Tangle - Republicans and Democrats strike a deal.

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

The new spending deal. On Sunday, top Democrats and Republicans in Congress said they had come to an agreement on a $1.65 trillion spending deal. Now, lawmakers will attempt to pass appropriations within the limits specified by the deal. Otherwise, Congress will need to once again push through a short-term spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), to keep the government from shutting down.You can read today's podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video about misinformation and fake news that has spread like wildfire in the three months since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent fighting in Gaza here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (0:57), Today’s story (3:02), Left’s take (6:23), Right’s take (10:04), Isaac’s take (13:44), Listener question (17:16), Under the Radar (20:35), Numbers (21:27), Have a nice day (22:24)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the poll. What do you think of the spending deal? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the deal struck between Republicans and Democrats over fiscal year 2024 spending. That might sound a little boring, but it's actually pretty important and interesting. Today is Wednesday, January 10th. And as always, before we jump in, we'll kick things off with some quick hits. First up, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized after complications from a surgery to treat prostate cancer. He did not disclose to the White House or Congress his cancer diagnosis or the hospitalization, which has led to calls for his resignation.

Number two, the final GOP primary debate for the Iowa caucus is being held tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern on CNN. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley are attending. Donald Trump has again opted to skip the debate. Number three, the U.S. Labor Department issued a final rule that could force companies to treat some workers as employees rather than independent contractors. The rule is expected to face legal challenges. Number four, last year was the hottest year in 173 years of recorded measurements, according to scientists from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Number five, Representative Greg Pence, the Republican from Indiana and the brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, announced that he is retiring at the end of his term. congressional leaders announced yesterday they reached a deal on an overall spending level for

the remainder of this term now this is a key step towards keeping the government funded as two shutdown deadlines quickly approach but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The big important number is $1.59 trillion. That is the top line for spending in fiscal year 2024, which allots $886 billion for defense and $704 billion in non-defense spending. This is still going to get messy and they're still going to cut it very close to the deadlines, which means there can be a jolt to the stock market or real world impacts from the federal workers and contractors, the military families and the small businesses who rely on a functioning federal government. On Sunday, top Democrats and Republicans in Congress said they had come to an agreement on a $1.65 trillion spending deal. Now, lawmakers will attempt to pass appropriations within the limits specified by the deal. Otherwise, Congress will need to once again push through a short-term

spending bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government from shutting down. The agreement is the first major deal new House Speaker Mike Johnson, the government from shutting down. The agreement is the first major deal new House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Republican from Louisiana, has made with Democrats since taking over the role. The House and Senate have struggled to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills required to fund the government since last year. In the spring, President Biden and then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a nearly identical deal for spending in fiscal year 2024 and also agreed to raise the borrowing limit to keep the government open. That agreement eventually led to McCarthy

being ousted as Speaker by a group of conservative Republicans who opposed raising the debt limit without reducing spending. The agreement includes $773 billion for non-defense discretionary spending and $886 billion for defense spending. As part of the deal, Congress will move $10 billion in IRS funding cuts scheduled for fiscal year 2025 into fiscal year 2024 and rescind $6.1 billion in COVID relief funds. Republicans involved in the negotiations touted those cuts, which totaled $16 billion in savings. Democrats, meanwhile, celebrated the protection of veterans' benefits and nutritional assistance, as well as keeping non-defense spending roughly flat year over year. It is less than a 1% decrease, while military

programs increase by 3%. Several Republicans expressed frustration with the deal, including the House Freedom Caucus, which issued a critical statement on X. It's even worse than we thought, they said. Don't believe the spin. Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is $1.658 trillion, not $1.59 trillion. This is a total failure. Representative Chip Roy, the Republican from Texas, said colleagues are really frustrated with Johnson and are having conversations about what to do going forward, which some interpreted as a threat that they may try to oust him like they did with McCarthy. In November, Congress passed a novel, laddered temporary funding bill that split the 12 appropriations

bills into two groups. The first deadline, January 19th, is for agencies covered by the Agriculture, Energy and Water, Military Construction and Veteran Affairs, and Transportation and Housing appropriation bills. The eight other appropriation bills were extended until February 2nd. Now, Speaker Johnson, who had previously vowed not to pass another temporary funding bill, is hoping to avoid a government shutdown while Congress figures out how to get to the top-line figure in the appropriation bills before those deadlines. We got the pedal to the metal on the appropriations process, he told Punchbowl News.

