The Government is Open - Now What?

Fox News Radio's Ryan Schmelz joins us to discuss the reopening of the government. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is West Michigan's Morning newstee Kelly, Bret, Kita Schmidty
back with us soon back in action, your United States
Federal Government. The story as he has been all along.
Ryan Schmells with Fox News Radio on Capitol Hill. Ryan,
thanks for doing this today. Of course, hel when we

(00:20):
last talked, we were awaiting a vote in the House.
We saw it and talk us through the numbers. First
of all, yesterday any surprises, well.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Democrats voting for it. You know, maybe not a ton,
but it was still still enough to be notable. What
I think stood out was that there was some new
drama that that circulated going into the morning, where you
had this provision that was put in in the Senate
which would allow the members who were spied on because

(00:54):
of Operation Arctic Frost to sue the federal government for
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, Speaker Johnson was curious
about this, but ultimately the Republicans still voted for the
bill because they wanted to reopen the government. But there's
going to be an attense the next week to offer
legislation to repeal that provision. And you had one Congressman

(01:15):
Gregg Stuey from Florik, who pretty much said that he
had to vote, know, pretty much vote against his party
because he did as he told me, and I got
an exclusive on this. He pretty much said, I do
not want to give Lindsey Graham five hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So wait a minute. So this whole thing's sort of
been held up because the Democrats wanted to put a
provision about Obamacare. Now, yes, so at the last minute,
the Republicans want to put something in about arctic frost.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
They did put something in and it's now passed. So
now eight senators on the Republican side are allowed to
do the the federal government over alleged damages from their
phone records being looked at during the investigation from Marctic frost. So, yeah,
this is this thing's gotten a little.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Juicy and certainly something that may warrant some attention, but
it just seems about like the same thing how it
was done. So how do we move forward from this?
Obviously those will be stories that we continue to follow.
How does one begin to open this thing back up
after forty three days?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, that's and that's gonna be a mystery. We've never
seen it happen before. So we'll ultimately see what they
how long this takes, and what they do. You know,
you saw President Trump try to at least get the
ball rolling by telling air traffic controllers to get back
to work as soon as a deal was reached. So ultimately,
see how long this takes. But you know this, this
this could be something that isn't exactly an overnight fix.

(02:43):
So I think you just have to wait and see
and ultimately, you know, back pay will start coming in
for federal workers and all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, do they all have direct deposit or is anybody
getting a check mailed? I mean, you got to learn
how because.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
That's a great cash that's a thing that the bank.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Right. And in the meantime, the clock starts ticking all
over again, doesn't it, Ryan, because we've got the thirtieth.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, the idea is that they are going to get
back to what they've been calling regular order, and they're
going to start passing appropriations bills. And they've already passed three.
Now that was a part of this funning package. So
they did get some of the government funded long term.
Now they've got to go and get the rest done
so the next shutdown won't be as you know, detrimental

(03:31):
because there will be certain agencies that were funded for
this one, but they're going to try to get as
many of those done so that the we get to
this funding pattle again. You know, it's not going to
be as much of an issue as it was this
time around. So multiply see what they're able to finish.
You know, maybe one would think that they get the
Defense bill done or some of the other bills like that,
and then ultimately they go from there.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And in the meantime, traffic gets worse for you on
your way work every day. Man.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Now looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Someday we'll do a whole segment on just that. Ryan
Smells with Fox Hots Radio in Capitol Hill. Thanks for
your time this morning.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Hey, thank you, Steve