The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Tucker Carlson Grill 6 GOP Candidates, NDAA Passes After Abortion Funding Blocked, New Student Loan Plan Announced | July 14

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: After a lot of debate and negotiations, the House passes the annual national defense bill.  Tucker Carlson interviews six GOP 2024 presidential candidates during an event in Iowa. President Biden’s Department of Education will forgive $39 billion in student loan debt to more than 800,000 borrowers.  The Daily Signal is going to be at the Turning Point Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida Relevant Links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuAGkW4KOEw  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, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Friday, July 14th. Here are today's headlines. After a great deal of debate and negotiations, the House has passed the annual National Defense Bill this morning. The bill is known as the National Defense Authorization Act or the NDAA. The major debate over the bill has centered on taxpayer money going towards abortions. Most Republicans agreed to. to back the bill after it was amended to prohibit the Pentagon from spending taxpayer money to pay for abortion-related travel and other expenses. Four Republicans voted no and four Democrats

voted yes. Three Republicans and two Democrats didn't vote. The bill approves 886 billion for defense spending. Heritage Foundation's director of the Grover M. Herman Center for the federal budget, Richard Stern, joins us now to discuss this a little further. Richard, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me on the talk about it. So if you would share a little bit about the process of this very large defense spending bill actually getting approved in the House because we were hearing for so long, there's debate, there's disagreement, it's not moving forward, and then all of a sudden this morning,

it is approved. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, defense is actually one of the weird places where the process is mostly followed. And that's going to come as no surprise to our listeners here. But, you know, the way it's supposed to work is that you have authorizing committees that create the underlying programs. Then appropriations comes in afterward and passes the funding bills that actually allow that money to go at the door to match what the authorizing committees do. It's an important part of the process. It's an important part of making sure that the American public can see what's going on, that they're part of the debates, that there are public hearings.

Now, for most of the funding that goes on, so we're ignoring defense for the second. We don't have the authorizing part of this. The authorizing committees do some things. the appropriations does whatever they want. In fact, hundreds of billions of dollars a year of appropriations, that's your money they take the fund of the government, goes to what are called unauthorized programs. It's exactly what it sounds like it is.

And that gets to the omnibus and all the other things that you've probably heard from people at Heritage here about how the process is broken down for funding. Now, with defense, we still do the NDA. We still do that authorizing bill ahead of time that approves the funding, doesn't give the funding, and puts stipulations over how it's used or how it can't be used.

So we still do that in Congress and then do the defense appropriations bill later. So part of this debate has been the conservatives have wanted, as you said, good values and life protections. Now, you might say, what does national security have to do with abortion policy, gender affirming care, diversity and inclusion? The answer is nothing except the Democrats. So President Biden has used his defense department and what we would consider to be inappropriate ability of the administrative branch to use defense department resources to, to do these insidious things, to spend money on abortions, to spend money on gender affirming, really genital mutilation, to spend money on diversity and equity and inclusion stuff and green energy stuff and all manner of other things.

So what conservatives said here was no, no farther. We won't let you abuse the Defense Department, so we're going to use all the tools we have our disposal. So there have been parallel debates going on about both the NDA on the authorizing side and the defense approbes bill, which has come out of committee now for the appropriations. Committee in both places to put up what are these limitation provisions, these provisions that would block the administration from using defense funds for this, that, or everything else. Now, as you'd imagine, this is controversial.

And both these bills, the NDA and the approves bill for defense need the pass the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. So this is why leadership feels like on a Republican side, they need to work with the White House. They need to cut deal. Now, for good conservatives and people like us and our friends in Congress, that's a no-go. We're not going to allow a defense bill that focuses on diversity and abortions. So what's happened here, right, is that stalemate you were talking about is conservative saying,

we're not going to do this and greenlight a defense set of bills that really just help the admin with their corrupt, woke, climate diversity stuff. And leadership saying, no, we've got to cut a deal here. So what they've done, and this is the important part for everyone listening, the amendments to these bills can't get on the floor unless leadership allows them to get on the floor. Leadership is the gatekeeper. They can stop amendments from getting to the floor. In fact, hundreds of amendments have been offered and get offered on the approbes billed on the NDA. A handful got voted on. What leadership did here was they made in order, that means they made them allowable to be voted on the floor, a couple of amendments that dealt with diversity, the dealt with abortion, the dealt with gender affirming care, and et cetera.

This way conservatives could pass these amendments, they could get a vote on the floor, they could go home and they could say, look, we did something for you, we did something the way we promised. leadership can say, yes, see, we made it, we gave you the opportunity to do this. Now, the Senate and Democrats already saying this are going to say, this is dead on arrival because Democrats won't vote with those, quote, poison pills in there. And then what you're going to see, tragically, is a conference report. You're going to see the House and Senate work together to put together a package where they're likely going to strip all of these good provisions out. That's going to be the thing they're going to try to sign on the law.

And leadership will go back to conservatives. And we've seen this time and time again. They'll go back to conservatives and say, hey, we gave you. the votes on the stuff you really wanted related to values? Why are you complaining? Completely ignoring the fact that those votes that they allowed conservatives are on the bill that the leadership never intends to actually get signed into law. So I think that's kind of the state of play of where we are right now. Interesting. So in other words, the bill as it was passed by the House this morning, that's not going to be the bill ultimately that is passed in the Senate is what you're saying.

