Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Well, I love what Majority Leader John Thune said. It's
Speaker 2: clear as mud in terms of the sequencing. But the
Speaker 2: priorities are clear for President elect Trump in order to
Speaker 2: get as a gender through and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about that right now with former Speaker of the House
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy. You know how challenging it is its slim
Speaker 2: majorities to get anything done in Congress.
Speaker 3: What's your advice to President Trump?
Speaker 2: Does he go for this one big, beautiful bill or
Speaker 2: does he lean on the Senate who wants to see
Speaker 2: a two track approach.
Speaker 1: I think one bill is the right answer, and this
Speaker 1: is why you've got to understand for you.
Speaker 3: But is it big? Well, this is the point. It's different. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the.
Speaker 1: First time in modern history the majority in the Senate
Speaker 1: is larger than the House. So the Senate's going to
Speaker 1: have a different view. They've got fifty three, but they
Speaker 1: really have fifty four. By having the Vice president. The
Speaker 1: House is and has a smaller majority than it had
Speaker 1: in the last Congress.
Speaker 3: They lost seats why everybody else won?
Speaker 1: Plus come January twentieth, they're going to lose two more
Speaker 1: members for a time period. Those two Florida seats won't
Speaker 1: get filled till April first, and then the New York
Speaker 1: seat won't get filled to after that. So you can't
Speaker 1: take that many bites of the apple. And remember for
Speaker 1: your viewers why you're doing reconciliation. It's a special provision
Speaker 1: that allows you, if your party controls the scent in
Speaker 1: the House, to pass in the Senate without sixty votes.
Speaker 1: But you can't write a perfect bill. So this is
Speaker 1: how the Democrats did Obama carrots, how we did tax reform.
Speaker 3: You've got tax reform.
Speaker 1: You have to get done by the end of the year,
Speaker 1: otherwise your taxes all go up.
Speaker 3: So the pressure is on you.
Speaker 1: If you make the bill too big and too beautiful,
Speaker 1: most in history, it collapses upon itself because it's too big.
Speaker 1: The reason why they're looking at two different bills. They
Speaker 1: need money now for the border, but I believe the
Speaker 1: border is a disaster. Declare it a disaster. Pull money
Speaker 1: from the disaster fund. You're going to be putting more
Speaker 1: in for californiawards, and let you do the border right
Speaker 1: now because tax will take a little longer. The other
Speaker 1: problem they have, though, is they made a mistake they
Speaker 1: never finished the funding from last year, and this is
Speaker 1: a disadvantage for Trump. They hurt Trump by making him
Speaker 1: worry about last year's funding now, which is due in March.
Speaker 3: Is that a fault of Speaker Johnson?
Speaker 1: I don't know whose fault it is, but they should
Speaker 1: have got the job done okay, and they should have
Speaker 1: done the debt ceiling already.
Speaker 3: So these are two.
Speaker 1: Provisions that the Democrats could use to an advantage and
Speaker 1: slow down your agenda. So the first thing I would do,
Speaker 1: you still have time now finish the funding from last
Speaker 1: year and take care of the debt ceiling, so President
Speaker 1: Trump could have the honeymoon or the agenda he wants
Speaker 1: to start putting forward. Because we're now in they got
Speaker 1: to confirm in the Senate the new cabinet. He's got
Speaker 1: to get his people in line to start working. But
Speaker 1: President Trump knows this job already. He knows he's got
Speaker 1: four years. He's not going to waste one moment. He'll
Speaker 1: do tremendous on the executive orders, but he needs the
Speaker 1: legislative body to catch up to him.
Speaker 2: Who's going to be that moderating voice to make sure
Speaker 2: that it's not too big, so that it doesn't actually collapse.
Speaker 1: Well, it's what I love. It's the free market. It's
Speaker 1: a natural that you'll see.
Speaker 3: So you think it's this bond market.
