Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and President Biden is sending tanks to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We have one heck of a show for you today.
Speaker 1: Senator Chris Murphy stops by to tell us the unseen
Speaker 1: reality of what's really happening at the US border. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to the Washington Post Jeff Stein about what
Speaker 1: the options are in the debt ceiling negotiation. But first
Speaker 1: we have former United States Senator Al Franken. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Al Franken, Thank you. Now we just talk
Speaker 1: real fast. Yeah, we really Well, the hope is that
Speaker 1: people are listening to this on ten thousand speed and
Speaker 1: so they can barely understand what we're saying. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk really fast, So slow it down, everybody
Speaker 1: that's right, listen to us on point five. Actually listen.
Speaker 1: When I listened to podcasts, I always listen to them
Speaker 1: at one point seven five because I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: getting so much done. Well, you know, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: am a kind of a slow talker. I really am.
Speaker 1: It's just the way I am, and so I me
Speaker 1: I did um an interview with Walter Mondale on my
Speaker 1: podcast Wonderful Wonderful Man. But you know, Walter talk pretty
Speaker 1: slow too, and so I and I'm a slow talker.
Speaker 1: So I I did listen to us at the thing
Speaker 1: at one point five or something and it was perfect, right, Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. So that's the suggestion. Definitely listen to
Speaker 1: this at one point five. So I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the gift that keeps on giving the
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy Congress, or the gift that keeps on scaring
Speaker 1: the ship out of us. Well, that is also true.
Speaker 1: I mean that is I think the knife's edge about
Speaker 1: all of this. We know it's bad for democracys. In
Speaker 1: the early midterms when there were some Democrats who supported
Speaker 1: these fringe MAGA candidates, and I always felt like it
Speaker 1: was really a dangerous game that I didn't think was
Speaker 1: worth taking the chance. Oh you're you're saying trying to
Speaker 1: get them nominated in the primaries, you know, candidates like
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake and Don Baldock. I mean, thank god those
Speaker 1: guys didn't win. And I think this is the same situation.
Speaker 1: There is damage being done by this, even if it
Speaker 1: ultimately undermines Republicans, the ones that lost, the really extreme
Speaker 1: candidates that loss that I guess I didn't like the
Speaker 1: strategy of let's take as supporting the worst of them,
Speaker 1: and maybe it worked once or twice, but that's just
Speaker 1: to me advertising the worst, and I think it influences
Speaker 1: people badly. I just think you I hated that strategy
Speaker 1: and and I haven't looked at it has did it work?
Speaker 1: Did it work anywhere? It ultimately worked? But again, you
Speaker 1: can't calculate how much giving a carry Lake a larger
Speaker 1: platform could theoretically undermine democracy in the long game. And
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got carried like now. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one of the really interesting things about MAGA is
Speaker 1: that they continue to promote the people who have all
Speaker 1: lost horribly. Okay, well, I think the ones that lost
Speaker 1: really are the ones that in especially heartening was And
Speaker 1: I have a pack. I have a pack called mid
Speaker 1: West Values Pack, which I've had since two thousand five,
Speaker 1: that support Democrats and we put a lot of money
Speaker 1: into the Secretaries of State races. And wife said this
Speaker 1: the day after the election. She said, the American people
Speaker 1: said stop it, stop it, stop this chaos, and stop
Speaker 1: this denial, and I think the MAGA bases the MAGA base,
Speaker 1: and they're going to vote for those people. But to me,
Speaker 1: what people are staring at, what they're looking at is
Speaker 1: the MAGA crazy. Is that McCarthy has put on these
Speaker 1: committees that are people gonna be looking at and going like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't want this, We want you to figure out
Speaker 1: how to actually govern. Yeah. I mean it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like policy is at all interesting to any of these people. No, No,
Speaker 1: what's interesting to them is getting on TV and raising
Speaker 1: money doing that and also disrupting. And of course you
Speaker 1: mentioned the dead ceiling or did you or maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: well I want to talk about the dead ceiling because
Speaker 1: it's so sexy. Well no, I'm just kidding, but it
Speaker 1: is it. It actually is a big fucking problem. Excuse
Speaker 1: my friend. It's the scariest problem. And I think your
Speaker 1: listeners know what we're talking about. Of course, and this
Speaker 1: happened when I was there in two thousand eleven. They
Speaker 1: held the gun to her head and we actually negotiated
Speaker 1: with them, and I think that was a mistake because
Speaker 1: every time once you do that, they say, oh, I see.
Speaker 1: Every time we get to the death ceiling, and this
Speaker 1: is money we've already spent. Right The way that McCarthy
Speaker 1: talks about it on the news is very disingenuous. There
Speaker 1: was a time to negotiate it, and it's not now.
Speaker 1: This is in saying because we came close in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, as you may recall, really went to
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour and we didn't go over the cliff,
Speaker 1: but we came close enough that our bonds are downgraded
Speaker 1: by standards and poor and cost Americans billions and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars. These guys, the people who leveraged their votes
Speaker 1: to be able to hold McCarthy hostage, they're the ones
Speaker 1: that would go over the cliff. I thought McConnell was
Speaker 1: very smart when he said, don't look at me, He
Speaker 1: pointed to the house. They're the ones that are going
Speaker 1: to have to negotiate. And I think the American people
Speaker 1: are looking at these guys and going there crazy. I
Speaker 1: think this crisis comes up around June, is what I
Speaker 1: keep hearing. June July. They don't totally know when it does.
Speaker 1: I think they'll have been a drumbeat up to it,
Speaker 1: where McCarthy is going to have to reach out to
Speaker 1: reasonable and there must be what a third on their caucus.
Speaker 1: This is the thing I wanted to actually bring up
Speaker 1: to you, and I wanted to reach you. This is
Speaker 1: Aaron Blake from the Washington Post had a piece, and
Speaker 1: I think this is such an important data point. He said,
Speaker 1: the Freedom Caucuses twenty percent of the House GOP, but
Speaker 1: they will be thirty eight percent of the oversight, percent
Speaker 1: of judiciary of this of the Select COVID Panel, whatever
Speaker 1: that is where they try to put Dr Faucci in jail,
Speaker 1: and of a panel on quote unquote weaponizing of the government.
