Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Last week Congress was in recess, but that didn’t mean it was a quiet news week. The White House floated a plan to address the health care subsidy problem that was part of the shutdown agreement. What are you hearing there and how’s it playing?

Mitchell Miller Well, when this trial balloon floated, it completely caught a lot of House Republicans, particularly, off guard. They were totally surprised by this and the fact that it was going to be a two-year extension. Now it would have potentially included some of the reforms that GOP lawmakers are looking for. They want limits on income that are now brought down a little bit more. They want some reforms that they say will take care of waste. But this definitely was quite an event here on the Hill, given the fact that the lawmakers are spread out all across the country in their districts, but they quickly made it clear that they did not like this proposal. And so while there was talk about it being rolled out last week, the White House quickly put the brakes on it and said, okay … Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, is acknowledging there are some very intense discussions about what is going to happen with health care within the White House and within, among Republicans. But right now, everybody’s kind of scrambling. There are some bipartisan proposals that are coming out of the House. The Senate is trying to work with some things. What I think may happen in the coming weeks is, you’re going to have a vote in the Senate, maybe one or two, on these proposals. One of them is likely to just be a straight up extension of the ACA for a year to keep those insurance costs down. That will likely go down to defeat. And then Republicans, it’s still unclear exactly what they’re going to propose, but you can bet that there will be something brought to the floor by Senate Majority Leader John Thune. That I think will also be defeated because Democrats will filibuster it. And then I think what is really going to probably happen is, this is all gonna get pushed into January, and when people start seeing those eye popping insurance costs going up $100, $500, $1,000, $2,000 and more per month, that is going to put a lot of heat on lawmakers to try to come up with something.

Terry Gerton You make a good point that there aren’t that many working days in December before they get to having to deal with this in January. What else is on the congressional agenda for those few days?

Mitchell Miller Well, you know, that’s a big question because last week was just really a lost week. When the House came back after the shutdown, there was all this talk about they were gonna get right back to trying to get back to regular order and we were going to see a lot of action on appropriations bills. That really just did not happen. There were a few symbolic votes in the House, and so they’ve still got this set of nine appropriations bills that they have to deal with. And even though they keep talking a good game and saying that they’re going to address them, and there is some appropriations meetings going on back in behind the scenes, but that’s going to be the real big thing that they need to at least start getting some traction on, some type of a minibus, perhaps bringing together three, four, maybe five big legislative bills together. But right now that is still in a free form position, so we’ll have to see with the only those limited work days in December will will they actually get much done.

Terry Gerton It feels like we talk about the NDAA every time, but that was supposed to come up for a a vote in early December as well.

Mitchell Miller Right. And that looks like it’s being delayed as well. There’s as you know, many provisions in it that are getting a lot of discussion. Among them, of course, is one of them related to artificial intelligence, the AI provision in the NDAA. There’s so much agreement on the NDAA and we know that this always gets passed every year, but I think that’s the big sticking point right now is that, basically this push to put a hold on everything that would happen in the states with AI so that the federal government could try to get its arms around it. And there’s been a lot of pushback from state lawmakers as well as the house lawmakers that are involved with those people. So I think the NDAA is going to get pushed back a little bit more. Certainly they’re close — you have House and Senate negotiators just trying to bring all of this together. That’ll be a big one this month.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller, he’s Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, one thing that’s got to be on lawmakers’ minds in December is the retirement of the comptroller general, the head of the government accountability office. Gene Dodaro’s term ends at the end of the month. What are you hearing in terms of the maneuvering and the nomination for his replacement?

Mitchell Miller Well, I think there’s actually a lot of nervousness right now about what is going to happen with him. He has been a steady hand on the rudder, as you know, for close to fifteen years now, and there’s really a lot of discussion about how they’re going to get a successor to him. And frankly, it’s not really clear what’s going to happen. You have this panel of lawmakers that are supposed to nominate the next person, but they’re also looking for some guidance from the White House because that will have a big role in the type of person that replaces him. And the fact that this is, you know, one of the most prominent unelected positions in the federal government, the fact that this person is really responsible for rooting out waste, which Republicans have said they want to do and that they tried to do with DOGE, how much of a leash is the new head of GAO going to have? Will the White House go along with Republicans? We’ve seen Republicans starting to assert their own voice a little bit more, saying that they want some independence here, or will the White House crush that and say, you know, President Trump says I want this person and we’re gonna put them in? So I think we’re going to see a lot of maneuvering here in the next few weeks because he will be gone, as you know, later in the month.

Terry Gerton Do you think it’s an opportunity for Congress to push back or take back some of its authority? GAO is their oversight body.

