The Daily Signal - #398: What You Need to Know About Spending Bill

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

As the national debt tick upward past $22 trillion, Congress is getting ready to pile on yet more debt as they consider a massive omnibus bill. We discuss with Heritage budget expert Justin Bogie to unpack the good, the bad, and the ugly. Plus: It looks like Republicans called the Democrats’ bluff on the Green New Deal -- and they’re relishing it.We also cover these stories:•President Trump will sign the omnibus spending, and then declare a national emergency on the border.•Former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe reportedly said that he Department of Justice was considering whether Trump could be removed from office using the 25th amendment.•Amazon announces it won't be opening a second headquarters in New York City,, after all.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, February 15th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, as the national debt ticks upward past $22 trillion, Congress is getting set to pile on yet more debt, as they consider a massive omnibus bill. Today, we'll talk with heritage budget expert Justin Bogie to unpack the good, the bad, and the ugly. Plus, it looks like Republicans called the Democrats' bluff on the Green New Deal. And they're relishing it.

But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that President Trump will sign the omnibus spending bill and then declare a national emergency on the border. Here's what he had to say on the Senate floor on Thursday. President Trump, and he, I would say to all my colleagues, has indicated he's prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time. and I've indicated to him that I'm going to support the National Emergency Declaration. So for all of my colleagues, the President will sign the bill. We'll be voting on it shortly.

The Omnibus Bill provides $1.37 billion for the President's border wall, far less than the $5 billion that he originally requested. Declaring a national emergency would free up unappropriated funds for the President to use, though it would almost certainly provoke a legal challenge. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country. Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe reportedly said that at one point the Department of Justice was considering whether President Trump could be removed from office using the 25th Amendment. Here's CBS is Scott Pelly, who interviewed McCabe discussing it. Gail, the most illuminating and surprising thing in the interview to me were these eight days in May.

when all of these things were happening behind the scenes that the American people really didn't know about. There were meetings at the Justice Department in which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment. These were the eight days from Comey's firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. and the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president. And here's part of what McCabe told CBS in a 60-minute interview that will be aired this weekend. I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency

and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage. And that was something that troubled me greatly. How long was it after that that you decided to start the obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations involving the president? I think the next day I met with the team investigating the Russia cases,

and I asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need to take going forward. I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace. I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that. without creating a record of why they've made that decision.

You wanted to take. McCabe's wife, Jill McCabe, ran for state Senate in 2015 as a Democrat and received contributions from Clinton allies. Jill McCabe and a Washington Post op-ed last year denied those donations had affected her husband's work. Well, President Trump was quick to the punch in responding to that interview. The president tweeted on Thursday, quote, "...Discraced FBI acting director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a poor little angel,

when in fact he was a big part. of the crooked Hillary scandal and the Russia hoax, a puppet for Leakin James Comey. IG report on McCabe was devastating. Part of insurance policy in case I won. Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave or left. McCabe's wife received big dollars from Clinton people for her campaign. He gave Hillary a pass, end quote. And Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, is denying McCabe's claim that he once

consider trying to push Trump out of office. He released a statement saying Thursday, quote, the Deputy Attorney General again rejects Mr. McCabe's recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect. The Deputy Attorney General never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references. There is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the Deputy Attorney General in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment, end quote. So the stories don't exactly match up. Someone's got to be right. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. happens. Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, is in trouble again. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, says that Manafort lied to special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as to the FBI and the

grand jury, per the Washington Post. That means that the plea deal Manafort made is null and void and could result in more jail time for him, among other consequences. Well, the Senate has voted to confirm William Barr as the next attorney general. Barr passed on a final vote of 54 to 45, mostly along party lines. He'll now oversee the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign's potential dealings with Russia. In that position, he'll have the power to determine what, if anything, his department tells Congress about the findings. During confirmation hearings, he wouldn't promise to release the findings, though he said he'd be as transparent as possible. President Trump met Thursday with abortion survivor Melissa Oden and Micah Pickering, a baby who was born at 22 weeks and survived,

according to EWTN. The Daily Signal profiled Micah Pickering in 2017 when he was five. Here's what his mom, Danielle, said about Micah. When I gave birth to Micah, I was 22 weeks and four days gestational. So then we heard him cry upon birth twice, and it was the most beautiful sound because then we knew that he had a fighting chance right then. Danielle Pickering also told the Daily signal this about late-term abortions. I just want to say on the issue of late-term abortion is just look at that baby.