Speaker 2: We've seen yields go up, people start to help. That's
Speaker 2: going to be on the debt financial discipline? Do you
Speaker 2: think the bond market is? Do you have does Congress
Speaker 2: have room to spend as much as Trump's rhetoric is
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Well the problem Trump's just now coming in. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm taking over a company, and remember what the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling is.
Speaker 3: You've got to give him leeway.
Speaker 1: So all it says is paying the debt that the
Speaker 1: last people had spent. But the debt ceiling doesn't solve
Speaker 1: all these problems.
Speaker 3: The market right.
Speaker 2: Now is pricing in his future plans and spending.
Speaker 3: Will that be the moderating We're not counting in Doze? Okay?
Speaker 3: And what I look to doze.
Speaker 1: I think this is good because it gives people the opportunity.
Speaker 1: But the way to handle this, and I tried to
Speaker 1: get Biden to go for this. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union collapsed, so we need to reform our
Speaker 1: military all designed to fight the Soviet Union. But what
Speaker 1: member was going to raise their hand and said close
Speaker 1: my military base. Nobody, but you need to created a commission.
Speaker 1: But this was the important part.
Speaker 3: You had teeth to it. If they got their work.
Speaker 1: Done, it got to vote in the House and the
Speaker 1: Senate with no amendments and long and beholded pass.
Speaker 3: They need to do something like that for Doge.
Speaker 1: When Doge gets their work done, let them vote in
Speaker 1: the House and the Senate with no amendments, and you'll
Speaker 1: know whether you can get it. I think one of
Speaker 1: our greatest threat is our debt. Okay, but we've got
Speaker 1: to do a lot of things going forward. The debt
Speaker 1: ceiling is not a part of that. You should take
Speaker 1: that out of the way. Let the president be able
Speaker 1: to govern do the job that has to be done.
Speaker 2: Are you feeling that this can potentially be done though
Speaker 2: in April? What Speaker Johnson's talking about all of this spending,
Speaker 2: reconciliation and a disaster.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's hard to say by April first,
Speaker 1: because you haven't put every vote matters. I'd wait to
Speaker 1: the Florida seats because that's two more seats. You can't
Speaker 1: get tax done that fast because remember tax, they're going
Speaker 1: to do something about salt. They're going to do something
Speaker 1: about tax on tips. That costs money, so how are
Speaker 1: you going to pay for it? But you've got to
Speaker 1: start working on the border. So take that money from
Speaker 1: disaster and do the executive orders.
Speaker 3: Get that done.
Speaker 1: You want to do something on energy, but if you
Speaker 1: put the debt ceiling to reconciliation.
Speaker 2: Which is what people are talking about, that won't work.
Speaker 1: And this is why because there are members in the
Speaker 1: Republent Party that will never vote for it, and you
Speaker 1: have no votes to see.
Speaker 2: House Freedom Caucus. Yeah, so you should wins that fight
Speaker 2: Trump or the House Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 3: Well, no, Trump will always win.
Speaker 1: House Freedom Caucus loses from that perspective because the House
Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus is in saying to the American public, your taxes.
Speaker 3: Are going to go up.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of you've watched in the
Speaker 1: House Freedom Caucus. Their former chairman was anti Trump. They
Speaker 1: have anti Trump people in that caucus and it's unfortunate.
Speaker 3: So nobody can fight here.
Speaker 1: They've got to focus on priorities, but they got to
Speaker 1: focus on the policy. You're not going to get it
Speaker 1: one hundred percent right, but government isn't designed.
Speaker 2: That way right.
Speaker 3: You've got to have combat because you've got to deal
Speaker 3: with the Senate. But you will get this done. It's
Speaker 3: in the sequencing of how you do it. I also
Speaker 3: want to ask you.
Speaker 2: You mentioned California the disaster at the top. How do
Speaker 2: you think Trump is going to deal with when he's
Speaker 2: inaugurated and the incoming tragedy devastating fires that are apocalyptic,
Speaker 2: people not having their homes, not having enough water, not
Speaker 2: having enough firefighters. How is he going to work with
Speaker 2: Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to solve this new vice.
Speaker 3: There's a third point too.
