Ryan Schmelz discusses President Trump's push for spending cuts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, the Senate voted. I think the vote was fifty
one to forty eight yesterday with the usuals and bowing
out of the Republican Party and signing with the Democrats.
And Ryan Smells is here to talk about what the
Senate pushed through in the bill, nine billion dollars worth
a clawing back. I thought the number might be bigger, Ryan,
But I guess this is just the beginning. What's going on?
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I think that's kind of what they say. They say
they want this to be the beginning. Yes, and it
was nine point four billion, it's now down in nine billion.
They took some things out of there so that they
could get everybody yes, or at least as many people
to yes as possible. They now got fifty one votes
and now heads back to the House and they need
to vote on this either today or tomorrow if they
want this thing to pass, because it does have a
deadline of Friday.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
What kind of votes do they need in the House
to make this thing go through.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
The simple majority they normally need. They've already passed this
before out of the House, but since the Senate made
some changes, they have to go get it again. So
you know this is actually a more water down version
of the one that they passed, So they should be
able to get the votes as long as they've got
full attendant and everything, as long as everyone's on the
same page.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
The areas that they're targeting in this round include the
public radio, public television, public broadcasting in general. What other
areas are going to see the effect of this out.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Of the gate, Well, well, the big portion of this
funding is for foreign a that's like over eight billion
dollars or so, so a lot of this is targeted
towards different programs related to USAID. There's some State department
funding in there as well. I think the one big
one that was kind of debated was pep bar, which
is a program that goes to combating the AIDS epidemic

(01:34):
in Africa. That actually funding was put back in, so
you know, that was one of the things that they
made a change to in order to get people to yes.
So I don't think that's getting slashed in the same
way that it was before.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, as they do this in the House, is there
i mean talk that it could be troublesome or do
they everybody? Is the vibe there that yeah, this is
going to go fine, and we're going to move forward
with it quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, maybe there could be some repos who are disappointed
if the Senate may changes to this and vote no.
But at the same time, it's a spending cut and
they've got a Friday deadline, so it's either you vote
for it now or President Trump's not going to be
very happy.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well, I think they're moving in the right direction on
this one here as far as this being the tip
of the iceberg on you know, the first start of
taking you know, money back and realigning money. What's up
next after this one moves through.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, we've had some hints about what's going to be next,
we haven't gotten any hard confirmation. I think, you know,
you could be seeing some cuts towards you know, and
this could be a topic that they get by part
of the support on animal testing, you know, how they
use different animals for scientific experiments, whether it's at NIH
or some other places. That's actually one that might have
some bipartisan support. So we'll see if the administration decides

(02:43):
to go down that route or not.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
All right, very good, Ryan Smells in DC this morning.
Thank you, Ryan, appreciate you, buddy.