From Washington: Why DOGE Will Face An Early Test This Fall
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Sunday, March 23rd, 2025. I'm Jared Halpern. Doge is on the ballot in Virginia. We speak with the Republican looking to become the state's next governor. We've still been able to give money back to the voters, tax reductions, tax cuts, eight years.

billion dollars. So we are ready for, you know, just about whatever comes our way. I'm Ryan Schmelz. Democrats are divided after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's move to keep the government open has some wondering who's the best person to lead the party against President Trump's agenda. Some of this is just letting out steam because they are steamed at him.

for not, you know, kind of fighting back against this Republican interim spending bill. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington. Every year is an election year. In Virginia, voters elect a new governor in November. The statewide race is attracting national attention first as a political barometer on how voters feel about Republican leadership and President Trump's first few months back in office.

But Virginia is also home to a lot of federal workers, more than most other states given its proximity to the nation's capital. So the November election in the Commonwealth will provide some of our first real-time data on the political implications of the Department of Government Efficiency and the Doge-inspired cuts at federal agencies around the country.

A Fox News poll last week did give us some insights. While most voters, more than 60 percent, consider the national debt a crisis or a major issue, 51 percent of voters oppose substantially shrinking the number of government employees. And 65 percent worry enough thought is not going into the cuts.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the face of Doge, who is spearheading the hunt for waste, fraud and abuse, has a 40 percent approval rating, 58 percent disapprove.

So that's the landscape as we enter an election cycle. Virginia's lieutenant governor, Republican Winsome Earl Sears, is the leading Republican in the governor's race, likely facing Democratic former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. I spoke with the lieutenant governor about Doge cuts to the Department of Education and the national spotlight on her race.

We in Virginia are prepared to help them in any way, shape that they want. In fact, we have a new campaign, and it's Virginia Has Jobs. And that means, in addition to, remember now, we have created, since we've been in office, over 276,000 jobs. We are creating jobs at $21,000, about $2,000.

21,000 about every two months, January, February, that's what we were seeing. So we're still doing that. In addition to that, we have another 250,000 job openings that are available for anyone who wants them. And we have done job fairs. We're going to do more. We have let people know if you're unemployed, we have the means to tide you over. We have about $1.5 billion in

in our unemployment benefits coffers that we can help you. It was drained with the Northam administration, the last Democratic governor who shut everything down during COVID. And by the way, by the way, it wasn't COVID that shut Virginia down and shut our businesses down in our schools. It was the governor's response to COVID. So it matters who sits in the big chair. Now, having said all that, listen,

We commiserate. We're empathetic with those who lose jobs. And in fact, if you want to even create businesses, we can do that. We can help you write grants. We have the solutions. But we have to remember now the president, President Trump is facing

A $37 trillion debt. And we are going at such a clip that another $2 trillion in debt is added every year. Folks, that is not sustainable. And not when I'm also informed that for a child born today, they automatically owe about $106,000. So we've got to rein that in. Do you think that the...

The agency cuts, the job losses are the best way to do that. Have you been satisfied with how these cuts have been happening, the pace that they've been happening? Well, I have no authority on the federal level. So I know I should. Sure. But governors are going to advocate. Right. For for kind of what? Well, you know, maybe inform the president on what these cuts may mean in their districts and their states. Yes.

Well, of course, those discussions are necessarily happening. I mean, you know, I'm not going to reveal anything on the radio today. But of course, I mean, the president isn't doing all of this in a vacuum. He's taking advice and he's listening to, I believe, not just our governor, of course, because I don't think that that's the way he governs. He takes in all advice and then he decides the best way to go. But what I'm telling you is that in Virginia,

We have jobs. And in fact, I'm going to use this opportunity to say that all states are competing with each other to attract jobs, attract investment, and

and attract people. We have received CNBC's number one best state in which to do business. And I'm saying now, if you have a business and you want to move to Virginia, come on. We, the water is fine. We are open for business and we want you to prosper. We've got room for you. We've got mega site pads ready. We've got other opportunities to bring you here. Come down and see us.

