trillion in debt, $40 trillion in debt, how much is too much?
And now we've gone and said, oh, it's okay.
we have to meet in the middle so the more moderate republicans we knew the republican the first republican deal that they passed which i thought was a great bill and a reasonable bill um was scored out saving 4.8 trillion And I think that that should have remained the foundation.
And, you know, look, there are certain deadlines, at least in the minds of Washington, not in the minds of real economists.
But it could have had, if we get to, what did Janet Yellen say?
June the 5th.
And remember, the House, you know, they have a deal.
They have 72 hours to read the bill.
I think that there's a printed form of it.
It's not available fully, completely edited to the public.
So I think there's still a few things to work out in this.
But when you look at the negatives on this deal, there's no budget caps after 2025, no non-enforceable appropriations targets, which we all know is meaningless.
And when you look at the agreed upon appropriations adjustments, the deal holds non-defense spending flat in 2024 and increases by 1% in 2025.
By the way, China is on the march.
They just stuck the middle finger in our face again this weekend.
How many more times are we going to allow this to happen and not realize that they are basically declaring a Cold War with us and we're not ready for it, especially with Joe Biden as president?
The snap change or work requirements likely they pretty roughly stayed the same according to my analysis.
Others are making that a bigger deal than I think it is.
I like the part about the substantive environmental protections.
That's going to allow some energy production that we didn't have prior to this deal.
I would have opened it up completely.
You know, pay go is great also, but it expires in two years.
You know, why they didn't hold firm on saying no to the 80 billion dollars that are targeted to the IRS.
That doesn't make sense to me.
Or, you know, not rescinding the remaining COVID-19 monies that were unspent and then allocating them towards pet projects.
So, I think those are the negatives of the deal.
And, Sean, if I may, today from the steps of the Capitol, you know, the one thing that Chip Roy and Scott Perry talked about earlier, and I thought it was a very good point, is, you know, we're looking at this overexpansion of the IRS.
We already know they're weaponized.
They've got 87,000 IRS agents, additional that they're adding.
They want to go after people making $600 or less, and they're basically saying this particular bill tech says 98% of that IRS expansion, they're going to keep it.
They're going to keep weaponizing it, and there's literally nothing meeting them.
We'll have no oversight over that.
Well, we have another IRS whistleblower coming in on Friday, and we have yet to really have any action taken.
You know, I thought we had whistleblower protections available, and it's not.
Anyway, so look, we're going to see, you know, it's all going to be out in the fine details.
You know, my gut tells me, uh-oh, you know, I think they gave up a lot of leverage that they had with the fact that they were the only part of government that actually passed a bill.
And, you know, I see that, you know, some Republicans in the Senate are racing to support this bill, even Mike Leed, which kind of surprised me.
So it's a weird coalition that is emerging that I'm having a hard time understanding.
If you want to look at the upside of it, I thought the New York Post editorial was one of the better ones, say versus, oh, the Washington Times actually had some good points too.
But the Washington Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal all had positive things to say about it.
And what they're arguing is, you know, that, yes, this is a less good bill than what the House passed, but far better than anything the White House or the Democratic-controlled Senate would have ever produced on their own.
Yeah, but that's true.
But why did we elect Republicans to be in the majority in the House anyway?
This is one of the main things we wanted addressed.
And the key they're saying is it advances the GOP-controlled spending agenda or begins the process of doing it and reducing federal outlays immediately, rolling back domestic non-entitlement outlays to the prior year's level.
Yeah, but those prior years were also COVID years.
And so, okay, it's definitely a good start, but it's not going to get us to a balanced budget.
And clawing back only some of the COVID relief money, not all of the COVID relief money, having some work requirements, but ostensibly not for everybody when it comes to SNAP and other subsidies that the government gives people, or eliminating at least the first year Biden's planned new IRS agents.
Okay, well, they're just going to hire them next year instead of this year.
So, you know, this is why I think there's such passionate response on both sides of this.
So what we decided to do is bring on New Kingrich, and I think it's going to be either Chip Roy or Scott Perry who are opposing the bill and let them go through it in the next hour.
