Speaker 1: What's going on.
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let me give you the update from Washington. Senate Democrats
today blocked yet another attempt to reopen the government, after
having nearly a week to muw their options. This was
the thirteenth attempt by Republicans to reopen the government. There
are a series of deadlines rapidly closing in the failure
to reopen the government. Today come as air traffic controllers
missed their first payday, the military is set to miss
its full first full payday on Friday, and then there
is the looming cliff for federal nutrition benefits on Saturday,
and that is the same day when open enrollment begins
nationwide for the train wreck that is Obamacare, which is
working as intended by the way that that was the intent.
The intent was to break the healthcare system, and I
thought it would happen a lot faster. But here we are,
so it is breaking. I'm gonna touch on that in
a bit. According to Fox News, in the background, Republicans
are considering a series of one off bills to pay
the troops, pay certain federal workers, pay the air traffic controllers,
fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, also known
as food stamps. However, whether or not these measures will
make it to the floor of the Senate for a
vote is unknown. John Thune, the Senate leader, he threw
cold water on the prospect of the piecemeal what he
calls rifle shots coming to the floor. So like this,
you know, these targeted bills to fund one thing at
a time. Republicans will discuss the bills during their closed
door lunch today. JD. Vance, the Vice President, will attend
that meeting as well. And you know, look, they're balancing
a couple of different things here, right. Number one is
how do we minimize the harm, minimize the pain of
the shutdown to these various employees and programs. Also, who's
to blame? Right, Who's to blame for the shutdown because
they keep on running these bills as they did today
another bill to pass the clean Continuing Resolution, and Democrats
keep blocking it. I always point this out too, is
that the Senate vote, they've gotten fifty three votes to
reopen the government with the clean CR and that is bipartisan.
There have been three or two Democrats and the independent,
but he's basically a Democrat, Angus King of the famous
Stake family. The two Democrats and one independent, they have
gone along with Republicans in trying to reopen the government.
That's a bipartisan vote, but it doesn't get counted or
reported as that because Republicans. So the blockage here is
completely the doing of the Democrats. I went over this
in depth last week, I believe traced back the history
of the Obamacare subsidies that now Democrats are demanding Republicans
pass as part of this continuing resolution. They want this
added back, or not added back, they want this added in.
But the subsidies were temporary, and they've always been temporary.
As silly as that sounds, but they were temporary from
the very very beginning. Remember, Obamacare rammed through party line vote,
zero Republicans on board with it. A couple of Democrats
did not want to support it, so that's how we
ended up. Remember the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana purchase. I
believe there was one for the Florida what was the
Florida deal? I forget what that was called. But these
were all carrots concessions that were given to Democrats senators
that knew this was not a popular thing to do,
and so they got bought off by getting exemption for
their states to certain aspects of Obamacare. So they gave
them these carve outs, and then the Democrats fell in
line and voted to ram this thing through. And part
of it was to make the fiscal projections work and
to keep it under half a trillion dollars. I think
that was the magic number back then. They had to
do all of this, you know, government accounting, which would
be illegal if you did it or I did it,
and like, okay, yeah, well we're going to subsidize, will
subsidize the premiums and such, and they put a I
think it was a ten year sunset on that. I
think it was ten years, maybe it was five. And
then they re upped it and reupped it, and they
keep reupping it, and then they added more with the
COVID pandemic. That was all Democrats. They did that every time,
No Republicans every time, and they could have made those
subsidies permanent, but they never did. But now they're demanding
Republicans do what Democrats refuse to and or were incapable
of doing. That's what they're holding the country hostage over
is to force the Republicans to do something that Democrats
themselves refuse to do. That's why this is squarely on
their shoulders. This is they are too blamed for this.
