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tv   Washington Journal Caitlin Emma  CSPAN  September 11, 2023 12:47pm-1:17pm EDT

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and on our mobile video app, c-span now. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including mediacom. >> at medicom -- you should have access to fast and reliable internet. >> medicom support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> this afternoon, representative mike rabbinate -- my gavin or -- mike gavoner -- live coverage starts at 1:45 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> welcome back to washington
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journal. >> thanks for having me. host: the recess is over for the house and they come back in tomorrow. the senate returned last week. where are we now in terms of the possible deal to avoid a government shutdown? guest: recent -- recess is over in a big way and there are only a few weeks to avert a government shutdown which would kick in october 1 if the house and senate cannot figure out a way to find common ground and find the government. we are no closer to the goal of averting a shutdown and a lot of people feel like it is more likely than not given the dynamics. you have a senate trying -- trying to pass a small package
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of bipartisan government funding bills this week. those bills have been already advance out of committee largely along bipartisan lines. you have a house that is in turmoil. you have speaker mccarthy, walk a really narrow tight rope between his conservative detractors and moderates who are both amending different things. mccarthy is hoping to pass a few spending bills in the next couple weeks but ultimately both sides are probably going to have to settle for a short-term spending patch -- to buy more times for mug osha -- negotiation but even that path is fraught with a number of different problems and it will be really interesting to see how everything shapes up in the next few weeks. host: let's talk about the senate first.
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hey article you cowrote in political -- an article you cowrote in politico. explain what is going on in the senate and what we should expect from them. guest: as soon as today, and possibly tomorrow, the senate is expected to take its first procedural vote towards passing what you called a minibus. that is a small package of government spending bills. there are 12 government funding bills and the senate is hoping to past three of the least controversial bills through the upper chamber. as soon as this week. it really looks to buy senate leaders a lot of leverage in this standoff without. it sends a message saying, look at us, we have our stuff together. weekend passed bipartisan funding bills and we are operating in regular order. this stands in stark contrast to
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what is going on with house republicans which is a chaotic mess. as soon as this week, the senate will try to take that step in passing three funding bills to send a message saying, we have our stuff together, it is time for you to come to the table and come to your senses and stop making bees crazy -- stop making bees crazing come -- stop making these crazy demands. i think in this case, the house would take a lot of the blame because that is where so much of the discontent lies. you have descendant -- the senate, the two women in charge of the appropriate -- appropriations committee, they are hell-bent on restoring a regular order, bipartisan
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process, getting things done in a timing -- time we fashion -- in a timely fashion. that stands in stark contrast with the house where speaker mccarthy is facing a real dilemma that could possibly even jeopardize his speakership if things go poorly. we have conservative members who are demanding spending cuts that are widely unrealistic and far beyond the bills they have drafted. you have moderate members who are frustrated the speaker keeps capitulating to these conservative members. if anything goes wrong, it will probably go wrong in the house in terms of what is mccarthy going to bring to the fore. does he have enough votes to pass it? host: for our viewers, if you would like to weigh in on this topic, you can do so on our lines by party affiliation. democrats, (202) 748-8001.
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republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can interact on social media. we will have our guest for the next 25 minutes or so. there's article by politico. you mentioned they had mentioned some demands. can you give us more detail on what exactly they are looking for and if they signaled any willingness to compromise on those demands? guest: there has been no willingness to compromise on part of the house freedom caucus. where all of this began was earlier this summer when speaker mccarthy and president biden negotiated a two year budget deal to lift the debt limit and avoid a much bigger crisis that would have occurred.
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from that debt deal, you have conservative feel pretty burned by the fact that mccarthy teamed up with democrats to stave off this crisis and that vote required a lot of democratic help. they say the speaker went back on a lot of his promises he made in order to get elected speaker earlier this year. i think we remember how chaotic that process was. you have all of these freedom caucus members who are saying this is our moment to stand our ground and make our demands and not fold on those demands. already, we have seen house republicans dropped spending bills that are below the spending levels negotiated in the debt deal. tens of billions of dollars that could be utilized in many different ways are being left on the table.
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conservatives are demanding steeper spending cuts then what happened negotiated and ate the republican negotiation bills and you have a number of other demands that have to be met. folks like congressman chip roy who is saying he is not going to vote for any kind of continuing resolution to find the government unless -- to fund the government unless speaker mccarthy patch republican southern border reforms. you have people saying we have to define the justice department or the fbi. a lot of lofty demands that do not have a shot making it to the centerboard the white house, are being made and how mccarthy gets that with his most conservative
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fashion, is the biggest thing everyone is watching. host: talk about previous government shutdowns and what the economic impact has been, what the political impact has been. guest: neither party wants to shoulder the blame for the government shutdown. and never looks good and we saw that with the last government shutdown under former president donald trump. republicans bore the brunt of that with the border wall. it is not a good look, it is one of those things that starts out innocuous and gets worse and worse and worse as it continues over time. we saw that with the 35 day shutdown a few years ago where maybe, initially, you have agencies putting in peace plans into place to handle a shutdown and figure out, what can operate with and without government funding.
