Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Gnsova. Today, Republicans in the US Congress are
Speaker 1: spoiling for a fight with Democrats, and with the White House,
Speaker 1: and sometimes with each other. A lot of the rules
Speaker 1: package has some quirks to it. Among the most noticeable
Speaker 1: is how it seems to give this conference the ability
Speaker 1: and mandate to cut the budget, to create and form
Speaker 1: a subcommittee to investigate the Justice Department, or the weaponization
Speaker 1: of government. Kevin McCarthy won the speaker's gambill after fifteen
Speaker 1: balance that spans more than four days. In the process
Speaker 1: of winning over the votes, the California Republican made major
Speaker 1: concessions to the hard right lawmakers. They include allowing any
Speaker 1: one member to call a vote to oust the speaker.
Speaker 1: Just ations will take center stage in a Republican lead House.
Speaker 1: Republicans already indicating their desired to look into the COVID origins,
Speaker 1: what's happening along the US Mexico border, issues with the
Speaker 1: President's family, and, as Kevin McCarthy said, also what happened
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Those Republicans now back in charge of the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives have a long list of things they
Speaker 1: say they want to get done. Tax and spending cuts,
Speaker 1: of course, and as you just heard, they're launching numerous
Speaker 1: investigations of the Biden administration and the president himself. But
Speaker 1: the Senate is still in Democratic hands and Republicans spend
Speaker 1: a lot of times squabbling among themselves. Just look at
Speaker 1: how hard sum members fought to keep Kevin McCarthy from
Speaker 1: becoming House Speaker. So will this just be a year
Speaker 1: of a lot of noise and not much else? My
Speaker 1: colleague Stephen Dennis spends his days putting those kinds of
Speaker 1: questions to the people in power in the US capital,
Speaker 1: And he's here with me now in our Washington studio, Stephen.
Speaker 1: This Congress certainly came in with a bang, and Republicans
Speaker 1: now are making all kinds of promises of what they'll
Speaker 1: do this year. It can be hard to separate the
Speaker 1: theater from what actually matters. And it was so much happening.
Speaker 1: How do you choose what to dig into and what
Speaker 1: to ignore? Yeah, I mean, you know, the House is
Speaker 1: now controlled by Republicans. They want to be on offense
Speaker 1: against Joe Biden and the White House. They want to
Speaker 1: be on offense against the Senate. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of things they want to accomplish, but you know, one
Speaker 1: House proposals are the same as press releases. You don't
Speaker 1: actually make law that way. And so it's really not
Speaker 1: clear whether this House Republican conference is going to be
Speaker 1: able to stay united. This is the most divided a
Speaker 1: new House majority has been in a hundred years against itself,
Speaker 1: against itself. They've got to figure out what bills they
Speaker 1: can all agree on to send over to the Senate,
Speaker 1: and then they've got to figure out a strategy for
Speaker 1: keeping the government lights on, keeping the government funded. And
Speaker 1: you know, as far as actual legislation, that might take
Speaker 1: a bit of a backseat this year. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: pass a lot of bills, but I think seeing a
Speaker 1: headline that they passed a bill, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners, if they're in business, their investors, most
Speaker 1: of these bills are not going to become law. They're
Speaker 1: just ways to sort of rally the Republicans and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we want border security, Hey we want to defund the
Speaker 1: I R S. They already passed that bill. These things
Speaker 1: aren't going anywhere unless they get a deal with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Senate and in the White House. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the actual functioning of the House. One of the big
Speaker 1: things that happens when it switches parties is the party
Speaker 1: that just came into power gets to choose who leads
Speaker 1: all the committees. And that's a pretty important thing. One
Speaker 1: of the things that Kevin McCarthy kind of had to
Speaker 1: give away in order to get the votes to be
Speaker 1: Speaker is some of these committee chairmanships. Can you describe
Speaker 1: who's running what and what it means for the priorities
Speaker 1: that the Republican House is going to put forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have like the money committees, people like Kke
Speaker 1: Ranger of Texas. She's a long time appropriator. She's gonna
Speaker 1: be handling the appropriations bills this Congress. She's deciding where
Speaker 1: the money go, where the money goes. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're a defense contractor, you go through her. If you
Speaker 1: have any spending contract through Congress has to go through
Speaker 1: the Appropriations Committee. She's a long time appropriator, She's done
Speaker 1: a lot of bipartisan bills in the past. She's going
Speaker 1: to be trying to come up with a big bipartisan
Speaker 1: appropriations bill that would spend less money than last year.
