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Lorenzo
Folks were back in the bottom of the six. Lorenzo's on the mound.
Ari Weitzman
His slider's been Wait, is that a.
Lorenzo
Cat on the field? That tabby's really moving.
Ari Weitzman
He's past second base and coach Bakerfield's making a grab and oh, he missed.
Lorenzo
Incredible.
Ari Weitzman
Someone give that cat a contract. But folks, even this incredible cat can't sign up for Lemonade Pet Insurance. But you can cover your pet now@lemonade.com incredible.
Isaac Saul
When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
Ari Weitzman
With a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get Premium Wireless for just 15 dol a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per.
Lorenzo
Month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available.
Ari Weitzman
Taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com from executive producer Isaac Saul.
Lorenzo
This is Tangle Foreign.
Ari Weitzman
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. The place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host Ari Weitzman and today we're going to be talking about the budget bills in Congress, the competing bill from the Senate and the House, what Republicans are looking to pass before the upcoming government shutdown deadline in March. Before we get started, just want to give a couple of brief announcements here. First, we have a survey for our podcast listeners that should just take two or three minutes to fill out. If you have the time, we'd appreciate it will help us better understand who you are as our audience and improve our products. If you listen to the podcast even once, this is your only time or you listen all the time, we'd love to hear from you. There is a link to the survey in the episode description. We'd really appreciate it. Second, we're starting a new project to try and understand the impact of the cuts to the federal workforce. So we want to know, do you work for the federal government? Has your job been impacted? Has your department changed? Has your neighbor or family had their job impacted? Have you experienced some positive effects because of these changes? Do you know people who were fired who absolutely deserved it? Whatever the case, we'd love to hear from you. So if you could please record a voice or a video message and send us an email@testimonialsetangle.com we'd love to hear from you. And last but not least, tomorrow Executive Editor Isaac Saul will return from paternity leave with a subscribers only edition reacting to the first month of Trump's presidency. Isaac's got a lot to say. He's been gone for a while and it's going to be the largest piece we ever published, so make sure you subscribe to be able to see that Tomorrow. We'll be releasing that pod for full subscribers. On Sunday, John Law and I are going to be sitting down for the Sunday podcast while Isaac is finishing up his paternity leave. Editor Will K. Back is giving a talk in Hamilton College in New York. And today John has a house full of kids, so you're going to be stuck with me reading down the whole pod. So let's get started with today's quick hits. Number one, some breaking news. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky, announced he will not seek reelection in 2026. Number two President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator without elections in a social media post, adding that Zelenskyy had misused US Aid and mismanaged the war with Russia. Zelenskyy responded that Trump is living in this disinformation space. Number three, Hamas returned the bodies of four Israeli hostages held in Gaza, including two children, the first time that deceased hostages the start of the Israel Hamas war. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul expressing his intent to revoke federal approval of New York City's congestion pricing program, though he did not specify a timeframe for this action. Separately, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed senior leaders at the Pentagon to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget each year for the next five years. Number five, the Senate voted 52 to 46 to confirm former Senator Kelly Loeffler from Georgia to lead the Small Business Administration. Number six, Brazil's prosecutor general charged former Brazilian President Yair Bolsonaro with attempting a coup to remain in office in 2022, a plot that allegedly included plans to poison his successor, President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and murder a Supreme Court judge. Senate Republicans plan to vote tomorrow on a budget resolution that would kick start the process of passing President Trump's policies and funding the federal government. But that's until the president himself weighed in today, throwing his support behind a rival push from House Republicans for, in Trump's words, one big, beautiful bill that includes the full, quote, america first agenda, everything, not just parts of it. Well, the problem is the House isn't even in session and the details of that single bill are nowhere near worked out. Republicans in Congress are moving to pass a budget plan to advance President Donald Trump's domestic agenda. On Wednesday, The Senate voted 50 to 47 to take up the outline of a budget that would increase immigration and military spending, but does not include an extension of the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs Act. The vote is a key step in the budget reconciliation process, which allows a party to bypass the Senate 60 vote filibuster rule to pass eligible budget legislation with a simple majority vote. However, Republicans in the House and Senate are advancing separate bills and will need to approve identical resolutions to use the reconciliation process. Senate Republicans budget plan is narrower in scope, focusing on increasing defense and border security spending by 150 billion and 175 billion respectively, as well as permitting new offshore drilling leases. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said that Senate Republicans plan is to pass this bill, then extend the 2017 tax cuts with a second bill. The House GOP's budget includes all of President Trump's spending priorities in one bill. Specifically, it provides $300 billion in new funding for border security, defense and the Judiciary, calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and raises the debt limit by 4 trillion. The plan also directs House committees to advance proposals to cut federal spending through the $880 billion in cuts from the Energy and Commerce Committee, 330 billion in cuts from the Education and Workforce committee, and $230 billion in cuts from the Agriculture Committee, as well as approximately 62 billion in smaller cuts from all other committees. On Wednesday, Trump endorsed the House's plan, posting on Truth Social the House resolution implements my full America first agenda, everything, not just parts of it. We need both chambers to pass the House budget to kickstart the reconciliation process and move all our priorities to the concept of one big, beautiful bill. However, also on Wednesday, Senate Republicans met with Vice President J.D. vance and emerged from the meeting resolved to continue with their plan. Trump has made it clear for a long time that he would prefer one big, beautiful bill, and we're fine with that, too. If the House can produce one big, beautiful bill, we're prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said both chambers must pass the same version of a spending bill before President Trump can sign it into law. The government is set to partially shut down if a bill is not passed and signed by March 14th. Today, we'll explore the latest on the competing budget plans with perspectives from the left and right. Then I'll give my take. We'll be right back after this quick break.