That is fully formed. You know, that baby has a heartbeat. That baby has a brain and kicks and does hiccups and is fully formed and just ready for this world. And just consider that person that's inside and realize that that person could be our next president. That person could be even the person that, you know, serves you your coffee in the morning. that that person makes a difference in the world and the world will never be the same without that little baby. Politico reported citing unnamed sources

that Trump confronted Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, over abortion in an evening meeting ahead of the National Prayer breakfast, which was last week, and which Coons also attended. An unnamed source, who claims who've been present during the Coons-Trump Exchange, told Politico that Trump, quote,

saw a Democrat in the room, a Democrat who's known to be a woman, who's known to be a person of faith, and he was like, why aren't you speaking out about this, meaning abortion? Well, the head of FEMA, Brock Long, has resigned after facing months of tough questions relating to his use of government resources. Long spent 18 months as FEMA administrator, but starting last fall, he faced pressure to resign after an internal watchdog probe, found that he used official government vehicles

and staff to travel to his home in North Carolina. Long said he's leaving to spend more time with his. family. Well, Amazon isn't coming to New York City, after all. The corporate giant had announced it would be putting 25,000 employees in a secondary headquarters in the Big Apple. Heritage Foundation's Rachel Gresler said New York's initial deal for Amazon was concerning, writing in the daily signal. When governments carve out special deals for corporations, they grant big business an unfair advantage, and that hurts the little guy. But now, after facing resistance from figures including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, Amazon has announced a change of plans.

We'll have next. We'll talk to Justin Bogie to unpack the big new spending bill. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Well, joining us now to unpack the giant new omnibus bill that just dropped on Capitol Hill is Justin Bogie. a senior policy analyst here at the Heritage Foundation. Welcome back to the studio. Thanks for having me. So just full disclosure for our listeners, this is a fast-moving issue, and we're recording

it on Thursday. So by the time you listen to this, it may have already passed. But I just want to ask you at the outset here, before we get to the bad stuff, you've spent the last 24 hours really digging through this bill. What's the good stuff in it? Well, I think there's a couple of good things, if you can call them that. Something that's out of the ordinary for a bill like this is they didn't include a tremendous amount of add-on. So there's not as much what I would call extra, you know,

stuff or extra junk is really a probably a more accurate way to describe it in this bill as they have in others. I'd say that's a low bar to consider good, but, you know, comparatively speaking, that is a good thing. One issue was we had heard for, you know, months now that there was going to be a big disaster relief package included in this, judging from what the House and Senate had put forward last month, that neither one of those really would have been good bills. They wouldn't have done anything for FEMA who was really responsible for responding to disasters. It would have been more money for grants and subsidies that are unrelated to disaster response. So, you know, from that perspective, it's a win. Obviously, you also had more border

security funding. There are some restrictions on that funding, but that's, for the, for, in most aspects, that's a positive thing. So there are some, some fairly good or better outcomes of this bill, but it's still, you know, not very good in general. So, Justin, let's get more into what's bad about this bill. What's problematic? What is this due? Of course, we had the news this week that the national debt is up to $22 trillion. Is this just more spending?

You're exactly right. We just said $22 trillion in debt. This bill is not going to do anything to curb that or to restrict spending, really, in any way. This sticks to the higher budget levels that were passed last year. Beyond that, you know, we're talking about a relatively small amount of money here. It's still, you know, they should be trying to make progress on. spending cuts. And this doesn't do that. But beyond that, it's really the process. This process is terrible. You're talking about an 1169-page bill that was introduced around midnight last night.

We're sitting here on Thursday afternoon at any moment the Senate may vote on it. The House is going to vote on it later tonight. And, you know, very likely by tomorrow morning or certainly by the end of the day, this could be law. And that's just not the way we should be funding the government. We really need more time so that everyone can have a chance to first and foremost read it. but also have a chance to really debate this bill fully and talk about amendments that can make it better. Yeah, just on that point, I mean, we had a budget process in your new article to Daily Signal. You say that it's been since 96 since we've actually passed all appropriations bills on time. Yeah.