We'll give you both sides of it.
And we'd like to get a copy of it so we can read it and sound even, you know, a lot of the devil is in the details when it comes to Washington and the swamp.
Anyway, 800-941, Sean, and here's the problem, too, is, you know, we're headed towards another recession.
Every economist, every financial advisor that I know sees a recession on the horizon.
Now, if you go back, we often would quote the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank and their predictions for growth.
They're the first ones that kind of predicted the last Biden recession, defined by two quarters consecutive negative growth.
They have a new GDP model for the second quarter that they've revised downward to 1.9% From 2.9%, that moved based on the recent releases of U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Economic Analysis and the National Association of Realtors.
So, you know, every voter is now worried about the economy, and they should be.
But the long-term impact to American families is being felt now.
Two-thirds of the country now living paycheck to paycheck.
That's a problem.
And then you look at states that are doing well.
There are states that tend to be free and Republican run for decades.
And don't forget also, Sean, there's another part of this bill that we have talked about a ton on the show, and that's the total bailout on student loans.
I mean, one of the things that Chip Roy, I think, illuminated perfectly is he said, we're going to have people that are, you know, went to trade schools, technical schools, and their tax dollars are going to pay for other people's college educations and, you know, study programs.
Some of the best schools and the best schools in the country.
You got to pay your own way.
That's part of growing up.
Why are people in the media, did you see the story about this miracle sister, a nun whose exhumed body shows like no signs of decomposition four years after she died?
I did see that.
Super weird.
Well, okay.
I mean, usually, you know, the process of decomposition starts very quickly once a person is buried.
And so, you know, some people on fake news CNN, one guy, Jim Schiato, whoever he is, wants no part of the story about onlookers kissing a nun who's been dead for four years.
That's not touching.
I'm not touching that story.
I'm like, why not?
That's interesting to me.
Was there something, you know, why is it that in most cases, the overwhelming 99% of cases, there's decomposition and not in her case.
That actually interests me.
By the way, we have a lot of woke stories that we're going to get to today.
I mean, a lot.
A lot of crime and violence around the holiday weekend as well.
None of it good.
All of it predictable, especially over a holiday weekend.
Shouldn't surprise anybody.
We still have wide open borders.
That's not changed over the holiday weekend as well.
And by the way, there was one sad story.
I don't know if you heard this, and I don't even know what to think about it.
A illegal immigrant has charged for throwing her baby away.
She didn't know she put a newborn in a New York City hospital trash can.
The woman's from Mexico.
She said she didn't know she was pregnant.
It looks like a very young woman.
I think she's 20 or 21.
I didn't know that I put my baby in the trash can.
She was telling nurses.
And anyway, the baby was found covered in blood at Staten Island University Hospital.
Police working security and cleaning heard the baby's cries, found the baby in the garbage can.
And she added that there was a police officer sitting there and she charged with two counts of assault.
There are people that don't know they're pregnant.
And I know that sounds strange to a lot of people.
There are instances where that could happen.
I don't know if this is one such case, but that does happen.
By the way, Biden released 2,300 illegal immigrant criminals into the U.S. in just the last few months.
I mean, I'm sure you're dying to hear that too.
Anyway, 800-941 Sean is on number.
So the next hour, we're going to have both sides of this budget debate, and we'll let you see if we can shed more light on this for you.
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All right, when we come back, the next hour we're going to have a showdown, and that is the Republicans.
Well, Newt Gingrich is supporting Kevin McCarthy on this bill, this compromise bill with the president.
The Freedom Caucus is dead set against it, and it may even result, according to reports, in a motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy.
We'll have the latest.
We still don't have the actual verbiage, so we're going off the talking points of both sides, which never makes me particularly comfortable because they kind of tend to spin it both ways.
But basically, what we see and what we're hearing is that it doesn't look like McCarthy held the line, at least for the conservative members, anywhere near where they thought he had the leverage to do so.
You're going to hear from both sides of this debate on the other side our next hour.
I promise you, you won't get this information anywhere else.