Speaker 1: And again I think the American people are looking at
Speaker 1: this going like, that's not what we want. Of Americans
Speaker 1: are vaccinated. The people dying of COVID, A large percentage
Speaker 1: of them are Republicans. There's an interesting stat which is
Speaker 1: of the fifteen states where the highest percentage of people
Speaker 1: who died were Republicans, fourteen voted for Trump of those
Speaker 1: states and the fifteenth of Georgia. And I'm kind of
Speaker 1: think that like eleven thousand, seven d eighty Republican Georgians
Speaker 1: died like the month before the election in two thousand twenty, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have always asked this question to guests
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and I never get the answer that
Speaker 1: is definitive because I don't think people really know. But
Speaker 1: the question is, like, so many people in this country
Speaker 1: have been affected by COVID, right, you know, we have
Speaker 1: more than a million people in this country died of COVID.
Speaker 1: Then we have people with long COVID, then we have
Speaker 1: people who have relatives who have died of COVID. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's such a large quantity that in my mind, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think of millions of people in this country
Speaker 1: have been touched by this virus that the Republican Party
Speaker 1: said was nothing and not to worry about. I think
Speaker 1: what they're now going to say is that Fauci caused that.
Speaker 1: That they're going to be going a gain of function, right, right,
Speaker 1: and so, which is a thing it's not related to
Speaker 1: causing the virus, though they're gonna say it actually did
Speaker 1: cause it, which is it's a technology to change viruses,
Speaker 1: to study them to see how to eradicate them if
Speaker 1: they morph into more dangerous ones. And then the dangerous
Speaker 1: one got out of the lab. And that's going to
Speaker 1: be their story that they're giving. And I hope they
Speaker 1: call Faucci, Faucci. I think Americans who aren't Maga really
Speaker 1: trust Faucci and trust science. You know, it does seem
Speaker 1: to me what we saw in these midrums, and we
Speaker 1: were just talking about this was there was. It's certainly
Speaker 1: in purple states, a real rejection of the stupid. I mean,
Speaker 1: Michigan is a great example, like those three women won
Speaker 1: by a lot. But even Wisconsin, Wisconsin is is very tight,
Speaker 1: very down the middle state and jerrymandered up the wazoo.
Speaker 1: There was some Kennedy School study that basically compared democracy
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin into the Congo because they're jerrymander so badly
Speaker 1: that for Democrats to get even in the state legislature,
Speaker 1: they have to win by like ten points if you
Speaker 1: look at a statewide race like the governor and the
Speaker 1: governor one by four points by being boring. He said, wow,
Speaker 1: is he boring? He boy, he accomplished that. Remember he
Speaker 1: hosted at Wisconsin, hosted the virtual convention, and I remember
Speaker 1: he gave like a welcoming thing, and I went like,
Speaker 1: holy mackerel. But he's a great guy. And Ben Wickler,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know Ben, he's been on
Speaker 1: this podcast he's amazing. Ben worked with the lies and
Speaker 1: Lyne liars who tell them when he was a student
Speaker 1: at Harvard. And uh is now the chairman of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party in Wisconsin. And they have a big, big
Speaker 1: election coming up in April for the Supreme Court because
Speaker 1: this will decide majority on the Supreme Court in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and they can undo a lot of what was started
Speaker 1: to be done back in you know, after two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten. What happened two thousand ten in Michigan is
Speaker 1: an interesting story because in two thousand and ten, we
Speaker 1: had passed the A C A. Right, the A C
Speaker 1: A was amazingly unpopular because a lot of it was
Speaker 1: about lying about what it was, you know, down panels
Speaker 1: that you know, I'm gonna pull pull the plug on Grandma,
Speaker 1: you know, and and people didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: And we lost. We we lost on the A C
Speaker 1: A until two thousand eighteen. We lost, we lost, and
Speaker 1: and when we won in two thousand eighteen big time,
Speaker 1: because they tried to repeal it. And then when they
Speaker 1: did that, people saw what it was and people realize,
Speaker 1: oh my god, free healthcare. Well, this is this is
Speaker 1: guarantee that you know that I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: rejected because I have a pre existing condition, and when
Speaker 1: Republicans tried to they didn't guarantee that, and people actually
Speaker 1: got to see what it was when it was almost
Speaker 1: taken away. But until then we just kept losing on it,
Speaker 1: and and we lost big on in two thousand tens
Speaker 1: it passed and they were lying about it. People didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was. They just were buying the lies.
Speaker 1: And so there are states like Wisconsin, in Ohio and
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and Michigan that all went very red in those
Speaker 1: elections and the state legislatures. Look over and the fact
Speaker 1: that now Michigan has a state legislature that is run
Speaker 1: that is that is all blue and as well and
Speaker 1: the women, you know, the Secretary of State and the
Speaker 1: attorney general and the governor are all all women. That
Speaker 1: is a a huge, huge transformation. But we still have
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin and in Ohio states that are just been
Speaker 1: jerrymandered so badly that it's impossible for Republicans to be
Speaker 1: to lose the state legislature. I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: because we're talking about state parties, and that I have
Speaker 1: quite a bee in my bonnet about this. During these
Speaker 1: mid terms, we saw Democrats really overperformed, really killed it,
Speaker 1: with the exception of two states Florida, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I had been hearing what a shit show it was there,
Speaker 1: and New York State. I mean, what the funk man?
Speaker 1: I blame the Jews. This is funny because we're both Jewish.
Speaker 1: That's why it's funny, folks. Do you see we're kidding?
Speaker 1: Comedy plus yes, continue New York. That's a heartbreak because
Speaker 1: what happened in New York was Democrats wrote a map
Speaker 1: and it was like one Democrat who wrote this map
Speaker 1: that was so extreme. It was jerrymandered for us, right,
Speaker 1: and as they do in the states I'm talking about Ohio, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania. It's Republicans do everywhere. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 1: were doing it. It was so partisan the way it
Speaker 1: was drawn that the New York State Supreme Court said no,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty conservative state court thanks to Andrew Cuomo.
