Barbara Bradley Hagerty
speaker
127 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, so three committees voted yesterday to finalize their portions of this big bill. That includes things like extending the 2017 tax cuts, no taxes on tips and overtime, cuts to Medicaid, and cuts to the food assistance program called SNAP. Now, the Budget Committee is meeting tomorrow to take all the individual bills approved by these various committees and put them into one big package.
And that is what House leadership wants to vote on next week.
Yeah, that's right. Well, there's two main groups here. One, members of the Freedom Caucus have pushed back on the current state of bills saying they just won't result in significant enough deficit reduction, which they see as their mandate here. And that proposals to add work requirements to Medicaid, the joint federal state health care program for those with
disabilities and the elderly and low income wouldn't kick in soon enough. It's worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the changes in this House bill mean at least 8.6 million people enrolled in Medicaid could lose coverage, and some moderate members worry that those cuts could become a major issue in the midterms next year.
Well, then you've got the SALT group, members and districts with high property taxes like California and New York who want to see the cap on deduction for state and local taxes be lifted significantly. And that's expensive to do. So it's fundamentally at odds with members who want to slash spending overall. So there's a lot of tension there. And Speaker Johnson is acutely aware of that.
Here he is yesterday.
He said he's confident they'll be able to work out a compromise that everyone can live with, even if everyone isn't fully happy. And he's planning on meeting with members concerned about SALT this morning.
Then comes the Senate, where some Republicans are already throwing cold water on the House's efforts here. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson told our colleague Deirdre Walsh yesterday that the House bill is, quote, a sad joke. Several senators on the GOP side have said they can't support it in its current form. And this makes some House members concerned.
You know, there's the dynamic of they don't want to take a vote on a tough, you know, package that's going to have some controversial elements like cuts to Medicaid, only to then be rolled by the Senate. So up here, it's not just tension within these groups and these factions in the House. It's also tension between these two Republican-run chambers.
Canadians are frightened right now. We're afraid. We're under threat. I've heard some people say, oh, you know, he's just joking. He's just joking. No, this is not funny. This is not funny to us. It is a threat. It is real. Yeah, we're feeling vulnerable.
Hey, thanks for having me.
That's right. Schumer had said Republicans didn't get input from Democrats when drafting this bill, and so they wouldn't get the Democratic votes they'd need to advance it. Instead, he wanted to pass a one-month funding bill to give them more time to negotiate a deal. But on Thursday, he made a U-turn, and he said he was going to vote to advance the bill.
Schumer and the nine other Democrats who ultimately voted alongside him argued the bill was bad, yes, but a government shutdown would be worse. They said it would enable President Trump and his top advisor, Elon Musk, to further gut federal agencies. And their support enabled Republicans to ultimately pass the bill largely along party lines.
It would be fair. I was at a conference in Virginia with House Democrats when Schumer made this announcement. I saw jaws drop. I saw heads shake. Members were really upset. They said they felt betrayed because they had voted on the same bill earlier this week and all but one voted against it. It was a tough vote for a lot of members, particularly those in vulnerable districts.
But the caucus banded together to present a united front and make a strong show of opposition against They said that the bill was essentially a blank check for Trump because it doesn't rein in the administration's efforts to cut spending that was previously approved by Congress. Here's New York Congressman Joe Morelli reacting to Schumer's comments.
Members told me they were calling and texting their senators, imploring them not to vote alongside Schumer. So a lot of frustration and anger among House Democrats.
House Democrats felt that they finally had some momentum as the opposition party. The vote over the shutdown was a rare and big piece of leverage for them. To have unity in the House and then have the Senate Democrats shift course at this late stage is a breakdown in strategy. And New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that it has implications, in her view, far beyond this one vote.
After the vote, she posted that the Democratic votes in the Senate were a, quote, fear-based, inexplicable abdication and that the Senate owns what happens next. You know, I talked to Democratic strategists about this yesterday, and they said that Senate leadership really misread what constituents want. for Democrats to hold the line, even if it means a shutdown.
There's concern that this emboldens the GOP, makes it harder for Democrats to present a unified message. Now, Congress is on recess next week. I expect Democrats will be getting an earful from constituents.
Thank you.
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