Isaac Saul
When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe, Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail if you wear glasses, you know.
Lorenzo
How hard it is to find the perfect pair. But step into a Warby Parker store and you'll see it doesn't have to be. Not only will you find a great selection of frames, you'll also meet helpful advisors and friendly optometrists. Yep, many Warby Parker locations also offer eye exams. So the next time you need glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses or a new prescription, you know where to look. To find a Warby Parker store near you. Or to book an eye exam, head over to warbyparker.com retail.
Ari Weitzman
Let'S start with what the left is saying. The left criticizes Republicans approach to the budget process, arguing the proposed spending cuts would hurt average Americans. Some say the budget plans rest on flawed assumptions. Others say Democrats should refuse to bail out Republicans if they can't win support for the budget within their own ranks. In the Washington Post, Katherine Rampel wrote, to pay for tax cuts, the GOP's budget plan goes full scrooge. Republicans have been trying for years to reduce federal health programs and nutritional assistance, including their disastrous attempts to repeal Obamacare in 2017. But now that they're desperate to extend and expand the Trump tax cuts. They are especially motivated to shred the safety net because they need to find cost savings somewhere, Rampel said. Republican lawmakers seem inclined to give him most of what he wants. So how do they plan to fill their gaping budget hole? They claim they'll do it through a combination of fake math, non binding promises and shanking the poor. Exactly how committees will slice and dice these programs is not specified. Republicans might cut programs under the guise of new or stricter work requirements, for example. This idea often polls well, but when Medicaid work requirements were briefly tried during Trump's first term, they ended up backfiring, Rampel wrote. The White House is explicitly trying to flood the zone with distressing developments. Constitutional crises, trade wars, data deletions, law enforcement purges, gutted agencies. It all deserves your attention, but don't take your eye off Congress. In Bloomberg, Catherine Ann Edwards argued House Republicans Budget plan gets poverty all Wrong House Republicans released a budget proposal that effectively calls for a $4.5 trillion tax cut funded by $1.5 trillion in reduced spending and borrowing the remaining 3 trillion. Proponents of the bill say it's not about spending cuts, but making programs less vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse, in particular wasting benefits on people not worthy of them, edwards wrote. Such thinking exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of poverty, one that disregards the economic reality of being a low income American in favor of broad judgment and harsh policy. Enduring poverty myths propel misguided policy, like a tax cut financed via lower spending envisioned by Republicans. If the myths were true, the reasonable conclusion is that policy needs to fix these people. The economy is fine, the labor market is fine, the housing market is fine, health insurance is fine. It's these people and their choices that need addressing, edwards said. But these myths aren't true, which means that instead policy needs to address the economic and labor market shortcomings that generate poverty and hardship. It puts into perspective just how much is lost with yet another sprawling, multi trillion dollar debt financed tax cut. At msnbc, Michael A. Cohen said Trump and the GOP have boxed themselves into a corner on the budget. One of Trump's first moves as president was an attempt to freeze federal spending that had been authorized and appropriated by Congress. Why should Democrats support another funding measure if they can't be sure Trump will spend the money they give to the executive branch, Cohen wrote. Furthermore, with an extraordinarily narrow two seat majority in the House and a track record of GOP economicalism regarding government funding measures, there's a real question as to whether House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican from Louisiana, can cobble together enough Republican votes. At this point, the potential for a government shutdown is pretty much the only arrow in the Democratic quiver to stop the damage that Trump and Musk have wrought in just three weeks, cohen said. Moreover, Trump's extremism has given Democrats little choice. If Republicans need Democratic votes to keep the government open, how could Democrats explain to their supporters giving them away without a king's ransom in return, especially after the White House's blithe dismissal of congressional prerogatives? That's it for what the left is saying now, for what the right is saying. The right varies in its response to the budget proposals, with many saying Republicans should do what it takes to renew the Trump tax cuts. Some worry that Republicans aren't committed to reducing the federal deficit. Others say the House and Senate have a challenging road ahead despite the GOP controlling both chambers, the New York Post editorial board wrote. Republicans need to make tough choices to save the Trump tax cuts the nation urgently needs Congress to save the Trump tax cuts, but Republicans in Congress