Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
WBT Radio in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: And if you want exclusive.
Speaker 2: Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my
daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. Happy eleven to ten day, by the way,
to all who celebrate, it's basically like us really. Also,
Happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps two hundred
and fifty years old to day. All right, So what
did the Senate Democrats get out of the forty day
Schumer shutdown?
Speaker 1: What do they get? What's the deal?
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't really get anything more than they would
have gotten a couple weeks back at October had they
just signed on to the clean R Continuing Resolution Chuck
Schumer's caucus. According to Ed Morrissey at hotair dot com,
his caucus threw in the towel last night, with at
least ten Democrats pledging to vote to end the filibuster
on the r The Senate will replace the cr A
with new language that would extend government operations until the
end of January while negotiations continue on the fiscal year
twenty twenty six budget, which I'll believe that when I
see it, it's going to be another one of these
omnibus or minibus or whatever. Forty days ago, Schumer demanded
passage of an extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies plus repeals
of Medicaid changes in the One Big Beautiful bill that
eliminated coverage for legal aliens. That's what Democrats were fighting for.
They have stated that they denied it after they stated it,
and they claimed that they are not the ones that
are holding this up, but they were. The only real
concession in this deal from the GOP is a pledge
to rescind the layoffs that the Director of Omb Officer
Management and Budget russ vote that he started riffing people,
he started laying people off, but those only took place
because the government shut down, right, so.
Speaker 1: You got the people.
Speaker 2: To come back to work that otherwise would have been
at work had you not shut the government down. That's
the biggest concession. Axios reports. The deal includes a December
vote on a Democratic proposal to extend and the ACA
tax credits for one year. That's the Democrats proposal. This
is what they want, another one year extension of the subsidies. Well,
why just one year? Democrats? Why are you making its
sunset again? Why wouldn't you make the subsidies permanent?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean, if everybody is going to die without the subsidies,
then it seems like you should make those permanent. But
you're not wanting to make them permanent. You're only asking
for one year. It's almost as if they want the
issue for another election cycle. The problem they're going to
have on that is that it's going to require sixty
votes to pass in the Senate, and the Republicans are
not going to pass an extension of the subsidies it
also includes, so they didn't get anything really on that.
That's why the left is so upset at these Democrats
who quote caved it also. And I'll tell you who
they are. I have the list, but put Catherine Cortes
Mastio from Nevada. Interestingly, she is not up for reelection
until twenty twenty eight. Nor is Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire,
who also voted to stop the filibuster. Jane Shaheen from
New Hampshire not running for reelection. Tim Kane from Virginia,
he's not up for reelection until twenty thirty. Angus King,
he's not up for reelection until twenty thirty. And then
you had the original three that had been voting to
reopen the government with the clean CR Dick Durbin, John Fetterman,
and Jackie Rosen from Nevada. And that got you to
your sixty votes because Ran Paul voted with the Democrats
because he votes against like every government spending bill, what
else do they get? It includes language aimed at providing
assistance to federal employees who were laid off during the shutdown,
as well as a provision to fund SNAP benefits through
September thirtieth of next year. Now, the provision on SNAP
is the Agriculture FDA appropriation bill. They actually did an
appropriation bill for that, so that's not even a concession
that they got because it was already there. It's one
of the dozen bills that form the discretionary part of
the federal budget. That bill and two others are ready
for passage. When you hear people like me talking about
regular order. This is what we're talking about. You're supposed
to be running your budgets through these committees, developing the budgets,
bringing them through the House, then going to the Senate.
That's the regular order. And we haven't been following that
for gosh, I don't even know, twenty years. That's why
we end up in this constant fiscal cliff, omnibus, Cromnibus,
clean CRS, supplemental funding requests, minibuses, whatever. It's like, all
of these gimmicks are done because we're not following or
Congress is not following regular order. So they were actually
trying to now return to regular order. And the Agriculture
Budget or Appropriation Bill has been done and it includes
the snap money, so that's not a concession. Senate Majority
Leader John Thune had already put them into a so
called minibus. As for the concession on the Affordable Care Act,
it's not really a concession either. Donald Trump has expressed
concern about the impact of the expiration of the subsidies,
which will hit Obamacare customers like attack hike, five years
after the pandemic for which the subsidies were implemented. Trump
and the GOP want to restrict and reduce them, and
the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill planned to
work on this regardless of what happened with the CR.