Speaker 1: But continue, yes, Well, what they did was they probably
Speaker 1: drew some pretty you know, close to what you would
Speaker 1: do is fair. And then we kept we lost a
Speaker 1: number of seats. We could control the House if it
Speaker 1: weren't for California and New York and but part of
Speaker 1: the New York I had my judiciary council. Josh Riley
Speaker 1: ran in New York nineteen and he ran ahead of
Speaker 1: Hoco by like six points and lost by one. Blossie
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned this in some sort of a peak
Speaker 1: that New York governor may have cost us the house
Speaker 1: because you know, and Josh was, I hope he runs
Speaker 1: again because he's he was my judiciary council. They ran ads,
Speaker 1: and this is when I trace like where we started
Speaker 1: to lose our democracy. Citizens United is a big part
Speaker 1: of this. And there's so much money run against him
Speaker 1: in ads that were about crime, and he was my
Speaker 1: judiciary council, and they kept basically saying he wants to
Speaker 1: defund the police. When I was in judiciary and he
Speaker 1: was my counsel, we funded the police. We did something
Speaker 1: called you know what crisis intervention training is, right, what christis.
Speaker 1: Intervention training is basically training cops to recognize when they're
Speaker 1: in a situation that's fueled by either mental health problems
Speaker 1: or drugs or something like that, and how to defuse situations,
Speaker 1: de escalate. And this money had expired and we I
Speaker 1: and I didn't a bipartisan way with corn and we
Speaker 1: got lots of funding for Christ's intervention training and also
Speaker 1: for bulletproof vest. This is what I did. And they
Speaker 1: kept running these ads, which is Judge Riley and his
Speaker 1: his allies want to defund the police and then well
Speaker 1: he didn't, but his allies suppose whoever they are, and
Speaker 1: then they would roll this rolling super over him defund
Speaker 1: The police would be over his face and they would
Speaker 1: darken his face and they would slow down some video
Speaker 1: of him to make him look sinister. And this is
Speaker 1: like the least sinister person in the world, heart of goal.
Speaker 1: He's from the district, grew up in the district. He uh,
Speaker 1: maybe the purest guy I know. And they but there's
Speaker 1: tons and tons of this dark money. Of course, we
Speaker 1: tried to have at least have disclosure of dark money,
Speaker 1: and Republicans fought that this you know, that's when we
Speaker 1: that's part of what sent us down this this road
Speaker 1: that in Shelby County and all that stuff of our
Speaker 1: democracy being under under threat, and of course what McConnell
Speaker 1: did on the Supreme Court. Right. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Al Franken for joining us. I hope you'll come back absolutely. Molly,
Speaker 1: thank you Chris Murphy is the junior Senator from Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Senator Chris Murphy, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. We're delighted. You know, we've just
Speaker 1: had two mass shootings in rapid succession. You have been
Speaker 1: really on the front lines of trying to legislate. Where
Speaker 1: are we I mean, first of all, we're in this
Speaker 1: place where the country pays attention to the epidemic of
Speaker 1: gun violence only when there are mass shootings. I know
Speaker 1: we belabor this point, but it bears repeating that every
Speaker 1: single day we're losing a hundred and ten plus people
Speaker 1: to gun violence. Most of those are suicides, homicides, accidental shootings.
Speaker 1: These mass shootings are awful, but that's not the actual
Speaker 1: story of what's happening in this country at large. Where
Speaker 1: are we? Were in a race? Um, we are passing
Speaker 1: more anti gun violence legislation than ever states surpassing laws.
Speaker 1: We passed the first federal law of substance in thirty years.
Speaker 1: But we're in a race against a flood of guns
Speaker 1: into our communities. You know, in ten years ago, eight
Speaker 1: thousand guns were sold on an annual basis. Today that
Speaker 1: numbers twenty thousand guns, and so there is just a
Speaker 1: ubiquity of firear in our communities today such that ordinary
Speaker 1: disputes and beeps between kids are turning into gunfights. People
Speaker 1: whose brains are breaking have easy access to weapons. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that's our issue right now. The laws are getting
Speaker 1: better in most places, but the number of firearms out
Speaker 1: there is devastatingly high, and that's really driving the higher
Speaker 1: rates of gun violence, I think, as much as anything else.
Speaker 1: So how can you get rid of all the guns
Speaker 1: or at least, you know, decrease the number of gun sales.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's the issue, well, I was, and
Speaker 1: I think there's a very broad conversation that we should
Speaker 1: have in this country about the sort of fetish around
Speaker 1: guns that exists and whether or not we're comfortable as
Speaker 1: a nation being, you know, so cavalier about our relationship
Speaker 1: with weapons, whether we're comfortable continuing to romanticize firearms. But
Speaker 1: we also know that laws, you make a difference, even
Speaker 1: with all of these weapons in circulation. So Connecticut, you know,
Speaker 1: has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
Speaker 1: Let's take a state like Florida, some of the loosest.
Speaker 1: Conneidica has a gun violence rate that's four hundred percent lower,
Speaker 1: maybe lower than Florida. That's stunning. Even with the loose
Speaker 1: national laws. What we know is that if you're just
Speaker 1: a little bit more careful about who can get their
Speaker 1: hands on a gun, if you stop the assault weapons
Speaker 1: from being sold in your gun stores, you can save
Speaker 1: a lot of lives. So you know, to me, it's
Speaker 1: just an invitation to continue to change the laws. It's
Speaker 1: not going to take all those guns out of circulation.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these crimes, especially the mass crimes,
Speaker 1: are committed by people who bought the guns, you know,
Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks, a couple of months of
Speaker 1: the crime. So if you're if you stop selling them
Speaker 1: to the wrong people, you actually can stop a lot,
Speaker 1: not all, but a lot of these um of the shootings,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence and especially with a lot
Speaker 1: of these shootings that there's a domestic violence component. And
Speaker 1: I mean we see this again and again and again
Speaker 1: with women, you know. I mean even there was some
Speaker 1: recently a case, you know where this guy murdered his
Speaker 1: whole family. I mean, this is something we see a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there any way to connect any of
Speaker 1: this gun legislation to preventing domestic violence. You know, what
Speaker 1: we know is that if you have a gun in
Speaker 1: your house, you are five to ten times more likely
Speaker 1: to be the victim of a domestic violence murder. And
Speaker 1: we really started to address this problem finally last year.