How big an issue are some of these Doge issues, do you think, in the race? Will it kind of be, I mean, do you expect it to answer a lot of questions about, or are you talking to voters who are asking you about it? Oh, it's on just about everybody's mind. I have not done an interview, and I've not been in any of the rooms where we're discussing issues with voters that they're not asking about it. And it is totally understandable, and it is our job as leaders to understand

inform people that we know what's happening, we see them and we hear them, we hear them and that we have solutions. We're not reacting. We have had opportunities available to the point where we have put about $400 million

into the coffers in case people want to, they have issues with daycare, that you can use those money to come back into the workforce. So this isn't just for people who have maybe losing their jobs on the federal level. This is for anyone who has lost their job or who were out of the job market and have decided they want to come on back in. So we hear what's going on. We know what's going on. And we've made plans for that.

One of the things that the president seems interested in is handing over a lot more responsibility in some ways to the states, right? He's talked about the states playing a larger role, say, on disaster relief. Virginia, no stranger to wild weather, obviously, on the coast. You get tornadoes more inland. Is that something that as governor you'd support kind of taking on a little bit more of that authority, maybe some more of that financial burden from FEMA?

Well, you know, I have lived a life full of a lot of different experiences. And so I would say to you that I'm qualified to take on just about anything. But then again, you know, I would surround myself with expert experts.

people who are experts in whatever fields so that they would help to advise me on how we should move. I'm talking about finance. I mean, can Virginia sustain that financially? Do you have kind of the resources from a financial standpoint to kind of be the first responders?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, in fact, what the governor has done is to create a new agency of natural disasters so that we're not waiting on FEMA to provide monies. By the way, most of the folks who qualify for FEMA, they're still waiting on it. And we have stepped up to do that because that's what leaders do.

And as I've said, because we're such a well-managed state, we have money in our Ready Reserve Fund. We have money in our Rainy Day Fund. We have socked money away. We haven't spent every dime in the way that some others would have liked.

So we have helped, you know, certain Democrats here to understand you don't spend everything you have. You sock money away for rainy day. And in addition to that, we've still been able to give money back to the voters, tax reductions, tax cuts, $8 billion. So we are ready for, you know, just about whatever comes our way.

What about on the education side? Obviously, the president has talked about eliminating the Department of Education. He says this should all be run at the state level. I imagine a Virginia-run education system may be different than, say, Maryland or North Carolina or Pennsylvania. How do you kind of see education at the state level playing out over the next few years?

Funny you should ask about that because, you know, when my dad came to America from Jamaica, August of 1963, he had no money. He had $1.75 in his pocket. In fact, I like to say he couldn't even afford the OR, so he was just poor. He wasn't poor. He was poor. And he needed every dime that he could get.

know finagle and he had several jobs at a time and used that money to put himself through school and of course he got me from jamaica when i was six years old and here i am now so education lifted my dad out of poverty when he came as a black man at the height of the civil rights movement

And here he is successful coming from another country and now his daughter is Lieutenant Governor and is seeking the governorship of our great Commonwealth here. So I have seen that parents want an all of the above approach. If you wanna go to public school, do that. If you want private school, do that. If you want to homeschool, do that. By the way, most people don't realize that the fastest growing segment of homeschoolers are black parents.

Now, that's important because, you know, we'd always heard that, you know, black parents, you know, we were just public schoolers. No, we want options just like everybody else. And in fact, you know, last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of Brown versus Board of Ed. And what was that about? Was it the worship of the school building, the brick? No, it was that the parents what was in wanted what was inside the brick building. And that is that would be the good books.

the indoor plumbing, heat, you know, lab equipment, that sort of thing. It was about options. So we want parents to have the say in how they want to educate their children. And I can tell you, as the former vice president of the State Board of Education,

I didn't play around with these children's lives. And if you're a superintendent, I wanted to know when you came in front of us, why are the children not learning? So I think of education as a national security issue. And we're going to do the very best we can in Virginia to make sure that

that our children have a hope and a future and it begins with a good foundation in education. What sort of state funding, state resources ought to be available for parents who opt not to send their children to public school, but, you know, look at private school or homeschool options? Should there be a state financial role in that?

Or even a hybrid, you know. Yeah, like a charter school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I put in a charter school bill when I was first elected 20 years ago. Of course, I left politics and been gone for 20 years. That would increase the charters that we had in Virginia.

