Trump talked a lot more about Hannibal Lecter during the campaign than one of his actual top priorities: extending his 2017 tax cuts. With those $4.5 trillion in cuts set to expire by the end of the year, that's the first major item of business for congressional Republicans. But how they get paid for will affect people's lives. Tim takes a deep dive into the reconciliation process that would allow Republicans to make deep cuts to programs without having to work with Democrats. Plus, the billionaire plutocrats staffing the new administration and the potential for corruption. Rep. Brendan Boyle and Liam Donovan join Tim Miller.
Chapter 1: What recent events are impacting California?
Everybody, a couple of notes. First up, there was the Palisades fire in Los Angeles that started last night. There's now expanded to four or five fires around LA, Southern California. And so just want to send our thoughts out to the folks that are involved in that. At some level, people that have had to evacuate. I've had some friends who have had to evacuate.
Producer Katie Cooper is out there and has been posting some pictures of some fires that look a little too close for comfort for me. we're hoping for the best for everybody on that front. I had the most minor experience with this in Oakland. We had the apartment building right behind mine caught on fire. And, uh, we had to evacuate one night, go to a hotel and man, it's scary stuff.
Just kind of monitoring your phone, trying to look at the app and trying to see where the fire is expanded to, whether your house is in the, uh, is in the target zone. So it is tough. I was already planning on doing a climate episode here in the next week or two. And so, uh, we'll be doing that and having a longer talk about this.
As far as today's schedule, just a reminder on Wednesdays, I do the political fluffery with my buddies, Sarah and JVL over on the next level podcast. Every Wednesday, it's out Wednesday late afternoon, usually. So make sure you subscribe to that feed or you go check it out. on YouTube.
We'll be doing the Gulf of America silliness, the Aline Cannon horrors, Joe Biden's interview with Susan Page, all that kind of political stuff we'll be doing with Sarah and JVL on the next level. Today on Wednesday, sometimes we'll be doing fun, longer form interviews about various topics. Today I wanted to do a doubleheader and just get deep on the budget stuff.
Because like the actual substance of what is going to impact people's lives this year is the immigration bill, the tax bill, and potentially the government shutdown. It's all related to this congressional, whatever you want to call it, process called reconciliation. And I've noticed I've been throwing around the word reconciliation a lot. And some of you might not even really quite get it.
So I brought on my friend Liam Donovan to give us kind of a 101 of what is reconciliation. And then the Democrats budget ranking member, Brendan Boyle in the house to talk about kind of the Democrats strategy and what sort of leverage they have on this. So we're getting nerdy on budget stuff. But, you know, I got some jokes in there for you. We do some bro talk at the end. It's great.
So stick around. You'll enjoy it. Up next, Liam Donovan and Congressman Brendan Boyle. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a budget doubleheader today. Up first, a former aide to Senate Republicans, he's a political analyst, lobbyist, and co-host of the Lobby Shop Podcast. Also an active opiner on X. And a buddy, Liam Donovan. How you doing, man?
Tim, it's good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's been a while. It has. Long overdue. Long overdue. First inaugural visit to the pod. I've called you into service today as a Hill nerd expert, particularly on reconciliation. Because what we've got coming down the pike, you know, in the non- renaming the Gulf of Mexico category, you know, in the seriousness category.
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Chapter 2: What is the reconciliation process?
It should not be that difficult if you can get out of your own way to pass.
Yeah.
You pass something that opens up leasing, throws off revenue that way. It offsets some of the border and wall spending. You throw in some stuff for defense. It's not that difficult to find what Republicans could agree on. You could even layer in some of the tax pieces that I mentioned from the Smith-Wyden bill. But you have to do something that puts Democrats in a position where they –
are inclined to help because remember trump has things he wants to do that actually democrats aren't against taxes on tips things like that this to me is a big question actually not what the republicans can prove competence they can't whether the democrats have the fucking resolve to be like nope nope not dealing with you not dealing with you because i don't think that they do
I think you saw it with the Lake and Riley stuff that's going on right now. I mean, even listening to people like AOC, I think there's a recognition that they just can't be seen as reflexively against policies. Why, though?
The Republicans were seen as reflexively against everything that Obama and Biden did. They suffered no consequences for it.
I think it's less about... whether there'd be consequences to suffer more that the repairing the party's image that Democrats need to do is just different than the needs and capacity of Republicans to improve their image. But I think there's a recognition that things are seen that are seen as populist and are seen as politically effective. Democrats have to change their tack on those things.
But the upshot is I think the virtue of of doing what you can now is that there are lots of things that Democrats can and probably would work with you on if you can put them in a position where there's pressure. And remember, whether it's Joe Biden and his budget or Kamala Harris and her campaign propositions, Democrats actually agreed with... They wanted to extend...
60, like about $3 trillion of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act policies. They wanted to extend that. So the way this would go at its best is work with Democrats on the things that are bipartisan overlapping. with the leverage of being able to go back and do everything else on a partisan basis in that second bill.
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