Speaker 1: So in the gun safety bill that we passed in
Speaker 1: the summer of two two, again the first substantial gun
Speaker 1: safety bill that passed Congress in thirty years, we closed
Speaker 1: something called the boyfriend loophole. There is a big loophole
Speaker 1: in the background checks law. It basically allowed for domestic
Speaker 1: abusers who committed misdemeanors um not felonies, misdemeanors to continue
Speaker 1: to own their guns and buy new guns. The problem
Speaker 1: is many serious domestic violence crimes that really are felonies
Speaker 1: are pled down to misdemeans. So there are just tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of men out there who have committed vicious
Speaker 1: acts of domestic violence, who can buy guns and who
Speaker 1: can keep their guns. That is over so all across
Speaker 1: the country. Those people are being dispossessed of their guns. Now,
Speaker 1: that's going to take a while for law enforcement to
Speaker 1: go through that process, but it will be the most
Speaker 1: substantial thing we've done to try to depress the rates
Speaker 1: of gun violence connected to domestic violence. Do you think
Speaker 1: there's a chance for an assault weapon VAN or something
Speaker 1: to that effect ever being you know, passed on a
Speaker 1: federal level or now. I don't think there's a chance.
Speaker 1: I think it's a certainty. I see, um, the anti
Speaker 1: gun violence movement, as you know, one of the great
Speaker 1: social change movements of this country's history, not unlike the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement of the marriage equality movement. We have
Speaker 1: really only been in existence for ten years, right. We
Speaker 1: really are a creature of Sandy Hook, And in those
Speaker 1: ten years we've made pretty substantial progress. We are now
Speaker 1: more powerful than the gun lobby, and so I think
Speaker 1: we're on a trajectory through which we will ultimately get
Speaker 1: universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons. It
Speaker 1: might take another five to ten years to get there,
Speaker 1: but I just think the American public have made up
Speaker 1: their mind that the current laws don't work. I think
Speaker 1: the gun lobby is decreasing rapidly in its impact. I
Speaker 1: think our movement is growing stronger, and ultimately, I think
Speaker 1: democracy gets its way when seventy eight percent of Americans
Speaker 1: have made up their minds. So is it in the
Speaker 1: next two years. Probably not, but I just think we're
Speaker 1: on a path to get things like an assault weapons
Speaker 1: ban back on the books. So I want to ask
Speaker 1: you this mid term election was sort of I found
Speaker 1: it very comforting, and I thought that a lot of
Speaker 1: voting that happened was people in swing states rejecting trumps
Speaker 1: Um and the extremism. You are. In the Senate, there
Speaker 1: are some really wacky, trumpy senators who have come in.
Speaker 1: I mean they've come from very red states. A lot
Speaker 1: of the really scary ones did not get elected from
Speaker 1: the swing states. But there are still I mean, you
Speaker 1: still have to work with people that, I mean whether
Speaker 1: or not they believe the stuff they've said, some pretty
Speaker 1: appalling stuff when they were running for office. How do
Speaker 1: you do that? Yeah, the Senate is very different than
Speaker 1: the House right now because you have fewer of these
Speaker 1: wackos in the Senate than in the House. But the
Speaker 1: problem is the Republican Party isn't really sending dealmakers compromise
Speaker 1: makers to the Senate any longer. And so if you
Speaker 1: look at the last couple of classes of new Republicans editors,
Speaker 1: they are filled largely with people that were endorsed by
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, people that are on the most extreme wing
Speaker 1: of the party. Now you still have a sort of
Speaker 1: legacy Republican senators that want to do deals, and some
Speaker 1: Republican senators who kind of hadn't been interested in deals
Speaker 1: in the past are more interested in them now because
Speaker 1: they don't want that crazy wing to take over. So
Speaker 1: we still have the opportunity to legislate in the Senate.
Speaker 1: And the good news is that, you know, somebody liked
Speaker 1: John Cornyn or Tom Tillois who maybe ten years ago
Speaker 1: or five years ago, you know, weren't part of a
Speaker 1: lot of these bipartisan groups working on compromises to big
Speaker 1: issues like guns and immigration, are now more interested in
Speaker 1: doing that because they really are, you know, worried that
Speaker 1: the you know, more recalcitran, more extreme wing of the
Speaker 1: party is taking over. So there's been an interesting reaction
Speaker 1: from some Republicans to this phenomenon of Trump endorsed candidates
Speaker 1: taking over. It's an amazing thing because you know, they
Speaker 1: they can't win, right, I mean, they're very unpopular. It's
Speaker 1: just that you have this primary system where you get
Speaker 1: these zalads who then can't win in a general, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not complaining, but I mean the people,
Speaker 1: you know, you do have this intractable situation. Yeah, and listen,
Speaker 1: none of it's good for our country. You know, We've
Speaker 1: got to find a way such that people who want
Speaker 1: government to work are rewarded. I mean, it's this interesting
Speaker 1: phenomenon in which in in our party, you know, our
Speaker 1: primary voters, you know, are still interested in pragmatists, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, Joe Biden ran as a pragmatist. There were
Speaker 1: candidates way to the left, candidates much more ideologically strident
Speaker 1: than him, and our party decided that we want to
Speaker 1: send somebody to Washington's gonna work with Republicans. Republican primary
Speaker 1: voters seem to the opposite right. I mean, they have
Speaker 1: no interest in electing or nominating candidates that are gonna
Speaker 1: work with Democrats. And it's a by product of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, you know, becoming devoid of ideas. You know,
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years in my sort of political lifetime,
Speaker 1: I've seen the Republican Party go from a party of
Speaker 1: bad ideas to a party of no ideas other than
Speaker 1: the destruction of government. Right, that's sort of the only
Speaker 1: idea that's left in the Republican Party is just kill government,
Speaker 1: just strip it down to its bare bones. And the
Speaker 1: result of that is that the only candidates that can
Speaker 1: win their primaries are the candidates that are literally running
Speaker 1: for office in order to destroy government from within. Yes, agreed,
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about you went
Speaker 1: to the Southern border. I feel like every time I
Speaker 1: say the word southern border, I don't even want to
Speaker 1: say the word Southern border because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: we're going into a Fox News talking point, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: for them. But I do want to say that in
Speaker 1: my mind, we have this very tight labor market. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants people to come and work. We have this immigration
Speaker 1: crisis is because of Republicans inability to legislate and to
Speaker 1: make a deal. But what did you see there when
Speaker 1: you went there? Talk to me about it so well?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's just quickly like two sides
Speaker 1: to this. Right. There's that side you identified, which is
Speaker 1: the economic and moral imperative for America to continue it's
Speaker 1: generous immigration policy, the economic comparative type labor market. Economic
Speaker 1: greatness historically in this country dependent on bringing smart people,
Speaker 1: industrious people to hear from everywhere and then there's the
Speaker 1: moral imperative, which is that the genius of this nation
Speaker 1: is our sort of multi ethnic, multi religious, multi racial legacy,
Speaker 1: and let's continue that because that's a great part of America.