In 2002, when that bill passed, there were five charter schools in Virginia, and we have a whopping six 20-some years later. My God, something has got to change. So I put in several bills to make sure that we would have the parents have the opportunity for choice and resources.

Of course, it didn't go anywhere. So, you know, look, Democrats understand that parents want this. Every survey that we have done, Latino parents, Asian parents, black parents, rural, urban, 67 percent of them want to be able to make that decision. And COVID shutdowns let them know that apparently they weren't in charge of their children's lives. And in fact, that's what got us the win, I believe, because the

When Governor Youngkin was debating, the former Governor McAuliffe said that the teachers will tell the parents how to educate their children. And I don't think we co-parent with the education system. These children are ours.

So financially, we know that it's not a function of money because if that were the case, then the New York children would be flying off the charts in their education. They're not. New York spends the most, and I think they land somewhere in the middle of the pack. That's not good. What we need is accountability, and I think competition coming to education is helpful. There are

private schools and other schools that you can pay tuition of about $6,000 and it's a really good education. I think some of our school systems here, if you were to pay tuition to go to public school, you're looking at $19,000, $22,000. And if parents had to write that kind of a check, they would say to themselves, hold on, what in the world is going on? I'm paying how much and the kids aren't learning? So

So competition is healthy. We have the means to do it here. We do it now because the learning loss was so great when the governor shut down the schools, the former governor, that we put money in for, what am I thinking of, tutoring. And say that the kids, they're just learning loss is so horrible. And then we wanted to put in opportunity scholarships where the kids,

could use that money and do anything they want with it. We also have an EISTC tax credit where foundations can put in money into a foundation and the kids can access that money to move into whatever they want, however the schooling they want. And then don't forget,

These private schools, parochial schools, et cetera, they offer some form of scholarship themselves. And as you know, there are many megachurches and other churches who have a school component. So look, parents want options. And I think ultimately the American dream is about options, whether it's in business, whether it's in how we go about our daily lives, whether it's in education, we want options.

Let me finish with kind of where we started, and that is the national nature that I think these governor's races and off-year elections take on. What are you expecting kind of from national figures, endorsements? Do you expect President Trump to campaign on your behalf? Have you asked the president to campaign on your behalf?

- Well, it's a good question and some conversations I'm gonna hold close to the vest until you see what you see. But I can tell you that Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas is coming to do a fundraiser for me. Shout out to governor there. And the money is coming in when you see my next reporting cycle,

You will see that we have national money. We have Virginia money. People are very interested in this race for various and sundry reasons, including the fact that, yes, you know, my win will be historical. Sure. But it will also be a continuation of Congress.

all the good that we have done in earning the trust of Virginia's voters and letting them know that this is about them. It's not about our celebrity. It's not about our vanity. It's about being accountable. And what a novel thought that politicians are accountable to the people who've elected them and coming from a third world country where I didn't see that. Of course, I believe that they have turned the corner, but I didn't see that. And

We've got to preserve America for the next generation, and Virginia will play her part in doing so. It will be a race that is certainly on a lot of our radars as we get closer to November. Lieutenant Governor, really appreciate your time, and we'll talk soon.

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Chaos erupting at Maryland Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey's town hall meeting, where some constituents don't think he's doing enough to combat President Trump's agenda. Get him back!

You will get a turn, but it's not your turn. It's his turn. I'm going to answer his question, okay? Ivey, though, won the crowd over when he began questioning leadership at the top. I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he's had a great longstanding career. He's done a lot of great things. But I'm afraid that it may be time for the Senate Democrats to pick new leadership as we move forward.

A number of Democrats have criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after his decision to vote in favor of breaking the filibuster on a bill to avoid a government shutdown, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Schumer, though, on ABC's The View Tuesday, defending the move. When you're a leader, if you see a real crisis a little bit down the road, your job is to stand up.

and say we cannot do that. It comes as new polling shows Democrats' approval rating at an all-time low. And while there's division and questions about the future following a rough election cycle, that doesn't mean there isn't trouble in paradise for Republicans either. Yeah, you're starting to see a few little breaks in the dam here. Now, whether or not this is catastrophic for Chuck Schumer remains to be seen, frankly. Fox's senior congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram.

