Used to being up this late and they really blame rand paul for this. This is something he said he was going to take a stand on and not care about the consequences. He wanted to make sure that this massive deficit busting package did not get through without a fight. He certainly put on a fight. He was on the floor from 1 00 or 2 00 in the afternoon until 1 00 a. M. As soon as time ran out and the senate had a chance to vote, they got through very quickly. It was a very quick pace. They had the regular passage vote all within a couple of minutes. The senators were ready to get out of there. Greta so it passed in the senate and went over to the house and passed over there as well. You had democrats objecting in both chambers and republicans as well, but they had the numbers to pass it. What happens now . Sarah we finally have the top line spending levels that everyone on capitol hill has been asking for, for nearly a year now. Appropriators can get to work. They can start writing the trillion dollar omnibus bill that will fund the government. What is important to remember is that the bill that was just past is not a full Year Spending bill. This is the budget deal that has been needed to get past so they can start to write the full Year Spending bill. There is a lot important legislative policy items in this bill. That is why rand paul did take a stand. He did not want to forget that there is a massive debt ceiling increase. We do not know how much exactly that will ultimately cost. There is a host of programs that will be authorized, including Childrens Health insurance program, Community Health centers. Theres a whole range of tax extenders both on the medicare and energy side. These are multibilliondollar packages that were not able to get through on the floor as standalone. There was an 89 billion disaster package, the largest standalone bill for disaster aid that congress has ever passed. This is the biggest fiscal package since at least 2009 and republicans did not even vote for this under obama. Now we have a majority of republicans in the house and senate supporting it under President Trump. Greta will the two sides come together . We had one caller say they are going to wait till the last minute. Will they be able to come together quickly and pass this trillion dollar omnibus bill . Sarah i do think they will wait until the very last minute, but thats because it takes a while to write these bills. You had the appropriations committees in the house and the senate. They are in charge of 12 separate bills and they have not been able to make much progress on those bills without knowing how much congress can actually spend this year. This is a very abnormal year. The house did pass its own appropriations bill on the floor but added number they essentially decided. This was not something confirmed into law. There are numbers that we now see. They have 300 billion above the sequester cuts that were scheduled to kick in. Appropriators can get to work and say we have this much more money. Its easier to add money then subtract money, so they do think it will be a faster process than it might otherwise have been if they had to do with the sequester cuts scheduled to kick and. Now they will need the full six weeks to get to work and get to work on these very large spending bills. A lot of the work has not yet been done. Greta at this time every year the president s budget is expected. When will this happen and what will look like . Sara comes out this monday. There are no plans to delay this. It will be coming out on monday and it will be a massive document that frankly capitol hill is not looking forward to all that much. Republicans in the house and senate told me this is something they know will be important to show trumps priorities, particularly in a Midterm Election year. They know what he wants to do. They heard him in the state of the union address. He has been talking regularly with lawmakers. He does not need a budget document to tell them he wants to achieve infrastructure or a massive boost to the pentagon budget. The numbers in the document will not be as important as it is writing budgets on capitol hill because Congress Passed a budget with little regard with what the white house is putting up. Show greta will the president s budget be drastically different than what they just agree to . Sara it will be drastically different because what they agree to was a record level of domestic funding increases. The white house put out a statement yesterday and sourcing this deal largely because of the huge increases to the military spending, which President Trump has been asking for for more than a year now. The white house did endorse the deal, but it said the domestic spending level included was higher than it deemed necessary. This is something the white house has already made clear that it does not think that departments like the Labor Department and health and Human Services and Education Department it does not think it needs as much money as it got. The reason it did is because its the key reason that Democratic Leaders agreed to back this bill. That is why they agreed to support a 700 billion military budget next year. Show less greta will the president sign any sort of omnibus bill that gets passed before march 23 . Sarah he has indicated that he would. A lot can happen in the next six weeks. We did not see much about the border wall or Border Security and the latest budget deal or shortterm spending bill. I think that is because immigration will be taking hold on capitol hill next week. Leader mcconnell set that debate up in the wee hours of friday. We will see all of next week consumed on the immigration debate. We could see President Trump bringing up the border bill shortly after that. Greta 67 republicans in the voted no. 16 republicans in the senate voted no last night. Who are those no votes and are they likely to vote no again on the trillion dollar omnibus bill . Sarah actually a lot of the republicans who voted against this dont vote for the omnibus bill anyway. And the senate, we had a large amount of socalled budget hawks. Get have been trying to mandatory spending, Discretionary Spending for some time now. You have some of the conservatives that you would expect to oppose this, the House Freedom caucus took a position against this bill. Some people did not take a formal position. This is something that we knew a lot of conservatives were going to oppose. They have been speaking out on their position all week. It is hard for them to refuse the military increases when they are hearing almost on a daily basis from jim mattis that without this the military when in the readiness preparation that President Trump has been talking about. Greta what happened in the early hours of washington, the senate voted 7128 to move forward on a continuing resolution. To keepstopgap funding the government up. The house scrambled around 5 30 a. M. Howard. Ning to you, howard good morning. What you just said about Social Security being the biggest holder of the debt that means that congress has taken Social Security money rather than leaving it in the bank and gather interest so they can pay people like me who are retired. They are spending it. Rather than pay it back, now they want to cut Social Security so they dont have to what is it . 