Democrats block re-opening government for 13th time (10-28-2025--Hour3)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So let me give you the update from Washington. Senate Democrats today blocked yet another attempt to reopen the government, after having nearly a week to muw their options. This was the thirteenth attempt by Republicans to reopen the government. There are a series of deadlines rapidly closing in the failure to reopen the government. Today come as air traffic controllers missed their first payday, the military is set to miss its full first full payday on Friday, and then there is the looming cliff for federal nutrition benefits on Saturday, and that is the same day when open enrollment begins nationwide for the train wreck that is Obamacare, which is working as intended by the way that that was the intent. The intent was to break the healthcare system, and I thought it would happen a lot faster. But here we are, so it is breaking. I'm gonna touch on that in a bit. According to Fox News, in the background, Republicans are considering a series of one off bills to pay the troops, pay certain federal workers, pay the air traffic controllers, fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, also known as food stamps. However, whether or not these measures will make it to the floor of the Senate for a vote is unknown. John Thune, the Senate leader, he threw cold water on the prospect of the piecemeal what he calls rifle shots coming to the floor. So like this, you know, these targeted bills to fund one thing at a time. Republicans will discuss the bills during their closed door lunch today. JD. Vance, the Vice President, will attend that meeting as well. And you know, look, they're balancing a couple of different things here, right. Number one is how do we minimize the harm, minimize the pain of the shutdown to these various employees and programs. Also, who's to blame? Right, Who's to blame for the shutdown because they keep on running these bills as they did today another bill to pass the clean Continuing Resolution, and Democrats keep blocking it. I always point this out too, is that the Senate vote, they've gotten fifty three votes to reopen the government with the clean CR and that is bipartisan. There have been three or two Democrats and the independent, but he's basically a Democrat, Angus King of the famous Stake family. The two Democrats and one independent, they have gone along with Republicans in trying to reopen the government. That's a bipartisan vote, but it doesn't get counted or reported as that because Republicans. So the blockage here is completely the doing of the Democrats. I went over this in depth last week, I believe traced back the history of the Obamacare subsidies that now Democrats are demanding Republicans pass as part of this continuing resolution. They want this added back, or not added back, they want this added in. But the subsidies were temporary, and they've always been temporary. As silly as that sounds, but they were temporary from the very very beginning. Remember, Obamacare rammed through party line vote, zero Republicans on board with it. A couple of Democrats did not want to support it, so that's how we ended up. Remember the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana purchase. I believe there was one for the Florida what was the Florida deal? I forget what that was called. But these were all carrots concessions that were given to Democrats senators that knew this was not a popular thing to do, and so they got bought off by getting exemption for their states to certain aspects of Obamacare. So they gave them these carve outs, and then the Democrats fell in line and voted to ram this thing through. And part of it was to make the fiscal projections work and to keep it under half a trillion dollars. I think that was the magic number back then. They had to do all of this, you know, government accounting, which would be illegal if you did it or I did it, and like, okay, yeah, well we're going to subsidize, will subsidize the premiums and such, and they put a I think it was a ten year sunset on that. I think it was ten years, maybe it was five. And then they re upped it and reupped it, and they keep reupping it, and then they added more with the COVID pandemic. That was all Democrats. They did that every time, No Republicans every time, and they could have made those subsidies permanent, but they never did. But now they're demanding Republicans do what Democrats refuse to and or were incapable of doing. That's what they're holding the country hostage over is to force the Republicans to do something that Democrats themselves refuse to do. That's why this is squarely on their shoulders. This is they are too blamed for this. That's one aspect of the blame. The other aspect is Chuck Schumer's reelection prospects, and I can only imagine the kind of arm twisting he's doing behind the scenes. Right because Chuck Schumer is worried about losing a primary to Alexandria Azquez, a congresswoman from New York widely expected to challenge Chuck in the Democrat primary next year. Chuck, who agreed to the continuing Resolution back in July and saw his poll numbers crater among Democrats because the far left base wants Democrats, as they said in the surveys, to take a bullet. They have to be willing to take a bullet to fight Trump, right, they want Democrats to fight harder, and so Chuck. When he agreed to the continuing resolution back in July, he then was on the receiving end of the wrath of the leftist base in the Democrat Party. And his poll numbers are terrible. I went over those yesterday. I think Democrats support him at like a seventeen percent approval rating. It's awful. And so he's worried about losing. So he has to stay in this fight. He can't cave to the Republicans because it's going to cost him or could cost him his re election chances because he won't even clear the Democrat primary. He'd probably win the general. That probably about it. He would win the general election in New York, but he won't get through the primary. So that's why we are where we are. So how is this working out for Democrats Because at the beginning of the shutdown lo those many weeks ago, Democrats were content to just keep the government closed because they thought that there