Some of this is just letting out steam because they are steamed at him for not to, you know, kind of fighting back against this Republican interim spending bill. The former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, well, you know, it's one thing not to want to shut the government down, but it's another thing to say, hey, you know, not get any concessions, which is what Schumer didn't get. He didn't get anything. And his philosophy was that it was worse to shut down the government.

and maybe have President Trump and Elon Musk just run afoul and shut down other agencies and say, well, you know, we didn't really miss this department or this agency. Let's get rid of these people over here.

I frankly have wondered and have said this before talking to some people close to the Schumer orbit, that there was concern that the government might not reopen anytime soon had it shut down because you need a certain number of votes in the House and Senate to unlock that combination. As I always say, it's about the math.

You're starting to see some members start to have some reservations about Schumer. I would look at Glenn Ivey, the Democratic representative from suburban Maryland, who represents a lot of federal workers, who had a pretty raucous town hall this past week where people were just yelling at him in guttural form, demanding that he was too calm. So they're not exactly ingratiated with how Glenn Ivey has handled all this, too.

but basically also saying, Glenn Ivey, that it may be time for some new leadership. He didn't call on Schumer to go. You'll note that you had former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying she had confidence in Schumer, but there's been other people. As they start to hear from their constituents, I suspect we'll have a rather interesting Democratic caucus meeting next Tuesday back at the Capitol.

And what's fascinating about the whole thing is that Democrats in some ways are boasting that they're doing these town halls because, you know, you saw a lot of GOP members opt not to do them anymore because of accusations that paid operatives are coming just to disrupt these town halls. But then, you know, Glenn Ivey goes, has this town hall and he's facing significant backlash from his own constituents where people are just yelling at him, as you just alluded to. And it seems like

You know, maybe this might be a situation of be careful for what you wish for, because Democrats are going to now go into these GOP led districts where there's vulnerable members and have town halls on Medicaid cuts. But I wouldn't be shocked if they start fielding a lot of questions about Chuck Schumer and Dem leadership.

You're right that that there is some risk for Democrats in doing this, because when they go in there, you know, it's not all, you know, rainbows and puppy dogs for them, you know, because a lot of people are upset at them. And I think the Glenn Ivey town hall was very reflective of that because you had, you know, his constituents wanting them to do more.

Nobody can tell you exactly what the more is. Some people say when they get up and yell and scream, that doesn't actually accomplish much. You had Democrats using pretty profane language. Does that accomplish much? It might make people feel good. And this is where some people say that Democrats need to be realistic about the limits of their power. They are out of power in Washington right now. And we can certainly blame them if you're a Democratic loyalist as to what happened and maybe some missteps that they made in the election.

But that said, you know, other than just being really angry and voting against things, it doesn't really accomplish much. Had the government shut down, you inevitably would have needed Democratic votes to reopen the government to get across a filibuster. And so would this just have delayed all of this confrontation that we're seeing now?

So you're right. And I think it's generally reflective that people are just not happy with government. The reason some people are unhappy with the Republicans, even those who might have voted Republican or supported President Trump, is that they like the theory of cuts.

But when you start talking about the specifics of cuts, they don't like that. But this is where if you ask people about Doge, if they're generally favorable about that, they say, yes, they are. But but, you know, but don't cut my thing, you see. And that's where there's always a constituency. And that's where the rubber hits the road.

And what's interesting about this, Chad, is, you know, John Fetterman, when we were talking to him before the CR vote went down, one thing he kept referencing was this meme. It's a very popular meme where you have Admiral Agbar from Star Wars saying, it's a trap. And he was saying, well, if we walk into this trap with the CR, which is, you know, Democrats are put in a very tough situation when Republicans sent that to the Senate, you

This could lead to something really bad for us down the road. And it looks like in some ways Democrats walked into that trap because it's now become a very divisive result after the vote went down.

Yeah, and John Fetterman, interestingly enough, was the person who was first in favor of saying that he was on the Democratic side of the aisle against a government shutdown, and then he voted to overcome the filibuster and then voted against the bill itself. So I'm not really understanding what his reasoning is there, to be frank with you. But that said...