Speaker 1: Is their goal. But that's a really hard to do,
Speaker 1: and corralling that is going to be difficult. One advantage
Speaker 1: she has this year is the Republicans are agreeing to
Speaker 1: do ear market people what earmarks are, because it's been
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, so airmarks are basically every member of
Speaker 1: Congress can sort of request a couple million for a
Speaker 1: project here or there. You know, maybe it's a bike path,
Speaker 1: maybe it's an interchange, maybe it's some local club that
Speaker 1: needs money for a gymnasium. They used to call it
Speaker 1: pork barrel spending exactly, And so you know, this is
Speaker 1: less than one percent of the budget, typically maybe two
Speaker 1: and it's a way to get votes because people tend
Speaker 1: to want to take credit for this stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to do if you vote no. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about your typical House member, they have
Speaker 1: very little to show for their time here. Very few
Speaker 1: House members get their own bills made into law. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, the big bills are discussed behind closed
Speaker 1: doors by the leadership. This is the one thing they
Speaker 1: can go home and point to something and say this
Speaker 1: is here. Because I was in Congress and Republicans used
Speaker 1: to say, well, we don't want this because it leads
Speaker 1: to all kinds of unnecessary spending. We hear about these
Speaker 1: Christmas tree bills where they pile on all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But now that the Republicans are in charge, suddenly well
Speaker 1: maybe it's not so terrible thing. Yeah. I mean about
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, when the Republicans were in charge for
Speaker 1: a long period of time, they used ear marks as
Speaker 1: sort of a favor factory, to the point where there
Speaker 1: were thousands and thousands of earmarks every year and people
Speaker 1: were under FBI investigation. Some people went to jail over corruption.
Speaker 1: With ear marks this there wasn't a lot of oversight.
Speaker 1: It was hard to tell who even requested them. There
Speaker 1: is more oversight this time around. There is more transparency
Speaker 1: on who's requesting them. But there is still a huge
Speaker 1: incentive to reward your campaign contributors, to reward people who
Speaker 1: have done favors for you back home. And so some
Speaker 1: people will look at that and say it's corruption, and
Speaker 1: other people would look at that and say, well, this
Speaker 1: is how politics has done and this is representation. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe your district never gets a grant funded by you know,
Speaker 1: some government agency, and you can insist I need this
Speaker 1: water project, and I know my district better than somebody else.
Speaker 1: Even with that ability to load up these bills with
Speaker 1: favors that get votes, do you think it's likely that
Speaker 1: that word by partisan is going to prevail and we're
Speaker 1: actually gonna have a spending bill that both parties can
Speaker 1: agree to. It's basically happened every year since the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Republic, with a very few exceptions. One would
Speaker 1: think that at some point there might be an agreement.
Speaker 1: I do think that going to a national park on
Speaker 1: October one is probably a bad idea for a plan.
Speaker 1: That's the start of the fiscal year. There's a decent
Speaker 1: chance we have a government shutdown. Then there's so many
Speaker 1: issues that the two sides disagree on, not just spending levels,
Speaker 1: but planned parenthood funding, border security, immigration, I r S
Speaker 1: funding is a big fight this year. There's so many
Speaker 1: things that they haven't even started negotiating yet, and I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be very hard for Kevin McCarthy to
Speaker 1: cut deals. He doesn't have margin to play with. You know,
Speaker 1: he was basically being held up by the party's conservatives
Speaker 1: who got seats on the key committees, and they got
Speaker 1: some control over the direction of some of these bills.