That's one aspect of the blame. The other aspect is
Chuck Schumer's reelection prospects, and I can only imagine the
kind of arm twisting he's doing behind the scenes. Right
because Chuck Schumer is worried about losing a primary to
Alexandria Azquez, a congresswoman from New York widely expected to
challenge Chuck in the Democrat primary next year. Chuck, who
agreed to the continuing Resolution back in July and saw
his poll numbers crater among Democrats because the far left
base wants Democrats, as they said in the surveys, to
take a bullet. They have to be willing to take
a bullet to fight Trump, right, they want Democrats to
fight harder, and so Chuck. When he agreed to the
continuing resolution back in July, he then was on the
receiving end of the wrath of the leftist base in
the Democrat Party. And his poll numbers are terrible. I
went over those yesterday. I think Democrats support him at
like a seventeen percent approval rating. It's awful. And so
he's worried about losing. So he has to stay in
this fight. He can't cave to the Republicans because it's
going to cost him or could cost him his re
election chances because he won't even clear the Democrat primary.
He'd probably win the general. That probably about it. He
would win the general election in New York, but he
won't get through the primary. So that's why we are
where we are. So how is this working out for
Democrats Because at the beginning of the shutdown lo those
many weeks ago, Democrats were content to just keep the
government closed because they thought that there would be enough
pressure on the Republicans through the media to reopen for
the Republicans to cave and do what Democrats want them
to do. Fund expansion of the subsidies, fund expansion of
the medicaid, so it keeps covering illegal aliens. And Republicans
have not been willing to go along with that, and
they thought the Republicans would take all of the blame.
So how is that working out well for Democrats? That
so good?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this show, you know I try
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News as they make the media landscape more transparent. From
the text line, Jeff says, through out the cr slash
shutdown drama, we hear these sixty votes Republicans need, right, Yes,
they need sixty votes to pass the Continuing Resolution. That's
to defeat a philibuster, right, Indeed, it is, Jeff, it
is to overcome the filibuster. I haven't seen anybody filibustering.
Why don't they make democrats filibuster? Make Democrats stand up
there twenty four to seven keeping the government shut down.
That's a very good question. This is what we call
the legislative filibuster, which I'm not a fan of. I'm
not a fan of this mechanism that the Senate uses
so they don't actually have to engage in filibustering. I
have long said that if you're going to threaten to filibuster,
you should actually have to do it. This idea that's like, well,
you know, well, we would totally filibuster if we had to,
But because we don't have to, I'm just gonna say
I'm going to filibuster, and then that counts. I don't
think that should count. I think that you should have
to actually filibuster. Now, Democrats are urging Republicans by way
of the media, saying, well, maybe they should just blow
up the filibuster. Maybe they should just get rid of
the legislative filibuster, just nuke it, just get rid of it.
But they're not saying get rid of it and still
make us filibuster. They're saying get rid of the sixty
vote threshold, which is what they would like to see done,
because if they win control, then they would be able
to expand the Supreme Court, pack the court, they would
be able to do all sorts of stuff. And that's
why Republicans aren't going to do it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The filibuster is an important tool for the minority party
to block actions by the majority party. But that being said,
I think they should have to actually get up there
on the floor and do the filibustering. So that's where
that's where we are. It's the legislative filibuster and so
I mentioned the numbers. Here is the exuberant Harry Enton,
the chief data analyst for CNN, talking about the polling
on who's to blame for the shutdown, and uh, there's
been a bit of a shift.
Speaker 1: It hasn't.
Speaker 4: If anything, it's been helped a little bit. Take a
look here the shift in net popularity versus pre shutdown
among the g When we're looking at the Republican Party overall,
that brand actually up two points. That's within the margin virap,
but clearly it hasn't dropped. Come over this side of
the screen, look at the net approval ratings for Republicans
in Congress. It's actually up five points since pre shutdown.
So what we're seeing here is the Republican brand in
Congress has actually improved somewhat compared to where we were
pre shutdown, despite the fact the Republicans control. And that's
the mat that John Thune and Mike Johnson are loved
looking at, is Hey, why should we give an electorally
speaking when our brand has actually improved a little bit.
Speaker 2: Now we say their position is getting better with whom?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, with whom.
Speaker 4: So I think it's two groups that it's so important
to keep them an eye out on all right, change
in the Republican congresses net approval rating versus pre shutdown.
Speaker 1: It's rallying the base, for sure.