would be enough pressure on the Republicans through the media to reopen for the Republicans to cave and do what Democrats want them to do. Fund expansion of the subsidies, fund expansion of the medicaid, so it keeps covering illegal aliens. And Republicans have not been willing to go along with that, and they thought the Republicans would take all of the blame. So how is that working out well for Democrats? That so good? All right? If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check Dot Ground, dot News slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. From the text line, Jeff says, through out the cr slash shutdown drama, we hear these sixty votes Republicans need, right, Yes, they need sixty votes to pass the Continuing Resolution. That's to defeat a philibuster, right, Indeed, it is, Jeff, it is to overcome the filibuster. I haven't seen anybody filibustering. Why don't they make democrats filibuster? Make Democrats stand up there twenty four to seven keeping the government shut down. That's a very good question. This is what we call the legislative filibuster, which I'm not a fan of. I'm not a fan of this mechanism that the Senate uses so they don't actually have to engage in filibustering. I have long said that if you're going to threaten to filibuster, you should actually have to do it. This idea that's like, well, you know, well, we would totally filibuster if we had to, But because we don't have to, I'm just gonna say I'm going to filibuster, and then that counts. I don't think that should count. I think that you should have to actually filibuster. Now, Democrats are urging Republicans by way of the media, saying, well, maybe they should just blow up the filibuster. Maybe they should just get rid of the legislative filibuster, just nuke it, just get rid of it. But they're not saying get rid of it and still make us filibuster. They're saying get rid of the sixty vote threshold, which is what they would like to see done, because if they win control, then they would be able to expand the Supreme Court, pack the court, they would be able to do all sorts of stuff. And that's why Republicans aren't going to do it. Right. The filibuster is an important tool for the minority party to block actions by the majority party. But that being said, I think they should have to actually get up there on the floor and do the filibustering. So that's where that's where we are. It's the legislative filibuster and so I mentioned the numbers. Here is the exuberant Harry Enton, the chief data analyst for CNN, talking about the polling on who's to blame for the shutdown, and uh, there's been a bit of a shift. It hasn't. If anything, it's been helped a little bit. Take a look here the shift in net popularity versus pre shutdown among the g When we're looking at the Republican Party overall, that brand actually up two points. That's within the margin virap, but clearly it hasn't dropped. Come over this side of the screen, look at the net approval ratings for Republicans in Congress. It's actually up five points since pre shutdown. So what we're seeing here is the Republican brand in Congress has actually improved somewhat compared to where we were pre shutdown, despite the fact the Republicans control. And that's the mat that John Thune and Mike Johnson are loved looking at, is Hey, why should we give an electorally speaking when our brand has actually improved a little bit. Now we say their position is getting better with whom? Yeah, okay, with whom. So I think it's two groups that it's so important to keep them an eye out on all right, change in the Republican congresses net approval rating versus pre shutdown. It's rallying the base, for sure. Look at this, the net approval rating up twelve points versus pre shutdown. But it's not just with the base, it's also with the middle of the electorate. Look at this among independents it's up eight points as well. So we've got a situation here where Republicans with this shutdown are actually rallying their base. But it's also something that's not hurting them with the folks in the middle of anything. It's helping them with folks in the mill. And this is the. Type of math that if you're Republicans you like to see, right, because something could rally the base but alienate those in the middle, or something could rally those in the middle but alienate the base. But the truth is we're not seeing that. What we're seeing is the Republican brand has actually gotten better among independents, and it's also gotten better among Republicans as well. That Republican brand when it comes to those in Congress. So again, what's it's the elect to a reason that Republicans were given at this point. And yes, what is the reason this is the Democrats doing and this is not going to help them either. The nation's largest federal workers' union, the American Federation of Government Employees, is urging Democrats to concede the government's shutdown fight and vote to reopen the government, revealing a significant fracture in the Democratic coalition as the shutdown nears the one month mark. This from Camden Mulder at National Review. The shutdown began twenty seven days ago after Democrats refused to back a clean government funding bill, demanding instead that Republicans extend temporary Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. But afge or avgheef Ghi, as I call it, it's a major ally to the Democrat Party, representing eight hundred and twenty thous thousand federal and DC government workers, now say it's time for the party to give up on its demands. They say it's time to pass a clean cr and end the shutdown. The union is also demanding that all federal workers should not only be returned to work as soon as possible, but also received back pay, including workers who got furloughed or were considered essential throughout the shutdown and continued to work without any pay. A House passed continuing resolution has now been voted down in the Senate thirteen times. Three Senate Democrats. You got John Fetterman, who after his stroke and brain injury, seems like sane from Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortes Mastow from Nevada, and Angus King from Maine. He of the famous state family. They have all voted with Republicans to pass this legislation. This statement from the Union is not the first sign that cracks are forming within the Democrat coalition. Congressman Jared Golden, also of Maine, the lone House Democrat to vote in favor of the existing cr blamed his own party's progressive wing for pursuing what he views as a misguided shut down strategy. He said this in a weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal. He cast blame on the left wing group Indivisible, which is the same group that organized the No Kings rallies. He also blamed progressive leaders like Alexandria A Cascutz, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders for moving the party in the wrong direction. He said, quote what they're doing is wrong. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection. 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Call her text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let us him and Tomato. Let's head over to the text line and see what some people are saying. Oh my gosh, I'm kidding. This from Kevin who says, I listened to Mike Johnson's speech this morning. He was making the point, among others that Democrats are focusing on forcing Obamacare into permanent law. Well the subsidies they want the subsidies made permanent. Yes, because Obamacare is law, but they are looking to expand it permanently with these subsidies. But what they don't tell you is the billions that they want to give illegal immigrants as part of what they want included. No, Democrats do not want to say that although somebody did right, they did actually acknowledge. And on occasion, I played one of these clips a couple of weeks ago. Who was it, Nancy Pelosi, I think, or maybe it was Maxine Waters. I forget who it was. A reporter from a conservative outlet asked her, and she acknowledged that they want to make sure everybody gets health care. So yes, and in fact, they're three points that they sent over, that the Senate sent over to the Republican leadership, and we're like, you know, here's what we're demanding. Here list of our demands, and one of them is the expansion of Medicaid to cover illegal aliens. And now they're trying to pretend that that's not what they're doing, but that is part of their demands. Let me see here, Gray says, do you think the Democrats are now hoping for people to start protesting and stir up riots in the streets. I mean, I know that they There was the reports, there were the reports before the No Kings protests what two weekends ago, that Schumer was not going to do anything, was not going to move on on anything before the No King's rallies because he did not want to be the target of those rallies. Right, You've got these mass demonstrations already planned by your allies by this you know, leftist base, and you don't want to go. You don't want to anger them. A day before they're showing up, because then your name is going to be all over those placards because you caved to the orange hitler. Right that you're just as bad because you're letting him just run roughshot over America and democracy. Right, So you didn't want he didn't want that. So those are the reports that came out of DC right before the No Kings protest. I don't think. I don't think that they want riots because I think that actually would undermine their their position, right if people start rioting for their paychecks, I mean, and that would I mean, I feel like that would probably be a first for people to be rioting to be paid for their work versus being paid to riot. I think that's the difference there. Dana wants to know, how did oh wait hand on what happened to negotiating? Why haven't they at least debate it openly televised and let the Americans decide? Well, that did happen. It happened over in the House, and it passed the House. The continuing Resolution passed the House with a Democrat, Jared Golden, supporting it, and then it went to the Senate. And you know, funding bills have to start in the House. So if the Senate were to try to make any changes, it would then have to go back over to the House for approval. And so the Republicans are like, well, no, we passed this, this is what we want, this is not And if you want to negotiate spending, then you could do that while the government's open, because this is just a continuing resolution, because that's how now we fund everything, and this is how we are constantly governing ourselves with the you know, the constant looming deadline of a government shut down, because everybody thinks that it gives them some leverage to negotiate around. And we're not doing the regular order, which is to have the spending bills run through committees and then make their way to the Congress. We're not doing that. We haven't done that in a decade. I've been advocating for a return to that, to the regular order. But both parties, when they get in control, recognize the value of the negotiating leverage that they get. They get to say you have to pass this, you have to go along with this, or else everything shuts down. So this is the new normal. I don't like it. And Republicans have tried to shut down the government when they were in the minority, and what they learned was there's no off ramp, and then you end up having to cave. Democrats this is their stab at the shutdown, and they are learning the very same lesson, and maybe at some point everybody learns this lesson now and then there aren't any more shutdowns. But that's not actually a very preferable outcome, right, because that means that everybody just keeps going along with continuing resolutions. So, and here's the thing. The Republicans could have jammed a bunch of extra stuff into the CR. They could have done that, but they did not. They did not add stuff to the continuing resolution. They just said keep funding it at the regular level, at the current level. Democrats are the ones that want to add hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new spending into the budget that we already cannot afford. That's not fiscally prudent. How did MTG vote, Well, she's in the House, so this is all Senate. She's not a senator, so she did not vote in the on the CR in the Senate seven oh four number. What exactly is a filibuster? A filibuster is this may not be the technical definition here, but off the top of my head, it is when the minority party can debate a bill and as long as they