Speaker 1: A lot of these families lost their insurance in the
Speaker 1: last six months because of Gavin Newsom's anability to deal
Speaker 1: with this problem. You know, insurance companies wanted to raise rates,
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to make sure they can
Speaker 1: afford to insure. When he wouldn't focus on that issue,
Speaker 1: they have left the state. My mother lost her homeowner
Speaker 1: insurance from Geico and she had no claims because California
Speaker 1: was uninsurable and they ignored the problem.
Speaker 3: He gallivanted around.
Speaker 1: You know the saddest part about all of this, We've
Speaker 1: had these fires before I went out to California, with
Speaker 1: then President Trump. November seventeen, two thousand and eighteen. We
Speaker 1: just had Paradise where eighty five people died, and we
Speaker 1: toured that with Gavin Newsom, who had been elected governor
Speaker 1: not sworn in in Jerry Brown, and then we flew.
Speaker 3: Down to Malibu that had a fire as well.
Speaker 1: I was in the meeting walking these places where President
Speaker 1: Trump is saying, you got to take the fuel away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to get a fire when there's wind to
Speaker 1: push it, but if it doesn't have fuel, it can't
Speaker 1: keep growing. The other problem too, is had you worked
Speaker 1: on the evacuation ahead of time, instead of these cars
Speaker 1: getting stopped in people, that's what happened in Paradise. What
Speaker 1: about the infrastructure. You can't go to a fire hydrant
Speaker 1: and not have water. And President Trump worked on providing
Speaker 1: the water further and you know who fought him.
Speaker 3: On it, Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 2: But looking ahead, Trump is going to come in and
Speaker 2: want to make sure that California gets the money they need.
Speaker 1: I think you're going to see Trump will be there
Speaker 1: for California. But what Trump's going to do too is
Speaker 1: you can't keep repeating the same mistake. I think you're
Speaker 1: going to see executive orders pretty early about the water Again.
Speaker 1: The President Trump did that lab time. Had Gavin followed through,
Speaker 1: we would have had water. President Trump was very serious
Speaker 1: about making sure taking out that fuel, protecting it, managing
Speaker 1: it so you won't have that.
Speaker 3: You're going to see him double down even harder on this.
Speaker 1: But California, the state, they've got to change their behavior,
Speaker 1: and I think what President Trump will do is put
Speaker 1: the mechanism is where Gavin cannot make this mistake again.
Speaker 2: Since you left Congress, I know you've been focused on AI.
Speaker 2: I want you to want to end on this, but
Speaker 2: you've also become an informal advisor to President LEC.
Speaker 3: Trump.
Speaker 2: You were at mar A Lago just last week. Do
Speaker 2: you see yourself going into government or do you like
Speaker 2: being that call on the outside?
Speaker 3: I serve for a long time.
Speaker 1: I want to utilize the knowledge I have from being
Speaker 1: speaker and everything else, and also on the outside that
Speaker 1: Congress starts looking at the issues in the next fifty
Speaker 1: sixty years. I mean, if Congress is looking back to
Speaker 1: do the funding from last year, we're losing the battle
Speaker 1: for the next century. And I firmly believe whoever captures
Speaker 1: AI and quantum. So these are all the issues I
Speaker 1: worked on while I was Speaker. You know, I went
Speaker 1: to MIT, which teaches a course to all the generals
Speaker 1: in our military, four years ago, having to develop a
Speaker 1: course to teach it to all of our members of Congress.
Speaker 1: The China Select Committee, right, the AI committee. So whoever
Speaker 1: captures AI and quantum has the advantage. But if you
Speaker 1: want to capture AI and quantum, you've got to get
Speaker 1: the energy policy right, otherwise you'll never have a data center.
Speaker 1: So what I'm doing at the Alpha Institute is literally
Speaker 1: just policy showing a roadmap for the policy makers to
Speaker 1: solve those problems.
Speaker 3: Just continue what I did.
Speaker 1: Why I was working there to help the policy makers
Speaker 1: and America succeed and be successful.
Speaker 2: Former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for your time