Speaker 1: Coming out of the House. Keep in mind there are
Speaker 1: a number of more moderate members, and if he loses
Speaker 1: five of them on a rules vote, they can't bring
Speaker 1: these bills to the floor. So it's not clear yet
Speaker 1: how united they're going to be, whether the moderates. If
Speaker 1: there's a debt limit crisis and some of these other
Speaker 1: funding issues coming up, you know, will there be a
Speaker 1: gang of five or ten or fifteen or twenty who
Speaker 1: will insist on funding the government and not having a shutdown,
Speaker 1: who insist on not having a debt limit crisis, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Because it only takes five, you know, they have, it's
Speaker 1: such a tiny majority that I think it's just going
Speaker 1: to be very hard for them to stick together for
Speaker 1: month after month after month. As you say, those arguments
Speaker 1: over government spending will go on for most of the year.
Speaker 1: But right in front of the Congress and White House
Speaker 1: now is a fight over raising the debt ceiling. The
Speaker 1: government has already hit the debt limit. Treasury Secretary Janet
Speaker 1: Yellen says she can move money around here and there
Speaker 1: to keep the checks flowing until around June, and if
Speaker 1: Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling to allow more borrowing,
Speaker 1: the us will the fault in his debt and reek
Speaker 1: havoc all over the world. Democrats want to raise it,
Speaker 1: Republicans want to use it as a way to four
Speaker 1: spending cuts. How does this all play out when you
Speaker 1: talk about the debt limit? The debt limit is something
Speaker 1: where it's very hard for McCarthy to cut any deal
Speaker 1: and keep his speakership. This was a problem for his predecessors,
Speaker 1: it's a problem for him. And you know, right now
Speaker 1: you have the Democrats insisting unknown negotiations. Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: saying I'm not going to give you anything. Senate Democrats
Speaker 1: saying similar. I mean, I don't know if they will
Speaker 1: be able to maintain that stance. Month after month after month,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama gave in two demands for two trillion dollars
Speaker 1: in spending cuts from the Republican. From the Republicans, they
Speaker 1: insisted on getting dollar for dollar to spending cuts for
Speaker 1: debt limiting crease. So you want a two trillion dollar
Speaker 1: debt limit decrease, give me a two trillion dollar spending cut.
Speaker 1: And so he agreed, in part, I think because he
Speaker 1: faced re election the next year. So we still, you know,
Speaker 1: we're waiting for Biden to jump in and say I'm
Speaker 1: definitely running. I do think that the Republicans have some
Speaker 1: leverage going into the presidential election year because when the
Speaker 1: debt limit crisis happened in even Obama's approval ratings tanked.
Speaker 1: The stock market tanked, you know, ultimately recovered, but even
Speaker 1: though House Republicans approval writings also went down, it was
Speaker 1: bad for all of Washington, and Obama ultimately cut the deal.
Speaker 1: We did not go over the cliff. We did not
Speaker 1: have an economic catastrophe, but we did have a debt downgrade.
Speaker 1: Consumer confidence took a deep fall, and Democrats will want
Speaker 1: to try to avoid that, and there are potential ways
Speaker 1: out that don't involve the House. Stephen, please stick around.
Speaker 1: We'll keep talking after the break. Defaulting on the national
Speaker 1: debt should be regarded as unthinkable. Failing to increase the
Speaker 1: debt limit would have absolutely catastrophic economic consequences. That's Treasury
Speaker 1: Secretary Janet Yelling sounding the alarm on what will happen
Speaker 1: if Congress doesn't act. Stephen, if this all feels like
Speaker 1: deja vu to our listeners, it's because this has happened
Speaker 1: before more than once. Why do we keep having this
Speaker 1: fight again and again. Basically, the debt limit is something
Speaker 1: that came into effect originally about a hundred years ago
Speaker 1: during World War One, to actually make it easier to
Speaker 1: have more debt. Before the debt limit that came about
Speaker 1: in World War One, Congress had to approve every debt issuance.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you have a new bond. Well,
Speaker 1: Congress has to pass a bill. And then they said,
Speaker 1: you know, that's too much trouble during a war. Let's
Speaker 1: give Treasury the authority to borrow up to a certain amount.