Speaker 1: But the flip side of it is that in a
Speaker 1: multi ethnic nation, in a nation that's a melting pot, right,
Speaker 1: that is, it is sort of just made for conflict,
Speaker 1: made for tension. And so what are the ways to
Speaker 1: sort of keep our cohesion is to be clear about
Speaker 1: what the pathways are to become part of our nation,
Speaker 1: to become part of the club. And when it becomes
Speaker 1: really confusing as to what those pathways are and they
Speaker 1: just don't look just and fair any longer, it kind
Speaker 1: of tears apart at a country that is already a
Speaker 1: little difficult to stitch together. And so I do think
Speaker 1: it makes sense to sort of acknowledge that the current
Speaker 1: system is not working and fix it. And I think
Speaker 1: that's good for American cohesion. I think it's also good
Speaker 1: for the economy. And so what I see, you know,
Speaker 1: a just way more people coming across the border than
Speaker 1: we've seen in a long time, in a different way,
Speaker 1: you know, folks not trying to sneak across as much
Speaker 1: as they are now just crossing the border, waiting for
Speaker 1: border patrol to come and find them and applying for asylum,
Speaker 1: knowing that that asylum process is going to take four
Speaker 1: to five six years, So even if they don't qualify,
Speaker 1: they get four or five six years of working in
Speaker 1: the United States and sending money back home. That doesn't
Speaker 1: feel fair to many Americans. But then also a crazy
Speaker 1: new diversity of geography, meaning in Yuma, Arizona, next seconds
Speaker 1: of the sixth most frequent crossers, there were Russians showing
Speaker 1: up at the Arizona border and Mexicans. Right now, I
Speaker 1: had no idea number one. And also, don't Republicans love Russians? Well,
Speaker 1: and we're not exactly you know, sure who all these
Speaker 1: Russians are, but yes they do. But there's there's Becky's,
Speaker 1: there's Indians. It just shows you sort of how unstable
Speaker 1: the world is that people are willing to come here
Speaker 1: through that pathway from all over. But it also means
Speaker 1: the job of the border patrol and the immigration this
Speaker 1: is a lot harder right now, and so you've just
Speaker 1: got to find a way to sort of manage these
Speaker 1: more diverse and bigger flows in a better way. That
Speaker 1: probably means processing these asylum cases a lot faster, which
Speaker 1: means more resources, which is something Republicans don't tend to
Speaker 1: be interested in. But that's, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: clear takeaways. They want to spend money on the southern border,
Speaker 1: but they don't really want to spend money on processing
Speaker 1: and having staffing. They're right, they want to spend it
Speaker 1: on like a wall with lots of spikes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like the wall with spikes doesn't work. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, I mean, we we went down to
Speaker 1: the border, and you know, we saw the places where
Speaker 1: you go around and over and under and through and um.
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is, so long as
Speaker 1: we have an asylum process, everybody who being persecuted or
Speaker 1: has a fear for their life from the country that
Speaker 1: they're coming from as a right to apply for asylum
Speaker 1: in the United States, no matter if there's a wall
Speaker 1: or not. And so unless Republicans are proposing to end
Speaker 1: our asylum wall, which some are but most aren't, then
Speaker 1: you're still going to have these huge numbers presenting themselves
Speaker 1: at the border because they have the right to show
Speaker 1: up to a portive entry. The gap in the wall
Speaker 1: and say I want to apply for asylum. So the
Speaker 1: wall just doesn't matter any longer because it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: people sneaking into the country. It's people showing up and
Speaker 1: turning themselves over to border patrol and applying for asylum.
Speaker 1: So you've just got to figure out how to reform
Speaker 1: the asylum process. That's the biggest problem. And there's no
Speaker 1: appetite on the Republican side to do that whatsoever. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe there is, there's some of the Senate. Let me
Speaker 1: say there's not. They may not be appetite in the House,
Speaker 1: but there may be appetite in the Senate because you know,
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is trying to move these asylum
Speaker 1: cases through the system faster. And so for Republicans they
Speaker 1: like that because it is true that some of the
Speaker 1: people who are waiting for the asylum claim for four
Speaker 1: or five years end up staying in the country beyond
Speaker 1: their legal ability. But for us, it also is better
Speaker 1: to just have these claims, you know, litigated faster, so
Speaker 1: that people know, you know, earlier, whether they are approved,
Speaker 1: and you know, then they can actually stay in the
Speaker 1: country legally work instead of retreat into the shadows it's
Speaker 1: such an impossible situation. I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1: I have one last question. You're running for re election.