Unfortunately. And we've seen this process time and time again. And this is part of why as conservatives, is we're always fighting this fight with leadership, trying to say, really put gold standards out, really stand up for the principles that you've all pledged to your voters, that as conservatives we say we believe in. And, you know, frankly, this is exactly what happened with the Limitsave Grow bill versus the misnamed fiscal responsibility act, is leadership put all of the goodies in Limits Save Grow, pass the House, knowing the Senate wouldn't pass it, Biden wouldn't sign it, and then turned around gave us the fiscal responsibility, which had none of those things.

And in fact, probably is going to lead to a spending increase in priorities that the Democrats have. So, you know, I think sadly what you're seeing here is just yet the next iteration of that. Wow. Well, Richard, thank you for your work on this. We're going to be following it closely as it moves forward. Really appreciate your time today. I thank you as much as well. Well, shifting gears to some news regarding the 2024 presidential election. Tucker Carlson interviewed six GOP presidential candidates today in Iowa.

The interviews all ran about 30 minutes each and took place at the Family Leadership Summit. The summit draws a large Christian and conservative crowd to discuss some of the major policy issues facing the nation. Carlson interviewed South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramoswamy, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Former President Donald Trump was not in attendance at the event due to a schedule conflict. Each conversation allowed voters to see where the candidate stands on some of the major issues. Russia and the war with Ukraine, America's southern border, and the protection of women's sports were all major issues that the candidates addressed.

Senator Scott was the first candidate to sit down with Tucker, and he made it clear that his Christian values will guide him if elected president. And for those who don't like common sense conservative principles driven by the Judeo-Christian Foundation, choose another candidate. It's that simple. Later in the morning, Carlson sat down with former Vice President Mike Pence, and their conversation became a little bit tense at one point, as Pence argued the Biden administration has not done enough to support Ukraine. But Carlson pushed back, saying America needs to focus on issues at home before addressing international issues. And all along the way, the Biden administration has been slow in providing military support. Make no mistake about this. We promised them 33 Abrams tanks in January.

I heard again two weeks ago in Ukraine, they still don't have them. We've been telling them we'll train their F-16 pilots, but now they're saying maybe January. We'll let somebody transfer some jets. I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President, have you? I know you're running for president. You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks. Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years. Drive around.

There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States, and it's visible. Our economy has degraded. The suicide rate has jumped. Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased. And yet, your concern is, the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars don't have enough tanks. I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that? Well, it's not my concern. Tucker, I've heard

that routine from you before, but that's not my concern. I'm running for president of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble. Pence went on to say that he believes it is possible to both fix the issues at home and lead on the world stage. The summit is still going on as of Friday evening. So if you're listening to this right around 5 or 6 o'clock p.m. Eastern time, you might still be able to catch some of the speeches. Blaze Media is streaming it. We'll put the YouTube link with the stream in today's show notes. And at 6.30 p.m. Eastern Glenn Beck is going to be sitting down for an interview with Tucker Carlson. So they're going to be a switching of roles. Carlson's been interviewing candidates all day. And now he's going to be interviewed. And it's also worth noting that this is the first public event that Tucker Carlson is appearing at since Fox News canceled his show in April. And today we also have some significant news out of the Biden administration. President Biden took new action on student loans today.

President Biden's Department of Education announced it will forgive $39 billion in student loan debt to more than 800,000 borrowers. So, who is eligible for this forgiveness? plan. Well, those who are eligible are a select group of borrowers who are repaying their loans through something called income-driven repayment plans. These are plans where borrowers repay not based on the size of their loan, but based on their salary. But not everyone on an income-driven repayment plan is receiving loan forgiveness. To qualify, borrowers have to have made at least 240 to 300 qualifying monthly payments on their loan. According to the Department of Education,

the forgiveness is the result of fixes implemented by the Biden-Harris administration to ensure all borrowers have an accurate count of the number of monthly payments that qualify towards forgiveness under income-driven repayment plans. The Department of Education says they began notifying qualified borrowers today. The forgiveness, will go into effect 30 days after notification of forgiveness. Of course, this loan forgiveness news comes two weeks after the Supreme Court struck down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan that would have forgiven up to $20,000 for every borrower.

After the court's ruling, Biden said that he would take further action to try to forgive student loans. And, well, this news appears to be part of that pledge. Before we go today, we want to take just a second to let you know that the Daily Signal is going to be at the Turning Point Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida this weekend. If you're at the conference, be sure to stop by the Daily Signal booth on Media Row to pick up a free Daily Signal tote bag. The Daily Signal team is going to be sitting down with some leading conservative voices, some lawmakers during this conference, and we're so excited

to bring you all some of those exclusive conversations early next week. So you can be looking forward to those. In the meantime, if you have not had a chance to subscribe to the DailySigal podcast wherever you like to listen to shows, please take a moment to do so. We love hearing your feedback and seeing those ratings and reviews come in. But thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We hope you all have a great weekend, and we will see you right back here on Monday morning for our interview edition. Have a great weekend. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko.

Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.