Speaker 1: Make it easier to borrow, not harder. And then decades
Speaker 1: passed and it kind of kept getting raised without much
Speaker 1: of an issue until eisen Yeah, until Eisenhower wants to
Speaker 1: build the highway system and borrow a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And there was a fight in Congress over the debt limit,
Speaker 1: and it was used for the first time as sort
Speaker 1: of like a political weapon. And back then Eisenhower had
Speaker 1: to do a workaround to keep the government funded. And
Speaker 1: they basically looked in the cushions of their couch and
Speaker 1: they found some unencumbered gold and they sent a little
Speaker 1: sheet of paper called the gold Certificate to the Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve and the Federal Reserve gave some money, and they
Speaker 1: kept the girl been running for a few months until
Speaker 1: they cut the deal. In the more recent times, the
Speaker 1: debt limit has become a political cudgel, mostly used by
Speaker 1: Republicans to try to extract spending cuts and other concessions
Speaker 1: out of Democrats when Democrats have the White House. And then,
Speaker 1: most notably in tleven, we came very close to a
Speaker 1: debt limit catastrophe about August of and ultimately Barack Obama
Speaker 1: cut this two trillion dollar spending cut deal in return
Speaker 1: for two trillion dollars in debt and remind people why
Speaker 1: it's such a big deal that we hit this debt
Speaker 1: ceiling in if we don't do something about it. Yeah, So, like,
Speaker 1: in the best case scenario, we have about a more
Speaker 1: than a trillion a year in deficits. That means basically
Speaker 1: we're borrowing a hundred billion a month on average, and
Speaker 1: and that's a big chunk of the economy. So say
Speaker 1: you sided, okay, well we're gonna instantly balance the budget.
Speaker 1: That would mean you'd have a hundred billion dollars coming
Speaker 1: out of the economy every month bills that were not
Speaker 1: paying whether it be to doctors in Medicare or social
Speaker 1: Security checks that are delayed or not going out. We're
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things the government pays for. And
Speaker 1: like the best case scenario where you do what the
Speaker 1: House has been talking about, which is some kind of
Speaker 1: debt prioritization, where we still pay the debt coupon to
Speaker 1: the bond holders, but we're not paying maybe the Medicare
Speaker 1: doctors or the veterans benefits or something else. Even in
Speaker 1: that scenario, the economy would take a huge hit because
Speaker 1: there will be a hundred billion dollars in less checks
Speaker 1: going into people's pockets. The worst case scenarios, you actually
Speaker 1: don't pay the debt coupon, and suddenly investors all around
Speaker 1: the world might say, well, maybe we shouldn't be putting
Speaker 1: our money in federal treasuries and the US default and
Speaker 1: its debt, which has never had the US actually defaults
Speaker 1: for any period of time, Then suddenly you can't base
Speaker 1: your global accoun on me on the US dollar and
Speaker 1: the federal treasuries and the rest. And it's potentially has
Speaker 1: a spiral cascading effect that you know, people like Janet
Speaker 1: yell And say could lead to a worldwide depression and
Speaker 1: or recession, and we want to avoid that. Both Republican
Speaker 1: and Democratic leaders agree. And yet you know, Kevin McCarthy says, look,
Speaker 1: we have thirty one trillion dollars in debt. We're racking
Speaker 1: up another trillion a year. We should take this moment
Speaker 1: to have an agreement to shrink it and bounce the budget.
