America's Talking - Episode 78: Battle Over Omnibus Spending Continues

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss the battle over omnibus spending continues as Congress faces shutdown Friday. Biden hosts Ukrainian head as lawmakers weigh $45 billion in new war funding. Dems face backlash over FTX scandal, return millions in donations. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. America in Focus is a production of America's talking network. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today is Casey Harper, as he does every week, the Center Squares Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, how are you, Casey? Doing great, Dan, as always. You know, no better Christmas present than to spend it here with you. I hear you.

No doubt about that. Listen, Casey, we're recording this because of the holiday. We're recording this a day early. It is Thursday, December 22nd. We are just a few days away from Christmas. Casey, any special Christmas traditions you want to tell our listeners about? Oh, Christmas traditions. Wow.

Well, we, you know, we always have to read the Christmas story on Christmas Day before opening presents, which as a kid really test your inner fortitude. I don't know how you feel about that. Did you let the kids just run in there like wild animals? Did you do something to make him appreciate the greater meaning? Or when I was little, really little, we didn't have this tradition. And so I would just barrel in there and like a piranha. But I don't know about you.

Yeah, we do. We have a very structured Christmas gift opening. Wow. sounds super fun. Man. Here's your agenda, children. My kids are both

older now. They're both college age students. And for the last, oh, eight, ten years or so, probably ten years.

My in-laws have come over as visited, stay with us on Christmas and on Christmas Eve. Just keeps getting better and better. All right.

Keep on. Christmas. Grandfather reads twice the night before Christmas, even with my kids now 18 and 21. And they get to open one gift on Christmas Eve.

And then on Christmas morning, we do the exchange and it's youngest, the oldest, one by one. So that's our Christmas tradition. And I know our listeners were excited to hear that. Yeah, I mean, the agenda, the unlaws, although I do love the Christmas poem that you referred to. So everybody has their own thing. I think it's the sentimental value, not necessarily any individual thing. Good point and family, spending time with family. But there actually is some news to talk about today.

In fact, as we speak, or just before we spoke, the U.S. Senate passed this massive like 4,000-plus page $1.7 trillion on this bill. It has to go back to the House where there could be a vote today. It could be tomorrow. But there needs to be – if there's not a vote, some government funding. get shut down on midnight Friday. Tell us what's going on here. Yeah, this has been the story of the week by far. So the U.S. Senate just voted with nearly 70 senators. They had about almost 20 Republicans got on board for this one, despite a lot of hullabaloo, a lot of squirming from Republicans, but many of those Republicans are in the House where

Republicans don't have a majority. They have more power in the Senate, but just not the political will to oppose this bill, which, you know, at least the latest version I saw was over 4,000 pages long. It's $1.7 trillion. It includes, and when it's $1.7 trillion, nobody really knows what all is in there on, you know, page 3,782. But people, you know, there are top line numbers about Ukraine funding, for example, $45 billion for Ukraine. There's almost $40 billion for disaster relief funding. there's a lot of defense funding in there. There's a lot of things we can go down. Some things are more controversial than others,

and we can go through some of those things that we're getting people, Republicans in the House in particular, riled up. I mean, I know you're really excited about the Michelle Obama Trail. Man, you can't wait to go on it. I know your big trail guy. So some of these things, you know, this often happens with these big bills. There's so many things you get thrown in there. Nobody really even knows what's in it,

let alone can get the kind of political capital and momentum to oppose it. And who's going to kill a $1.7 trillion bill over a random $10 million or $5 million spending item? I mean, they're just not going to do it. It's 12 appropriations bills wrapped into one. And they just shove it through right at the deadline. And if anybody opposes it, they accuse you of wanting to put federal workers out of a, you know,

out of a job right at Christmas time. And you know, it often happens at Christmas time. And the reason that is is because they pay. pass, so this bill funds through next September, which is the fiscal year. The end of the fiscal year comes around and they're not ready. So they pass a CR, continuing resolution to buy them some more time, you know, early December and then, or even before that, and then they're not ready when that deadline comes. So they pass another CR. And then they're not ready that deadline comes. So they pass another CR until it's Christmas Eve. They don't do it now. The next Republican Congress is

going to do it. Democrats don't want that, although House Republicans and even some Senate Republicans have been pushing for that. So I think hopefully the background kind of understands, like, why does this keep happening? What's going on here? What are the motivations? Democrats really want to pass something while they have the majority before this new Congress takes over. And Republicans are opposing it for very much the same reason.

They want to pass a smaller bill that funds more to the border, things like that. But I don't think they're going to have their will. The Senate just passed one and they don't have the votes in the House. So by the time our listeners hear this, there may already been a vote in the House in favor this legislation. So you expect it to pass is what you're saying, and President Biden will sign it. I think so, yeah. If there was going to be any victory, I think we would have seen it by now for Republicans.