I mean, why do we have this budget breakdown and what would it actually take to get back to that? Yeah, so the last time we actually passed every, all 12 individual bills on time was 94. and the last time we started a year without a continuing resolution was 96. So, you know, over 20 years now since we followed the process, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons for it. Things have become more partisan in D.C. So it's a political kind of reaction. But there's just also not much incentive to follow the rules.

The 1974 Budget Act laid out a budget process with very clear timelines, but there's no penalty for missing those timelines, those deadlines. And so it's just been another thing that Congress pushes off as long as it can until it has to do something. And in some cases, when you, when you're up against a funding deadline, it allows people to put in worse policy measures, but they get through because of this must pass bill, so to speak. So I think we need to look at ways to change that. One idea out there is this so-called no budget, no pay act. Senator Braun from Indiana just introduced that in the last couple weeks, which would basically say, if you don't meet your budget milestones, then we're not going to, members of Congress won't

receive pay. So maybe that's one way to motivate them to actually follow the process. Would that include staff, by the way? There are different versions of that proposal. I don't believe that his wouldn't include staff. You know, I don't know if we want to penalize staff for their bosses, but. Yeah, a lot of roommates wouldn't be happy. Yeah, and there's certainly been, there's been proposals that would restrict their travel. And I have seen some ideas out there that would restrict staff salaries, but I don't

think that's actually made it into a bill yet. So speaking of salaries, one of the things that the Omnibus Spending Bill does is leave, give federal workers yet another raise. Can you speak about that and why that's problematic? Yeah, I can speak about it briefly, not an expert on federal compensation, but generally speaking, the pay gap between comparable jobs in the federal government versus the private sector, it's already about $50,000 a year in terms of total compensation with benefits. and on the federal level, it's usually those in higher positions are making less than their private counterparts

and those in lower positions are making more. So it just kind of continues to proliferate that wage gap between the public sector and private sector. And instead of just giving an across-the-board pay raise, we really need to be talking about federal compensation reform on a broader level and, you know, looking at merit-based raises. and, you know, it's so hard to change salaries or to discipline federal employees who aren't living up to their obligations. We really need to look at the whole system and find ways to make it better and more efficient. Well, of course, the big issue that gets a lot of the headlines is border security and the wall.

Can you talk a little bit about what this bill puts toward border security and how much of that actually will go to the wall? Yeah, so in terms of what we'll go to the wall or fencing or however you want to look, at it, it's about $1.375 billion. So just under $1.4 billion, that's new funding. There are some restrictions on it. There are certain areas where the wall may not be able to be built or where those local jurisdictions will have the right to say you can't build it here and have to work out some kind of agreement with the federal government. And there's a stipulation that this can't be used for concrete structures. It has to be used for any kind of existing fencing. or, you know, wall that we have in place now.

It can actually be used for a concrete wall. So those are some of the things to keep into consideration. There's some money that's unclear if it's really for detention. So immigrant detention beds, basically bed space and facilities. There could be up to another $750 million available that could be moved around. So potentially you could get a little bit more for the wall, perhaps even. But yeah, it's certainly not the $5.7 billion that the president was asking for, but it's also more than the zero that Nancy Pelosi was promising.

So for some people, there's probably a small victory there. Okay, so just to circle back to the $22 trillion and look at the big picture a bit more here. You know, let's say you get a magic wand and can do whatever you want. How do you think Congress should actually tackle their spending problem? Well, I think, first of all, we need to enact some kind of spending restraints. We have the budget control acts that have been in place since 2011, but they've been eroded by Congress. they're not going to be around past 2021 regardless, and they really limit what you can cut. So we need to talk about a spending cap on all spending, so you can open that up to Medicaid,

Medicare, Social Security. That's what's really driving our national debt. And right now there's just not really a will from Congress to do anything about those programs, even though they're driving all of this spending. You also have this huge problem. You know, $22 trillion in debt is bad enough, but it's really expensive to carry that much debt because of the interest payments on it. We're already spending close to $300 billion a year on interest payments on the debt.

That's going to go up by about 186% over the next 10 years. Within the next six years or so, we're going to be spending more on interest payments on the debt than national defense. So that becomes a question of our security. And that's something that should really worry all Americans if we don't get this under control. You know, you mentioned interest on the debt. Congressman Cloud recently wrote a piece for The Daily Signal saying that we need to, Congress basically isn't incorporating the future interest into its current expenditures. So they're able to kind of ignore the interest.