Speaker 1: You know, that argument the actual cost savings to do that.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, you have this political argument
Speaker 1: that everyone would shake their head and say, yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds good, But then it comes down to, Okay, where's
Speaker 1: that money coming from exactly? And I think one of
Speaker 1: the big challenges that McCarthy is going to have. You know,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to pass a budget in the House. Many
Speaker 1: years we just decide not to pass a budget, and
Speaker 1: this budget resolution, you're supposed to say roughly where the
Speaker 1: money's coming from if you're going to balance the budget.
Speaker 1: You know, usually what they do is they put a
Speaker 1: bunch of magic asterisks this budget to claim that they
Speaker 1: got to a balanced budget without raising taxes. It's just
Speaker 1: going to be a very fascinating thing if he can
Speaker 1: actually get two hundred eighteen out of two two to
Speaker 1: vote for this thing, which they have not yet written,
Speaker 1: will be challenging to do. Now, we've both been around
Speaker 1: long enough to have seen how many of these debt
Speaker 1: ceiling fights, and in the end the story is always
Speaker 1: people met behind closed doors and they struck a deal,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we're all saved. Um, is there any reason
Speaker 1: to think that in the end this is going to
Speaker 1: be any different. I think that this is likely to
Speaker 1: be like a lot of other ones. One reason why
Speaker 1: you might have optimism that there's going to be a
Speaker 1: deal is you already have a number of individual House
Speaker 1: Republicans say that they don't want to have a debt
Speaker 1: limit crisis. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina,
Speaker 1: who has the Financial Services Committee, wants to avoid a
Speaker 1: debt bit default. And it only really takes four or
Speaker 1: five of them to agree with the Twitter and thirteen
Speaker 1: Democrats to cut a deal. And so I do think
Speaker 1: that there will be pressure on McCarthy to cut a
Speaker 1: deal that gives him at least a fig leaf that
Speaker 1: he can go and take to, you know, the Conservatives
Speaker 1: and say, look, we only have the House, we don't
Speaker 1: have the set up, we don't have the White House,
Speaker 1: this is the best deal I can cut. If you
Speaker 1: want to try and replace me with another Speaker, good luck,
Speaker 1: But you're not gonna get a better deal. Well, all
Speaker 1: that is going on, Republicans have also said they're going
Speaker 1: to use their new power to launch any number of
Speaker 1: investigations of Joe Biden and his administration. One of the
Speaker 1: deals McCarthy had to strike to become speaker was putting
Speaker 1: Trump loyalists on important committees. What effect is that going
Speaker 1: to have. I think it's going to make these committees
Speaker 1: sort of hyperpartisan. They can go out after the functioning
Speaker 1: of government. You know, there's the post Office delivering your
Speaker 1: mail properly, but they can also dig in on these
Speaker 1: investigations and have a very broad remit and so whether
Speaker 1: Joe Biden had a conflict of interest with his son
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden taking money from overseas interests, or whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, the handling of the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 1: Basically they can dig into almost anything. Now I think
Speaker 1: it's possible that the White House might actually want some
Speaker 1: of these red meat throwers on this committee to make
Speaker 1: Republicans look more extreme. And some of these hearings Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green was kicked off committees a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: She's back on committees. One of the committees she's going
Speaker 1: to be honest, the Oversight and Reform Committee. Same thing
Speaker 1: with Paul Gossar of Arizona. Both of them had appeared
Speaker 1: at events with Nick Fuentes, who is a white nationalist
Speaker 1: and Holocaust denier, who was an attendee on January six,
Speaker 1: for example. You know, they've had a lot of controversial
Speaker 1: statements that have basically fueled Democrats as well. Lauren Bobert,
Speaker 1: also a controversial Republican, is going to be on that
Speaker 1: committee as well. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who is the
Speaker 1: head of the Freedom Caucus, is going to be on
Speaker 1: that committee. He was one of the Republicans behind the
Speaker 1: scenes pushing very hard to find a way to keep
Speaker 1: Trump in power after the election. Before January six, his
Speaker 1: cell phone was seized by the Department of Justice. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of sort of interesting situations where
Speaker 1: folks who some of the Democrats blame for January six,
Speaker 1: for fomenting efforts to overturn the election, now having some
Speaker 1: power in the House to go after the folks who
Speaker 1: were investigating you know, I think they're trying to dent
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's approval ratings heading into next year's election. I
Speaker 1: think there's also, you know, an effort by Jim Jordan's
Speaker 1: the House Judiciary Chairman, who has been itching at the
Speaker 1: bit to sort of go after the Apartment of Justice, uh,
Speaker 1: go after its investigations when Trump was president, for investigations
Speaker 1: of Trump, you know, everything from the rate at mar
Speaker 1: Lago to how it's handling the investigations of you know,
Speaker 1: the classified documents that might be multiple committees looking at that.