Speaker 1: I am running for re election. I'm not doing like
Speaker 1: a big splash the announcement or anything. I love this job,
Speaker 1: and you know, luckily, I think I'm getting better at
Speaker 1: it as time it was on. This will be your
Speaker 1: third term, right, it will be my third term, and
Speaker 1: you know, I feel really lucky to have the job,
Speaker 1: and I'll feel really lucky if people give me a
Speaker 1: shot to do it for another six years. Your crew
Speaker 1: is kind of Brian Schotts, right, I mean, like bigger
Speaker 1: than Brian shots. I mean, he's not like he's not
Speaker 1: enough to meet a fulfilling life for the Senate. So
Speaker 1: I feel like him and Corey book Are are your squad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Booker and Heinrich and Jilla Brand, those are kind of
Speaker 1: the crew that you know, we came in around the
Speaker 1: same time together and have spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: over the over the years. Yeah. Over the last year though,
Speaker 1: I have spent you know, probably more time with John
Speaker 1: Corny and Tom Taillis and Kirsten Cinema between the gun
Speaker 1: Bill and the trips to the boarder than I have
Speaker 1: with Brian and Cory and Martin. But yes, sort of
Speaker 1: my original you know friends sets. When I need to
Speaker 1: move a couch, you know that I can't carry alone,
Speaker 1: I'm calling Brian Corey. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Chris Murphy thanks. I know you, our dear listeners are
Speaker 1: very busy and you don't have time to sort through
Speaker 1: the hundreds of pieces of pundentry tweak. This is why
Speaker 1: every week I put together a newsletter of my five
Speaker 1: favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you
Speaker 1: will love having this in your inbox every Friday. So
Speaker 1: sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and click
Speaker 1: the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast politics
Speaker 1: pod dot com. Jeff Stein is the White House economics
Speaker 1: reporter for the Washington Post. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Jeff Steint. It's let's talk about the Giant quech. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves to talk about the Giant coin. It's on everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: It's a great story because it's an amazing story. Give
Speaker 1: us the backstory. Its debt ceiling giant coin. But give
Speaker 1: us the backstory, please. The story of the coin goes
Speaker 1: back to eleven, when the Obama administration first had this
Speaker 1: sort of major crisis with House Republicans over raising the
Speaker 1: debt limit. It was a very different political context than
Speaker 1: we're in now, but essentially, the Republicans, having swept Congress
Speaker 1: in we're demanding major concessions from the Oban administration's cuts
Speaker 1: to Social Security and Medicare that the Aboma administration did
Speaker 1: did entertain. And so it gave rise to this question of,
Speaker 1: you know, the US has a limit on what it
Speaker 1: can borrow, and so people were all over the place
Speaker 1: brainstorming how does the Obama administration how could they theoretically
Speaker 1: get around this question of needing Congress to approve an
Speaker 1: increase in what the U. S Government is statutorially allowed
Speaker 1: to borrow without you know, giving into Republicans demands that
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, economists and Democrats hate and
Speaker 1: think are really that for for millions of people? And
Speaker 1: so Carlos Mucha is the verified originator of this idea.
Speaker 1: He's an attorney and believe in New York City, and
Speaker 1: he came up with this idea that essentially the US
Speaker 1: government Congress approved in the in and the two thousand's
Speaker 1: a law that allows the US Treasury to basically meant
Speaker 1: novelty coins and recoup a profit from the novelty coins.
Speaker 1: I think we should take a step back from our
Speaker 1: involvement with novelty coins to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the dead ceiling. So we we officially hit it this
Speaker 1: week or last. We officially hit it last Thursday. But
Speaker 1: because of extraordinary measures, Jannet Yellen can keep this whole
Speaker 1: fiasco a k a. The United States government going until June,
Speaker 1: when we will have an economic showdown to end all
Speaker 1: economic showdowns, which will involve jacket lest Jim Jordan jumping
Speaker 1: up and down obviously explain to our listeners why the
Speaker 1: dead ceiling is a made up thing. So Congress has
Speaker 1: passed two laws that seem completely contradictory. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: they've said to the administration, to the executive branch, you
Speaker 1: have to spend on these things, right whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: all the things that the government spent the trillan's fortunately
Speaker 1: dollars a year that we spend money on. And then
Speaker 1: simultaneously Congress has said you can only borrow up to
Speaker 1: a certain amount. In this case, it's about thirty one
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. And so the math of the first part
Speaker 1: of this right, what Congress has told the administration it
Speaker 1: can borrow and spend. What it's required to borrow and
Speaker 1: spend is in excess of what it is also telling
Speaker 1: the administration that it is actually allowed to borrow against
Speaker 1: its borrowing limits. So this is the core of the
Speaker 1: conflict where we've had we had this impass where it's
Speaker 1: impossible for the administration to simultaneously maintain all of the
Speaker 1: spending and revenue that you know, and and tax collection
Speaker 1: that Comress has told it to do, and also at
Speaker 1: the same time not borrow an access of what Congress
Speaker 1: has told it that it can borrow an excess of.
Speaker 1: And so what the administration is doing now, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned Jenny Yellens, has started extraordinary measures which essentially allow
Speaker 1: them to do some sort of just basically playing around
Speaker 1: with money, moving funds around to prevent us from going
Speaker 1: above that borrowing limit there. You know, they're they're sort
Speaker 1: of technical things that including you know, not reinvesting a
Speaker 1: retirement fund for federal employees. Once the crisis passed, that
Speaker 1: will be made whole. But the upshot is that we're
Speaker 1: kind of moving money around to maintain all of the
Speaker 1: funding obligations withoutgoing about the borrowing limit. So we we've
Speaker 1: already hit the maximum amount we can borrow, and so
Speaker 1: you know, if we get any closer, um, you know it,
Speaker 1: once we exhaust these extra maring measures that allow us
Speaker 1: to move money around, then we're going to be at
Speaker 1: a real crisis point where the government is going to
Speaker 1: be saying, we have millions of payment requests coming in,
Speaker 1: but we cannot borrow any more money because Congress has
Speaker 1: told us we can't legally. Yeah, it's an amazing, amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I want you to explain to our listeners why the
Speaker 1: Republican way of explaining the debt ceiling is so disingenuous.
Speaker 1: You know what the Republicans would say is, you know,
Speaker 1: they are using the threat of the of the debt
Speaker 1: limit to you know, bringing in what they see as
Speaker 1: this catastrophic problem in America and you know in the
Speaker 1: American government, which is that we have. You know, there
Speaker 1: are thirty one trillion dollar debt. What the problem with
Speaker 1: that is is that, as you're alluding to, all of
Speaker 1: this spending has already been approved by Congress, including an
Speaker 1: eight trillion dollar run up of the debt under President Trump,
Speaker 1: which was the largest under any president in American history.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think really gets missed from this
Speaker 1: discussion that is really important to emphasize is that Republicans
Speaker 1: are playing games with this debt limit. They're they're risking
Speaker 1: the possibility that we default in our obligations for the
Speaker 1: first time in US history and cause a market collapse.
