Congress is trying to come up with a new budget, while also attempting to extend tax cuts put in place during President Trump's first term. But with a very small majority in both houses, Republicans have little margin for error. Then, we look at the first cabinet meeting of the Trump administration, the upcoming presidential address to a joint session of Congress, and changes to the White House press pool. And, we can't let go of television — a lot of it. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Congress regarding the budget?
I'm Barbara Sprent.
I cover Congress.
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
And it's time for the weekly roundup. And we're going to start on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are trying to figure out how to get a budget through Congress that will allow them to extend President Trump's 2017 tax cuts, most of which will expire at the end of the year. Barbara, this is going to be a long journey for Republicans.
But look, Speaker Mike Johnson, he's had a lot of defeats on the floor. He enjoyed a rare unified win. How'd it go down?
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Chapter 2: How is the Republican Party handling budget challenges?
That's right. Yeah. Big win for the speaker. There were plenty of holdouts in his conference on this budget resolution, which, as we've talked about before on the podcast, is an early step in using the reconciliation process to pass a lot of what President Trump wants to see happen. Tax cuts, sending more money and resources to the southern border. On Tuesday, pretty dramatic.
Johnson and House Republican leaders held the floor open for an hour or so while trying to get all of the votes needed to pass this resolution. At one point, it looked like they weren't going to quite make it. They sent members home for the night. But wait, but wait. They quickly changed course, ordered the House back in session and voted on the proposal right away.
You know, essentially, some of the GOP members who had said that they would not support it changed their minds and ended up supporting it.
One thing that's really interesting to me about this is this time around, Trump seems much more involved in in the process here. And there was this great anecdote that he could be heard yelling over the phone in the Republican cloakroom, getting lawmakers in line to vote for the bill. That tells you something about how much he wants this done.
Yeah, I think there's two big things, you know, that are different between now and when Republicans used reconciliation in 2017. And one of those is exactly what you're saying, the difference of Trump himself. He was fairly content to leave a lot of the procedural elements in 2017 to Paul Ryan, who was speaker. And now it's not even, you know, a full two months into his presidency.
He's already put his thumb on the scale when it comes to a lot of the decision making between the House and the Senate, talking to members, doing some whipping of support. And then, you know, the second thing that I think is different, of course, is the margin, you know, that Johnson enjoys or does not enjoy rather some of the time.
You know, in 2017, Republicans can lose, I don't know, 20 some votes. Now, you know, Johnson can afford to lose just one vote. That's that's pretty tight. Yeah.
But Domenico, I think – look, I think when Americans think about Washington right now, Republican unified control of government, Trump exerting a lot of power in the White House, Republicans have both the House and Senate. Why should it be that hard? But it's going to be pretty hard.
Yeah, it's not that easy when you have such a small majority in the House and you have varying factions within the Republican Party. They have some moderates and you also have some pretty hardline people on the right who don't want to see – much increased spending at all.
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Chapter 3: Why is Medicaid a contentious issue in the budget?
Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's involvement in the budget process?
Johnson and House Republican leaders held the floor open for an hour or so while trying to get all of the votes needed to pass this resolution. At one point, it looked like they weren't going to quite make it. They sent members home for the night. But wait, but wait. They quickly changed course, ordered the House back in session and voted on the proposal right away.
You know, essentially, some of the GOP members who had said that they would not support it changed their minds and ended up supporting it.
One thing that's really interesting to me about this is this time around, Trump seems much more involved in in the process here. And there was this great anecdote that he could be heard yelling over the phone in the Republican cloakroom, getting lawmakers in line to vote for the bill. That tells you something about how much he wants this done.
Yeah, I think there's two big things, you know, that are different between now and when Republicans used reconciliation in 2017. And one of those is exactly what you're saying, the difference of Trump himself. He was fairly content to leave a lot of the procedural elements in 2017 to Paul Ryan, who was speaker. And now it's not even, you know, a full two months into his presidency.
He's already put his thumb on the scale when it comes to a lot of the decision making between the House and the Senate, talking to members, doing some whipping of support. And then, you know, the second thing that I think is different, of course, is the margin, you know, that Johnson enjoys or does not enjoy rather some of the time.
You know, in 2017, Republicans can lose, I don't know, 20 some votes. Now, you know, Johnson can afford to lose just one vote. That's that's pretty tight. Yeah.
But Domenico, I think – look, I think when Americans think about Washington right now, Republican unified control of government, Trump exerting a lot of power in the White House, Republicans have both the House and Senate. Why should it be that hard? But it's going to be pretty hard.
Yeah, it's not that easy when you have such a small majority in the House and you have varying factions within the Republican Party. They have some moderates and you also have some pretty hardline people on the right who don't want to see – much increased spending at all.
And, you know, there's a lot of division here among those factions about how much to cut entitlements, for example, if at all, we know Medicaid has been a huge sticking point. Right.
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Chapter 5: How might a government shutdown be avoided?
Senate Majority Leader Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson need to find that compromise resolution. And I think that that is unlikely to happen until April. Yeah.
And look, like every time Republicans have needed to pass either appropriations or stopgap spending bills, they've needed Democrats. And I'm not sure Democrats are super inclined to help Republicans at this moment in time.
No. And I think, you know, this is a big question that Democrats are chattering about on Capitol Hill and being asked a lot about. There is sometimes the framing of like, will Democrats step in to prevent a government shutdown? And the messaging so far from Democrats has been very much like we do not have the power to shut down the government. Don't put that framing on us.
Remember, it is our friends in the Republican Party who control the House and the Senate and the White House. So please don't put that label on us. All right.