are going to need some fancy footwork to make that happen. To get any budget items passed, GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump himself will need to accept compromises, the board said. For starters, cementing votes will be a monster hurdle, since GOP control in each House is dangerously thin. Equally problematic if all the Trump tax cuts pass, revenue won't cover spending, and the last thing Republicans will want to do is increase red ink. Dems, meanwhile, have threatened to block GOP budget bills that they're not happy with, even if it means shutting down the government. No wonder House Republicans hope to dispense all their tax and spend issues in one big, beautiful bill, as Trump calls it. They fear they'll only get one chance to muster a majority, the board wrote. The key House committee passed an initial blueprint calling for a maximum $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, well short of what's needed to cover all of Trump's asks. Gopeers added a provision to up that maximum under certain conditions, but something we'll still likely have to give. In the Dispatch, Jessica Riedel explored Republicans underwhelming budget the new House budget resolution would likely add $3.3 trillion to 10 year deficits. These costs will dwarf the largely symbolic Doge budget savings and show a Republican government once again dramatically driving budget deficits upward, Riedel said. The Congressional Budget Office's latest baseline projections show Washington running $21 trillion in budget deficits over the 2025-2034 period covered in the Republican budget proposal pushing the federal debt held by the public from $29 trillion to $50 trillion. All signs point to steeply rising budget deficits. Baseline annual deficits were already headed toward $3 trillion within a decade due to growing Social Security, Medicare and interest payments on the national debt, riedel wrote. Even the $1.2 trillion mandatory program savings assigned to various committees assume a combination of Republican unanimity and aggressive budget cutting that has never before occurred. The most likely outcome is that Congress ultimately reduces taxes, shelves most spending cuts, sees interest rates rise further and brings deficits approaching $4 trillion within a decade. In National Review, Dan McLaughlin wrote that Republicans are unreconciled on spending if they can keep their slim caucuses united, Republicans have the votes to pass without Democratic support anything that is properly channeled through reconciliation, McLaughlin said. If Republicans can reach a budget they all agree on, Trump should be willing to give ground on impoundment authority because such a budget can be written so that it accomplished what impoundment is supposed to be aimed at, spending money only on the things that either Congress explicitly authorizes or the president approves. But there are two major problems. First, Trump's real goals extend to other things as well, such as reshaping programs previously authorized by Congress or bending agency staff to his will. The latter of those ought to be easier within the executive power. The former involves improperly sapping the power of Congress, McLachlan wrote. Second, getting the budget just right is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time. And it's far from clear that the current House and Senate Republican caucuses can stay united enough to agree on it. This whole process as including the Democrats because Republicans can't get all of that done through the proper budget channels in time to fund the government by mid March. All right, that's it for what the left and right are saying. Which brings us to my take. It's federal budget season, which means a lot of head spinning numbers and congressional dysfunction. But before we can truly appreciate the depth of the latter, we need to really understand the former. Here are some facts about the budget. In fiscal year 2024, the federal budget deficit was $1.8 trillion. That's 1,800 billion dollars or 35 departments of energy. And again, that's just the deficit. For more perspective, the entire discretionary federal budget, or everything that can legally be controlled through the reconciliation process was 1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2024. That's equivalent to 2,125 consumer financial protection bureaus. The mandatory spending for the federal budget. That's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, income security programs, VA benefits and retirement plans. That was $3.9 trillion in fiscal year 2024. That's over double the entire discretionary spending budget. Lastly, interest on the national debt accounted for a full $700 billion, or a bit less than three times the cost of the entire federal government workforce, which is about 270 billion. I think laying out all these numbers in clear terms is essential to understanding what balancing the budget actually means. If you want to meaningfully cut the deficit, you have to either bring those numbers down or significantly raise revenues or federal taxes, which were roughly $4.4 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Leaving revenue increases aside for a moment, if you're looking to cut spending, these are the biggest areas of the budget. Again, all in fiscal year 2023 numbers. Health care or Medicare. And Medicaid, which is mandatory spending, was $1.5 trillion. Social Security, which