Speaker 1: And and what Jane Allen said would quote undoubtedly be
Speaker 1: a recession, right, and it did in eleven There's historical
Speaker 1: precedents for this. I mean, it didn't cause a recession,
Speaker 1: but it caused the market to crash and billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to be lost. Yeah, we know that there are
Speaker 1: real risks here at a minimum, And I just think
Speaker 1: it's a really important thing to communicate is Republicans are saying,
Speaker 1: over and over look, we need a way to force
Speaker 1: a conversation. They say, you know, the Republicans say, we
Speaker 1: agree that the debt limit needs to be raised, but
Speaker 1: we just want to use this opportunity that it creates
Speaker 1: to have a force a discussion about reigning and spending.
Speaker 1: And what I what I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: would say is that you know what, I think what
Speaker 1: gets mistialized that that there is an opportunity to do that.
Speaker 1: It's called the government appropriations, and you have had shutdowns
Speaker 1: of the federal government that you know, our your listeners
Speaker 1: will be from emiliar with when the Parks Services closes.
Speaker 1: And there's issues with T s A. And it's a
Speaker 1: real problem, and it's a real thing, but it's not
Speaker 1: the existential threat to the American economy that this threat represents.
Speaker 1: And so for Republicans to say we need to use
Speaker 1: the debt limit to do this, I would ask them,
Speaker 1: and we were trying to understand, why don't you just
Speaker 1: use the annual process of deciding funding for the federal
Speaker 1: government for that exact purposes. You can force the conversation
Speaker 1: and you're not risking a global recession as part of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I also think that it's really disingenuous because
Speaker 1: Republicans agreed to these nonfunded tax cuts under Trump, and
Speaker 1: they in fact agreed to the debt seal raising the
Speaker 1: dead ceiling twice under Trump. Yeah, I mean, there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that Republicans have had a hand in running
Speaker 1: up the debt, and there's no doubt that Democrats have
Speaker 1: had a had a major hand in that too. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the interesting question here is like, to what
Speaker 1: extent our Republicans right at our debt is out of control?
Speaker 1: And I think you find, you know, even on the left,
Speaker 1: kind of mixed responses to that. You know, the borrowing
Speaker 1: has come down, you know, since the height of COVID,
Speaker 1: but that you know, the administration is trying to claim credit. Look,
Speaker 1: the federal deficit came down from three trillion to one
Speaker 1: trillion under Biden. I kind of look askance at that
Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, we had a generational COVID crisis
Speaker 1: where every country in the world ran up on the
Speaker 1: president of deficits that have since come down. And for
Speaker 1: the buying administration to tow deficit savings as a result
Speaker 1: of that is I think a little suspect. I also think,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of economists would tell you that
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that this can solely be solved from tax
Speaker 1: increases on the rich may may not quite be true
Speaker 1: in Scandinavia, where they have much much higher revenue as
Speaker 1: a percent of GDP and a much more robust welfare
Speaker 1: system and a much more people would say adequate um
Speaker 1: protections for the elderly and the sick and people without
Speaker 1: healthcare it's not a dystopia. They they also have broader
Speaker 1: based taxes, which is obviously not dystopia. But it's not
Speaker 1: just higher taxes on the rich. It's higher taxes on
Speaker 1: the upper middle class in the middle class as well.
Speaker 1: And we have the country have been reticent to go there.
Speaker 1: But that's probably if we're going to actually maintain higher
Speaker 1: spending levels where we need to start thinking about going.
Speaker 1: If we want to look more like Scandinavia. Yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I theoretically agree, but I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be hard to convince anyone in either party
Speaker 1: to get excited about that. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is really interesting here is that during
Speaker 1: Clinton we were not adding to the dead. There was
Speaker 1: a period in American history where we weren't adding to
Speaker 1: the dead, and that was Glinton. That's true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Republicans would say only to take the Republican signs,
Speaker 1: But what they would say is that the deficit reduction
Speaker 1: measures that were achieved under Clinton were the results of
Speaker 1: gingrich sweep of Congress, after which Clinton was sort of
Speaker 1: in a position where he had to They would say,
Speaker 1: at least east make these deals with Republicans that cut
Speaker 1: spending substantially while in exchange for for raising taxes in
Speaker 1: the nineties six and nine budget deals. But it is true.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, like the last president to balance
Speaker 1: the books was a Democrat, and Bush ran up enormous
Speaker 1: debts in pursuit of um not just the Iraq War,
Speaker 1: in the war in Afghanistan, but massive new spending measures
Speaker 1: through Medicare Part D and enormous tax cuts under Bush
Speaker 1: as well, although again most of those were extended by
Speaker 1: the Obama administration, which also ran up. When we talked
Speaker 1: to the Biden people, I think they would say that
Speaker 1: they see an opportunity to reclaim that sort of Clintonian
Speaker 1: model of responsible governance, and they are very eager to
Speaker 1: be like, we want to bring down the deficit. There
Speaker 1: are people on the left who say this is not important,
Speaker 1: this is not a fight worth having. That is not
Speaker 1: the view, at least a stated view of the Biden
Speaker 1: White House. They agree that that the debt is a
Speaker 1: problem that they wanted to be reduced and brought under control.
Speaker 1: The problem is, I think that they'll face, is that much,
Speaker 1: you know, completely unlike the nineties, there's just zero belief
Speaker 1: that Republicans will be willing to go along with anything
Speaker 1: that would involve, you know, any sort of higher taxes.
Speaker 1: Not that Inglich was a big tax hiker, but that
Speaker 1: and you know, frankly that that you know, the party's
Speaker 1: mood has shifted on spending. I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people look at what Clinton did to balance
Speaker 1: the books in the nineties, in particular cutting welfare, and
Speaker 1: say this was an enormous disaster that has really increased poverty,
Speaker 1: child poverty. You know, poor black mothers have suffered tremendously
Speaker 1: as a results of some of the deals that Clinton
Speaker 1: cut and this Biden White House I think, for a
Speaker 1: lot of good reasons is saying we don't We're not
Speaker 1: really willing to pay that price for the mantle of
Speaker 1: fiscal responsibility. Yeah, I mean also fisical. I mean I
Speaker 1: tend I'm kind of of the school that a lot
Speaker 1: of this is bullshit anyway, and that you know, we
Speaker 1: should I mean, I just think it's better to help people.