Mitchell Miller Right, exactly. I think there is because whether they’re Republican or Democrat, I think the institutionalists, at least, believe that this type of leadership is necessary. And there’s no question about it, whatever political stripe you’re from, this office does root out a substantial amount of waste. I mean, they talk about something along the lines of a $160 billion in the past year. And so also these lawmakers, let’s not forget, when they’re leading various committees or subcommittees, they rely on the GAO for investigations to try to find out what do we need to fix. Everybody’s talking about what needs to be done to make federal government better. Well, this is perfectly an example of where you find the areas where there are problems that the GAO identifies and then Congress can act and react and and create legislation.

Terry Gerton Mitchell, all of these things together, the healthcare proposal from the White House, the delay in the agenda, even this issue of replacing the the head of GAO, point to kind of a an a miasma in the air, if you will, that maybe the White House and the president are losing their grip on Republican policy. What is the feeling on the hill and what implications might this have going forward?

Mitchell Miller I think that this is a great point because there has really been no change among House and Senate Republicans from Trump 1.0 to 2.0 up to this point, however, you have definitely seen in just the past week the real first seismic changes happening within the GOP. And I think, you know, you look at Marjorie Taylor Green and you could say, oh, well, she’s only one of more than 430 lawmakers. But the fact that she decided to resign, that also caused a lot of House Republicans to say, you know what, we’re kind of fed up with being just treated like the little brother at the card table of the Thanksgiving dinner and patted on the head and we want to actually legislate, we wanna assert ourselves a little bit more. So I think you are going to see more of that, particularly on the House side. The House side, frankly, has been kind of quiet in part because they literally were not here for 43 days during the shutdown. But I think that is going to affect the policies of the White House and what they propose. Like as we just talked about, the health care proposal, like that would have been unthinkable a few months ago that Republicans would have rebelled that much. You do see it more so on the Senate side, a little bit more quietly, but I think that is going to have a pretty big impact on what we see moving forward legislatively in the coming year.

Terry Gerton And that’s going to lead right into the midterms in 2026, so much to watch.

Mitchell Miller Absolutely.

Terry Gerton Mitchell, thanks as always for joining me.

Mitchell Miller You bet

The post Congress faces a packed December agenda and big decisions on healthcare subsidies first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton We’re all relieved that the government shutdown is over, but I’m really interested in your perspective. You watched it unfold on the Hill for the last seven weeks. What are your takeaways from the discussions and ultimately the resolution?

Mitchell Miller Well, I think, first of all, not surprisingly, everybody agrees that a shutdown is just bad all the way around, with all the impacts that we’ve seen everywhere, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers not getting paid, the delays at the airports, the SNAP issue with people not getting their benefits. So on that, we all agree. Now, what do the parties agree on elsewhere? Nothing, really. I do think from my personal standpoint, having seen these shutdowns before, I think we really know for a fact now that the agitating party, whichever it is, Republican or Democrat, is always going to fall short of what its ultimate goal was. So for example, if you go back to 2013 when Republicans were trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, they didn’t quite get there and they eventually didn’t get what they wanted. This time around Democrats got a lot of the things that they wanted in terms of raising the profile of health care and all the issues related to the Affordable Care Act and extending those subsidies. They also got some political boost, of course, from people who didn’t think they fought hard enough the last time, but ultimately they didn’t get exactly what they wanted, which was a guarantee that these subsidies would be extended. So while it can be a somewhat effective way of getting political leverage, it’s obviously the most inefficient way possible to do this. How you sort out whether there are winners or losers here, I think just depends on your political point of view, whether you think Democrats got enough victories to make it worthwhile, whether you are on the more liberal end of the Democratic Party and you think that it was a cave-in and that it’s another bad indicator that the leadership of the Democrat Party doesn’t go far enough. And then on the Republican side, they say, hey, look, we held firm, we had a continuing resolution, and we did what we had to do. So really, there are no particular winners, I think, when you have a government shutdown.

Terry Gerton That’s a really helpful perspective. One of the threads that kind of kept coming through the whole period was the White House’s various comments on the federal workforce: Would they pay them? Would they not pay them? Would they hold them? Would they fire them? The CR really reaffirms what everybody kind of thought was the rule that regardless of whether you’re furloughed or accepted, you get your back pay. And it reverses the rifts. Do you think this is the beginning, maybe, of Congress taking a more supportive view of the federal workforce, a more engaged perspective?