He's right about the trap from Admiral Akbar here. I think it was probably a trap no matter what. The trap for the Democrats was the fact that they were banking on the idea that Republicans previously were never able to pass any government funding bill, even though they had the majority in the previous Congress with their own votes.

So now they have even a slimmer majority. And guess what? What did they do? They passed the bill. And then nobody was banking on Chuck Schumer doing what he did, along with nine other Democrats, including Fetterman, to overcome the filibuster. So, you know, those were two rather remarkable things that happened, the difference in the House. And for that matter, you know, it might have been unclear whether or not they had the votes in the Senate maybe at some point. But is President Trump?

Don't forget that Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, he was criticized and lost his speakership because he worked with Democrats to fund the government. There were efforts by, you know, and chatter from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert in the springtime last year of Mike Johnson working with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown on multiple occasions and maybe trying to, you know, relieve him of his duties and also funding Ukraine.

You know, which we always thought was a little bit weird that, you know, they they showed Kevin McCarthy the door, but didn't show Mike Johnson the door for the same thing. So guess who? Some people, some people, I'll underscore that, think that Chuck Schumer should be seeing the door. Why? Because he worked with Republicans. But you know what's funny? When you when you look at most polls that talk about bipartisanship and whether or not they want members to work with one another, they will say, yes, we do.

Now, I don't think that that was the reason why Chuck Schumer made his decision there. But a lot of voters, they want bipartisanship in Washington.

And while we're on the topic of bipartisanship, we have a very interesting case of bipartisanship here where you have Ana Paulina Luna, a Freedom Caucus Republican from Florida, who is partnering with a number of Democrats to pass this bill that would allow for proxy voting for new parents in Congress. Chad, you're following this very closely. Can you kind of give us the backstory with how this is working out?

Right. Well, it's not a bill, first of all. It's a resolution that would change the House's rules for this Congress that would allow expectant mothers or those who have just given birth or even the fathers, the spouse of a new child, 12 weeks off to vote remotely. Now, you might remember during the early days of the pandemic, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at first was a little skeptical about

of trying to do some sort of remote voting in the House, because at that stage when COVID was raging, it's probably not a good idea to have 435 people in the House in the same room at the same time. And number two, have these people on airplanes flying back and forth, back and forth. I remember one day during the pandemic, I think that there was only a grand total of 5,000 people nationwide who flew somewhere.

which was just a staggering figure if you look back to those dark days five years ago. And that's why there was a lot of concern of, well, who is out in their districts and states and then coming to Washington and going back with members of Congress. As Lamar Alexander, the former Republican senator from Tennessee, said, he said, if we're not careful about this, the Congress itself could become, his term, a very efficient virus spreading machine.

So they imposed remote voting in the House of Representatives at that stage, saying that you could call in literally from home or wherever a proxy vote and you would have another member on the floor who would represent you. You have control of your vote. And then they would read how you would vote on an issue on the floor. And that was considered voting.

Well, Kevin McCarthy, who was the minority leader at the time, he saw an opportunity here to kind of drive this wedge with the Democrats, health-bedammed at the time, and say, you know, we're against this. We shouldn't be doing this thing. There was a news conference with him from like May of 2020 saying that some hair salons in California were reopening and so on. He said, so why aren't we here at work, you know, doing this?

And I think that was an opportunity for Kevin McCarthy to say, you know, if we get the House, I will do things differently. And one of the first things he did in 2023 was, quote, reopen the House. Now, of course, the pandemic had started to really subside by that stage. So things were a lot different than they were in May of 2020. But that said, if you look in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 5, it is crystal clear that you have to have a quorum to do business.

And so they were saying, well, there's not a quorum here because people aren't here in person. And so what you've had is Ana Paulina Luna gave birth in 2023. And then you have Brittany Pedersen, who is a Democrat from Colorado, give birth early this year. With Pedersen, she's only the 14th member who's ever given birth.

It's a remarkable stat, and some of that shows that there just weren't a lot of women in Congress. That number is much higher now, but for decades there were very, very few, and that's really started to change in the 1990s.

certainly 1992 with the year of the woman, but let alone somebody who was young enough. You know, Luna is in her mid-30s. Pedersen is in her early 40s, that you had someone who was young enough, a woman of childbearing age, to serve in Congress. You often had people who were women, but they were older, so they'd already had kids.