So that really wasn't even a big win for the
Democrats either, not really a concession when they were already
planning to do it, which I guess they're going to
have to come out against the ACA subsidies if Trump
proposes it. Right, if Trump comes along and it's like,
you know what we need to do these subsidies. Yes,
we're gonna We're gonna these are the biggest and best subsidies.
People are hurting. I'm looking out for them. And so
he's going to propose the subsidies. And then what a
Democrat's going to do, They're going to agree to that.
Ed Morrissey at hot Air says it may infuriate conservatives
who warned about the political trap that these temporary emergency
subsidies created, because we were right.
Speaker 1: We were. This is precisely why Democrats do it.
Speaker 2: The issue of healthcare is like the fatted cath for Democrats.
For elections, they love to run on healthcare. That's why
everything kind of gets shoehorned into healthcare like abortions, you know,
women's health care. They label everything healthcare because healthcare polls
well for them. He goes on to say, Unfortunately, retiring
Senator Tom Tillis is correct about the political reality for
Republicans as the midterms approach. Tillis said, quote, if we
don't work on a smart glide path for the Obamacare subsidies,
that too, will be something that will produce headwinds for
Republicans in the midterms. Right, Democrats put the subsidies in
and they sunseted them for now in order to maximize
the damage to Republicans. That's the game they're playing. That's
why I call it the Hamas strategy. It's a PR
leverage move that puts your own people in pain in
order to extract the PR win. But just like Hamas's strategy,
at some point the PR doesn't win you the war,
and you then have to cave. You have to eventually
agree to give back the hostages. And that's what Democrats
did yesterday. The point remains, a promise for a vote
at some point on the ACA subsidies is really not
a concession at all. That vote would have happened with
or without the shutdown, rescinding the layoffs, maybe a concession
of some sort, but the riffs would not have happened
in the first place had Schumer not shut down. The
government agreement includes back pay for furloughed workers, but that's
standard operating procedure and shutdown deals too. The fact that
Democrats couldn't even get an agreement to bypass the filibuster
on the vote for the ACA subsidies means Schumer came
away with literally nothing at all, and that's why people
are calling for his head.
Speaker 1: Blue Sky is lit today.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, the radical lefties over on Blue Sky.
They're having a moment. You know, stories are powerful. They
help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories
connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations.
They help us process the meaning of life, and our
stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories
with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill,
North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this
valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality
produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and
dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of
the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be
ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your
loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays,
or just your family stories, all told through images. That's
what your photos and videos are. They are your life
told through the eyes of everyone around you and all
who came before you, and they will tell others to
come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. All
righty from Ed Morrissey's piece at hotier dot com. He
points out that Schumer came away with literally nothing at
all after these eight Democrats voted with the fifty two
Republicans to unlock the filibuster. To break the filibuster, now
a vote can occur and then it'll go back over
to the House where the Republicans have the majority, and
a simple majority in the House will be enough to
pass it. Democrat Representative Brendan Boyle was on MSNBC and
he was asked, can you explain how you interpret why
this deal came together now?
Speaker 1: And Boyle said, quote, I.
Speaker 2: Can't explain it because to be frank. To me, it
makes absolutely no sense. I am completely perplexed by today's developments. No,
it's pretty clear to me what happened. It's not perplexing
at all. Schumer insisted on playing a losing hand, and
he lost. Because it was a losing hand. They couldn't
even they couldn't even articulate who was shutting the government down.
They kept trying to blame the Republicans, but they were
the ones that were making extra demands. It was a
bipartisan vote from the jump in the in the Senate
to pass the clean Continuing Resolution. Republicans had already offered
weeks ago, hey, if you want to do an Obamacare
subsidy thing, then yeah, well we can bring that up
for you. But that's not going to be part of this.
And they're like, no, it has to be part of this,
and they used it for the run up to the
No King's rally because the leadership, specifically Chuck Schumer, is
worried about a challenge in his Senate race from his left,
namely AOC Alexandria. Cause this right, he's worried that the
radical leftists have so taken over the party that in
a Democrat primary. He's going to lose, so he has
to show that he can fight the Republicans. And when
they did the Continuing Resolution a couple months back, he
did not block that with a filibuster, and he was
pilloried for it by his own voters, and so he
did not want a replay of that, so he chose
this other course. And the problem was there's no off
ramp for him. So then it became, well, we were
going to show that we're fighting, and then the No
Kings people show up and they're kind of crazy, and
so we don't want to get any of their fire.