6 trillion they owe Social Security . They dont want to pay it back. Thats why they want to cut Social Security. Lets take up this question. If they have a budget deal in place and they decide not to pass a budget and 2018 and 2019, then they cannot do entitlement reform . That is right. Its important to clarify here because the budget deal that was passed yesterday was a bipartisan setting up for spending bills. The white house proposal and the republican budgets that we would see on capitol hill would not have any effect except for setting up for the special budget tool that would allow for Something Like entitlement reform to go through without the filibuster. Also how we saw the tax bill passed and the republican attempts to repeal obamacare. So the real question is whether republicans will attempt to pass their joint resolution an attempt to do entitlement reform and 2018. From everything ive heard from Republican Leaders so far, the answer is no, which is something that democrats say is a relief. They were concerned about potential cuts to particular medicaid and perhaps medicare and food stamps. Social security and medicare were not so much on the table for this. President trump said from the campaign that he is not looking to cut from beneficiaries. There there are ways that republicans are looking to do either provider cuts or other reforms to medicare and Social Security. It is difficult to do because these are mandatory programs and would require a separate bill and Something Like a reconciliation bill. Because you cannot just do this in the regular appropriations process. Thats one of the biggest things that republicans are worried about because they cannot actually tackle the growing share of mandatory spending through the already difficult appropriations process. Greta in alexandria, virginia, independent. Caller thank you for taking my phone call. Im just curious about something i heard on another network this morning about nascar being mentioned in this bill. It is just kind of ludicrous that nascar, a multimillion Dollar Corporation opened owned by private corporation, is mentioned on capitol hill in a bill having to do with a shutout. Shutdown. Its ironic that one of the major tracks in the nascar circuit is in kentucky where rand paul and mcconnell are located. I would like your comments on that, if you have any, maybe someone can delve into this stuff and what is going on in this bill that the average person will never know about. Greta you are a lot of things tucked into this bill that even senators and members of congress have not had a chance to read. And we a 650 page bill got it on wednesday. Talking to members on capitol hill, they have not read the whole thing. I have not had the time or the bandwidth to actually do that. That is why senator rand paul held it up. This is something that combined several dozen tax extenders. These are a lot of tax breaks that were expired and not included in the 2015 package or the bill that we saw december. There were tax benefits in there for horse racing and tax benefits for when credits. Win credits. Pretty much running the gamut of everything that was not included last time. It is difficult to peace apart this 650 page bill if you are not looking precisely for what if youre not looking at it for precisely something that you wanted in their. Greta that will be the next homework assignment for you and other reporters on capitol hill to dig through this 650 plus pages and figure out whats in it. Lets go to tom in hawaii, republican. Caller i appreciate you taking my call. The point i would like to make is how inefficient this is for our country. Not only is it difficult to plan existing projects that are going on, but with furloughing employees, people on travel and working on projects now have to return home mid project and not complete the work. Then to complete the work, they have to travel again to work on projects. Its a complete waste of money to furlough projects and have uncertainty on projects that are going on and how to plan for them. Thank you very much. Arahah faris s ferris . Sarah something that members of congress have been complaining about for the past five times the have voted on the shortterm spending bill. We have to wait another six weeks to have actual legislation get this through september 30. We have heard the most from military leaders. Secretary mattis has gone to both the republican retreat and got up to the White House Briefing room and talking individually with members of the leadership saying that there are army and Navy Departments that cannot start new projects. They they are essentially ground to a halt unless they get a full Year Spending bill. So the repeating cycle of continuing resolutions is really damaging to the military. That is something that republicans have hammered into them for the last several months. That is why it was so difficult to back another shortterm spending bill that was made easier by the fact that the military budget will now be 700 billion for fiscal 2018 and 2019. That is something that was pretty much the main reasons republicans would vote for the package. Greta defense secretary mattis up on capitol hill earlier this week and testified. We covered that hearing if you want to listen more to what he had to say and arguments for not operating under continuing resolution. You heard senator chuck schumer, the minority leader who cut the deal, praising general mattis and his role in this. Show less arah right. Democratic leaders have never not wanted to fund military. The argument that they are making since 2011 and the start of sequestration when both the republicans and democrats saw domestic and defense funding basically on the chopping block and being forced