The Daily Signal - Congress Gears Up for Spending Fight, Kim Jong Un and Putin to Meet, Grief Follows Morocco Earthquake | Sept. 11

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: President Joe Biden is absent from New York City on the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. Congress prepares for a spending fight as the end of fiscal year approaches.  California’s Legislature passes multiple bills aimed at undermining the rights of parents who disagree with the transgender worldview. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un plans to visit Russia in the coming days. Morocco earthquake kills at least 2,681 people. Relevant Links: https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/10/californias-coming-inquisition-targeting-anti-trans-parents/  Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen. I'm Samantha Sherris. And this is the Daily School Top News for Monday, September 11th. Here are today's headlines. Today is the 22nd anniversary of 9-11. There are ceremonies and events across America today to remember the lives that were lost and to honor the first responders who risked their lives at the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. Vice President Kamala Harris attended events at the National September 11th Memorial in New York. City today, but the president was not in New York City. President Joe Biden was in Alaska today, and his failure to appear in New York City on the anniversary of September 11th angered some of the families of the victims, according to Fox News. Biden is returning to Washington, D.C. today after a trip to India and Vietnam. And on his way home, Biden stopped at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska to honor the lives of those lost in the attack.

Fox reports that Terry Strata, who lost her husband at the World Trade Center, criticized Biden's decision as the opposite of what we all pledged to never forget. Stratta said the president is now just saying that flippantly and that he doesn't have to come to any of the sites and commemorate the loss with the families. And Matt Bachi lost his father on 9-11. he called Biden's failure to participate in the traditional events today, unfortunate. Bachi said if our leader is so willing to not show up to the memorial service, it's showing the message that Americans have forgotten and it's okay to forget.

Unfortunately for myself and for all the other families and those joining with us this morning, we have no way of forgetting. Well, in other news, the Senate returned to D.C. last week, and the House is going to be back tomorrow. At the top of Congress's to-do list is the budget. Congress has until the end of September to agree on 12 annual appropriations bills. Here with us to discuss more is the Heritage Foundation's director of the Center for the Federal Budget, Richard Stern. Richard, thanks for being back with us. Hey, as always, thanks for having me on. It's always a pleasure. Well, as Congress returns to Washington, D.C. and enters this debate over the 2024 fiscal budget, what are really the biggest funding issues that lawmakers are expected to disagree on? Everything. Wait, I wasn't supposed to say it was going. So, you know, here's the way I would frame this up, right? So there's this window of the spending number the fiscal conservatives would like versus the number that Biden would like. And frankly, unfortunately, some people from across the aisle that don't care about fiscal responsibility, that don't care about inflation taxes, that don't care about regular taxes, and just want to give more money to their

friends. So that debate encompasses every one of those 12 bills and every program in there, because it's questions about the growth rates of every single discretion program. It's questions about the appropriateness of an enormous number of this program. So, you know, that's why these appropriations debates are always so pitched. It's why they take so long. It's why they seem so opaque and kind of, you know, off the scope for the way that most people look at things, because you're looking at thousands of pages of bill text, of thousands of little line items of programs, every single one of which is under the microscope, not just this year, but those growth trajectories going forward. That's all in this debate about what spending levels are hit, and not just a spending part of it.

That's not even the limitation provision. Okay, so we know that there are these 12 specifically appropriations bills. And are any of those? I mean, you say that there's nothing that lawmakers agree on, but they're supposed to pass all 12 by the end of September. So are any of these expected to pass by that deadline? Well, I'm being a little hyperbolic here, right? So there's some of these bills that are a little less controversial than others. So for example, the one bill that actually made it to the floor of Congress before the August recess was the Milcom VA bill. It's military construction. and Veterans Affairs. Now, if you said, what's the portion of federal spending that sounds the least controversial? You'd probably come up with military construction. That's like base building services for military families and the VA for the people that literally

have served this country and kept this free. And you'd be right, but that is the only bill, the only one that made it to the floor of either chamber before the August recess. Now, the Senate is looking at doing a package that's got agriculture, that's got transportation and housing and urban development attached to the VA part of it. And so that gives you a little bit of a window of where negotiators think they're a little closer on things where there's a little more agreement. But this is where we are right.

Is that most of the bills, most of the spending, is really still kind of so far off the scope that negotiators are like, nah, we'll get to that later. We've got a couple of bills here. We think we might get in the ballpark of the way. to be along first. Okay. Well, so the end of the fiscal year is the end of this month, the end of September. And what happens if agreement can't be reached on a budget on these spending bills? So you might be listening to this thinking, wow, how could we be 20 days from the end of the fiscal year and have nothing figured out, nothing set up? And you might look at that and say, wow,

Congress, this doesn't do its job, and you'd be absolutely right about that. But to answer your question. We've been doing this for 15 years every year in a row. What happens every single year is we get right to the end of the fiscal year, right to the end of September, and we pass what's called a CR, a continuing resolution. And that's where we just simply say, you know what, we're going to take all the funding levels the way they are. We're going to take all the limitations on how the money has to be used and how it can't be used, and we're just going to keep doing it for another week, month, two months, whatever. So that's actually where everybody is on this. Everyone is not expecting to do the real next year spending bill until December, God forbid, maybe January, February.