Just let them hammer Trump, you know, and then like
keep everybody agitated through the election and the weekend after
the election. Then he allows five more members of the
Democrat Party in the Senate to vote with the Republicans.
It's all very clear. I don't know why this Congressman
Boyle seems perplexed. But then again, so many are arguments
are tedious like this, and that it seems like, I
don't know, eighty percent of arguments usually include people on
the left pretending not to understand something, so you can
start to have the actual argument. Simone Sanders Townsend co
host at MSNBC. She tweeted out, if they don't get
anything except a promise to vote later, then how do
Senate Democrats explain the last forty days to the people
who have suffered? The people were supportive of Democrat efforts
to fight for something, But what happens if the fight
ends with nothing for the people?
Speaker 1: Oh, she's so close, she's so close to understanding it. Warmer, warmer, hot,
you're hot. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's almost as if they weren't really fighting. It's
almost as if they were just telling you that they
think you're stupid. That's what that tells you. They think
you're dumb. Oh and, by the way, none of this works,
Just like the Hamas strategy, none of this works without
a complicit media. Here's a great idea. How about making
an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in
western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain
and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating
an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a
memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a
big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot
for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones
and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath
taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their
cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance
of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect
balance of seclusion and proxy to all the local attractions
with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills,
outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from
thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge
with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the
ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have
pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three
six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there
is to offer at Cabinsofashville dot com and make memories
that'll last a lifetime. Representative Roe Kana, Democrat from California,
he tweeted out Senator Schumer is no longer effective and
should be replaced. If you can't lead the fight to
stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans. What will you
fight for? Guy Benson at Fox News pointing out that
the Democrats response the air no statements are pretty wild,
aiming Republicans for not handing them another Obamacare bailout as
a condition for ending their government shutdown. The healthcare crisis
quote unquote that they are lamenting is one hundred percent
their own party's policy failure. They own this, This is
all them. Stephen Miller, a writer at The Spectator, says
Democrats went on for three weeks about unaffordable healthcare and
starving families, and then last night they're all upset that
people are going to get healthcare and their Snap benefits back. Also,
Blue Sky, the lefty Twitter competitor which is like circling
the drain, is currently posting guillotine memes about Chuck Schumer. Guys,
if this is really about Snap benefits and starving families,
he says, the Democratic Party and their Blue Sky influencers
would not be throwing a hissy fit right now if
it really was about those things, they would not be outraged.
Everyone knows this, and the only reason this is dragged
out this way is because the media carried that.
Speaker 1: Message for them. That is exactly right on the text line.
Speaker 2: Oscar says, with the success of the last election, the
Democrats may do this before future elections. Indeed, sir, correct,
they stage this stuff so they have the healthcare issue
and they can catastrophize, scare their constituents, and animate them
and motivate them to go vote. It's supremely cynical. Steven,
Welcome to the program. Hello, Stephen, Oh.
Speaker 4: Hey, pet Hey, So you were talking about how Schumer
was doing this to fight off an attack from the left,
primary from the left about a Cossio Cortes. Yeah, anyway,
she h. This isn't going to help him because all
this interest in lefty Democrats on Reddit are blaming him
one hundred percent for this, even though he voted no
on it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: See, they think he either engineered it or they think
that his ineffective leadership led to it falling apart.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: No, you're exactly right that there are only two options.
He either, as you say, engineered it so he would
have cover, or he could not keep his own members
in line. Either way, they don't care, it's the same outcome,
and they're they're there.
Speaker 4: They're they're they're calling for his head on reddit Land too.
So I don't see how this ends well for Schumer
either way. Not that this was, like you said, this
was a losing hand from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Right, And he had, I mean, his polling the last
the last polling I saw from him, and I want
to say it was probably about three weeks ago, and
he was somewhere among Democrats. He was somewhere around seventeen
percent among Democrats.
Speaker 4: That and that's that's the same state that just elected Mundami.
So yeah, I think so, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he may very well just announce his retirement rather
than lose to Aksuo Cortes in a Democratic primary.
