00:00Bloomberg Congressional reporter Stephen Dennis joins us now from Washington.
00:03Stephen, great to speak with you as always.
00:05I wonder if you could put the significance of that vote in context, give us some perspective on it.
00:09We also had this vote in the House this week on Ukraine and Russia sanctions as well that passed.
00:13Again, I think sending a very strong symbolic message to Ukraine that they have U.S. support
00:19that the president has been reluctant to offer.
00:21How do you see this?
00:22Is it the legislative branch you're trying to wrest control back from the executive branch?
00:27Is it more than symbolic?
00:28What do you make of it?
00:30It is basically symbolic.
00:32None of these things become law without a two-thirds vote to override a veto.
00:37So even the House measure is basically a press release, but it's an important press release.
00:45You know, I can't remember a time where a president's own party voted to rebuke and end a war that
00:53he was prosecuting like this.
00:57You know, it certainly did not happen under George Bush, didn't happen under Barack Obama when he was bombing Libya.
01:04You know, this is a break from the president, but it really shows how tenuous his control is over Congress.
01:13They have very narrow majorities.
01:14It only takes a few members to break off, and suddenly they can start passing things he doesn't like.
01:21But it is symbolic.
01:22They don't have the votes to actually prosecute this.
01:25Now, the real question is money.
01:29You know, at some point you need money from Congress for the Defense Department for the war.
01:36And right now it's kind of unclear if he's going to get anything close to the $400 or $500 billion
01:43increase he wants to help prosecute this war and future wars potentially.
01:49And that's, you know, that's sort of an open question.
01:52There's a lot of nervousness even among Republicans who didn't vote for these war resolutions in the House and the
01:58Senate.
01:58There was a vote last week in the Senate to advance one.
02:01We'll get a final vote on that probably next week, and we'll see if that passes in the Senate as
02:08well.
02:08But there are a lot of Republican senators who are up for re-election, people like John Husted in Ohio,
02:15who, you know, just in a poll this week was down eight points to Sherrod Brown in a critical Senate
02:21race.
02:22And, you know, they're starting to vote with Democrats more and more.
02:26And I think they're feeling the pressure that the terms are coming up.
02:30Voters are unhappy with gas prices, they're unhappy with prices in general, and they're uneasy economically even with, you know,
02:39the stock market near record highs.
02:41I also want to ask you, there was this, like, voterama, which, you know, when you cover Congress is very
02:47exciting.
02:49Listen, I—
02:49It's exhausting.
02:50I want to have to say that as well.
02:51Exhausting, exhausting.
02:52And I know you were covering the whole thing.
02:55So they did pass—the Senate passed the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill after 18 hours, I think, of amendments.
03:02And those kind of ran the gambit from, like, funding for the ballroom for a debate over whether or not
03:07to prevent this DOJ weaponization fund, anti-weaponization fund.
03:11Talk us through.
03:12I hear you've got some good deets on how that all went down and some of the back and forth
03:16in the drama, even from—even between other Republicans.
03:20Yeah, I mean, I think it was all about the Republicans and whether they—you know, there's sort of this band
03:25of—loose band of Republicans, anywhere between 4 and 10 on any given vote, who are breaking with the president.
03:33And a lot of these senators are not running for re-election, people like Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy, and John
03:41Cornyn.
03:41The president just defeated both of them in primaries.
03:45So, you know, some people call them, like, the Wounded Bear Caucus or whatever.
03:48Yeah, we had a Republican operative on our show call them the YOLO Caucus.
03:52Nothing left to lose.
03:55Right.
03:56And, you know, Bill Cassidy was sort of the main character during this Votorama.
04:02He has been sort of a tortured soul ever since he voted for RFK's confirmation as HHS secretary.
04:10He's spending a lot of time criticizing RFK and his activities on vaccines.
04:16But, you know, anybody can just look at the replies to his ex-account whenever he mentions that, and it's
04:21hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of people saying, well, you're the reason why he has that job.
04:26And so I think he's a bit of a tortured soul.
04:30He looks pretty sad and frustrated.
04:31What he was trying to do during the Votorama was to find a way to amend this immigration package so
04:39that this $1.8 billion fund that the DOJ and Todd Blanche set up potentially to pay off the president's
04:49allies, people who were convicted of crimes during the January 6th assault on the Capitol, including potentially people who beat
04:58up police officers.
04:59And this is, you know, it's hard to get something through this keyhole of reconciliation, which is this special process
05:11to avoid a filibuster where you only need 50 votes.
05:14And he couldn't do it.
05:16He couldn't find language that would only require 50 votes.
05:20And so when they finally voted on these various amendments, they needed 60 votes.
05:26And while there were a bunch of Republicans who voted with him and with Democrats, most of the Republicans are
05:34still just voting with the president.
05:36And so they were able to defeat those amendments.
05:39And then on final passage, these Republicans had a choice.
05:43They could have taken down the bill and forced changes, and they didn't.
05:47And ultimately, all the Republicans basically want this underlying bill, which will fund immigration enforcement for the next three years
05:54and bypass Democrats, because the Democrats, after Alex Petty's shooting at the beginning of the year, were insisting we need
06:01to unmask ICE agents.
06:03We need judicial warrants.
06:05And the Republicans said no.
06:06And so that's what this drama has all been about, was funding that.
06:10And this was a moment of leverage for these Republicans.
06:13They did get some things.
06:15Todd Blanchett announced the fund was gone and wouldn't be coming back.
06:19But people like Bill Cassidy didn't trust that.
06:22In fact, he put an amicus brief earlier in the day, he co-authored an amicus brief to the court
06:29saying we've got to get rid of this fund and that it's a threat to the republic.
06:33So Cassidy is in full yellow mode, except he didn't quite go all the way and threatened to take down
06:41the bill.
Comments