We've done that before. We've actually done March before. So no one thinks we're going to get up at the end of September. They think we're going to do a CR. If anybody's guess at this point, how long the CR goes, though. Okay. Now, in Washington, D.C., there are rumors of a government shutdown if an agreement can't be reached at some point. How likely do you think that is? So a government shutdown is always a specter in these conversations, and we've even done it a couple times, right? But, you know, at the end of the day, the government shutdown tends to not be more than a few days, maybe a week or something like that. You know, and so what happens here, right, is a shutdown, and I should mention this, when there's a shutdown, which is to say that we don't pass a full, you know, next year's spending bill,

we don't pass a continuing resolution. It shuts down about a third of a third of the government. It's actually a lot less dramatic than everybody in D.C. wants to make it sound like it is. Social security checks still go at the door. Your Medicare is still going to work. Don't worry about it, right? But a shutdown a lot of times is really the result of the supermajority in Congress, not being comfortable of how much money they want to steal from the American public, and then allowing good fiscal conservatives, maybe like the Freedom Caucus,

to stand up and say, hey, wait a second. Instead of playing with this narrow window of slightly cutting growth of this or that, why don't we actually put together a bill that reflects all that? the Constitution, they reflects a real respect for letting people keep the fruits of their labors. So, you know, shutdowns happen for a lot of reasons. It's usually a lot of this kind of inside baseball. The specter is always there. It's really hard to predict whether this will be one of those years where we get a shutdown. And if we do, is it going to be a 48-hour dramatic shutdown or a month-a-one where it really starts affecting how the government function? The Heritage Foundation's Director of the Center for the Federal Budget, Richard Stern.

Richard, thanks so much for your time today. As always a pleasure. Thank you for having me all. The Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill is reporting that California's legislature has passed multiple bills aimed at undermining the rights of parents who disagree with the transgender worldview. Let's look at what some of these bills say. One of the bills would train teachers to profile anti-LGB parents. Another bill would train psychotherapists to prepare to high. gender treatments from parents at a minor's request. A third bill would prevent school districts from removing sexually explicit books if they contain transgender themes. The

fourth would prevent Californians from becoming foster parents if they disagree with gender ideology, and a fifth bill would expand the definition of child abuse to include non-affirmation of a child's claimed transgender identity. of the bills claims to uphold the virtues of diversity and inclusion while promoting a worldview at odds with the way many parents wish to raise their children. We will leave a link to Tyler's full report in today's show notes. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un plans to visit Russia in the coming days. During the visit Kim Jong-un will meet with President Vladimir Pugin. The Kremlin made the announcement on its website

writing the respected comrade Kim Jong-un will meet and have a talk with comrade Putin during the visit. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said the two leaders will lead their delegation in talks in Russia and the leaders might also meet one-on-one. The Kremlin spokesperson added that as with any of our neighbors, we feel obliged to develop good mutually beneficial relations. The talks are expected to focus on bilateral ties. Reuters reports that U.S. officials say the two leaders will discuss a possible arms deal to aid Russia's war in Ukraine and provide North Korea with economic and political assistance. The exact schedule for the visit is unknown, so stay tuned for more later this week.

We want to take a moment during today's show to share a sneak preview of a daily signal documentary that will be coming out Tuesday morning. myself and some of our daily signal team traveled down to Texas a couple weeks ago to interview Alisa Tambunga and her father. Tragically, in March, Elisa lost her mother and her seven-year-old daughter in a high-speed crash with a human smuggler. The human smuggler was evading police and had 11 illegal aliens in his car. I remember hearing just sirens.

I remember hearing yelling. I just kept yelling where's Amelia. I saw my family members were there. I saw my dad. I heard my dad yelling. Elisa says her daughter and mother were murdered because of our border crisis. You can check out the Daily Signals YouTube and our social media platforms to find the full-length documentary that will be released mid-morning on Tuesday.

Finally, today we have some updates regarding the earthquake in Morocco. The earthquake struck close to the popular tourist hub of Marrakesh on Friday night. About a dozen remote villages were among the communities hit the hardest. Rescuers are still looking for bodies in the rubble, but right now, we know that at least 2,681 people have been killed. Another 2,501 have been injured. It was a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, the strongest earthquake to hit Mirableness. in more than a century. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Morocco as they grieve the lives lost

and continue to find anyone who might still be alive in the rubble. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode of the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't gotten a chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Tomorrow morning, I am sitting down with Liz Wheeler of The Liz Wheeler Show to discuss her brand new book, Hide Your Children, Exposing the Marxist Behind the Attack on America's Kids. Also, make sure you subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback. Have a wonderful evening. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by.

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