c-span has provided complete coverage of the halls and congressional floor and committee meetings, c-span gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and with no interruptions and completely

unfiltered. c-span q you're unfive-minute voterred view of government. >> a healthy address doesn't just look like this. a looks like this, where americans can see democracy at work. when citizens are truly informed, our public thrives. get informed straight from the source on c-span, unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, from the nation's capital to wherever you are. because the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by capable. host: joining us in studio, mr. dennis, glad you're here. guest: great to be here. host: how much time until the federal government runs out of money? guest: the next friday is the

deadline for congress to act. if they don't act by the end of that day, the following day to saturday, november 18th, we'll have a shutdown. the messenger: what is the speaker doing? guest: every vote is a task for the speaker. the previous speaker got tossed a few days after he kept the government open, needing democratic votes.

it's a real challenge for johnson to try to keep a way for the government to stay open without blowing his conference apart. there's a lot of different proposals that have been floated by various republicans, including something called a ladder c.r. where they have steppedded various departments for lengths of time and don't think the democrats will be particularly excited about that idea and you also have republicans who don't want to vote for any stopgap bill whatsoever which means you need democratic votes which means you need a clean bill with some democratic priorities. the real test for him is the minute he puts something on the floor that more than fourth down members of his conference does oppose, does he still have a honeymoon, can he actually govern? we'll find out in a couple weeks. host: you talked about the interview but he expresses confidence it eventually will

happen. this is yesterday on fox news, speaker johnson talking about plans to keep the government open. [video clip] >> we're running out of money the next couple weeks. will we have a continuing resolution, a temporary band-aid and will it be clean or will you attach other things to it? mr. johnson: the reason i look haggard is i was up late and worked through the weekend on a stopgap measure and realize we may not get all the appropriations bills done by november 17th but we'll continue in good faith and the difference what we call on capitol hill a continuing resolution now and what we dealt with in year's past, this would allow us time to continue this appropriations process. we're committed to bringing 12 bills to the floor as the statutory law requires congress to do and hasn't been done in many years. we're changing the way washington works because it needs to be more accountable and transparent for the people. more accountable and more transparent for the people. we are going to fight that fight every single day and get that

job done. host: he talked about those 12 bills. what is the status of those bills? guest: these bills basically have no chance of becoming law as is. they are under a threat from the administration, they spend far less than what democrats were agreeing to with the previous speaker. they have a lot of policy riders on them so they are kind of messaging bills that he needs to keep at least his caucus together on, which is going to be very hard to do because he has 18 members in biden districts that are worried about their reelection. voting for a lot of controversial policies that are not going to become law, members of congress don't like doing that. this transportation bill is going to be on the floor, has a lot of amendment votes. there are big cuts to railroad and amtrak. a lot of members have amtrak

railroads going through the district, so the unions for the railroads are trying to kill the bill. if that bill ultimately passes, we have a financial and general government bill that has a lot of cultural amendments on everything from the irs to climate change and all sorts of other policies, maybe some crypto amendments that could be interesting. and then presumably toward the end of this week, we will have a bill to keep the government open. he has a few days to talk to his members. one of the good things for a new leader is when you have these appropriations bills on the floor, members are on the floor. you can talk to them, you have lots of time to sort of try to dislodge the differences and make people happy with what you waldman the end up doing. so it's going to be interesting to see how johnson sort of tries

to do basically the same strategy that kevin mccarthy did. kevin mccarthy kept the government open, and on the other issue that divides republicans, ukraine funding, the speaker is trying to pair it with a border security combo package which he said is next, and that is a very tough road to hoe because a lot of republicans don't want to fund ukraine, period. democrats are going to vote for the hr to which is the house gop immigration package, and during negotiations going on the last couple days particularly in the senate, bipartisan negotiations to try to thread the needle have a ukraine border package that can pass both chambers and reach the president's desk. host: if you want to ask questions about what to expect in congress this week, particularly a new house speaker, (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8002 for independents.