The appropriators are all working in earnest. The staffs are. They're overworked. Everybody is doing their best to meet the deadlines. Today, we're going to break down some commentary about this deal from the left and the right, and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left has few objections to the budget agreement itself, focusing instead on how the deal is nearly identical to the one that McCarthy struck. Some say House Republicans learn nothing from their chaotic ouster of McCarthy and seem

prepared to make the same mistake with Johnson. Others commend Johnson for his willingness to negotiate with Democrats, despite knowing the blowback he'd receive from his party. In the American Prospect, David Dyan said Johnson is the same as the old boss. Republicans could have made Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or a picket sign with the words no new taxes on it House Speaker, and any of them would have ended up putting out the same statement that Mike Johnson did about a budget deal reached over the weekend. There is no conservative hypnotist who can lull Democrats who control the Senate and the White House into agreeing to all of their hyper-partisan demands, Dianne said. Johnson's tenure was always going to result in the latest in a series of sad,

dear colleague letters, which exaggerate the conservative slant of the bill almost beyond recognition. Conservative rage over this is likely to manifest in at least a partial government shutdown. What most of the reporting on this budget deal has missed is that Republicans had moved on a week ago from a showdown over federal spending targets to a showdown over immigration. Unless there's been a change of heart, the House GOP caucus is united on demanding far-right border policies in exchange for passing a government funding bill. As that remains unacceptable to Democrats, we're likely to see funding run out beginning on January 19th, regardless of this agreement. In MSNBC, Hayes Brown wrote that House Republicans are right back where they started on

spending. There's no substantive difference between the Biden-McCarthy deal and the agreement made between Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, despite Johnson's attempts to say otherwise, Brown said. Even the way that the money is divided between military and non-military spending is the same as before, $886 billion for the former and $704 billion for the latter. That there was any real dispute about the top line number says more about the internal dynamics of the House Republican caucus than anything else. It's unclear that the House GOP has learned anything from spending the last year punching itself in the face, that they've managed to get Democrats to agree to a spending

freeze, and that with inflation actually cuts total spending is a win that they should have been enjoying since last May. Instead, they find themselves right back in the exact same place, much worse for the wear and heavily bruised. The New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial board praised Johnson for showing his pragmatic side in the budget negotiations. Johnson showed he was willing to put country over the extreme wing of his own party and work in good faith across the aisle. He also demonstrated an understanding of how to negotiate under circumstances that are complex, to put it mildly, the board said. It won't win him any favor from the shut-it-down wing of the GOP, the same folks who turned on Johnson's predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, after he cut a similar budget deal last year. But the

agreement suggests Johnson is willing to take some friendly fire while keeping his eye on what matters. We have to be encouraged by the willingness of both sides to get down to the country's business, the board said. There's plenty in getting the endless budget machinations behind him for Johnson too, as he's got other things, particularly the chaos at the country's southern border, which he visited last week on his own agenda. For the country as a whole, though, the first order of business is to keep the open sign turned on. We're glad to see Johnson doing his considerable part. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is mixed on the deal and acknowledged that it's functionally the same as McCarthy's

budget agreement. Many bemoan that the deal makes no attempt to address the government's most exorbitant areas of spending. A small section of the right see the deal as a pragmatic move by Johnson to demonstrate that Republicans can govern effectively. National Review's editors criticized the deal as another punt on spending. This deal doesn't include the two spending items that have been the focus of Congress's attention the past few months, border security and aid for Ukraine and Israel. Bills on these subjects could pass at a later date, potentially adding over $100 billion more in spending this year, the editor said. And of course, this deal is only for discretionary spending, which is projected to

be roughly balanced anyway in the long run. The driver of the national debt is mandatory spending, social security, health care programs, and interest payments. Keeping discretionary spending roughly equal to last year's is a perfect demonstration of Washington's unseriousness on fiscal policy. Last year, the deficit was $2 trillion. It was a year of low unemployment, no major new domestic programs, no U.S. forces involved in major wars, and tax revenue comfortably above the historical average as a share of the economy. Coming up $2 trillion short in those conditions is an embarrassing failure of leadership, starting with the president and his administration and running all the way through both chambers of

Congress. In the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg asked, will Mike Johnson get away with betraying MAGA House members? I'm a big believer in the power of arguments in a democracy, but the simple fact is that arguments within Congress matter less than the raw numbers behind who is making the arguments, Goldberg wrote. When you can afford to lose a dozen senators of your own party and nearly a hundred representatives in the House on a given piece of legislation, it's relatively easy to get your way. That's simply how our system works. Apparently, the House Freedom Caucus doesn't get this. The argument Republicans need to win is at the ballot box. It doesn't matter that House Freedom Caucus members are in safe seats and won their elections.

