It is the last fiscal year 2023 and without an agreement government shuts down tonight. Federal workers will stop getting a paycheck. The house comes in at 10 00 a. M. Right after this program the senate, at noon. We are taking your calls on the possible Government Shutdown that is hours away. Democrats, 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. And independents, 202 7488002. We have a line set asi for federal employees, 202 7488003. You can also use that line to text us. We are on social media on facebook and x. Welcome to washington journal. I want to start with this article from capitol hill. Speaker Kevin Mccarthy on friday evening floated passing a clean continuing resolution without ukraine aid, marking a clear shift in the possibility he is willing to consider ending a shut down after being repeatedly undercut by his own party. The speaker did not commit putting a measure on the floor, and other republican said lawmakers are still exploring gop only possibilities to bring up a vote on saturday. Here is from late saturday talking about the latest on negotiations. [video clip] i firmly believe there are no winners in a Government Shutdown. That is the best way forward, to make sure that the government does not shutdown. Questions . What are you doing now . Are you open to a clean continuing resolution . We had a clean one with our ukraine on it. I think if the senate puts ukraine on it and focuses on ukraine over america, that could cause real problems. Our goal is to secure the border. As you remember the house is the only one that has passed with 70 of the discretionary. The senate has not. It is productive to keep the house open while we finish our work. What i have directed the members to do is they were supposed to be out next week. They will be. We are back care. Obviously, the government shuts down tonight at midnight. I dont think so at all. I think we can still move. Host host that was the speaker from last night. Theyre taking your calls this morning on the possibility of a Government Shutdown. Lets start with phil in long island. Caller good morning. I really appreciate cspans coverage of congress. I have learned so many things about what we spend our money on, and how messed up both sides are. Republican stuck in something about an abortion pam. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything. It doesnt belong in their. That is a hindrance. We talk about Border Security which the other side is no one a negotiate on. Were talking about spending money on things we cant afford. Common sense tells us that if you taken 5 trillion you can spend 7 trillion yearoveryear when we have a 33 trillion debt. With that being said, why cant they compromise on continuing resolution to fund all domestic spending and cut all foreign aid until we get this result . The lebanese government we fund has 87,000 soldiers. The United States has 2 million armed forces with 282 generals. Iraq gets funding from us. Theyre transporting their royals. Host do you think ukraine funding should be taken out as well . Caller there has to be tighter security on ukraines funding. For now we have to keep it up. If you look at the ue, other countries havent input in their fair share, 2 of their gdp. W our funding moste of the bill for that. Something has to be done. Everyone once the u. S. To pay for everything. If we keep spending money like this, we they dont love the dollar to be a global currency. Host michael is next in fort oaks. Caller this is michael. I love your suit this morning, mimi. It is good to see you again. I have faith in our leaders that there will be a resolution to the problem. It will take all day and most of the night tonight. We should have a correction under path forward to keeping governmentfunded and running. Unfortunately, there are a few people who want to hold country and apollos in a pause. They should not shut government down just to get a few more things that they feel they need on the bargaining table in their favor. Host that was on the front page of the wall street journal. It says the shutdown as likely as rebels defy gop leadership. Social media and online leadership and power polarizing members. Small group of House Republicans walking their leaders and pushing the government towards a shutdown would have carried a dismissive label and passive previous years. They would have been called gadflies. Today the gadflies are dominating the political scene. John is in detroit michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. I wish the government wouldnt shutdown. Personally, i think the ukraine funding is just an abomination, an appalling thing. This war has been misrepresented. I believe the russian reasoning of denazifying ukraine. We had members of our senate sign the letter decrying White Supremacy but they dont want to talk about it. This ukraine thing is an abomination. Host next caller. Caller you do such a great job. Its wonderful what you do. Im a democrat but i have some republican leaning tendencies. I believe in those buoys on the southern border. I think on the one who invented the idea of putting up a wall, because im a low income earner. People who come across the border compete with me for pay. 20 years ago i called cspan about the wall. I thought trump the businessman was going to raise, was going to be a businessman. I thought he was going to raise the cap on the Social Security, whatever the cap was 13,000, just remove the cap. I thought he was going to come in and put a fee, maybe . 