if you want to text us, do that at (202) 748-8003. we saw the house passed israel aid bill. aside from the bill itself, what does that say about -- give examples, or at least reveal how he plans to go about strategy work. guest: he went for the low hanging fruit on his first big bill. below hanging fruit is there is broad support in his conference for aiding israel and broad support for defunding the irs. you put them in a bill. the tougher bills are when you include items that people don't like. and since he has such a small majority, if five people stand up and say i will never vote for ukraine, he has to go negotiate with democrats. that is something that we saw with mccarthy. one of the reasons why these appropriations bills did not

come to the floor before september 30 is because groups of conservatives were insisting on daily riders and then saying they wouldn't vote for the bill anyways. it still wasn't good enough for them. so mccarthy was like look, i wanted to do these bills before the august recess and i couldn't bring them to the floor because conservatives were blocking them. it's a very difficult balance here when you are speaker with a four vote majority and the democrats are not going to vote for these. we are seeing that again and again, every amendment on the floor is a test. right now he has got these financial services bills and the amendments on them are almost practiced. the next two weeks are the big super bowl.

these are sort of practice runs of kenny keep his conference together? does he still have that honeymoon? can you do things that some of them don't like and then they say i'm going to vote against it but i'm not going to try to hobble you right out of the gate. i think that is an open question. his own conference, they were fighting each other on x. marjorie taylor greene, logan -- lauren boebert. every day it seems like another faction is going after another faction and certainly ukraine is something where the conference is split down the middle on a very tough issue for johnson to figure out. he has said we can't allow putin to win. he has previously voted against ukraine, the defense on both the house and the senate have been arguing for him and his character is we need to take care of the u.s. border first.

that is the big sort of negotiation that is happening right now, particularly in the senate. people like senator chris murphy, kyrsten sinema have been working with senator langford and some of the other republicans who try to find some republicans who try to find some yes. eted munitions

you can cause a lot of class value damage if you're trying to attack one person. there's various things being talked about but it's clearly a devastating situation if you're in gaza right now. host: the line from maryland. erin, hello. caller: how are you? host: you're on with our guest. caller: why are we sending military aid to israel with veterans homeless on the street and children going to bed hungry every night in america , we are a

government spending issue. i heard on the radio last week that the government is thinking about closing certain federal agencies. we americans are hurting and why are we sending military aid to someone else? children and citizens of israel are better taken care of by america than our own citizens here. every time you go into baltimore, it breaks your heart to see all these homeless people on the street begging for money. and it's not like israel is a poor, poor country. israeli citizens have a lot of money on their own. they have huge tech companies, a lot of startups. let them buy weapons like everybody else. why are we sending them our hard-earned tax dollars when we can be spending it on americans who are suffering? guest: i see arguments like that on social media a lot.

i don't hear those arguments very often in congress. i haven't heard them from u.s. senators. maybe we will hear more of that, but pretty much almost every republican ended up voting for the israeli package. there were a couple who voted no. thomas massie tends to be very much a skeptical foreign aid. i think marjorie taylor greene also voted no. there has been, over time, more of a push against foreign aid and part of the republican party in particular. just to put in perspective what we are talking about, $14.5 billion, the overall package the administration asked for was $106 billion. the u.s. government budget is over $6 trillion. so 1% of the budget is about $60 billion. we are talking about 1% with 2% of the budget being discussed as far as this package in the next

couple of weeks, of which israel is sort of at one quarter of 1%. >> jeff is in texas, independent line. >> i just wanted to say i grew up near ellis island statue of liberty. now i live down here in texas knew the border and it all passes -- we need to take on america first and we need to start caring about people. we've got to avoid that. we need to fix the border here. you don't want people coming in while you are trying to sleep.