And of course, not to belabor the point that it's 4,155 pages or so, plus or minus a few. It was introduced on Tuesday. No way in any, no way anybody read this whole thing. No, no. Maybe one committee staffer who has a migraine right now, probably. right at all, but your average lawmaker, I mean, they get summaries. I mean, I've pretty familiar with

how the Hill works. They give them summaries. He give them top plan numbers. They meet with staffers. Staffers on relevant committees who really care about certain issues, they know how much spending is for things in their section. So if, you know, a lawmaker who's on defense committees

or our intelligence or something, them and their staff will know how much defense funding is in it, and they really work on that. Maybe there's a military base in their district. They work hard to make sure their military base and others are getting enough funding. They don't know what kind of climate spending or border spending or whatever a different thing is. It's just impossible to know when they make such large bills at the last minute. Maybe this is an early holiday president for outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Republicans taking over control of the House.

She is not going to be seeking a leadership position. You've got to pass the bill before you know what's in it. Oh, wow. What a great way to honor her as she leaves. Yeah. That's a famous quote for sure. And you mentioned the billions and additional funding for Ukraine, Ukrainian to sentence in their war against Russia. Speaking of Ukraine, their president, Zelensky, visited the White House in Congress yesterday.

Yeah. President Joe Biden invited him, of course. He's fending off and has been for months now, the Russian invasion of his country. Russia has made some inroads, but didn't just sweep the nation and take it over quickly as many experts expected. They've put up a fight. Of course, that's been helped along by, you know, billions and billions of dollars in, you know, taxpayer funding going to their, for humanitarian aid, but also for military funding, we should buy weapons for Ukraine. I think Ukraine would have been done a long time ago if it hadn't been for the pocketbooks of, you know, the U.S. Treasury. So we're kind of propping up this proxy war with Russia via Ukraine.

It's obviously very, very dicey. Russia is a nuclear threat. And they have brought that up and they have reminded us of that recently. But Vladimir Zelensky, he came to D.C. He was invited by Nancy Pelosi to speak and he did address Congress last night. You know, I think everybody can. And these speeches are interesting. It was unprecedented to have something like this in recent, you know,

not political memory. I mean, a lot of people compared it to when Winston Churchill came to the White House, in part because Zelensky took a lot of flack, oddly enough. Maybe he wasn't ready to step into the pettiness of American politics. But he didn't wear a suit. He didn't wear a suit. And people gave him a really hard time about that. And then others were saying, well, look, you know, Churchill didn't wear a suit when he came.

And so it's kind of, it quickly devolved. But what he wants is what he's been calling for via video and speech, you know, a week after, you know, month after month this year, which is more funding. And he gladly is accepting this $45 billion. But he wants more. He's, you know, it's not enough. He's going to need more than that to keep up this resistance to Russia. I don't care whether he wore a suit or not.

But there should be significant debate over American taxpayers, you know, spending as much money as we have in defensive Ukraine. Early on, you know, back in February when Russia initially invaded, Ukraine. Yeah, there were a handful of voices questioning whether the U.S. should get involved by funding Ukraine, but it seems to be those voices are growing and getting a little bit louder. There has been some pushback on the U.S. funding of the Ukraine war. Yeah, I mean, you know, this happens with a lot of wars. People just get war weary. You know, there's initially a lot of support when the war begins. But more and more questions,

you know, start to arise. And that's happening in particular among Republicans. And now I think in some ways you can't blame them because some of the recent or just look at the wars of u.s. history in the last you know 60 years i mean they haven't all been you know in retrospect they haven't had the same shimmer that they had when we got into these conflicts especially in far off lands most americans don't name two cities you know so um i think you're going to see continuous resistance it'll be really interesting to see when republicans have the house if they're really willing to put a stand against Ukraine funding. Often when Republicans are in the minority, they, you know, they raise a big ruckus and they oppose things and they make speeches. But when they have the power, they don't actually

do the things that they were. They kind of just start to let a lot of stuff slide. So, and I think that's in the last 20 years, we've seen that a lot for Republicans where they don't always follow through. Their big talk in the minority, but when it comes time for them to govern, they don't have the same backbone that they let on with some of their rhetoric. So whether they will actually push through or stand up to the Ukraine funding when they have the majority remains be seen. But you could, you know, in their defense, you would say, well, there are plenty of Republicans who do have the backbone, but there's always these moderate Republicans who side with the Dems. And that does happen a lot.