Luna and Pedersen created a resolution that would say, OK, you can vote remotely if you're a new mom and those other provisions which I laid out a few minutes ago. Well, they didn't get a lot of reception from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said he was opposed to remote voting under any circumstances, actually signed on to a lawsuit which said that the House ought not be doing this, even though he voted remotely 39 times during the pandemic, by the way.

and said, I just don't see this. So there's one way that rank and file members can go around the leadership and put a bill or a resolution or whatever on the floor. And it's called a discharge petition. And you have to get 218 members to do so.

And it sounds great in theory, but it's really hard to do. Ironically, there were only two discharge petitions to put a bill on the floor or a resolution on the floor that were successful between the late 90s and 2024. There was one in 2002. There was one in 2015. And then there were two last year. So still, that's pretty rare, just four in the past quarter century until we got to this resolution from Luna and Pettersson.

So just because you get the 218 signatures doesn't mean that it magically happens. There's certain provisions which are really weedy, which I'm not going to bore you with right now, about when it can come up. There's efforts to table it.

et cetera, you could try to actually kind of run them off at the pass with another rule from the rules committee that could, you know, change things around if you adopt that and kind of supersede what they're trying to do. Or you could just rip the Band-Aid off. And if Mike Johnson is, you know, is really opposed to this, go around and talk to enough members and say, look, we can't do this. This sets a bad precedent in the House. But if they adopt that,

there will be this special carve out. And this might take anywhere from a few days after they come back to long case scenario here, maybe the end of April. There could be a potential that people who fall into those categories suddenly are eligible to vote from home. And that's pretty remarkable. I mean, it was pretty remarkable to have remote voting during the pandemic because

Again, nobody had ever done it that way. I remember doing a story in, you know, about late March or early April about whether or not they should do something like that here. In fact, Rob Portman,

who was a senator from Ohio, Dick Durbin, put together a resolution to try to allow that in the Senate. The Senate during the pandemic never adopted remote voting. Again, it's a smaller body. The voting is handled a little bit differently. So it's probably from a health standpoint, if you have coronavirus everywhere, maybe it's a little easier to do. It's different with the House. It's just so many more people. But one of the stories in that story, I talked to representatives from the European Parliament

who they were approving hundreds of billions, if not trillions in euros for the European nations to deal with the pandemic. And the European Parliament has about 700 and some odd members in it. And they passed the thing on the spot. And I remember the soundbite from somebody I talked to from the EU, and they said it was never a question. And I said, well, why is it so hard to do it back here? And I remember talking to Tom Cole, the Republican representative from Oklahoma, who's the chair of the Appropriations Committee.

And he said, because we have a better system here and it's an older system. Now that may or may not be true, but they did adopt remote voting in the House for those circumstances. And if this passes, this would put in remote voting for this Congress. It'd have to be changed for the next Congress conceivably. But you have these bipartisan members and even Hakeem Jeffrey is the Democratic leader saying, if you're pro-family, we should be for this because you've had Pedersen

where there have been two big votes, which, you know, she made sure she was here for because Democrats were trying to defeat the Republicans. And because the margins are so tight in the House, you know, Democrats might be able to do that. One was on the budget resolution that they put together and also to fund the government. So she came back and kind of, you know, brought her child onto the floor, you know, a little bit of a prop here, but to demonstrate, you know, I'm here and this is the problem with

remote voting because you get to a point where it's not even safe to travel. Some women who are pregnant start to have problems or put on bed rest for several months or something. So this is not an easy solution, frankly. And we'll see how this goes in the next couple of weeks. And that was a good clarification you had off the top. So this

This would change the House rules, so therefore they would have to vote on this every new Congress, correct? This would amend the rules package for this Congress. One of the first things you do early in a Congress in the House is that you set up a rules package, which this would be amending what they approved just a couple of months ago in January. This was something that Luna had pushed for back then, and it did not make its way in.

You know, this was the whole idea that remote voting was allowed in the House because they had established this. This was something that they enabled, you know, adopted into their rules package during the pandemic in 2021. So, yes, you do this all the time, usually at the start of a Congress. It's not changed in the middle of the road very often. The Senate's a different animal because you have I mean, you could do something by what they call unanimous consent.