Speaker 4: Look at this, the net approval rating up twelve points
versus pre shutdown. But it's not just with the base,
it's also with the middle of the electorate. Look at
this among independents it's up eight points as well. So
we've got a situation here where Republicans with this shutdown
are actually rallying their base. But it's also something that's
not hurting them with the folks in the middle of anything.
Speaker 1: It's helping them with folks in the mill. And this
is the.
Speaker 4: Type of math that if you're Republicans you like to see, right,
because something could rally the base but alienate those in
the middle, or something could rally those in the middle
but alienate the base.
Speaker 1: But the truth is we're not seeing that.
Speaker 4: What we're seeing is the Republican brand has actually gotten
better among independents, and it's also gotten better among Republicans
as well. That Republican brand when it comes to those
in Congress. So again, what's it's the elect to a
reason that Republicans were given at this point.
Speaker 2: And yes, what is the reason this is the Democrats
doing and this is not going to help them either.
The nation's largest federal workers' union, the American Federation of
Government Employees, is urging Democrats to concede the government's shutdown
fight and vote to reopen the government, revealing a significant
fracture in the Democratic coalition as the shutdown nears the
one month mark. This from Camden Mulder at National Review.
The shutdown began twenty seven days ago after Democrats refused
to back a clean government funding bill, demanding instead that
Republicans extend temporary Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire
at the end of the year. But afge or avgheef Ghi,
as I call it, it's a major ally to the
Democrat Party, representing eight hundred and twenty thous thousand federal
and DC government workers, now say it's time for the
party to give up on its demands. They say it's
time to pass a clean cr and end the shutdown.
The union is also demanding that all federal workers should
not only be returned to work as soon as possible,
but also received back pay, including workers who got furloughed
or were considered essential throughout the shutdown and continued to
work without any pay. A House passed continuing resolution has
now been voted down in the Senate thirteen times. Three
Senate Democrats. You got John Fetterman, who after his stroke
and brain injury, seems like sane from Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortes
Mastow from Nevada, and Angus King from Maine. He of
the famous state family. They have all voted with Republicans
to pass this legislation. This statement from the Union is
not the first sign that cracks are forming within the
Democrat coalition. Congressman Jared Golden, also of Maine, the lone
House Democrat to vote in favor of the existing cr
blamed his own party's progressive wing for pursuing what he
views as a misguided shut down strategy. He said this
in a weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal. He
cast blame on the left wing group Indivisible, which is
the same group that organized the No Kings rallies. He
also blamed progressive leaders like Alexandria A Cascutz, as well
as Senator Bernie Sanders for moving the party in the
wrong direction. He said, quote what they're doing is wrong.
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Let us him and Tomato. Let's head over to the
text line and see what some people are saying. Oh
my gosh, I'm kidding. This from Kevin who says, I
listened to Mike Johnson's speech this morning. He was making
the point, among others that Democrats are focusing on forcing
Obamacare into permanent law. Well the subsidies they want the
subsidies made permanent. Yes, because Obamacare is law, but they
are looking to expand it permanently with these subsidies. But
what they don't tell you is the billions that they
want to give illegal immigrants as part of what they
want included. No, Democrats do not want to say that
although somebody did right, they did actually acknowledge. And on occasion,
I played one of these clips a couple of weeks ago.
Who was it, Nancy Pelosi, I think, or maybe it
was Maxine Waters. I forget who it was. A reporter
from a conservative outlet asked her, and she acknowledged that
they want to make sure everybody gets health care. So yes,
and in fact, they're three points that they sent over,
that the Senate sent over to the Republican leadership, and
we're like, you know, here's what we're demanding. Here list
of our demands, and one of them is the expansion
of Medicaid to cover illegal aliens. And now they're trying
to pretend that that's not what they're doing, but that
is part of their demands. Let me see here, Gray says,
do you think the Democrats are now hoping for people
to start protesting and stir up riots in the streets.