So we'll just have to see right now Ukraine funding does have a majority support. I don't see that going away in the next, you know, a few months, but give it a few more months after that. And who knows how the situation will change? Also this week, Casey, not a slow news week at all heading into the Christmas holiday. More news on the border crisis. The Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to take up a challenge to the Biden administration's plan to end Title 42 enforcement. Title 42 was a Trump-era health authority that allowed border agents to immediately,

or quickly expel immigrants who illegally cross the border over fears of them spreading COVID-19. That was scheduled to end on Wednesday of this week, just yesterday. Some states challenged it. The Supreme Court put a hold on the Biden administration's plans, and now we're waiting on a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. What's going on here? You laid it out pretty well, but what's, you know, Title 42 has been. been really what's holding the floodgates back at the southern border. So there's been a record

surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office. He has, you know, changed certain mechanisms within U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, CBP, to make it harder to catch or detain illegal immigrants. And he's definitely changed it for ICE, which is in charge of catching and deporting illegal immigrants when they're in the country. We've talked about this before in the podcast. But he's made it a lot harder to deport. almost impossible to deport any illegal immigrants unless they have some kind of criminal record. So, you know, word has gotten out that if you can get into the U.S., you're pretty much safe. I mean, border patrol will tell you, hey, come back for this hearing on this date, but, you know,

the vast, vast majority of migrants don't come back for the hearing. They just, you know, head north. And once they're there, if ice catches them, they're not going to deport them. So they know even getting caught crossing the border into the U.S. doesn't even mean that you're going to get rejected. Often you can get caught, processed, released into the U.S. and don't come back for your court date. You're not going to get deported, at least under this administration.

What Title 42 did in the name of preventing the spread of COVID into the U.S., it empowered these border agents to expel people quickly because, you know, they could have COVID and bring into the U.S. That was a reasoning behind it. Now, critics said that this was just like using COVID to keep immigrants out of the country, and it was kind of abusing COVID pandemic powers. But those on the other side will just say, hey, there's a crisis at the border. And this is, you know, the executive branch is not enforcing the law as well.

So we have to do what we can. There's also questions about states' rights versus the federal government. To what degree do these states step in and deport people? Or they can't really deport people, but secure their own border. So this has been dysfunctional for a long time. And now the Supreme Court, right before the expiration of that Title 42, says, hey, we're going to take a look at this. So it'll be interesting to see. I think the Supreme Court has this habit lately of taking on the most dysfunctional gridlocked, impossible issues like they did with abortion.

So I don't think they're going to help their popularity, whatever they rule on this. But it could create some movement on the issue. And in Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the state that is seeing the biggest impacts of, of the open borders under the Biden administration. He has been pleading with President Biden since he almost nearly since he took office to enforce U.S. immigration law, close the borders, deport illegal crossers, etc. None of that is really happening. This week now, depending on where you are in the country, you might have some bad weather

either already there or coming your head in your way, including in Texas at the southern border where they're expecting below freezing temperatures. This week, he sent a letter to President Biden pleading with him to provide humanitarian aid because a lot of these folks who are being released in the communities don't have a place to live. They're gathering. They're sleeping on streets, street corners and things like that. And Greg Abbott said with actual winter weather coming to the state, that that could end up resulting in a lot of deaths.

Yeah, even in sunny Texas, the weather, the coming weather is going to be pretty severe, especially if you're sleeping outside. I mean, and this may sound like overblown rhetoric to some people, but, you know, El Paso has declared a state of emergency because there's so many migrares. And we're talking about thousands and thousands every week coming across. And they're walking into El Paso. I'm like, hey, we're here. You know, what do we do? And these local, you know, local towns, even counties are having to handle these large influxes of people. they don't have the resources to do it.

So like you said, I mean, there's documentaries. There's, you know, Twitter is full of these videos of people, just large homeless encampus, but they're families. They're not, you know, one-off people. There's huge communities, families, and they've, I think they've been made some promises. And of course, cartels have helped, you know, get some of them over here. But they're really in a precarious position now. And so, as you said, Abbott's asked for federal help.

But these are all band-aids on this bigger issue. and I don't think anyone knows how to solve it. And I think, you know, at least half the country doesn't really want to solve it. You referenced El Paso declaring a state of emergency. One of Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's, you know, plans to address this issue was to start this past summer. He started busing migrants to sanctuary cities, so-called sanctuary cities, such as Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago.

now Philadelphia is on the list. The mayors of those cities declared emergencies when they're getting a fraction of the number of people that places like El Paso are saying. Yeah, I mean, it turns out that all the rhetoric on both sides and speeches don't really mean much when you have actually 1,000 people just walking around your town who don't have anywhere to stay, anywhere to go. I mean, a lot of these mayors and local officials have to actually solve the problems created by this,

not just give speeches in Washington like the Republicans and Democrats have been doing for a long time. So you're right. I mean, and I think it probably was kind of laughable to some of these border states that such a low number of migrants caused a state of emergency. I mean, what Philadelphia received could be what El Paso receives in one afternoon. But Philadelphia declared a state of emergency. So this is real problems.