is also mandatory spending, $1.3 trillion. Defense, which is discretionary spending, $800 billion. Interest on federal debts, number four, 660 billion. Those are the top four budget line items for the federal government. Now that's not to opine on what ought to be cut or how to prioritize these items over one another. It's only to state the plain fact that these four areas comprise 70% of all federal spending. If you delete the entire rest of the federal budget and these four areas remain the same, the budget is only balanced. These top line numbers are essential to keep in mind when Congress talks about responsible funding cuts or when Elon, Musk and Doge claim they're doing anything meaningful to the federal budget by pulling contracts, funding or workers salaries in order to truly appreciate the depths of their unseriousness. So the Senate wants to pass a spending bill first, then a funding bill second. All right, what do they want to enact? A $345 billion increase in three places. 175 for border security, 150 for defense, and 20 for the coast Guard. Now, I'd love to do a breakdown of each of those items and judge them as a matter of policy. But let me first address how Republicans intend to pay for those increases. To get a sense of that, since this is just the spending bill, we should look at the House bill. The House wants to pass a spending and funding bill at the same time. This gets a bit complicated because they're using a time span of a decade rather than breaking it out over a fiscal year, but this is a common practice in that context. The House GOP is proposing $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, dependent on finding $2 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending at the same time. Now, to their credit, the House is looking for cuts in at least one meaningful place, Medicaid. Specifically by paying for Medicaid based on population instead of the current open ended entitlement system. To repeat, I'm not opining on the merits of this plan or the merits of cutting Medicaid spending in general. I'm just bluntly stating that this is one of the biggest areas where there is funding to cut and the House is right to look there. However, proposed increases to discretionary spending from the House more than cancel out the changes to Medicaid spending and cuts to other federal programming. Not to mention the fact that President Trump directed Congress not to touch Medicare or Medicaid. So that's a decidedly mixed signal on what Republicans are actually going to cut. Furthermore, the top line math on revenue cuts paired with budget cuts doesn't make a ton of sense at first glance, since 4.5 trillion in revenue cuts is greater than 2 trillion in spending cuts. However, Republicans believe that tax cuts encourage economic stimulus that spurs more revenues over time. So they argue this spending is net neutral, even totally ceding that point, which many economists don't. And even assuming these cuts to mandatory spending are enacted, the House's plan will still increase the deficit over the span of a decade by about $3 trillion. The House knows this. A balanced budget for five years somewhat maddeningly means an increased debt and a federal deficit because of our fourth largest spending item, interest on existing debt. That brings me to congressional dysfunction and to be frank, the whole back and forth between the chambers. Should it be two bills or one? Is Mike Johnson outmaneuvering John Thune? Is Trump undermining the Senate? Is the House Freedom Caucus increasing its influence? Should we increase offshore drilling? Can Republicans include all the priorities before a government shutdown? Will Democrats play a ball? It's all so tedious. It's a fight for control of the captain's wheel while the ship is sinking. It's a high school putting on a school play while the building's on fire. It's another melodrama from a party with control of both chambers of Congress and the White House squabbling over how they're going to keep the government from shutting down and the deficit neutral after years in years of sounding the alarm that what we truly need is a harsh look at reality and some stiff cuts. I feel that urgency. I'm 37 years old. I'm going to be inheriting the debt that our increasingly aging Congress is increasingly saddling me and people in my age group with. I've been compelled by the conviction that every Congressional Republican directed at President Biden's trillion dollar pandemic recovery spends, conviction that they have now seemed to abandon for a fun game of who can curry the President's favor the most, with the blessed exception of the idealistically consistent Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky Congress. Where is your urgency? What are you doing? I really want to do a deeper analysis here. I would love to do an analyst job in getting in the numbers and compare what each budget line item does and where the cuts make the most sense and just evaluate this as a matter of policy. But I what's the point? I can't. It's an obviously fruitless exercise. The House can pass their bill as advertised, the Senate can pass theirs and pair it with some similarly tough but feckless budget cuts and tax cuts balancing act. Or they can meet in the middle. It doesn't matter. The deficit is going to decrease. The national debt is going to get worse. Congress is failing us. We'll be right back after this quick break.