We're all 100 senators agree to something and don't object. But there are a little more than 40 standing rules of the Senate. And so you would have to change one of the standing rules of the Senate. And that is very hard to do. And I'm not going to get into the details about how challenging that is.

All right, Chad, if we can move on to, you know, the one big beautiful bill is still out there. It's probably the next step of business for congressional Republicans. It looks like the same holdups are still there, which is this debate over tax policy and how to pay for it. Well, the phrase that you're going to hear a lot in the coming days and weeks are current policy and current law. OK, now, why is that important?

Well, if you're changing things with current policy, it makes it a little bit easier to kind of get the numbers to fall your way with the tax cuts. Because based on current law, the law doesn't reflect the tax cuts. The current policy does. And so what you can do under the budget rules, and this gets very wonky, but it's very important, is that it's generally believed that there's a little more fudgeability

with the numbers in terms of saying that you're using this special process called budget reconciliation because you can't get this through the Senate unless you have a filibuster. So that's a problem. But you can if you use budget reconciliation, which is why they passed that budget just a couple of weeks ago and why that was so important in the Senate and the House. But they're not aligned yet. So that's a problem still. That said, they

are able to say, all right, this has to be budget neutral. In other words, it doesn't add to the deficit. So if you look at the scorekeepers from the Congressional Budget Office, and that's the other thing that you'll start to hear a lot about now or soon, is that a lot of disagreements about them, too, will say that we don't we don't like the scorekeepers. You know, it's college basketball season. How much time are we going to see in the next few weeks of coaches working up and down the sideline, working the refs?

That happens on Capitol Hill too, and that's exactly what they're going to be doing. They're working the refs. Or saying CBO uses what we, and this is the other term you're going to hear, static scoring. In other words, they're saying, okay, you have five cents here today, and five cents today is worth five cents tomorrow and heretofore in the future. Dynamic scoring says five cents because of inflation. Other things might be worth seven cents in reality.

And we might get a certain amount of growth. And even the levels of growth that we've seen are so high that there's almost no way to get those levels of growth, first of all, because if you've grown the economy, the economy is really churning. The tax receipts go up, you know. So you say, hey, guess what? The forecast says, yeah, this works. The other thing that you're going to hear a lot about are the tariffs saying, well, the tariffs will pay for this.

The problem is with the Congressional Budget Office is that they cannot score a tariff unless it is built into the law because the tariff is a policy by the administration. That's not an actual law, at least not yet right now. And so the tariffs that Canada or other countries or the European Union are paying, you might actually in the aggregate be getting more money in there, but it isn't reflected in their evaluation

of the bill in order to comport with the policies of budget reconciliation that what you're doing is budget neutral and not adding to the deficit. I know that's really complex.

So in other words, the money coming in actually does count, yes, toward deficit reduction. And there's a lot of debate and a lot of people saying there's no way you can bring in that level of tariff to start. I mean, you're just not going to make that much money. You'll make some, but there's no way to cover the deficits that they're talking about. Number two is that you use this fancy dynamic of either current policy or current law, and you make the numbers look a little bit better. And I'll say this.

The president said this just the other day, too. He said, we're going to balance the budget. The budget plan that they have are prepping right now saves on a good day two trillion dollars. And over that same period of time, they are going to spend eighty six trillion dollars, which is a mind blowing figure.

So you tell me how possibly physically can you actually balance the budget based on that? And as you and I probably discussed many a times, too, without touching entitlements or going after Pentagon spending, this is a very tough task to pull off, especially when you're cutting taxes at the rate that they want to cut taxes at. That's right, because because you're because that spending, the entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security continues to go up. Pentagon spending goes up.

You do these doge cuts that cut at the Interior Department or the Education Department. Well, that's pocket lint compared to what you're spending at the Pentagon. And then you're spending more on all these other programs. So how do you actually balance the budget on that? It's very fuzzy.

It certainly is, Chad. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. Great analysis as always. Thank you so much. And of course, we'll be following you closely as The Hill comes back into session next week, and it should be fun as always. My pleasure.

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