I mean, we can't, I don't, I'm not going to propose a solution. That's not my role. But I do think that these mayors, these border towns, they're calling out for help. These border state governors are calling out for help. these border state governors are calling out for help and for some kind of solution. And it's not there right now. Moving on, Casey, I don't know that we've talked about this next story on America in Focus yet, but the collapse of the digital asset company FTX, the arrest of its former CEO

and the fallout from that. You wrote about that this week. Yeah, Dan, it may be bad news. I don't know if you're Trump-NFT digital trading cards, where they are, were they I heard they sold out before I had a chance to get. Oh, so you didn't, you didn't actually get one. I thought you would be first in line. Yeah, I missed up my, I missed my opportunity.

Wow, those are priceless collectibles. I'm really sad. I know you're mourning that, but yeah, this FTCS scandal has been, it's kind of a text story, but it has real political implications. I'll try to simplify it. FTX is a digital asset trading company that, a big part of that is crypto. And so it was started by this guy named Sam Bankman-Fried. And he has a cohort of guys who are helping him. But Sam and all of his cohort are actually looking at criminal investigation.

Even Sam Bankman-Feed is facing charges because this FTCS company, it just skyrocketed in popularity. It's one of the top crypto digital asset firms in the world. It's getting all this money. and then it just almost overnight, not quite overnight, but almost overnight, just cratered. And we're talking billions and billions of dollars lost. It's now looking like Banking Fried allegedly was taking money from the company to shore up his hedge fund. A lot of people who had money in this company, it's just gone. Like they're never going to get it back.

It was just lost. And so it's definitely a black eye for crypto and for the efficacy of it, the safety of it, the security of it. But the political angle here is it turns out that Banking Fried was a big donor. And he actually gave, you know, almost $40 million in political donations to Democrats. We also still reporting from the Washington Examiner that he was taking out federal regulators and whining and dining them. So this has raised a lot of questions. And I think this would be a source of, of course, this criminal investigation, but maybe even more investigation. because this guy who apparently just hoodwinked a lot of people.

I mean, that's, you know, nothing's been proven in court yet, but that's what's being said. He was giving a lot of money to a lot of powerful people and taking them for some, from some nice dinners and things. So now it's like, hey, was anyone turning a blind eye? That's going to be the source of investigation. And I don't know what the result of that will be, but I know that the point. Republicans keep hammering as he gave only a few hundred thousand dollars to Republicans, and he gave tens of millions to different rights.

Well, we'll continue to follow the fallout for man. I think I heard today, too, that a judge agreed to allow him to be released on bail, $250 million bail. If he's able to post that, then he's still got a lot of people's money. That's a good point. That's good. I mean, when people were that rich, they are really high flight risk, because they can go anywhere and disappear.

All right. Just got a brief minute or two, Casey, to talk about one more story. It wouldn't be American focus in 2022 if we didn't talk about inflation in some way. You wrote about a recently released data or survey this week that shows that a majority of Americans are having to live paycheck to paycheck because of the higher prices of everything. What's going on here? Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, a lot of Americans, hopefully you're done with your. Christmas shopping, but I'm sure there's a few husbands and dads out there who are going to be running out tomorrow and I in the night after getting a last-minute gift. But Casey, I'm disappointed. That's a very sexist point of view. Oh, it is entirely. I'm happy to discriminate against the dads of this country when it comes to Christmas shopping. I think you're actually projecting now. Tell me, honestly, Dan, have you bought all your presents yes or no? Yes, I am done. I don't believe it for a second.

Absolutely. We've got a blizzard coming out. way like right now. I'm not going out anywhere in the next two days. Okay. I even make my wife go pick up our daughter and her parents at the airport if they make it today. You're going to make your wife go drive in the black ice?

You know? Wow. She wanted to. Oh, no. There's no recovery. I'm sorry, America. How can we even trust this man with our news? Can we be trusted? But I don't know how recovered.

Yeah, something about payments. It's a group that has, you know, they released this survey. And it found that more Americans are saying they're living paycheck to paycheck. Of course, the holidays are a bad time for that. And interestingly, 57% of those American consumers who say they're living paycheck to paycheck, say that inflation has really hurt their financial situation, which makes a lot of sense. Of course, we've talked a lot about the podcasts on about record inflation and certain issues. like grocery prices, which have even outpaced the already high inflation numbers of other goods. So if you're one of those Americans, hopefully your shopping is already done. Hopefully you're able to stay in budget this year.

And hopefully you pick your own wife and family up from the airport and don't send your love your life into the Black Eyes. Blizzard. You end with jokes, Casey. Very nice. Of course, thank you for all those great news, though, that we can. got to talk about today. Just a few days before Christmas. Way to close the year 2022 on a positive note.

Right. That is all the time we have, though, this case. And thank you for your insight. I want to wish all of our listeners. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Whatever you practice.

Please stay safe out there. There is bad weather. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKeelib. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you.