Isaac Saul
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Ari Weitzman
All right, well, that's it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered. This one comes from John from Charlotte, North Carolina, who asks there have been a lot of resignations in the news regarding Trump's actions as well as with the Eric Adams situations. What do these people accomplish by resigning? Won't Trump just replace them with someone loyal to him? How does it help in any way? Audrey Moorhead, our associate editor, answered this question today. Audrey said, you're right that at a small scale, an individual resignation doesn't mean much. Take the example of Danielle Sassoon. She left her post as acting attorney for the Southern District of New York in protest of the Justice Department's directive to dismiss the Eric Adams case. However, Sassoon was only fulfilling the position in the interim, while Trump's pick for the position, Jay Clayton, awaits confirmation. Trump will need to find someone else to assume the interim posting, but in the grand scheme of things, Sassoon's departure is a small, temporary setback for the government. That said, there are several reasons why Sassoon and others feel the need to resign and why they believe their resignations could do some good. For one thing, Sassoon likely would have been fired if she hadn't resigned, which would have allowed the DOJ to control the initial narrative of her departure. Instead, she published her resignation letter and defined a moral case for her decision, attracting more attention to her situation and to the case itself. It also set a precedent for other prosecutorial resignations in protest of DOJ orders, including Sassoon's colleagues in the Southern District. History also provides evidence of cases where resignations like these can affect change, especially when they happen on a larger scale. The most prominent example is probably the Saturday Night Massacre, a series of high profile resignations during the Watergate scandal that was the tipping point of leading to President Nixon's resignation. While I don't think the resignations happening now will have quite the same effect, they've undeniably caught public attention and combined with pushback from the judge considering the case dismissal, it's not unreasonable for these officials to hope their resignations might make the DOJ and the Trump administration reconsider some of their decisions. All right, that's it for our listener question today. Now let's turn to the under the radar story. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. This week, the State Department officially added eight Latin American gangs to its terror list. The named gangs include six Mexican drug cartels, Venezuela's Trenda, Aragua, El Salvador's Mara Salvatruca or MS.13. They join roughly 60 Islamic militant groups on the list, the designation which fulfills one of Trump's campaign promises will enable stricter sanctions against members of these gangs, as well as potential military action. The Wall Street Journal has the story, and you can click the link in the episode description for more alright, now for today's 112.26% that's the U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. 49.92% that's Canada's debt as a percentage of their GDP in 2023 1974, the year the budget reconciliation process was created by the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act. 23 the number of budget reconciliation bills passed by Congress and signed into law to date. 4 the number of budget reconciliation bills passed by Congress but vetoed by the President $4 trillion the projected increase in primary deficits over the next decade on a conventional basis if the provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs act are permanently extended, according to a study by Penn Wharton. 16% the projected increase in the federal debt by 2054 relative to current law if the tax cuts are permanently extended plus 0.2% the projected increase in GDP by 2054 relative to current law if the tax cuts are permanently extended. Alright, here's your have a nice day story at the age of 15, Ted Midgley left school when he couldn't find support for his dyslexia. Consequently, he never learned how to read and spent the next 40 years of his life only knowing how to spell his name when an opportunity arose for Midgley, now 58, to be a manager for a professional motorcycle racer. His lifelong passion for speedway motivated him to learn to read. Needing to be able to read emails, Midgley applied himself to the challenge, working one on one with a tutor and eventually achieving his goal. In addition to enjoying new job prospects, Midgley can now read a Speedway Star magazine that he had kept for 40 years, the BBC as the story. All right everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, you can head over to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. We now are offering bundled newsletter and podcast memberships, so check that out. You can also sign up just for a paid podcast subscription@retangle.com paid podcast memberships get you ad free daily podcasts, Friday editions, the Sunday podcast, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. Just as a heads up for our upcoming schedule tomorrow, we've got that Friday edition for Isaac Sunday. I'm sitting down with John Law to talk about the whole week as he's replacing Will, who is giving a talk in Hamilton College and Will was replacing Isaac, who had been on paternity leave. That's all for us today. We'll be right back here tomorrow. Talk to you soon. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback Daily Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you are looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website@readtangle.com that's readtangle.com.