I mean, I know that they There was the reports,
there were the reports before the No Kings protests what
two weekends ago, that Schumer was not going to do anything,
was not going to move on on anything before the
No King's rallies because he did not want to be
the target of those rallies. Right, You've got these mass
demonstrations already planned by your allies by this you know,
leftist base, and you don't want to go. You don't
want to anger them. A day before they're showing up,
because then your name is going to be all over
those placards because you caved to the orange hitler. Right
that you're just as bad because you're letting him just
run roughshot over America and democracy. Right, So you didn't
want he didn't want that. So those are the reports
that came out of DC right before the No Kings protest.
I don't think. I don't think that they want riots
because I think that actually would undermine their their position,
right if people start rioting for their paychecks, I mean,
and that would I mean, I feel like that would
probably be a first for people to be rioting to
be paid for their work versus being paid to riot.
I think that's the difference there. Dana wants to know,
how did oh wait hand on what happened to negotiating?
Why haven't they at least debate it openly televised and
let the Americans decide? Well, that did happen. It happened
over in the House, and it passed the House. The
continuing Resolution passed the House with a Democrat, Jared Golden,
supporting it, and then it went to the Senate. And
you know, funding bills have to start in the House.
So if the Senate were to try to make any changes,
it would then have to go back over to the
House for approval. And so the Republicans are like, well, no,
we passed this, this is what we want, this is
not And if you want to negotiate spending, then you
could do that while the government's open, because this is
just a continuing resolution, because that's how now we fund everything,
and this is how we are constantly governing ourselves with
the you know, the constant looming deadline of a government
shut down, because everybody thinks that it gives them some
leverage to negotiate around. And we're not doing the regular order,
which is to have the spending bills run through committees
and then make their way to the Congress. We're not
doing that. We haven't done that in a decade. I've
been advocating for a return to that, to the regular order.
But both parties, when they get in control, recognize the
value of the negotiating leverage that they get. They get
to say you have to pass this, you have to
go along with this, or else everything shuts down. So
this is the new normal. I don't like it. And
Republicans have tried to shut down the government when they
were in the minority, and what they learned was there's
no off ramp, and then you end up having to cave.
Democrats this is their stab at the shutdown, and they
are learning the very same lesson, and maybe at some
point everybody learns this lesson now and then there aren't
any more shutdowns. But that's not actually a very preferable outcome, right,
because that means that everybody just keeps going along with
continuing resolutions. So, and here's the thing. The Republicans could
have jammed a bunch of extra stuff into the CR.
They could have done that, but they did not. They
did not add stuff to the continuing resolution. They just
said keep funding it at the regular level, at the
current level. Democrats are the ones that want to add
hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new spending into
the budget that we already cannot afford. That's not fiscally prudent.
How did MTG vote, Well, she's in the House, so
this is all Senate. She's not a senator, so she
did not vote in the on the CR in the
Senate seven oh four number. What exactly is a filibuster?
A filibuster is this may not be the technical definition here,
but off the top of my head, it is when
the minority party can debate a bill and as long
as they don't give up the floor or stop talking,
they can block a vote until they stop talking. That's
the filibuster. But over the years they've decided, well, we'll
just we'll just threaten to talk without actually talking, because
you know, nobody really wants to do that and we
don't want to hang around, and so they just like
I will just say we're going to talk, and that's enough.
That's called the legislative filibuster. And so as Jeff says, right,
so they don't actually do the filibustering, they just identify
as philibustering. Stan says, when you have a disagreement about
the path forward, and one party says, let's continue doing
it like we've been doing it while we chart a
bipartisan and agreeable path forward as at least it wasn't
a disaster yesterday, But the other party says, no, no,
I would rather cause that disaster. It seems pretty obvious
which side caused the current problem. And then this is
from A to eight number. I tried Obamacare in twenty
eighteen in between jobs literally covers nothing. Subsidy blew up
my tax filing and it took three years to address
the mess. Healthcare I had the same problem at the
exact same issue. Health care costs need epic level solutions,
but not via Obamacare, the scam to launch a federal
takeover of our health rights down to our gym memberships. Yeah,
the point of Obamacare was to break the system.
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dot Com. All right, Hello, Mike, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hello, I really appreciate you taking my call.