knocking on the door of the country. host: can you clarify when they talk about border security funding, what is exactly meant by that? guest: different people hear different things. one person's ideas building a wall. another person might say ok, dealing with the influx of people is expensive. you have to provide shelter, you're dealing with transportation, dealing with all sorts of other things involving the migrant flow. republicans of argued that we don't actually need to spend a lot more money. mcconnell's argument last week was we don't actually need a lot more money, what we need is different policies that some people don't come, you won't be allowed to stay. we won't be shipping people across the country, we will in addition to having more security at the border, a lot of these people are coming up to border

patrol and declaring i want asylum. a wall doesn't release solve that issue. the asylum issue is one that has been growing. who have people coming from lots of countries saying hey, i can declare asylum and it takes a long time to adjudicate those asylum claims. so there has been bipartisan discussion of trying to speed up those processes. there are republicans want to bring back some form of remaining in mexico policy and they can pushing the democrats to agree to that as well. as sort of a way to dissuade people from coming in the first place. host: sherry in washington state, independent line. caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. i believe the answer can be, or part of the answer can be to bring back the draft. if we bring back the draft, it

will separate the citizens from the people that are not here legally and it will also keep some people in this country. something about what it really means to stand up for and fight for your country and let some of our people in this country be able to go out and see the world as it might be. i think it should be both men and women. i'm not sure of the details if they don't feel like they want to do that, they should maybe do four years in the peace corps. that's just my own personal opinion. bring back the draft might be one of the answers. host: the answers to what? caller: the border crisis. people that are coming here illegally. it will separate the citizens from the illegals and we will be able to see if the illegals want to stay and they sincerely want

to defend this country, they can have a segue into how they can join the military. host: got your point. talking about the wider issue of border security. the draft. guest: there might even be an amendment on getting rid of the draft this week on the financial services bill. i was looking for the amendment this morning and that was one of the amendments, to get rid of the selective service. if you look at israel, i think everybody there is called to serve in the military. it does have an effect on culture if everybody is serving some way or another. every once in a while you will see service proposals like in maryland where they put in a service requirement. there are people with these proposals who are not going to go anywhere. there is no real constituency to

compel people to serve right now. it wouldn't be particularly popular, either. talking about the border issue, i think this is something that what has changed as we are getting closer to the election. if you look at polling, one of biden's weak points is border security. against trump, against other republicans. so does that bring the democrats to the table to do something they wouldn't be willing to do previously? there were a lot of things democrats were willing to do tied to a comprehensive immigration proposal. something that deals with millions of people already here, their children, the so-called dreamers. a much bigger conversation. it's hard to imagine doing something like that in the next two weeks. could they do a deal that gets through the next election and maybe sets the stage for some bigger package after the next election? that would be an interesting

idea, but keep in mind congress has basically failed. they've taken a lot of swings at doing a big immigration deal and they have basically all failed except for some really small deals for decades. it is just a really tough issue. we now have a brand-new speaker trying to figure out in the next few days. but maybe he has a little bit more leeway as a brand-new speaker to try to reach across the aisle, to try to come up with some compromises that may be how about the democrats. the democrats, people like joe manchin, i've talked to them, they want to do something on the border. they have potential reelection fights as well, particularly in the senate. a lot of vulnerable senators coming up probably wouldn't mind having a package that does deal with the border, and the

administration did putting a proposal for a lot of border funding in the supplemental. so there is potentially room for a compromise. we'll see. the next few days are sort of the prelude to next week's showdown. this week is the week that everybody is negotiating, trying to get their team on board. next week is shut down week. next week is when you have to really cut the deal. and we also have this situation where any one senator can hold things up for as much as a week. and so you tried to get your ducks in a row by the beginning of next week. i've seen them go to the floor right before midnight and the following week is thanksgiving week.