They need Republicans in competitive seats, and lots of them, to win. That's because millions of Americans elected Democrats to oppose Republican policies. The idea that a weak House speaker with a tiny and sharply divided majority can simply overpower the Senate and the White House is childish nonsense. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season,

over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluSilvax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. Thank you. is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the deal gives Republicans a chance to show they can actually govern. Fiscal 2024 discretionary spending through this September will remain at $1.59 trillion, as specified by statute in the Fiscal Responsibility Act agreed to by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden in May. That's a minor victory by itself, since Senate appropriators intended to bust that cap by adding another $14 billion, the board wrote. The rub is that Mr. McCarthy and the White House

negotiated several side deals that increased domestic spending by an additional $69 billion. While that number remains, Mr. Johnson managed to offset $16 billion with other cuts. House Freedom Caucus members are denouncing the deal as a sellout, but they always do. Could they do better with a three-seat margin in the House and Democrats in charge of the Senate and the White House? There's no evidence they have a plan beyond the futile gesture of shutting down the government, the board said. The cheapest trick in politics is to pound the table in outrage at everyone else's failure without offering a constructive idea for doing better. This is part of the GOP's current affliction, and the Speaker's deal is an antidote. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.

So we are back where we started. When Johnson was elected as speaker, I said my biggest concern about him is his inexperience. I floated the possibility that how green he is might help him. Perhaps not having enemies and having very little known about him would be an advantage in these kinds of negotiations. But I also posited that being in the room with far more experienced power players in Washington like Biden, McConnell, and Schumer was going to make his job very difficult. After the November deal to pass a laddered stopgap funding bill, I said Johnson deserves more credit than criticism for trying something new, and I wasn't going to judge the outcome until this deal got fleshed out. But now, I think it's safe to say that Johnson got steamrolled and that it isn't really his fault.

The fundamental takeaway here is that this deal is only marginally different from what Speaker Kevin McCarthy got, and that the last few months of turmoil in the House Republican caucus—the fight for Speaker, the ouster of McCarthy, the search for his replacement, all of it got them right back where they were before. Indeed, the biggest changes in the chamber since then are that McCarthy and a number of other House Republicans are retiring, in part, if you believe what they've said, because of how chaotic and unproductive the chamber is. Representative George Santos, the Republican from New York, has been expelled, and Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican from Louisiana, is leaving D.C. for cancer treatment. The net effect is that their voting majority has narrowed

and the number of seats they need to defend in the upcoming election has increased. In political terms, House Republicans are in a weaker position now than before ousting McCarthy. And I'm not thrilled to say that, because I support the thrust of what House Republicans like Johnson are trying to accomplish. Our spending is completely out of control, and Johnson's desire to get Congress to pass 12 appropriations bills individually with lots of deliberation and debate is the right North Star. That is how Congress is supposed to work. Our spending should be flat, if not cut, and we desperately need reforms to Social Security, Medicare, and the military, which waste our money at an extraordinary rate. I also appreciate conservative House Republicans like

the Freedom Caucus wielding their power in the most impactful ways possible. Far too much power in Congress sits with a handful of leaders at the top, and if Democrats had a contingent of members willing to buck the party leadership in real tangible ways rather than always falling in line, the institution as a whole would be a lot healthier. Say what you will about Representative Matt Gaetz or Chip Roy, but they are maximizing their impact given their stature and experience. That strategy is one thing, outcomes are another, and it doesn't look like anything good is coming Johnson's way. If he sticks to his pledge of no more short-term spending,

then the government will shut down because there is simply not enough time for appropriators to get the job done before January 19th. But if he passes another short-term spending bill, then he'll be breaking his promise on top of getting a penance more than McCarthy got, which could spark a fresh rebellion against his leadership. The reality for Republicans remains the same either way. Democrats control the White House, they control the Senate, and Republicans have the narrowest of majorities in the House. Until that changes, Republicans aren't going to regardless of who the speaker is. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Paul in New York. Paul said, Trump's lawyers argued his case for immunity in court yesterday.