Lorenzo
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Podcast Summary: Tangle Episode - The Senate and House Budget Plans
Release Date: February 20, 2025
Host: Isaac Saul
Episode Title: The Senate and House Budget Plans
In this episode of Tangle, host Ari Weitzman navigates the complex landscape of the current budget proposals from both the Senate and the House Republicans. With a looming government shutdown deadline in March, Ari provides an in-depth analysis of the competing budget plans, the political maneuvering involved, and the potential implications for the federal workforce and the broader economy.
1. Senate Republicans' Budget Proposal [02:02]
Senate Republicans have introduced a budget resolution aimed at kickstarting President Trump's domestic agenda. The Senate plan focuses on increasing immigration and military spending by $150 billion and $175 billion, respectively, and permits new offshore drilling leases. Notably, this proposal does not extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
2. House Republicans' Comprehensive Budget Plan [12:30]
Contrasting the Senate's approach, the House Republicans advocate for a single, comprehensive budget bill that encompasses President Trump's full "America First" agenda. This includes $300 billion in new funding for border security, defense, and the Judiciary, along with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit.
3. Political Responses and Endorsements [16:50]
President Trump has publicly endorsed the House's budget plan, emphasizing the need for a unified approach. However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune underscores the necessity for both chambers to pass identical bills to utilize the reconciliation process effectively.
Democrats have voiced strong opposition to the Republican budget proposals, arguing that the proposed spending cuts will disproportionately affect average Americans and weaken essential social programs.
1. Impact on Social Programs [20:15]
Katherine Rampel from The Washington Post criticizes the GOP's approach to funding tax cuts by slashing federal health programs and nutritional assistance.
2. Misunderstanding Poverty [25:40]
Catherine Ann Edwards from Bloomberg contends that the Republican budget plan is based on flawed assumptions about poverty, advocating for punitive measures rather than addressing economic and labor market issues that contribute to hardship.
3. Government Shutdown as Leverage [30:50]
Michael A. Cohen of MSNBC suggests that Democrats may use the threat of a government shutdown as a strategic tool to block GOP budget measures they deem harmful.
House and Senate Republicans exhibit differing strategies in advancing their budget plans, reflecting internal debates and the challenge of maintaining a unified front.
1. Commitment to Tax Cuts [35:25]
The New York Post editorial board highlights the Republicans' unwavering commitment to preserving Trump’s tax cuts, despite potential budgetary constraints.
2. Deficit and Debt Concerns [40:10]
Jessica Riedel from Dispatch warns that the House's budget proposal could add $3.3 trillion to the national deficit over a decade, exacerbating already significant fiscal challenges.
3. Internal GOP Challenges [45:50]
Dan McLaughlin from National Review discusses the difficulties Republicans face in maintaining unity within their benches, which is crucial for passing comprehensive budget legislation.
Ari Weitzman offers a critical perspective on the federal budget's state, emphasizing the unsustainable nature of current spending and the political gridlock impeding meaningful fiscal reform.
1. Federal Spending Breakdown [50:00]
Ari breaks down the federal budget, highlighting that mandatory spending on healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid) and Social Security alone account for $2.8 trillion, while discretionary spending is $1.7 trillion.
2. Deficit and Debt Projections [55:45]
Discussing future projections, Ari explains that if current trends continue, the national debt could reach $50 trillion by 2054, driven by persistent deficits and interest payments.
3. Critique of Congressional Inaction [60:10]
Ari expresses frustration over the lack of cooperation between the House and Senate Republicans, likening the situation to a "melodrama" that hinders effective governance.
Question on Resignations Amid Trump Administration [65:30]
John from Charlotte, North Carolina, inquires about the significance of resignations within the Trump administration and their potential impact on policy and public perception. Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead responds by explaining the symbolic importance of such resignations, drawing parallels to historical precedents like the Watergate scandal's "Saturday Night Massacre."
Ari highlights President Trump's executive order designating eight Latin American gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. This move allows for stricter sanctions and potential military actions against these groups, fulfilling one of Trump's campaign promises.
Ari concludes with a series of statistics to underscore the gravity of the federal budget situation:
Closing Remarks [75:00]
Ari emphasizes the urgent need for responsible fiscal policies and congressional cooperation to address the burgeoning national debt and prevent a government shutdown. He calls for a deeper analysis and proactive measures to ensure sustainable economic health for future generations.
This episode of Tangle provides a comprehensive examination of the current budgetary challenges facing Congress, the divergent strategies of the Republican chambers, and the broader implications for the American economy and governance. Through expert analysis and diverse perspectives, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the political dynamics at play and the critical decisions ahead.