to stave off these funding cuts every two years or so, democrats have said we want boosts for the military and a Strong National defense. We just want domestic funding such as the Education Department and the Health Department and having these larger increases as well. Under sequestration, both the domestic and defense have seen cuts slowly over time. It seems like we will have a reversal of that. These increases were far higher than both the 2011 and 2013 budget deal. We are going to see both sides of those ledgers, which have been huge debates of the spending talks in the last year. It seems to finally be evening out for a little bit. Show less. Greta tammy in minnesota, democrat. Caller thanks for taking my call. I have more of an observation. We are about 45 minutes before the government is due to open and trump has this bill on his desk and still has not signed it. It is being reported that he has not signed it because he is waiting for fox and friends to get over. I would just like to hear what he thought about that. Greta where did you hear that, tammy . Caller i just heard it on cnn. Sarah there is flexibility for workers to avoid being furloughed. They can spend four hours at work preparing for a shutdown if they are under shutdown protocol. There is a bit of flexibility so federal workers can still come come in. Greta charles in tennessee, independent. Caller i dont really have a question for your guest even though she is very knowledgeable. I have a comments. I think that most of the congressman and senators are egomaniacs trying to feather their own nest and we should have term limits. The government is not supposed to do certain things. Its not supposed to be a profession. Thank you. Greta in lancaster, california, republican. Good morning to you. Caller im caller heres a good question for this reporter here. We should add up all the money that was put out in quantitative easing and put that into the military and pay back Social Security with it. Could you give could you give us a number on how much money under the Obama Administration that was put in quantitative easing through the Federal Reserve bank to prop up the stock market and fluctuate prices for stocks and bonds and how much money was made by other than United States citizens . You you can put it into the military, which are american citizens. And you can put it into the Social Security and payback american citizens. Add up that add up that money that was not appropriated by congress. Can i ask you, do you think senator rand paul was making the argument why were , both republicans not ok with the deficit under president obama that seem to be ok with deficits as long as there is a republican in the white house . Caller the same question could be to the democrats. Why was 10 trillion spent under obama with the democrats and they are ok with that, but we dont even mention that . How much money has been spent on foreignborn invaders in the United States, but democrats and republicans . And how much money was spent on iran when they only had 499 million . Who okayed that money . Your point. We will go on to stephanie and highland point, democrat. Caller i just wanted to know, first of all i want to say rand , paul does not have any standing to make comments or complaints about the budget exploding because didnt he vote for the tax bill . The next thing i wanted to say was it is kind of scary because they are ballooning the deficit, but with that said, with the tax bill and the budget deal, what are we talking about . 3 trillion added on to the deficit . Does any of that contain Infrastructure Spending . Sarah theres not too much Infrastructure Spending included in there yet. Theres about 20 million set aside for the next two years and appropriators will decide where that goes. It is approaching at least 2 trillion if you take into account the tax cuts and the cbo estimated that would cost over 10 years. The cost of this bill is about 320 billion all things considered. That includes the tax extenders and disaster relief. There are those on capitol hill that note this is two years of raising the sequester, pushing up the spending cuts yet again. If congress does not do that, then the costs are way more than 320 billion over a decade and it would be exponentially higher because the spending increases approved would just continue. Its very hard for congress to go back and allow for spending cuts after raising for both the military and Domestic Programs. Greta after 2019, do they have to pass another longterm budget deal . Or if they dont, does it go back to 2011 sequestration levels . Sarah that is essentially right. This whole decades long sequestration effort ends in 2021. We have essentially one more budget deal that is two years long. This is something that affects leadership going back to 2011. We have had some very hard deals cut. This is why former Speaker John Boehner did not stay speaker. He he faced in an internal revolt among republicans. Speaker ryan has avoided that under President Trump. That means there are very difficult decisions to come. With 700 billion for the military and nearly as much for domestic, it will be very hard to reverse those cuts and to not see those costs add up over the next several years. Greta matt in new york, republican. Caller good morning, ladies. I hope youre having a good day. I heard the host speaker earlier that there is 4 billion for the v. A. To help rebuild the a the hospitals. Being a client of the v. A. Hospitals, a new coat of paint is not going to fix what the problem is. The problem is they dont have enough personnel. I use those the and the the v. A. And the private system. I spoke i spoke to people in the private system that wouldve been willing to work at the v. A. , but they dont pay what the private system does. In my own case here at the v. A. , the basic thing with the v. A. Is the primary care teams. Of course it expands to the specialists. For 30 years, im using the v. A. And every couple years, the money goes to a new paint job. Instead of personnel. The thing is we had five primary care teams. That got cut to four. Now the four teams are handling the caseload of the five. On top of that, to see a specialist, its hard for them h even higher specialists specialists. Greta i heard your point on that and yes 4 billion is , included in this, but that does not mean that is it for the Veterans Affairs department. We we will have to wait and see what the appropriators come up with for the Veterans Affairs department and what theyre spending