Congress will return to serious business this week like your budget

Tom Taemin: And they’re back. Despite this, they had a great week after fighting. And budget settlement, will it be the first of the agenda?

Mitchell Miller: Yes, absolutely. The Congress has run the government with the ongoing resolution they have passed recently, and lawmakers have since returned to their district. Now, Republicans in the House and Senate must really grasp the path forward for this big, beautiful bill that the House has passed before and make sure Senate leaders are on board. One of the biggest challenges is making sure everything is paid. The House Energy Commerce Committee has also been directed to devise a $880 billion cut. That is likely to require a cut in Medicaid, which Democrats are harping. Republicans say nothing is set on stone yet, but GOP claims they can get a large portion of it by cutting through fraud and waste. Of course, I’ve heard it before with other institutions without actually taking away any profits. So this will be politically difficult for the Republicans.

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Tom Taemin: Yes, they don’t want anyone to put under the stone by reducing Medicaid. And will the settlement set the blueprint for 2026?

Mitchell Miller: That’s right. And, in the end, of course, it’s a settlement, so we’ll need to balance everything over the next decade. And one of the issues with Hugest is the issue of paying $4.5 trillion to extend these Trump tax cuts from the first semester. And what we’re hearing is that Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee will meet with the Senate’s office on a variety of issues that sound like very simple and common, such as the infamous current policy baseline. However, these three words are important to what can actually happen in a reconciliation. The senator wants to use the baseline to say, “In fact, this doesn’t cost anything because $4.5 trillion is actually extended from the original 2017 tax cut.” This is a big problem for GOP lawmakers, obviously through settlement, as I said, they have to pay over the next 10 years.

Tom Temin: Yeah, 10 years, and of course, they can change any course in ten years. But this reconciliation, it will be a big battle. So it’s just hot and is it fair to say?

Mitchell Miller: Absolutely. So, clearly, before the ongoing resolution is passed, and whether the government will be shut down, it can be argued that the simple part is over despite the big kerfuffle. But for Republicans, this is a massive deal, and the House and Senate really have to reach the same page. And of course, as you know, in connection with the settlement, there are all these mysterious rules, including the bird rule, named after Sen. Robert Byrd and the infamous Bird Bass. This money cannot be used for discretionary spending, so it is essentially a tool to avoid things, and in this case you can get a lot of policy initiatives and tax cuts. And among the things that could come up is the House, where Senate Republicans are worried they might try to lower the blueprint for their $1.5 trillion budget in cuts in spending. So I think I’m going to see them slam their heads on these major committees, Houseways and the instrumental committee and Senate leaders. They are now trying to make sure everything is on the same page. But we’re going to see some fights within the Republican Party.

Tom Temin: By the way, what about the $1 billion cut in the District of Columbia budget? There are many pot holes in the district.

Mitchell Miller: It really blew a billion dollar hole. It’s a big pothole on a budget. In a review of people, this is essentially a language not included in continuous solutions, and DC said it would obviously need to return to its 2024 spending levels midway through 2025. Finally, in the end, the Senate approved this bill, but it’s essentially another bill that must be passed in the House to essentially say, “D.C., you’re the whole and you have to come up with a recovery of these billion dollars.” Of course, when they returned here this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, this clearly isn’t at the top of his agenda for all the reasons outlined in relation to other issues. But at some point, I think it’s coming to the floor of the house. The question is, what about House Speaker Mike Johnson dealing with it delicately? He has extremely influential old people, like Susan Collins of Maine and Tom Cole, the spending chairperson of the Oklahoma home. Both say it’s okay for this to happen, but of course there are plenty of hardliners in the house saying, “Why should we bother this?” All of these supporters point out that this does not include federal taxpayer dollars. If so, it’s just like fixing a glitch.

Tom Temin: Well, the city can also lower the speed limit to 10 mph and have 10,000 new cameras in it.

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Mitchell Miller: That’s very true.

Tom Temin: And they’ll make trillions like that. I’m talking to Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent at WTOP. And then there are the Trump administration’s administrative measures and executive orders. This requires some action by the council if only the education department asks questions, but there are many. And I think the lawmakers are baring their fangs and claws here and are back with at least some of them.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right. I think this is really interesting. I think it was useful, an executive order signed last week by the President in relation to the education sector. He went all the way to the edge, but as you know, Congress had to do its own, so he didn’t say they were going to close the department. And this is something I think is happening now with Doge. It’s starting to get a little late as many lawmakers say, “Wait a minute, this is happening in my district, this institution is being cut off, or this university where my district relies heavily on research money is upset about it.” It’s a more delicate balance and I think we saw the reorganization between Elon Musk and Kuji. If we convince them that they are the people making decisions and that these anonymous people in the Doges are not the only ones making these decisions, then have they essentially returned some power?

Tom Taemin: And the president said that Doge had a time limit, which I think was 18 months, but it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t even within the Trump administration’s 100-day mark.

Mitchell Miller: Yeah, that’s incredible. So we’re going through the 60-day mark for presidency and we’re thinking that the federal government is absolutely shaken around what’s going on. That’s truly amazing.

Tom Temin: And you find reports that members are returning to the district and, as you briefly stated, they are really hearing from both sides when they get home. It gets a little hot under the collar.

Mitchell Miller: Yeah, that’s really funny. For example, Democrats would think they’ll return to their district and would oppose Republicans about these pending cuts they expect to come in relation to Medicaid. But what happened to them was that many Democrats said, “Hey, Democrats, you haven’t put in enough effort to keep federal workers, and all these people are losing their jobs whether they’re veterans or people from various institutions, and we need you to fight harder.” And on the contrary, there were talks about a lot of Republicans in the very conservative districts who work with military veterans and VAs, and about the fact that “wait a second, what’s going on here? Do you know what the cut is? Are you exactly the waste?” And of course, there was talk about the fact that the head of the reelection division of the Republicans essentially said to Republican lawmakers, that doesn’t look very good, so don’t do these town halls. But some of them still had, they confronted the noise and faced the music. However, during this period when lawmakers returned to the district for what is known as working periods, many of them worked pretty hard to get people’s support in their district.

Tom Taemin: By the way, is there any small bill capable of such things as Rep. Dina Titus announced, that there may even be bipartisan support such as air traffic control, employment, funding, and support? It’s not a big bill, both parties agree. Can they deliver these things now?

Mitchell Miller: There were a lot of laws, so that’s a really big question. Of course, we publish various suggestions that many people have come up with, but hidden by all of these big issues. When we’re talking about all these issues like the FAA and the air traffic controllers, I think there’s room for trying to make some of these. Of course, Democrats offer all sorts of laws related to Doge, and are trying to hold the government more accountable in relation to what the administration is in operation. But we’ll be on our side, until we get through the huge hum of one big beautiful bill, and until we get over what Republicans are trying to do, there will be many of these other laws that have been getting a lot of attention, at least for a while.

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