Speaker 4: That would definitely be the face saver for him. But yeah,
I appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for thanks
for trawling over reddit.
Speaker 2: Because I don't want to do it.
Speaker 1: It's assessful.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: Oh, then there was this from Ari Fleischer, the former
press secretary for George W.
Speaker 1: Bush.
Speaker 2: He says the debate over Obamacare's temporary subsidy on top
of a subsidy is a good example of where our
country is today, right, because remember the subsidy that they're
talking about is just the COVID subsidy. There was another
subsidy prior to that. Okay, some want free healthcare and
know if they subsidize enough middle and upper middle income
people to get them onto Obamacare, then private insurance will
become so expensive it withers on the vine. This has
been my belief from the outset. Obamacare is designed to
destroy the current healthcare system and turn it all into
a government run system. That's the end goal. All you
gotta do is inject the statist poison into the system
and just keep ratcheting it up, ratcheting it up. Others
believe that after you help those in poverty, that nothing
in life is free, including healthcare, and they think it's
reasonable for those not in poverty to pay health insurance premiums. Right,
These are like the basic outlines of the argument, and
they have been from the very beginning. Free healthcare is
not free. Also, healthcare is not insurance. They are different things.
Free stuff for almost everyone versus everyone has to pay something.
That's what the fight is about. That's aorr Fleischer. And
then there was Tim Kaine, one of the senators, one
of the Democrats, who voted for Kloture, who voted to
end the filibustering. And he makes quite the admission that
he's been voting no this whole time without really understanding
the full dynamics of the issue.
Speaker 1: This is what he said.
Speaker 5: Do you wish that you would have started looking for
this off fra him soon said that Republicans were never
going to change in their position.
Speaker 3: I didn't fully understand how dug in they were. Again
because I was so focused on the Virginia elections. I
wasn't in this discussion on the healthcare to see how
dug in they were. But even as I was not
part of these discussions, I was saying to Thune and
others on the floor, going back, listen, I need you
some of you heard me say this in the all.
I need a more attireum on mischief. Others are working
on the healthcare thing, I trust them. Others are working
on the approached thing. I trust them. I need a
moretirem on mischief because if we vote to open and
then the immediate step next week is Donald Trump fires
a lot more people.
Speaker 1: It's going to blow up trust to get the full
year deal. See.
Speaker 2: But the problem there is that again, the layoffs were
only done because of the shutdown, So you guys induced that,
and you were warned russ vote at Omb warned you, like,
if you guys shut down the guver, I'm gonna I'm
gonna use that as an opportunity to start doing headcount cuts.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because
it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and
it's a website and it combines news from around the
world in one place so you can compare coverage and
verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground,
dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the
podcast description too. I started using ground News a few
months ago and more recently chose to work with them
as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how
stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature
shows you which stories get ignored by the left and
the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news
slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen
percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to
get unlimited access to every feature your subscription. Then not
only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news
as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let me
jump over to the phone lines and chat with Jimmy.
Speaker 5: Hello, Jimmy, Hey, it's Jack.
Speaker 1: Actually, oh, Jack, just.
Speaker 5: Wanted to point out to you, by the way, Pete,
you're doing a great job. Thanks our compliments as always.
But there's another aspect of this humor issue too, and
that is and that is the fact that he's Jewish. No,
Lieberman left the Democrat Party because of increasing anti Israel
policies and anti semitism. Now they're in full blown anti
semitism with ma'm Donnie and the rest of his bunch.
So you know, yeah, Chuck time is Chuck.
Speaker 4: Time is not right.
Speaker 2: They welcomed, yeah, they welcomed h They welcomed these radicals
into the party, and now they have taked. The radicals
have taken over the party and the yeah, the corporate
donors and stuff, and they they're all that remains and
they're not enough to keep the establishment candidates around.
Speaker 5: Well as the as the old saying goes, you, you know,
show the wins the whirlwind.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, Yeah, Jack, appreciate the call. Yeah, appreciate the call.