Mitchell Miller I think so, and here’s an interesting kind of inside look at that. I spoke with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who of course was one of the Democratic lawmakers who went along with the new CR in the Senate to get it to the final finish point with the House last week, and what he said was they really hadn’t addressed the federal equation with the employees when he jumped into the negotiations. They had talked about appropriations, they had talked about health care issues, but they hadn’t specifically addressed whether or not federal workers were going to, number one, get back pay, or also whether these RIFs would be rescinded and whether there would be guarantees in the future. And so he pushed very hard for all of those three things. And in his view, that was the most important reason why he ultimately became the deciding vote and got them to the 60 votes to break the filibuster. So I think the fact that the White House was willing to give in a little bit, and as you well know they have not for many, many months, I think this does suggest that there is a little bit more wiggle room than there used to be, and that there IS a shift where members of Congress are now taking a little more of an assertive role.

Terry Gerton Well, that might be a little bit of a silver lining. I guess the other question I wanted to ask you was people expected there would be some pressure points that would work to motivate members of Congress to reach a deal: air traffic control, SNAP, health care. What’s your take on which of those was ultimately most effective?

Mitchell Miller Well, it’s interesting because it’s almost like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once infamously said. When you went back to the longest prior shutdown, the one in 2018 and 2019, what was it that ultimately ended it? It was the aviation issues, the flight delays, the cancelations, and all these other pressure points that we talked about where there were certain dates and deadlines and the fact that the open enrollment in connection with the ACA was coming. Those had various impacts, but I think ultimately it really was the whole issue related to the aviation system. And I think when I talk to people who, for example, think that the Democrats really caved, a lot of other Democrats who don’t think that they caved point out that the goodwill that they had politically with the wins at their back, with these elections that recently happened in Virginia and New Jersey would be quickly wiped out as we got closer to Thanksgiving, because obviously these these air issues were only going to get worse and so i think that was really the biggest pressure point.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller. He’s the Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. All right, Mitchell, well, now they’re back and we have at least a temporary reprieve until the end of January. What’s on the legislative agenda for the upcoming couple of months?

Mitchell Miller Well, one of the small victories, of course, was the omnibus that they passed within the continuing resolution. So they had three appropriations packages that got passed. The bad news about that is those are kind of the low-hanging legislative fruit. You have [the Agriculture Department], the legislative branch, military construction. These are the things that generally both sides agree on. And I think what we now have is we have these nine other appropriations bills that need to get passed, and there is so little trust within the Congress right now between both sides, even among appropriators, that it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to get all of those through regular order, even though Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.)has repeatedly said that’s what he wants to do. I think they will grind away at some of those, and they may make some progress there. But ultimately we may again be pushing up against that January 30th extension of the federal funding deadlines, which actually goes back to the levels under the Biden administration, believe it or not.

Terry Gerton That will be quite a challenge. And Speaker [Mike] Johnson (R-La.) has said that the House members are catching up on backlogged hearings, right?

Mitchell Miller Right. They have a huge backlog in the House. I mean, they were gone for the longest period that is not a regularly scheduled either summer or holiday recess ever. So the fact that they were gone since September 19th means they have lots of oversight hearings scheduled. They had lots of appropriations hearings scheduled. They have to just get to back to the legislating that they originally planning to do. So that was why they scheduled to get back into action this week because they have such a backlog

Terry Gerton And one of the big hearings that comes out of the CR resolution is the bill on health care premiums, right?

Mitchell Miller Right, so that will be the big question. How does Senate Majority Leader John Thune schedule this? Because there are a lot of new Republican proposals that have come about because of this whole struggle related to healthcare. A lot of people are talking about reforms to the Affordable Care Act, putting caps on them, doing various things that they believe will cut waste out of the ACA. So that’s going to be a moving target, I think, about when that vote will actually take place and what it will include. Will there be separate Republican proposals? I suspect there will. Will there a variety of amendments? And then let’s just say even if in the unlikely event that they do get to a vote where they approve extension of these subsidies, then of course it would have to go to the House. There have been no promises made by House Speaker Mike Johnson that he will hold a vote on this. He said he’s just leaving it as a clean slate and essentially saying “I’m going to wait for what the Senate does,” so a lot of unanswered questions in that category too.

Terry Gerton Well, with the holiday schedule, there aren’t a lot of work days for Congress between now and January 30th. Do you think they’ll be able to get all of it done?

Mitchell Miller I really don’t. I think that we are looking again at probably another kind of a showdown as we get to January 30th, because I just don’t think that they’re going to have enough time to get through all of these things that they need to do. And then there’s still a lot of feelings of just frustration related to the shutdown. And one of the things that’s come about related to that is there’s a hearing this week on Wednesday, the Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee on Aviation is going to look at those issues related to air safety: the delays, the cancelations, what can be done to make sure that air traffic controllers and other federal key federal employees involved in aviation are paid while this all goes on, because a lot of lawmakers are really concerned about that. So that panel’s going to hear from the head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Nick Daniels, as well as others involved in aviation.

The post Lessons from the shutdown, and what to do before funding runs out again first appeared on Federal News Network.