Explain what that's about and what – I mean, you've said that you support that reform. That's exactly right. So when the Congressional Budget Office goes and scores a bill, for instance, we had this budget deal last year that increased spending by $300 billion. dollars. That's just the actual spending authority that Congress, the additional spending authority that Congress increased the budget by. That doesn't take into account at all what that $300 billion spent over two years will do in terms of interest payments over the long term, over the 10-year period. So you're really getting, when you see a score and it doesn't include interest costs, you're really getting an incomplete view of the true costs of legislation. Congressman don't

have all the information that they need to really make an educated. a decision on what the impact of those bills will be. So we're certainly in favor of having CBO moved to a system where any kind of major legislation, really any legislation with a cost effect that they also include an estimate of what the interest impact will be. Well, Justin, thanks for joining us, bringing us all down with all this bad news. Well, it could have been worse. Listeners, you should know that Justin told us before the show that he was up at 530 this

morning reading the budget report. So if you want to be a think tank researcher, think again. Justin, thank you for joining us. And next up, we're going to discuss the Green New Deal. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. Each Tuesday in the Agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research.

The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, isn't happy that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, plans to hold a vote on the Green New Deal. I'm not sure I could count the number of times

he shrugged off a piece of legislation by calling it, quote, a futile gesture because the president won't sign it or because he thinks it would be a waste of the Senate's time. And yet on Tuesday, the Republican leader announced he would bring his Green New Deal resolution up for a vote because, quote, he wants to make sure everybody has the opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about it, unquote. Knowing full well his entire party will vote against it, including himself. Meanwhile, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and in House GOP. leadership, announced this week that the FAQs about the Green New Deal, originally on Representative

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's website, before being taken down after an uproar, will be included in the congressional record. These FAQs, just refresh your memory, included the stuff about updating every building in the country or building new buildings to make them energy efficient, the stuff like using high-speed rail so planes wouldn't be necessary, all that fun stuff. So, Daniel, do you think it's outrageous that Mitch McConnell, wants to let people vote on the Green New Deal? No, because it's their own bill. So this was angry Chuck Schumer, right?

He's very angry at Mitch McConnell right now. But he's angry because his own party just owned itself. Because Senator Markey, who is teaming up with AOC to push the Green New Deal. AOC is OECOECA is OECA. OECO.C. OEC. Hopefully the whole country knows AOC at this point. They introduced a bill that they know can't pass, but it's supposedly their most aspirational

like progressive bill to, you know, save the planet. And now they're freaked out that they actually have to vote for it. Right. And I think it's interesting because, you know, one, this is not like just representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey are on board with this. A lot of top Democrats have announced their support for this bill. There's a lot of things in the bill that give people, or at least in the FAQs, which I know they're trying to say, oh, no, those aren't it now.

But again, they were up on Ocasio-Cortez's website. Ocasio-Cortez sent them to NPR, and they didn't, I believe, disown them until two days after. So, I mean, it's hard to take them seriously that this was a whoops. But, you know, I think show votes are telling in the sense of Republicans when they controlled the House, but not the Senate or the presidency, took a bunch of votes against Obamacare, which was meant to show that that was their platform and they intended to do it. Yeah, I mean, every part, it's just for Chuck Schumer to criticize McConnell over this, it's like every party is going to do this, right? It's really his fault ultimately for letting his people introduce such a crazy bill that wants to get rid of oil and coal in 10 years and wants to move us from airplanes to trains. I thought airplanes were supposed to be more advanced than trains. Why are we trying to get away from airplanes?

I mean, I think they're considered worse for the environment. But I think the issue, of course, is high-speed rail. I mean, if California can't afford high-speed rail, I don't know who the heck is. They just junked their plan for high-speed rail. Right. But I mean, I don't think it's Schumer's fault. I don't think, I mean, Schumer doesn't control whether bills are introduced or not. I think what he's trying to do is he wants the Democrats and the liberals generally to not come off as extreme.

And McConnell is saying, let's own it. So, yeah, I don't know why you would be upset that you would get a vote on your legislation. I mean, if he's upset about his party being on the record, then it seems like that's his party's fault for holding the wrong positions and introducing the wrong bills. Anyway. Well, we'll leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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