Speaker 1: They're also going to be looking at things that are
Speaker 1: sort of hobby horses on the right, origins of COVID
Speaker 1: in China, the handling of COVID by Anthony Fauci. There's
Speaker 1: going to be also investigations into Order security, and there
Speaker 1: are some Republicans who actually want to impeach the Home
Speaker 1: and Security Secretary may Orcas. That could be a bit
Speaker 1: of a circus, and ultimately it's not inconceivable that the
Speaker 1: House ends up impeaching the president. Should that person stay
Speaker 1: in their job. Why raised the issue they shouldn't. So
Speaker 1: the thing that we can do is we can investigate
Speaker 1: and in that investigation could lead to an impeachment inquiry.
Speaker 1: That's Kevin McCarthy there. I think right now, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to want to go down that road. But
Speaker 1: you know, Nancy Pelosi didn't want to impeach Trump every
Speaker 1: day until she decided that she had to. So I
Speaker 1: think there are some Republicans who are looking for turnabout
Speaker 1: his fair play. And you guys went after Trump for
Speaker 1: seven years of investigations. It's time somebody went after Biden
Speaker 1: and looked at his family and their financial dealings. And
Speaker 1: I think that they want to air them out in
Speaker 1: public on prime time TV if they can. And I
Speaker 1: think that some of them look at the January six
Speaker 1: Select Committee and think it was damaging and they think
Speaker 1: they can do some similar kinds of things as well.
Speaker 1: Our conversation continues after the break. So there we have
Speaker 1: the House some of their big priorities. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: the House is on offense. We're certainly talking about how
Speaker 1: that is. You said the Senate will be on defense.
Speaker 1: So switching over to the other side of the Capitol,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Yeah, So, I mean the Senate
Speaker 1: is in the personnel business, so they're going to be
Speaker 1: confirming judges and confirming ambassadorships. The legislative agenda might be
Speaker 1: a little thinner this year than previous years. It's not
Speaker 1: to say they won't be trying things, but I think
Speaker 1: that they're mostly focused on how do we get the
Speaker 1: House to agree to increase the debt limit? How do
Speaker 1: we get the House to agree to not shut the
Speaker 1: government down. And I guess another thing too, is just
Speaker 1: the Senate saying no, no, no, to one after another
Speaker 1: of the Republican past House bills that won't ever go
Speaker 1: anywhere in the Senate right. I think one of the
Speaker 1: big questions in the Senate is at what point does
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell engage on the debt limit and on resolving
Speaker 1: some of these questions in when there were these key
Speaker 1: deadlines and John Baynard, Coast Speaker at the time, was
Speaker 1: having difficulty corralling his own folks in many of these cases,
Speaker 1: McConnell was hutting deals with then Vice President Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in back rooms to keep the government open, to avoid
Speaker 1: tax increases, to avoid a debt limit default. I could
Speaker 1: see that happening again if we're here in June and
Speaker 1: the debt limit is breached because the extraordinary measures that
Speaker 1: they traditionally buy them three or four months run out.