Speaker 2: H it's the it's the old you know, feeding the
alligator in the hope that it eats you last. It
eventually does eat you, though it's always the problem with
that it does eat you. So people on the Democrat
side and the radical side, they are they're they're not
happy today because the government is reopening and people now
are not going to starve to death. Susan Glasser, staff
writer at The New Yorker. She writes to sum up,
Democrats had a strong week at the polls, the election,
and are ending it by agreeing to a deal that
was in that was on offer weeks ago without anything
that they were demanding. Que the Democrat civil war. Yeah,
but you can't call it a civil war that only
happens inside the Republican party. Okay, Democrats are in disarray,
and they're very sensitive about that branding. But that's how
it's always been cast. Democrats are in disarray. Republicans they're
always in civil war. But yeah, this is this is
the problem. In fact, the Lincoln Project. These are the
former Republican establishment types that broke away because they hate
Orange Hitler so much that they went off and started
their own Lincoln Project. And like, I still don't know
if this is all just a grift, because it's a
brilliant grift if that's what it is. It's brilliant because
they siphon up millions and millions of Democrat donor money
and then they produce ads and put out you know,
memes and such that don't actually influence any elections, but
the left loves them. The left loves them some Lincoln
Project stuff. And Rick Wilson is over there among others,
and he's just nasty, a nasty, nasty campaign consultant guy,
formerly a Republican, now he does all this stuff anti Trump.
And he said, the Republicans cannot believe their luck. They
get to end the shutdown, blame it on Democrats and
go back to the magabase and say we killed Obama
Care at last. Yeah, they didn't kill it. It's not
dead yet. It's not dead yet. We had a chance,
we had a chance. But another never Trumper, John McCain,
he blocked that he was the one that had the
chance to dismantle Obamacare, but he hated Trump so much
that he had to subject Americans to further pain, and
so he did not vote with all the other Republicans
to kill Obamacare. Carl Paulus, historian and author, says, if
you notice they aren't offering any ideas on how to
actually fix Obamacare. You notice this, It's just that we
have to pay the subsidies otherwise people will be mad
at their signature policy of the twenty tens. This is
a great point, like why are you not offering fixes
for Obamacare? All you're demanding is that we just throw more,
more and more money at it, hundreds of billions of dollars.
You have to understand a huge driver of Democrat politics
today is just trying to avoid feeling dumb about everything
they said and did during the Obama terms. They literally
think we need more money for Obamacare, otherwise the GOP
will be proven right about it. They think that's a policy.
Speaker 1: He's exactly right.
Speaker 2: There's a fellow named Gnoam Bloom or Blum, co host
of a podcast called The Ambitious Crossover Attempt. He goes
by a Twitter name of Neon Taster. I don't know
why but he's a pundit, and he said the blue
Sky crowd on the left over at blue Sky, the
social media app, they're like all fight fight, but they're
literally Their only lever was keeping the government shut down,
and that did not work. He says, again, I'm trying
to understand what they wanted Democrats to actually do here.
Speaker 1: What could you actually do? The only.
Speaker 2: Lever you could pull was the shutdown, and that's not
going to get you what you want.
Speaker 1: Let me go to the.
Speaker 2: Text line here, driven by liberty buick GMC. This is
from I don't know make This is from a seven
oh four number. Make the ingredients sugar and artificial sweeteners
illegal to use, and eighty five percent of people won't
need to worry about healthcare expenses. Well, that is one
of the things, Like our healthcare costs are so high
in part because we make really really bad decisions about
a lot of things that we put in our pile.
This is from I don't know, another seven oh four number.
I think the Democrats won't make permanent subsidies for Obamacare
is because they need a fight in the future. If
there's no them, then there's no reason to vote for us. Yeah,
that's it's the same dynamic at play with the budget fights,
with the fiscal cliff, the continuing resolutions, the Omnibus bills. Right,
these random deadlines and everything is.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my gosh, we're going to shut down. We're
not going to be able to pay everybody.
Speaker 2: Like all of these panics are all because they have
designed the system to run the way it's running for
these budget funding cycles to end as they do, and
then it's about scheduling them to land right before an election,
and the deadline applies pressure that now.
Speaker 1: You just have to vote along with them.
Speaker 2: You've got to go along with it unless you want
people to starve to death, and you don't want that, right,
This is from Daryl. A lot of people think Medicare
is free to us over sixty five, but it's not.
Between what is deducted from our Social Security checks and
what we pay for an additional advantage plan. My wife
and I pay about five hundred dollars per month. Well,
here's another thing. The average was that on average, people
will draw down more out of from Medicare than they
ever contributed.
Speaker 1: Like that's the data. All right, that'll do it for
this episode. Thank you so much. For listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.