levels are at, correct . Sarah democrats have been championing this effort from the beginning. Chuck schumer has been on the senate floor talking about how important it is to not only having more money go to v. A. Choice and the private Health Care Sector program but also across the health care spectrum for veterans, including Mental Health care. Democrats have said they will make sure this entire budget for the v. A. Goes up. We do not know we do not know what the breakdown is going to be because we just have the top line spending levels. It is a significant increase in the Domestic Program levels. You you can expect big increases in every department here. Greta jasper is watching and bethel springs, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. I was calling and im hearing about the budget and all that. Well, i got disabled back in 1988. For nearly all of my life, since i was a kid. In the last year ive had two strokes and two heart attacks and three back surgeries. Now im disabled. My wife, she draws 160 a month. It doesnt cover her medicine bill. They say thats all she can draw. Theyre so much money out there wasted and the guy about the v. A. , hes right. He is 100 , im a veteran myself. Dont blame it on the democrats. It is both sides. Anyway, why the you always hear about upperclass, middleclass, but nobody ever mentions the bottom class . Greta besides this budget deal that was approved, there has been this side conversation about what to do with dreamers or the daca participants. The the president has offered his proposal to the democrats. They appear to not agree to that. What is going to be next though . The last thing that Mitch Mcconnell did on the floor early this morning after the approved opening up the government was what . Ah he did allow for this debate to go forward and essentially set up the debate to begin next monday evening. This this essentially is what democrats have been told for more than a week he is making good on his promise to restart the immigration debate. Whats whats really going to be key is which bill is debated. That is still not clear yet. Is is it going to be some of these bipartisan efforts that Democratic Leaders have been involved in . There are other bipartisan efforts that senator john mccain and chris coons have been part of. Theres a whole spectrum of bills available both in the senate and the house. In the house, things are less clear on where this thing goes forward. Paul ryan has been hesitant about an immigration bill brought to the floor, but he did make an agreement with democrats last night to get the 70 votes he needed to get this bill across the house floor at 5 30 a. M. The other thing to watch is that the immigration debate has been linked to spending. Republicans have said they will not consider an immigration debate while it is linked to spending. They dont when i have to vote for something that will increase the military and achieve all these priorities like hell help Funding Health funding if it also means having this uncomfortable and difficult conversation about dreamers, something very polarizing. They they wanted to be separate. Now that it is separate and theres more oxygen in the room because the budget deal has finally passed, there will be more of an effort to have some hearings and open conversations versus just various groups meeting behind closed doors trying to come up with a way to get their bill to the floor. There is now a clear path for an actual immigration debate to go forward. Greta whitney is in kansas, a democrat. Good morning to you. Caller good morning how are , you . I have a comment. Im a federal employee and my son is in the military. Its its significantly impacts numerous amounts of individuals that people are not even considering. When it comes to appropriations etc. Everyone , needs to remember we are under a sequestration. Sequestration sequestration lasts 10 years and it will continue to last as long as everything goes the way it is going to. Everyone wants to blame party after party as to kicking the can down the road, but sequestration is nothing but a kick of the can. We are not we are not paying attention to the actual fact of whats going on. We are paying attention to any of the bills that are on the floor. Were not paying attention to any of the bills that are on the floor. Greta has any lawmaker argued that sequestration sequestration has not been a bad thing. Forcing cuts in spending on congress has not been a bad thing . There have been a number of conservatives who have said that since 2011. The cuts were never intended to go through and only one time did they, back in 2011. Since then, conservatives have been trying to tempt on domestic spending. They have said it has reached levels that are too high. They they will point to the mandatory spending making up a larger share of actual federal spending which you cannot touch through , the appropriations process. One thing included in this deal is another one of these socalled super committees that we have seen time and time again as congressional leaders try to sort out their broken budget process. The task is to get the appropriate process moving you. We saw none of the individual bills come to the floor. The again, the spending bills will finished up in march. This is several months past the deadline so congressional leaders are trying to have some sort of way to reach the skids on this. The committee has not had a great reception with conservatives and some of them are shrugging it off already, but there are some attempts to talk about the longterm effects of sequestration whether it is worthwhile to continue to live under the budget control after 2011. Technically that is still the law of the land. And also larger conversations about what to do about the budget act of 1974. This is the last major bill setting up the congressional budget and appropriations cycle. A lot of conservatives, particularly those who do support sequestration and say that there needs to be larger conversations about this, say its time to reconsider the budget act. Our viewers can follow sarah ferris on politico. Com and on twitter. She is the budget and appropriations reporter with politico. Again we thank you after a very , long night on capitol hill for coming here and being awake and very alert and giving us good information about what happens there. Show less text thinks for having me. In the u. S. Senate in this coming week, we was something that we have not seen any while. The majority leader saying that whoever gets