Speaker 2: Actually, I only have about five minutes, so I'm going
to ask you, Mike, because I have had many conversations
with you over the years, to please arrive at your
point as succinctly and rapidly as possible.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, thank you, I appreciate that, and again, thanks
for taking my call. Actually, I'm talking about three points
of agreement that we have, or maybe I should say
two and a half. Yes, Yes, I think we need
to get back to regular orders. I think both parties
would benefit by it, and I think both parties to
blame for it, and we need to do that. I'm
not sure what it's going to take to get there,
but I agree with you on that. And yes, yes,
I agree with you that our American healthcare says some
need some major changes to it. As you know, we
as Americans pay roughly twice as much as other industrialized
countries per person for health care, and for that we
get really media results. We just don't fare very well
in terms of life expectancy and all kinds of fat
measures because we're fat well that we also don't we
don't do enough screening to prevent various diseases, all that
sort of stuff. And by the way, I haven't told
you again, congratulations on your great weight loss. Will give
pac weight Loss a free plug real quick because you
did some great work on that, well.
Speaker 2: They did mostly. Yeah, no, I appreciate you. All right,
So what's the half point here now that we are
two minutes in?
Speaker 3: All right, very good. The half point is talking about
medicaid funding. Yes, it is true that some people who
are undocumented receive Medicaid benefit.
Speaker 2: They're documented, But.
Speaker 3: There's a This is one of these examples in which
you can take a small kernel of truth and make
a very very big misperception and miscon going around with
it here, right, I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to hang on, Mike, I'm going to stop you
right there. When you said a small percentage, how many
people do you think that are in the country illegally
that came over during the Biden administration. How many people
do you think are eligible for the Medicaid.
Speaker 3: Well, in terms of getting benefits zero. That is not
correct in terms of going to an emergency room.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not talking about emergency room for that. No, no, no,
I'm not talking because all of them get that. Anybody
who's here illegally gets that. I'm talking about the number
of people that came through under the Biden administration that
are eligible for Medicaid benefits. And you said zero.
Speaker 3: Those are TPS people and folks that are actually have
a certain legal status here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they may qualify, they do qualify. Do you know
what that number is? Do you know what the number is?
Speaker 3: I don't know what the rough number of people.
Speaker 2: Is three million? About three million? And do you know
what that special designated status was?
Speaker 3: But I also know the amount of Medicaid hang on hanger.
Speaker 1: Do you know what that?
Speaker 2: Do you know what that status was? You mentioned it
that they were tps, but like, what was the status
that got them that made them eligible for the Medicaid?
Speaker 3: I think seeking a solid maybe one parole?
Speaker 2: Correct, they got paroled, and therein lies the rub is
that Alejandro Mayorcus blanket paroled millions of people in violation
of the law, in clear, absolute, clear violation of the law.
A blanket parole system for everybody that came in and
that made them eligible for medicaid. That's why there's two
point eight to three million people that are now eligible
have been eligible for medicaid. So it's not taking a
small kernel of anything.
Speaker 3: The amount of money is being spent on it is musicool.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. It should be zero, should be zero.
And if you want to and if you want to
hash out whether to extend medicaid to illegal aliens that
have been granted parole illegally, if you want to have
that argument, go ahead and have the argument, but do
it outside of a continuing resolution that has now been
sitting for almost a month, and you're holding hostage all
of the people whose paychecks aren't getting cut.
Speaker 3: Part of governing, Pete, is that when you control the
White House, you control the House.
Speaker 2: You know the filibuster, you know how that works. Mike,
do not play the game with me.
Speaker 3: They got to get exactly, they got.
Speaker 2: To get seven more Democrats, and until democrats.
Speaker 3: Part of governing is being able to count to sixty.
I part of governing being able to know how to
count to sixty and to get sixty votes. Okay, well
you agree there's no secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we agree. We agree. We agree. Democrats are
responsible for the shutdown. We agree, Mike, I got a run.
I appreciate the call, but we agree they cannot get
to sixty without seven more Democrats. That's coming on board.
Democrats are refusing to do it because they want Medicaid
extended for these illegal aliens, and the Republicans are saying no,
we agree. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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