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which workers are essential and who needs to still be here. the longer it goes on, the more people get furloughed. paychex get delayed and becomes a huge mess that spirals out of control. host: the white house has asked congress for an additional $16 billion in emergency spending. talk about what that is for and where that is. guest: this is an important request. it is going to states that have been affected by disasters like wildfires and hurricanes, and hurricanes that have yet to come up, in what is sure to be another terrible hurricane season. the island of maui which is recovering from devastating wildfires, all of these states need money and disaster aid to continue their recovery efforts. that request includes --
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initially it included 12:00 a.m. dollars for the disaster relief fund and they are asking for additional $4 billion in disaster relief. there is also broader requests that deal with ukraine aid, border security funding. those are going to be political -- in the form of negotiation. you have a lot of republicans opposed to giving ukraine any more money and you have republicans like mitch mcconnell who said this is probably the most important thing we can be talking about and doing to ensure that comfort -- that country can continue its war against russia aggression, that we are not turning our backs on a country like ukraine. what gets attached to endy -- to any government funding measures to avert a shutdown will be a critical point in negotiations. it could help get more members on board, maybe you have republicans who are wary of
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ukraine aid but their state needs hurricane relief or something. it is one of those things that can be used to get folks on board when you have such a fractious house in the way we do now. host: we will start taking calls. tim in michigan, republican. caller: good morning. i have a comment and maybe a question. the government actually -- i don't understand how they can provide money for people when we send all of our money into the government, but they get to choose onto -- on where to spend it. that doesn't make any sense to me because we just give it to them so if they sat down, they
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are not doing their jobs, so why do they get to keep their jobs? i guess that is my question to you. that is
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these federal workers are at a loss in the sense that if there is a shutdown, there is not too much they can do, so they hope it gets resolved quickly and it doesn't go on long enough that they will be missing any kind of paychecks. host: mitchell is calling from new jersey, democrat. caller: good morning. i will give my comment and i would like to hear you react to it. my read on the shutdown talk is the hard core right of the republican party is really furious about what happened during the debt ceiling negotiations, and i think the large consensus on their part is they were outmaneuvered by the biden administration, and they want another bite at the apple with shutting down the government. i think as far as the democrats go, they realized that the republicans have lost their
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leverage, because even though a government shutdown isn't perceived as a good thing, it doesn't have nearly the weight as defaulting on our national debt. i think also if we look at past history, the blame for this tends to redound with the party that instigated the shutdown. so, that is my comment. i would like to hear your reaction to that. reaction to that. guest: guest: i think that is exactly right. we discussed earlier how a number of conservatives feel they were burned in that debt deal that speaker mccarthy teamed up with democrats to avert what you describe as a catastrophic default. that would certainly have rocked this country, the global economy. it's a scenario that has never happened before. the stakes were really really
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really really high, and in this case a government shutdown is something we are dealing with every year it's a new fight. the stakes are high and a number of folks are adversely affected and services would be jeopardized. it is one of those scenarios where conservatives, like you said, can get another bite of that apple and wheeled their influence and try to gain as much leverage as possible. you have a lot of conservatives saying they are not afraid of shutdown and this is something that they feel like the government can handle. it is unfortunate consequence in the fight for making sure if are on a fiscally responsible path, i think a number of tis would be ok having a shutdown be a casualty of what happens.
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host: charles in texas texted, the funding deadline, i think there will be a government shutdown because the unrealistic demands of the fritos caucus -- freedom caucus embers and speaker earth he may lose his speakership. andrew is in middletown, new jersey -- speaker mccarthy may lose his speakership. andrew is in middletown, new jersey. caller: does congress still get paid during shutdown? guest: i believe they do. i know there might be legislation that has floated around to ensure they are not paid if there is a shutdown. that is something that has been on the table and incentives to ensure that doesn't happen. our and number of members in congress that rely on their paychecks. host: the house, andrew? -- anything else, andrew?
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caller: since ash we have had paper money we have nothing to back it up. host: federal workers would stop getting paid and essentially be furloughed so they will stay home. what has happened in the past is they aren't paid at their backpay from the point of the government shutdown. so there is an economic impact very directly on that. they are not going to work but taxpayers will end up paying their salaries in the end anyway. guest: certainly, and it is the question of how long can they go without the back pay. during the 30 hi -- 35 day shutdown, we saw that not everybody has the funds to miss a couple of a check ash of
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paychecks. something comes up, a medical situation and people, some people don't have the savings they can rely on for weeks and weeks to ensure they are going to get that backpay. it is a tricky situation and we are gambling with the lives of everyday people work with the government because they would be the ones most directly affected by a shutdown. a number of republicans aren't afraid of that consequence and are willing to risk it and shoulder the blame for what they see as a worthy cause. host: let's go to kevin in florida, democrat. caller: actually, i am a republican. host: it looks like you called on the wrong line. 2 caller: -- caller: it was a federal employee during one of the shutdowns and i would like to explain my situation. host: go right ahead. caller: i was not able to work during that time and my wife was
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a teacher and we met with an educator and when we picked that educator up we ran into a couple of -- from australia. please told me that an armed guard prevented them from being able to get to rushmore. i drove up there and the park service at armed guards preventing people from pulling on the state i wake. the point was, the government used the shutdown to punish the american people as hard as they could to make us put pressure on our politicians. in your own budget, if you spend beyond your means, you are out of luck. in this case, all you are doing is laying off a bunch of overpaid employees that threaten american people. that is how it appears to meet.