50 on every Stock Transaction to raise the revenue. I thought you would balance the budget. I thought the idea of taxing anyone who earns over 100,000 is the right way to go. Host think the solution is more revenue than . Caller fpr low income and middle income people like myself whether youre republican or democrat to go against to shoot yourself in the foot for not getting behind and i the alike raising taxes on those who earn over 400,000 a year, need more irs agents to go after rick tax cheats. The idea that you will have people all over the Country Living in mediocre means, in trailers, apartments, struggling, saying i dont want more irs agents to go after the rich people because it came out of a democrat, people have to be nuts to vote against their economic selfinterests. It is plain and simple. You have to get money from somewhere. Rich people used to pay so much more of the taxes in this country. Now with accounting and cooking the books, theyre able to whittle their taxes down, 50 , 10 , 5 . Host if you are on the line, stand by, we will speak to a reporter now. Senior writer for cq will call cq roll call. Tell us the latest. Yesterday the house failed to pass a shortterm funding bill. What are the options . Where is this going today . The house and senate guest the house and senate both come in today. The house may take up another stopgap spending bill. They may wait. We dont know. After the house defeated the continuing resolution on the floor yesterday, Speaker Mccarthy and the rep. Pocan conference got together and talked. They discussed a few different options. One would be conservatives stopgap measure, similar to the one they defeated. Another one would be a one o two or two weeks stopgap, which they called clean, meaning it would not have additional provisions like Border Security provisions attached. Another option would be ticking up the senate continuing resolution, which the senate has not passed yet, but will be working on today. Host what are the chances of any of those getting through both the house and senate . Guest the chances of that happening before the government shuts down are virtually zero. The government today is the end of the fiscal year. If a temporary spending bill is not passed by congress, signed by the president , the government will shut them. Shutting down over the weekend is not a big deal, but a shutdown would start on monday. Host the senate has their own version of a cr. How much republican support does that have . Guest the initial vote to towards the faa bill, which would be the vehicle for the cr has a lot of support, 76. Since then republicans have raised concerns over this. Republicans have discussed amending the cr with Border Security measures. Some republicans in the senate are saying they would like to try to take up a cr that could actually go somewhere in the house. Republicans and democrats were discussing adding these Border Security measures yesterday. They really are stymied at this point. It is unclear whether there will be an agreement to add Border Security provisions to cr or make other changes to it. Host what are republicans looking for . What is it that democrats are not in agreement on without . Guest it is a combination of things. If you look at the cr that did not pass in the house, it would split a silent eligibility for migrants coming over the border. It would increase penalties, it would restart border wall construction, and a number of other things. In the Senate Republicans one idea was to add about 6 billion in Border Security funding and also add some Border Security policies. It is not really clear, the details of that are not really clear yet, and it is possible that republicans will decide they are not even going to attempt that. Host there were some spending bills that were passed in the house. Tell us about those. How many were passed and what was the senate saying about those and what are those stakes in the senate . Guest a couple of days ago the house took up 4 spending bills, department of defense, Homeland Security, state, foreign operations, and agriculture, and actually passed 3 of the four. The did not pass agriculture. These bills have lower spending than the bills marked up by the Senate Appropriations committee. They have a lot of different writers, antiabortion writers and policies that democrats object to. There was a wide golf between gulf between these housepasse appropriation bills and what the Senate Appropriations committee has passed. The senate has not yet passed any actual appropriation bills. The house has passed 3 more this week, so the house is passed 4 Appropriations Bills. Host there have been rumors about the speaker losing his job, and there being a motion to vacate. What are you hearing about that . Guest congressman matt gaetz from florida has been routinely threatening to bring up such a motion. He said he even might bring it up soon. Speaker mccarthy has dismissed those threats. It is not really clear when it might be brought up, or with the result would be. Those threats continue. Host with the lead contender be for that job . Has anybody expressed interest in that position . Guest no one has as far as we know. When mccarthy first became speaker, it went through 15 ballots because of Republican Opposition. Some Republican Opposition to him. There were various jim jordan from ohio was a favorite of some of the opponents of mccarthy. Jordan said he was not interested in the job. A number of people have been mentioned as possibilities, Steve Scalise from louisiana is one person who has been mentioned. The wip has been mentioned. It is not clear that anyone is interested in the job. It is not clear whether anyone besides mccarthy would be able to get the votes. These rebels as they have been called, these republican rebels, they may oppose mccarthy, some of them, and prefer somebody else, but there are a lot of moderate republicans in the house, they would not necessarily support that choice of the rebels. Host the question often comes up about members of congress continuing to receive paid during a Government Shutdown. This was brought up by nikki haley during the last gop debate. Where does that stand . Our members of congress able nancy mays has said that she would not accept pay. Is that a possibility. Guest i dont know how that would work. Several members have said they dont want to collect paid during a shutdown because many government most Government Employees would not be paid. The military would be paid if Congress Passes the bill to pay the military during the shutdown. Congressional members, all of them would not lose their pay. Some are saying they dont want to collect their pay. Unclear how that would work out. Host paul gosar, Senior Writer at cq. You can find more of his writing online. Thank you for joining us. We will go back to your calls now about the possibility of a Government Shutdown tonight at midnight. Gary is calling from sterling, genia. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Shout out to bill om goshen in goshen. Im sorry mcconnell is going to have another head injury because of this. We went through this three times during the obama administration, and each time it was a failure. The last time i lost 12 of my 401 k , and i did not get it come back to equity for 10, almost 11 months. How many kicks from the mule in the head does it take mr. Mcconnell to have . Host you are blaming mcconnell in the senate, not the republicans in the house . Guest both of them. Mcconnell tom mccarthy about these thing mcconnell taught mccarthy about these things. We have 2 types of people in this country. Those who are fools and those who believe in common sense. You have half the population of the world you are going to let take advantage of you, and your saying i none of them will. That is a bunch of nonsense. Common sense would tell you some of them will. That is exactly what 4 teenage girls did. They all got pregnant. One went on to have two juvenile the link wents. Host we are getting a little off subject. Lets go to billings, missouri. Caller how are you . Host what do you think, barry . Caller caller i want to point out that the rules of government, rules is just another word for algorithm. We need to prioritize a dignified life above all else, so governments everywhere should provide food, water, shelter, clothing and health care, and that will cure capitalism. It will solve reparations. It will solve immigration. It will go very far to reverse Climate Change. There will be no more fear of stock market crashes or popping bubbles. The first leaders in the countries around the world that will enact this will go down in history as the first ones who did. Host we have a line set aside for federal workers. Lena is calling us on that line from illinois. Thank you for taking caller thank you for taking my call. I made government retiree. I am 90 years old and they keep going out bonaire utilities and everything. Going up on our utilities and everything. If electricity keeps going up, i have medicine and everything. I full have to figure out how to pay that bill. Republicans should be the first ones should not to pay their to take their checks. Host i was going to ask you about the last Government Shutdown. You might have been affected by that as well. Caller it is hard to catch up after a certain time off, and when you dont have nobody to help you, you might have 2 over the amount that you need to get help from the government w ell, from the state even. I cant even get food stamps because im 5 over. When my daughter died and i had her two kids to take care of, they offered me food stamps. Some of these older ones now, they dont even remember what they are doing. That man stood up there and didnt even know where he was. I think they should redo the whole government because this is getting ridiculous, and all the murders, and you are scared to go anywhere. Host we certainly wish you the best. Ray is in ithaca, new york. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I consider myself a strong republican, but mccarthy needs to do resolution. The panic is setting in. This will only backfire. I blame a lot of this on matt gaetz. I think mccarthy has done a good job. He has to work with the democrats. I dont think there is anybody who wants the job who can actually get the votes. You have to do what we have to do to stop it, dont make ourselves look bad, and move on. Host ray, there is a pro public interview with the president. Here is the headline from that. With shutdown looming, President Biden calls out Kevin Mccarthy. Lets take a look at a portion from that interview. [video clip] the speaker has made a terrible bargain in order to keep the speakership. He is willing to do things i think he knows are inconsistent with constitutional processes. Number two, i think it says that there is a group of megarepublicans who generally want to have a fundamental change in the way the system works. That is what worries me the most. Host said to be published tomorrow, if you would like to take a look at it. Richard is up next in buffalo, minnesota. Good morning. Caller morning. This is pappy benson in minnesota. I am 80 years old. I lived up on iron ridge in the early 80s. Back then democrats and republicans got along. We survived the 80s and 90s. I am a proud american. Right now, we are looking like this stupidest people in the whole world. We looked dumb. We supposed to be the shining light and we look stupid. That is all i got to say. Anyone who knows me knows who i am. I wish this country the best it can get. Host guarded. Look got it. Lets go to cedar rapids, iowa. Caller i sympathize with the republican moderates who have to face, especially those in marginal districts, have to face election next year. These radicals will cause the republicans to lose the house next year. Same could be said for democrats on statements like those of representative omar, senators and others. It just drives these moderates crazy. With as close as margins are these days, the radicals need to sit back and ask is it worth losing our House Majority because of this craziness . Lets talk to tom next to host host his a federal employee in the flam, pennsylvania host lets talk to tom next. He is a federal employee in bethlehem, pennsylvania. C