that is big motivation for congress to come up with a deal. they don't want to be here thanksgiving week. they have plans, they have families. they want to go home. those kinds of holidays sometimes are the magic elixir. they get to the airport to cut some kind of a deal, and we will see what happens. but it is a big test for mike johnson. so far, so good as far as his ability to keep his conference in line. he's been able to pass bills, keep them together mostly, and he's got his work cut out for him the last couple of weeks. the israel bill, not going to become law the way he proposed it. these other bills on the floor today and tomorrow, also not going to become law. host: i would ask before you leave, i want to show you an ad from the house pack, their job to get democrats into the house.

speaker johnson now becoming the main target for them. i want to show you the latest to talk about what it means for politics. >> after all the chaos, congressional republicans chose extremist mike johnson sp grabowski. johnson voted to overturn the presidential election in the skull the mastermind of the january 6 plot. johnson pushed for national abortion ban even for victims of rape and call for deep cuts to social security, even raising the retirement age. mike johnson and congressional republicans are just too extreme. host: how much is that part of the narrative for next year's election? >> i think it is a big part of the narrative, assuming he is still speaker. we just saw that this is a very unstable house republicans conference. if he is able to stay speaker and he is speaker going into the election, his past positions on

abortion, on january 6, the memos he wrote about the election, all of these things and what he has said in the past on cutting spending, these are all going to be litigated in many, many tv ads. you're going to hear a lot more like that and beyond depending on which state you are in. the reality is mike johnson is not alone right now. the democrats -- not well-known right now. democrats want to make him well-known. they want to make his views well-known. i think that is something that is a politics issue. he sort of has been trying to undercut that in his interviews by saying look, i have these deeply held beliefs, but i'm not making big proposals right now on these cultural issues. i'm focus on keeping the government open, funding the government, dealing with crises around the world.

so he is trying to sort of jiu-jitsu's way from being the target. but i think it is going to be tough for him, given that there are these demands for cultural culture war among his rank-and-file. if you look at the amendments that have been filed in these appropriations bills, and a lot of them have nothing to do with actual spending. it is abortion policy, it is climate policy at agencies. it is esg policy at agencies, they birthed the agencies. it is things that are policy-focused and culture-focused and if he can keep the focus on issues that have sort of 51% support, that's going to be easier for them to digest to the extent there are

issues that are being at the forefront for democrats that are good for them like abortion bans, for example. the democrats think that help them mitigate their losses. one of the reasons why the house majority is so small is the red wave kind of crashed and burned and became sort of a red puddle. it got the majority, but you seen it is really hard to govern. the democrats kind of want to put the focus on some of these culture war issues where they feel like they have the advantage. host: our guest reports for bloomberg, you can find >> tonight, watch c-span series in partnership with the library of congress, books that shaped america. we'll feature the novel "their eyes were watching god."

the story set in central and southern florida during the jim crow era. and explores life in the african-american community. race relation. gender roles and female empowerment. the book written in 1937 is considered a harlem renaissance classic and highly influential on both african-americans and women literature. tiffany ruby patterson, professor of history at vanderbilt university, will join us on the program to discuss the book. she's the author of stora kneel hurson and the history of southern life. watch books that shaped america. featuring their eyes were watching god, tonight, at 9 p.m. eastern on c-span. c-span now, our fee mobile video app, or onlynn at c-span.org. be sure to scan the q.r. code to listen to our companion podcast to learn more about the authors featured. >> c-span's student cam documentary competition is back

celebrating 20 years. with this year's theme, looking forward while considering the past. we are asking middle and high school students to create a five to six-minute video addressing one of these questions. in the next 20 years when what is the most important change you'd like to see in america? or, over the past 20 years, what has been the most important change in america? as we do each year, we are giving away $100,000 in total prizes with a grand prize of $5,000. and every teacher who has students participate in this year's competition with the opportunity to share a portion of an additional $50,000. the competition deadline is friday, january 19, 2024. for information visit ou website at student cam.org. >> a healthy democracy doesn't just look like this. it looks like this. where americans can see democracy at work. when citizens are truly informed, our republic thriv