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host: you felt that you were overpaid? caller: yes, i think most federal employees know they are overpaid fear they get every federal holiday off. they get comp time off. if you got into the paint where it is ridiculous. host: let's get a response. guest: i think you are right in that you were one of those workers who wasn't able to do your job. as you described during the shutdown, things like national parks. a lot of d.c. would shut down, those would close, that all closes. so there is a direct effect on what remains open. host: i was going to ask about social security checks. would they go out to stiller with a stop? guest: this of security checks would not be affected.
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social security and meda tear -- medicare and medicaid is part of the federal budget not discretionary which is what happens in a shutdown. the funding that directly goes to federal agencies is known as the discretionary part of the federal government. it is a very small part of the federal budget that everyone is fighting about. rest of the critical services and benefits would not be affected by shutdown. as we saw earlier this summer, a debt default, there are many other implications for that. social security beneficiaries and things like that come that is not funded by the kind of money we are talking about. caller: back is next on the line
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for democrats, harrisburg, pennsylvania. caller: first of all, i don't think it is that these guys are noble and stand on principle when it comes to shut down, they are basically living because being gerrymandered they don't have to worry about it. it cost the economy $8 billion. i have a lot of friends and family who work for the federal government and by no means are they overpaid the services they provide us. of those guys wind up going to the food bank because some of them also live paycheck-to-paycheck. we have these guys who go to
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d.c. green called biden a liar when they knew they were coming after peoples social security. it is ridiculous. it is creating chaos. is chaos, i am looking at what is happening behind the scenes. these guys, when the boston marathon bombing abend, we were looking and they were writing bills that allow them to trade on information that they learned in congress. host: let's get a response. guest: you made a good point
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when you mentioned food banks which is something we saw with the 35 day shutdown with federal workers turning to food banks and appealing for different federal and state aid and anything to sort of help them get over the hump until they could get backpay. like we were talking about, a lot of people don't have the funds to be able to miss paychecks. things come up, payments have to be made. a lot of folks are relying on critical money to get by week to week that is something we saw in the shutdown went on so long during the trump administration that people were turning to help to simply get through the day and be able to eat. host: looks is in st. paul, minnesota, republican. caller: thanks for taking my
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call. i used to actually work for the federal government for a couple of years. i left. but i think they would be entirely within their right to shut down the government and i understand why people are conserved about the average federal worker. the truth is that right now, the managerial path in the federal government just don't listen. you can listen to the oversight hearings where they lie and misdirect. they didn't give answers about the withdraw from afghanistan. they don't give any answers. yet emails from nih that were heavily redacted. and it comes out when you get the unredacted version that they were functioning -- they were funding gain of function
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research. host: you are going in and out so we will try to get a response. guest: i think you get at eight sentiment that a lot of folks feel when we are talking about federal workers not being able to get by during the shutdown, especially the longer it goes on. there are a lot of who would be fine with the government shutting down. there is mistrust in the federal government. you're getting it from that. i think a lot of republicans feel the same way in that the government is broken and bloated . and would a shutdown be such a bad thing? that is not my personal feeling but that is sort of the sentiment. the continual discussion of is the government going to shut down, not shut down, can congress fund the government is the type of fight that comes year after year and it feeds
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that. it feeds the mistrust in government and the ability for the government to really be able to serve the country. it is a discussion a lot of people are tired of. a lot of people are wondering why can't congress do its most basic function and fund the government on time without it being a huge problem over and over again. that feeds the sentiment you were getting at. host: what are the next steps? what are you going to be watching for in the next few weeks? guest: both chambers have a lot of interesting things going on. the senate will try to pass a government funding at this week and say, look, look out functional we are. the art doing our job and that is in stark contrast to the house. i think what ever but he is
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really going to be watching is house speaker mccarthy navigates the next few weeks and how he navigates his conference on these issues. certainly there is interest in passing the house republicans defending bill is the same vein as trying to lay down a marker in the standoff with democrats. the thing that everybody is really going to be watching is can mccarthy keep his speakership through all of this. any government funding measure to avoid the shutdown could involve a good number of democrats. just as we got to the debt limit crisis with bipartisan help, while no republican has taken the steps to directly threaten the speakership, that could be different this time around. you have republicans saying in
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not-so-subtle terms they are not afraid to go there. politically everyone will watch house speaker mccarthy navigates the next couple of weeks and will there be a government shutdown. a lot of people think it is more likely than not this time around. host: we will definitely be watching that. caitlin emma is a budget and appropriations reporter for >> our coverage of the 22nd anversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks continues this afrnoon with president biden. you will be speaking -- he will be speaking from anchorage, alaska. live coverage on c-span, also online at c-span.org and our mobile video app c-span now. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded these television companies and more, including comcast. >>

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