Speaker 1: But that's my own personal belief. I just am curious.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that makes me feel like we
Speaker 1: are heading towards imminent disaster with this dead ceiling crisis,
Speaker 1: which is everywhere. Is that it just seems like Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy cannot He can barely get things he found equivocally
Speaker 1: wants done. How is he going to be able to
Speaker 1: get something like this past when he's already made deals
Speaker 1: saying he won't. God, Molly, I welcome to my world.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this is This is the question that
Speaker 1: is consuming all of Washington, d C. And you've articulated
Speaker 1: perfectly the like impossibility of seeing how this gets resolved
Speaker 1: in a way that isn't catastrophic. Yeah, no, you're I
Speaker 1: People like ask me, like, hey, so, like what happens
Speaker 1: with this? And I'm like, I have no idea, Like
Speaker 1: it seems very just iCal um for me to like
Speaker 1: the White House cannot give in to major spending cuts
Speaker 1: after not only like winning the presidency, but but you know,
Speaker 1: like it's doing really well last year expanding the Senate.
Speaker 1: They're not going to turn around and and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for reelecting us UM and expanding our Senate margin.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to agree to cut source security Medicare's
Speaker 1: just not going to happen, and frankly they shouldn't. I
Speaker 1: mean to your point, like, once you accept that the
Speaker 1: White House isn't going to give into anything that McCarthy
Speaker 1: can take back as a victory. The question becomes, do
Speaker 1: you think Kevin McCarthy is the kind of person that
Speaker 1: will put the US economy and the fate of millions
Speaker 1: of jobs over his own personal political anhibition that he
Speaker 1: spent decades working for. It's like, you know, the Michael
Speaker 1: Scott meme where he's like kind of like sucking his
Speaker 1: face in, Like it just seems like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't laugh, because people will suffer because of this, But
Speaker 1: it seems inevitable all that this, we are just spiraling
Speaker 1: towards disaster. I mean, and I think even if Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy were a sort of very moral and upstanding person
Speaker 1: who cared only about the public good, I do not
Speaker 1: think he is that. But if he were, that he's
Speaker 1: still too incompetent to be able to get I mean,
Speaker 1: what we saw with his speakership bid was that he
Speaker 1: actually does not have the votes. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: just think that either way this ends in disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think he's going to go to
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi for advice on how to manage and cacus
Speaker 1: it just seems like we're in a in a death spiral.
Speaker 1: What I would say is that there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of talk recently about what kind of non substantive concessions
Speaker 1: the White House might be able to offer McCarthy to say,
Speaker 1: let's start a commission. It might not have any power,
Speaker 1: but then you know, you can say that there's a
Speaker 1: reigning in spending commission that um, we got out of
Speaker 1: the debt limit fight. And I am very skeptical. We've
Speaker 1: already talked to the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives
Speaker 1: who say, you know, we're not stupid. We can see
Speaker 1: through that potential outcome, you know, but we'll we'll just
Speaker 1: interpret that. I mean, they're sort of stupid, but they're
Speaker 1: not stupid in that way. Yeah, they I think they
Speaker 1: would be able to, you know, not have the will
Speaker 1: pulled over. I think they'll understand if McCarthy reaches a
Speaker 1: deal that's purely pro forma, and so then that leads
Speaker 1: us back to like one of the unilateral options for
Speaker 1: the White House if they can't negotiate and McCarthy can't
Speaker 1: give them anything that that he can self of his
Speaker 1: own caucus. And what I've been convinced of talking to people,
Speaker 1: you know at the White House and the last week
Speaker 1: or so is that the unilateral options are really dad
Speaker 1: And I know this gets a little technical. Um, I
Speaker 1: know this gets a little technical, but the the issue
Speaker 1: here is that any of the unilateral options, be it
Speaker 1: invoking the fourteenth Amendment to just declare the debt let
Speaker 1: law unconstitutional um or you know, minting the giant coin,
Speaker 1: either one could lead to a really severe outcome, which
Speaker 1: is that that Treasury auctions. Right the process by which
Speaker 1: the government issues bonds to raise money for its obligations
Speaker 1: and then investors come and then bid on that on
Speaker 1: those bonds, right Like, That's that's how the US government
Speaker 1: funds its obligations there, you know, balances its books essentially
Speaker 1: about raising money. The cost of that could be much
Speaker 1: more expensive if all of a sudden investors are saying,
Speaker 1: holy holy cow. The risk premium of this is enormous
Speaker 1: because there's a chance the Supreme Court will invalidate these bonds.
Speaker 1: Because the Republicans on the on the Supreme Court Supreme
Speaker 1: Court are very partisan, could say that they're bad and
Speaker 1: so that could lead the cost of borrowing to jump
Speaker 1: by hundreds of billions of dollars that the government will
Speaker 1: be spending hundreds of billions of dollars more on each
Speaker 1: of these auctions. And that's a very scary outcome because
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, huge portions of the out
Speaker 1: of the government will be going solely to paying off
Speaker 1: these really high premiums on the debt. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: so much. It sounds like there's no possible good outcome.
Speaker 1: You will will definitely have to have you back to
Speaker 1: talk about all of this as it continues on towards
Speaker 1: the cliff in June. Be back at any time, I
Speaker 1: think so much. Molly John Fast whoever you are, No
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon, I'm just kidding, Jesse Cannon. You know the
Speaker 1: best part about the Trump administration the incompetence. It's like
Speaker 1: the thing that saved us. So, yes, the incompetence is
Speaker 1: the best thing in the Trump administration. It's probably the
Speaker 1: only good thing. I'm gonna check the box on the
Speaker 1: right for that one. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
Speaker 1: Today we learned that A. G. Bill bar pressed Durham.
Speaker 1: You'll remember Durham as the guy with the enormous mustache
Speaker 1: to find flaws in the Russia investigation. And then this
Speaker 1: is a line from This is New York Times scoop.
Speaker 1: Mr Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign's myriad of murky if murky links to Russia, as
Speaker 1: unjustified and itself a crime. So Bill bar was working
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to do what Tucker Carlson and Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity we're doing in front of the scenes. And for
Speaker 1: that that is our moment of buckery, well deserved. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to your the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.