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a minute.
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And we're back. And let's talk about some of the other things that happened in Washington this week. There was a lot. We can't cover it all, but we can talk about a couple things. The first is President Trump will give an address to Congress on Tuesday night. We'll, of course, have live coverage on your NPR station and analysis on the podcast after it.
But as is tradition, the opposition party has a planned rebuttal. And Barbara, the Democratic Party, has selected – freshman Senator Alyssa Slotkin to give that rebuttal.
What's the thinking there? That's right. Well, I mean, who the minority party picks to give the response to the joint address says a lot. As we've talked about on the podcast, it's not always a guarantee that that person goes on to become the heir apparent in the party. But it is a high profile platform.
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Chapter 6: What to expect from President Trump's address to Congress?
I think it's a it's a choice that makes a lot of sense for what they're trying to achieve in this moment.
And Domenico, we should also note that President Trump held his first cabinet meeting this week. And we've talked extensively on the podcast about the role Elon Musk is playing in the government. But he had a seat at the table and had his own speaking direct to the camera moments. And I think it was just this reminder of like what a force this person is going to be in government. Yeah.
Yeah, and he didn't quite have a seat at the table. He had a seat off the table. But he was able to stand and preside over everybody kind of in the shadows wearing a black Make America Great Again hat, a black coat that he had on, this long coat. And he thought it was funny. He opened his –
Jacket and it said tech support because he felt like he was tech support for the government But I thought that the imagery was interesting there because Trump did give him the floor He let him take a lot of questions about what Doge is doing, but it does set up this What I think a lot of us thought would be the case which is Trump sort of making Elon Musk the sort of the bad cop You know and be able to absorb all the bad press and when he gets to be too much you could see Trump cutting the the rope
to send the Musk boat out to sea. But he won't necessarily need to do that until Musk makes all of the cuts he wants to make. Because polling has shown Musk to be pretty unpopular, but Trump above him. So I think that he thinks that it's working at this point.
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Chapter 7: Who is delivering the Democratic response and why?
There was also the moment in the cabinet meeting where I think Musk was trying to do a good thing and say like, look, when Doge messes up, we'll fix it. But kind of like flippantly referred to the fact that they halted Ebola prevention. Like, ha ha, we halted Ebola prevention. And it was one of those like awkward moments in the room where no one laughed.
Like it looked like he was trying to like make light of it. And it was just like it fell flat for a second. And then he was like, no, but then we reinstated it. And I'm like, those are the moments in politics where you can't have too many ha ha moments about. Life-saving services. Yeah. And look, there's something else I want to talk about, which I do try to avoid navel-gazing.
Let's talk about the media stuff in our podcast because it's not really what our podcast is about. But something did happen this week that I think we should talk about because I think it does speak to how this White House operates. And it's something that I think people should consider in the years going forward because, you know, Barbara, when we're up on the Hill, we run wild.
Like the Capitol Hill press corps – It has a lot of freedom to roam, and it isn't as tightly organized and orchestrated as the White House press corps. And, Domenico, this week the White House decided to weigh in and change the way the White House press pool governs itself and to take a stronger role in governing who gets to cover the president.
Yeah, and, you know, it – A lot of people might think, well, so what? The White House gets to determine who's there. No big deal. But what has gone on for a long time is a sort of democratic process where the news organizations that have covered the White House for a long time get together, vote on somebody who's in charge of the White House Correspondents Association.
And then they try to have a rotation for what's known as a pool, where people are reporting on the president, and often in tight spaces where you can't fit a lot of media. But you want somebody there who's fast and sharp, and who's giving you unbiased information and giving you all of that relevant information. And that is now called into question because
The White House press secretary came out and chided the media and said essentially that this group is no longer going to control that. The White House is going to control it. And that raises eyebrows because who are they going to select for that? They want to be able to control their message more tightly.
Every president wants to try to control the message, but this is a bigger step than other presidents have done before. And I do think it's worth reminding people that – Being a member of the press is the only protected job by the Constitution in the First Amendment.
I mean freedom of the press is right there, and it's one of the things that around the world people are concerned when they see the freedom of the press reduced because that also tends to track with a lot of autocracies around the world.
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Chapter 8: What role does Elon Musk play in the Trump administration?
And one thing that I thought was interesting is a correspondent for Fox, Jackie Heinrich, did kind of weigh in on this. And saying, you know, the association has has not opposed the White House historically adding members to the pool, but that's different than sort of choosing it outright.
And for people that are thinking that this benefits somehow, you know, the MAGA movement, she pointed out like this opens the door for a Democratic administration to pick its own pool. And, you know, that doesn't necessarily roll over well with folks either. Right.
Yeah, I think that's always been the point of the pool and why previous presidents always were hands off about it is the recognition that like your party is not always going to be in the White House. And maybe you don't want the next president picking and choosing who gets to have seats in there.
And there's so much partisan coverage to be done. Right. But the pool is really not the place for that. All right.
We're going to leave it there. But let's take another break. And when we come back, time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back, and it's time once again for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Barbara, I'm going to give you the honors. What couldn't you let go of this week?
Thank you. Okay, so I feel like there are seasons in life where you watch a little less television, and that's okay. I don't feel like I'm in that time of my life.
I don't know if I've ever experienced that time before.
And I'm okay with it. And so I just want to say, like, you know, my can't let it go is sort of a thank you note to the content creators out there because I feel like television is in a good moment.
I'm sorry, can you just not let go television? Just shows? Just all of it? The whole thing?
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