Avian flu can’t hurt Congress: Members are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Democrats are incensed at President Trump but don’t seem to have a plan of their own. Republicans seem content to sit back and watch the show. So what are they doing? The Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And that’s the question. Mitchell, what are they doing?
Mitchell Miller Well, yeah, there’s a lot of tumultuous activity, I would say, here on Capitol Hill. It’s really interesting as we look to this federal court case involving the deferred resignation and what’s going to happen with federal workers. As you can imagine, that really generated a lot of energy, at least on the Democratic side, over the past week. And as we move through the weekend, a lot of anticipation related to this decision. And interestingly, some of the more verbal, vocal people in connection with this issue have been Washington area lawmakers. Perhaps not surprisingly, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) among the most critical of this offer from the administration, saying there were just too many unanswered questions about this. Also, whether it’s legal or not; both have actually called it a scam. And these are two lawmakers that are not exactly bomb throwers. So it’s been fascinating to see how Democrats have tried to basically get their footing after really being caught on their heels for quite a while after the Trump administration just started unveiling executive order after executive order. Now, we are seeing kind of a more traditional back and forth between Republicans and Democrats over what’s actually going to happen here.
Tom Temin It doesn’t seem like they can do a lot legislatively. I spoke with Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) last week and he said they’re depending on the courts and the court cases at this point because Democrats don’t have the votes to, say, rule against schedule F, or that kind of thing.
Mitchell Miller Right. So it all seems to be sort of a mix right now for Democrats. One thing that they are trying to do, in addition to holding news conferences and going to these federal agencies and calling on protests and complaining about what the Trump administration is doing at various agencies, some of the pieces of legislation that they’re offering up include one that relates to Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury Department’s extensive payments system. And this is what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) had to say about it.
Hakeem Jeffries Why does Elon Musk and his minions need access to the names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birthdates and bank account information of millions of Americans?
Mitchell Miller So Democrats are trying to find their voice in connection with this. But as you noted, especially with legislation, Republicans control everything. So this is more basically a PR move by Democrats. I think really it is going to end up, all of this, eventually in the courts. That’s where it’s all heading. And of course, we have a lot of these legal cases already ongoing. But ultimately, I think what’s going to happen in the biggest picture of it all, and maybe this is way down the road, but you had the Senate actually getting Russell Vought confirmed as the head of [the Office of Management and Budget). And he, of course, as you know, is the architect of Project 2025 and has made it very clear, along with President Trump, that they feel that the Impoundment Control Act, which Congress passed back in 1974 during the Nixon whole flare up over that, that that is ultimately going to be the central issue, whether or not the President can impound discretionary funds? Not the mandatory funds like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. But what is going to happen in connection with that? That’s really the tussle with the power of the purse and the power of the presidency.
Tom Temin Well, I wonder, though, if an alternative route is a final ruling on large measures of Title V at the Supreme Court level?
Mitchell Miller Yeah, I mean, that could very well be too. I think ultimately now, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I think there’s going to be a lot of piecemeal lawsuits going ahead, if you will, that a lot of these cases, I think, are going to be, frankly, already the Trump administration has lost a few of these early rounds. And if you look at the first term when he was in office, he actually there was one estimate that he only won about one fifth of the cases that he brought through the federal court system. So I think you’re right. You’re going to have a lot of these legal skirmishes, whether it’s Title V or other issues, as we move forward.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller. He’s WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent. And what is the latest in budget work, to get down to more prosaic things, although that relates to the deferred resignation in some sense.
Mitchell Miller It does. I mean, actually, we kind of joke about it, but with this March 14th deadline where the government’s money is going to run out and it’s the shutdown deadline, that was actually referred to by several lawmakers who said, “look, there really isn’t any money in the pipeline necessarily for these deferred resignations.” And so they do have to obviously get something going here. And finally, over the weekend and late last week, House Republicans and Senate Republicans have started getting very, very close. And I think this week is going to be a critical week for both chambers, really, because last week there were murmurs that because the House Republicans weren’t coming together quickly enough that Senate Republicans say they needed to move ahead and they actually did start to move ahead on their two track approach, which is basically immigration and a lot of other issues related to that. And then moving secondarily to the tax cuts and extending the tax cuts from the original, President Trump’s first term. And so the House Republicans, meanwhile, have been still pushing the one “big, beautiful bill,” so-called, trying to get that going, I think, in the House Budget Committee. The House GOP leadership at least said most recently that they want to get it before that committee this week. So I think finally, the rubber is going to hit the road this week and we’re going to find out one way or another exactly how Republicans are going to move forward. And then, of course, we’ll have the real political donnybrook over whether or not the Republicans can do most of it on their own or how much help they’re going to need from Democrats, because certainly there’s just not a lot of time as usual. We’re already just close to a month away from this deadline.
Tom Temin And in the meantime, the President has been getting his nominees confirmed at a pretty good clip. It seems like it’s going fast relative to two earlier times.
Mitchell Miller It really is. I mean, there was an attempt last week with Russell Vought at [OMB] that Democrats tried to stretch it out as much as they could and they did one of those all night. It’s not a filibuster, but an all night debate over whether or not he should be confirmed. And, of course, he eventually was. And then now this week, you’re going to have things moving forward again for some of the more controversial nominees. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the head of [the Department of] Health and Human Services. All of these people have been moving forward even though there were some rocky roads. And I think really what happened was Pete Hegseth’s nomination and how the Republicans basically got it back on track for defense secretary, I think that showed them that they could get these nominees, even the ones that are tougher to get through. So I think overall, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Republicans are feeling pretty good about how this process has gone, that they will have the President’s full cabinet together pretty soon.
Tom Temin And the pressure is going to be on Hegseth pretty soon, because after he gets through with the photo ops at the border and all of this kind of thing, a 2026 budget for the Pentagon is going to have to be reworked because they’re in that season right now. I mean, that should be technically coming out in a month or so, but we don’t know when it’s going to come out. But presumably the administration is working on it. So Hegseth is going to have to understand some stuff beyond photo ops at the border.
Mitchell Miller This is going to be huge for him. As you know, the Democrats criticized him during his nomination process that he really didn’t have much budget experience and that what he did have was with two smaller veterans groups. And there were questions about whether there were financial problems there. But nonetheless, now he’s got to take on the big enchilada, more than $850 billion worth of programs. And this is really going to be a tough, tough job. I think a lot of people are really going to be watching him very, very closely to see how he does with this whole process, because there were still a lot of questions, even some privately among Republicans, about whether he was actually up to the job. So this is the first big test.
Tom Temin Yeah, the old timers would say, I knew Robert S. McNamara. You’re not Robert S. McNamara.
Mitchell Miller Youngest defense secretary since actually Donald Rumsfeld. But McNamara, of course, had a big name of his own.
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