don't give up the floor or stop talking, they can block a vote until they stop talking. That's the filibuster. But over the years they've decided, well, we'll just we'll just threaten to talk without actually talking, because you know, nobody really wants to do that and we don't want to hang around, and so they just like I will just say we're going to talk, and that's enough. That's called the legislative filibuster. And so as Jeff says, right, so they don't actually do the filibustering, they just identify as philibustering. Stan says, when you have a disagreement about the path forward, and one party says, let's continue doing it like we've been doing it while we chart a bipartisan and agreeable path forward as at least it wasn't a disaster yesterday, But the other party says, no, no, I would rather cause that disaster. It seems pretty obvious which side caused the current problem. And then this is from A to eight number. I tried Obamacare in twenty eighteen in between jobs literally covers nothing. Subsidy blew up my tax filing and it took three years to address the mess. Healthcare I had the same problem at the exact same issue. Health care costs need epic level solutions, but not via Obamacare, the scam to launch a federal takeover of our health rights down to our gym memberships. Yeah, the point of Obamacare was to break the system. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit Creative video dot Com. All right, Hello, Mike, welcome to the show. Hello, I really appreciate you taking my call. Actually, I only have about five minutes, so I'm going to ask you, Mike, because I have had many conversations with you over the years, to please arrive at your point as succinctly and rapidly as possible. Yes, sir, thank you, I appreciate that, and again, thanks for taking my call. Actually, I'm talking about three points of agreement that we have, or maybe I should say two and a half. Yes, Yes, I think we need to get back to regular orders. I think both parties would benefit by it, and I think both parties to blame for it, and we need to do that. I'm not sure what it's going to take to get there, but I agree with you on that. And yes, yes, I agree with you that our American healthcare says some need some major changes to it. As you know, we as Americans pay roughly twice as much as other industrialized countries per person for health care, and for that we get really media results. We just don't fare very well in terms of life expectancy and all kinds of fat measures because we're fat well that we also don't we don't do enough screening to prevent various diseases, all that sort of stuff. And by the way, I haven't told you again, congratulations on your great weight loss. Will give pac weight Loss a free plug real quick because you did some great work on that, well. They did mostly. Yeah, no, I appreciate you. All right, So what's the half point here now that we are two minutes in? All right, very good. The half point is talking about medicaid funding. Yes, it is true that some people who are undocumented receive Medicaid benefit. They're documented, But. There's a This is one of these examples in which you can take a small kernel of truth and make a very very big misperception and miscon going around with it here, right, I'm. Going to hang on, Mike, I'm going to stop you right there. When you said a small percentage, how many people do you think that are in the country illegally that came over during the Biden administration. How many people do you think are eligible for the Medicaid. Well, in terms of getting benefits zero. That is not correct in terms of going to an emergency room. No, I'm not talking about emergency room for that. No, no, no, I'm not talking because all of them get that. Anybody who's here illegally gets that. I'm talking about the number of people that came through under the Biden administration that are eligible for Medicaid benefits. And you said zero. Those are TPS people and folks that are actually have a certain legal status here. Yeah, they may qualify, they do qualify. Do you know what that number is? Do you know what the number is? I don't know what the rough number of people. Is three million? About three million? And do you know what that special designated status was? But I also know the amount of Medicaid hang on hanger. Do you know what that? Do you know what that status was? You mentioned it that they were tps, but like, what was the status that got them that made them eligible for the Medicaid? I think seeking a solid maybe one parole? Correct, they got paroled, and therein lies the rub is that Alejandro Mayorcus blanket paroled millions of people in violation of the law, in clear, absolute, clear violation of the law. A blanket parole system for everybody that came in and that made them eligible for medicaid. That's why there's two point eight to three million people that are now eligible have been eligible for medicaid. So it's not taking a small kernel of anything. The amount of money is being spent on it is musicool. It doesn't matter. It should be zero, should be zero. And if you want to and if you want to hash out whether to extend medicaid to illegal aliens that have been granted parole illegally, if you want to have that argument, go ahead and have the argument, but do it outside of a continuing resolution that has now been sitting for almost a month, and you're holding hostage all of the people whose paychecks aren't getting cut. Part of governing, Pete, is that when you control the White House, you control the House. You know the filibuster, you know how that works. Mike, do not play the game with me. They got to get exactly, they got. To get seven more Democrats, and until democrats. Part of governing is being able to count to sixty. I part of governing being able to know how to count to sixty and to get sixty votes. Okay, well you agree there's no secret. Yeah, no, we agree. We agree. We agree. Democrats are responsible for the shutdown. We agree, Mike, I got a run. I appreciate the call, but we agree they cannot get to sixty without seven more Democrats. That's coming on board. Democrats are refusing to do it because they want Medicaid extended for these illegal aliens, and the Republicans are saying no, we agree. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.