Speaker 1: And that's the moment where you can see the Senate say, look,
Speaker 1: the House can't figure this out with the White House.
Speaker 1: Let's try and pass something and hope the House can
Speaker 1: take it. There are also what I would call sort
Speaker 1: of like some hail Mary kinds of issues that you
Speaker 1: could see happening that folks would care about. One is immigration.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a big priorities border security for the House.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely the Senate is gonna like say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: do a big border security package without doing immigration, without
Speaker 1: doing something about the dreamer kids who have been here
Speaker 1: for many years and are sort of still stuck in limbo.
Speaker 1: Carson Cinema of eras on a Democrat turned independent recently.
Speaker 1: Key corraller of bipartisan deals last year on a whole
Speaker 1: host of issues, including immigration and marriage equality. You know,
Speaker 1: and John Cornyn, who's a senior Senate Republican, took a
Speaker 1: bipartisan group of senators to the border. They're trying to
Speaker 1: craft a bipartisan package that would include changes to how
Speaker 1: we do immigration, included more resources for border security, It's
Speaker 1: interesting in that this is a group of senators that
Speaker 1: has been pretty successful in actually crafting legislation. But as
Speaker 1: we all know, you know, immigration is one of those
Speaker 1: things where we're like zero for thirty thirty straight years.
Speaker 1: People try to do a bill and nothing happens, or
Speaker 1: very small things happened, and uh, you know, but there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of other things where you can
Speaker 1: see something happening. One of the other things to watch
Speaker 1: is Joe Mansion was not able to pass his energy
Speaker 1: permitting fast track plan for pipelines and and energy projects.
Speaker 1: This is the Democrat from West Virginia held up Biden's
Speaker 1: agenda for all those months. I remember standing in line
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four to buy gasoline to go to work.
Speaker 1: I Am not going to stand in line and wait
Speaker 1: for a battery to come from China. Part of his
Speaker 1: deal to get a climate package last year was the
Speaker 1: administration Democrats agreed to back his plan to accelerate a
Speaker 1: key pipeline in West Virginia a bunch of other projects.
Speaker 1: He is still going to be trying to revive that
Speaker 1: this year. And you've got House Republicans who could be
Speaker 1: staring at a at a long list of promises and
Speaker 1: hope for accomplishments without actually getting a lot of them
Speaker 1: across the finish line. When you look at the Congress
Speaker 1: a year from now, after Republicans have been in charge
Speaker 1: of the House, when you're closer to a presidential election,
Speaker 1: what do you think actually will get done? If anything,
Speaker 1: I think the most likely scenario is that they kick
Speaker 1: the can, you know, with some small modest attachments to
Speaker 1: that can kick, you know. And Joe Biden, I think
Speaker 1: having Democrats do better than expected in the mid terms.
Speaker 1: He's not like he's really sounding like Bill Clinton after
Speaker 1: they got shellacked in and he pivoted hard to the
Speaker 1: middle and he cut a big giant welfare reform deal.
Speaker 1: If people remember, with the House Republicans, it's possible that
Speaker 1: Biden can cut some deals with McConnell. They've worked together
Speaker 1: very well. It's possible that Kevin McCarthy can find a
Speaker 1: few things that navigate among the partisan investigations and the
Speaker 1: spending fights. I think there's a chance that they can
Speaker 1: do that on the margins. Stephen Dennis, thanks for talking
Speaker 1: with me today. It's great to be here. You can
Speaker 1: read more from Stephen Dennis at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to us here at The Big Take, the
Speaker 1: daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: shows from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Read Today's story and
Speaker 1: subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 1: Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you. Email
Speaker 1: us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Speaker 1: Vicky Bergelina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producers
Speaker 1: are Mo Barrow and Michael falerro Is. Our engineer. Original
Speaker 1: music by Leo Sidrin. I'm Westkasova. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: with another Big Take.