Did they change your mind? No, Paul. They did not change my mind. If anything, I think they actually further convinced me how weak his argument is. A quick refresher here for those who haven't been keeping up. Special Counsel Jack Smith

asked the Supreme Court to expedite their determination of whether Trump is immune from prosecution. Tangle covered that extraordinary request last month when it looked like SCOTUS was going to take it up, but after Trump's lawyers filed their own brief, the court determined that it would not hear arguments before an appeals court did. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard Trump's appeal, and it did not appear to go well for his team. All three judges seemed skeptical of the Trump team's position. The moment that got all the headlines was when Judge Florence Pond asked

Trump's lawyers if a president could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and be immune from prosecution. Judges have a very special talent for getting right to the core of an issue. Trump's attorney, John Sauer, responded that before such prosecution takes place, Trump would need to be impeached and convicted. The judge repeated her question, saying she sought a yes or no answer, and Trump's attorney said it was a qualified yes because there is a political process that would have to occur. I hope the absurdity of that is self-evident. But to make it plainly obvious, if a president orders SEAL Team 6 to murder his top political rival, we shouldn't need Congress to impeach the president and convict

him before doing something about it. And if Congress somehow decided not to convict him in an impeachment trial, that president should still be able to face actual prosecution. The obvious point here, which the government's lawyers did make, is that under the logic of Trump's attorneys, a president could murder someone, resign before being impeached, and then be allowed to walk free. But that wasn't Trump's team's only argument. They also argued that his actions fighting the election results were part of his official duties as president, and that those official acts are specifically what must be prosecuted by Congress before being prosecuted anywhere else. The appeals

court could potentially respond to this line of argument by asking the trial court to determine the question of whether his actions fighting the election results were official acts or not, sending this debate back down to the lower court and further delaying the trial. But again, Judge Karen Henderson, the lone Republican on the panel, cut through the defense in simple terms. I think it's paradoxical to say that his, Trump's, constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law, she said. All this is to say that I don't think Trump's immunity here hinges on Congress impeaching him or not. I don't think the appeals court will rule that, nor do I think the Supreme Court would, and I definitely don't think his actions after the 2020 election all amounted to official acts as president. So no, I did not find his attorney's arguments compelling in the least,

and I don't think this line of defense for him is going to be effective. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, the prosecutor who charged Donald Trump and 18 others with participating in a criminal enterprise to subvert Biden's election win, has been subpoenaed herself to testify in a colleague's divorce proceeding. The development could shed light on allegations that Willis and the colleague had an improper romantic relationship when they sought to prosecute former President Donald Trump. Separately, Trump co-defendant Mike Roman has alleged that Willis improperly hired that

colleague, Nathan Wade, and sought to disqualify Willis from the case she brought against Trump and other defendants. The Wall Street Journal has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. Non-defense spending as a percentage of GDP in the U.S. budget in 1955 was 5.1%. Non-defense spending as a percentage of GDP in the U.S. budget in 2000 was 12.6%. And non-defense spending as a percentage of GDP in the U.S. budget in 2023 is 18.6%. The U.S. government expenditures in Q1 of 2020 was $7.5 trillion. In Q2 of 2020, it was $10.8 trillion, and the expenditures in Q2 of 2023 were $9.4 trillion. The percentage of Americans who said reducing the budget deficit should be a top

priority for the president and Congress in 2021 was 42%, according to a Pew survey. And the percentage of Americans who said reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress in 2023 was 57%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Foo Fighters frontman David Grohl is the hero we need in times like these. Between shows in Australia, Grohl spent a rare day off in Melbourne volunteering for the Big Umbrella Foundation, a food rescue charity. During a heat wave, the charity said that Grohl spent 18 hours preparing and lovingly smoking 120 kilograms, that's 44 pounds, of pork ribs, pork butt, and beef brisket. By the end of the day,

Grohl and his fellow volunteers had served over 430 meals to locals in need. It will be a day our friends on the streets will never forget as they brushed up against a rock legend and one of the nicest guys on the planet who genuinely cares for people in need. Read a caption on Big Umbrellas Foundation's Instagram page. No words can fully capture the impact of this positive experience. Good Good Good has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description.

All right, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law.

The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.

When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.