Republicans, 202 7488001. Democrats, 202 7488000, and , 202 7488002. We will get to your calls in a minute but first running us on the phone is jennifer shutt, the budget appropriations reporter for c q roll call to talk a little bit more about a continuing resolution in washington. When they say that this continuing resolution keeps the current spending level going into 2017, what does that mean exactly in dollars . Guest every year the federal government is supposed to get 12 Appropriations Bills passed by september 30 when the fiscal year expires. They were not able to do that this year so they passed a temporary stopgap spending bill which we call a continuing resolution. One of the criticisms from appropriators is that it continues those fiscal 2016 spending levels into fiscal 2017, which can cause some problems. We heard the department of defense repeatedly Tell Congress that it causes a lot of problems for them. One of the important points to make about the continuing resolution that is going to be passed in the house today and could be taken up in the senate today or friday, is that it does increase spending to those fiscal 2017 levels. The winners and you are the losers in the stopgap spending . Guest the winners could be policies and Funding Priorities that democrats and republicans have been trying to move for some time. Million to a 170 dressed lead contaminated water , 7 millionchigan for the Justice Department to reimburse state and local lawmakers in new york for providing protection for the president elect. It includes several Million Dollars for the 21st century bill whichdical includes joe bidens cancer men shop initiative. Bute are a lot of winners, one of the possible losers is the department of defense. We have heard them repeatedly talking to lawmakers, and the secretary of defense sent a letter to the hill last week saying they do not this want this continuing resolution to pass because it might cause issues. In an attempt to assuage the pentagons fears, congress put 10 billion in what is commonly known as a war fund into this d cr. Host that helps with the fight against isis in iraq and syria . Guest yes. Host are the votes there for this to pass in the house, and will we see bipartisan support and opposition to it . Guest the votes are definitely there for it to pass the house later today. What we are looking for, and what a lot of reporters and lawmakers are closely watching is the senate, because when that will moves over to the senate later today, in order to move through the senate and become law and continue funding past friday night at midnight, it needs to get something called unanimous consent. That is the fastest way for leader mcconnell to move the bill through the senate. The democratic senator from West Virginia has repeatedly said he plans to block that unanimous consent attempt on the continuing resolution, which means the senate will have to move through that series of procedural votes which takes time and would put the final vote after fridays midnight deadline, which could cause some complications. And very possibly it could cause a partial Government Shutdown. Host why is the senator threatening to do this . Guest he is a democrat from West Virginia, a big coal mining state. Later this year, pension and Health Care Benefits for former set to runwidows are out. The senator wanted to see a longterm solution for that United Mine Workers health care and pension plan. The continuing resolution only that as a solution for long as they continuing resolution runs for, which will expire on april 28. Senator has said that is not adequate and he will not support it. Host is it likely that he gets his way, that they capitulate to him and give him what he would like here . Guest we do not know. That is something we have been closely watching. Last night the senator was an leader mcconnells office and when he came out he did not say there was a solution reached, and seemed adamant he would stay on that path to blocking unanimous consent on this funding bill. Host jennifer shutt, you can follow her reporting. Thank you. Guest thank you for having me. Host we will continue our gavel to gavel coverage of the house and senate, the house on cspan and the senate on cspan2, where you can watch these debates unfolding. But first, your ideas for cutting spending. Hatchery in leesburg, virginia, a republican. Caller i work in the education industry and i would think the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the illegal immigration problem. The teachers within the county that i live are talking about it. Just in Loudoun County there is 112 languages spoken. Resources are being pulled away to get the kids up to speed , and it is not a situation where it is not compassionate. It is just common sense. Idea of printing things and languages that people do not speak, that is the problem. This whole continuing resolution, wheres is that money coming from . Every year they do the same thing. They never talk about where it is coming from, and every year hands, theg our government is going to shut down. We cannot fund everything. This is not a utopia and never was meant to be. Tough decisions need to be made and people need to look in the mirror and say, what am i willing to cut . Host when you look at what you are talking about, the money that is spent to publish things in different languages compared to what the government spends on entitlement programs, medicare, Social Security, do you think they should be focusing their attention on those programs and trying to make them solvent for future generations . Caller i do think they should, but the problem is, illegal immigration, whatever you want to call it, it goes across many different platforms within our society. It is not just people running across the border and getting on welfare. It is everything that goes along with that, because when you have people here that are not actually legal and getting benefits that affects health. Are, education, everything i think what you are talking about is definitely true. There are certain things within medicare and entitlements that need to be looked at. The problem is if somebody goes into a Health Care Facility and does not have insurance and does not pay, all of those dollars factor back into the taxpayer. Host that is patrick in leesburg, virginia talking about the cuts he believes need to be made. Resolution,ntinuing it does deal with immigration policy. It does not renew a oneyear onetime expansion of the h two Seasonal Worker program that effectively introduce increase the number of visas that were available. In jupiter, florida. Used the said he has program to hire workers during the busy season but the program drew the ire of the labor leaders who excoriated Congress Program they a believe exploits Foreign Workers and conservatives who favor keeping the number of available visas in check. Candy in clearlake, iowa, an independent. What are your ideas . Caller we cannot pick on just the seasonal visas. Those are entertainers in vegas. They are a percentage of nothing. The illegals have all the entitlements, plus it costs money and law enforcement. They drug dragged down housing. There is world trade and world food programs. We are too involved with trying to fix the world. No other country works the way that we do. They just do not. This whole wave a baby in front of a camera and think im going to cry, that is not going to work anymore. Ethiopia has been starving to death for the last 50 years. If they cannot figure out how to put seeds in dirt and add water, that is not my fault. Host that is candy in clearlake, iowa, an independent caller. This continuing resolution keeps the funding level at the 2016 spending. This is from cbs news, it maintains the same budget cap of 1. 07 trillion from fiscal 2016 which ended this past september and includes an 8 billion boost for the pentagons overseas Contingency Fund that is used to finance the fight against the. Slamic state in iraq and syria would you put Pentagon Spending on the chopping block or another Government Agency . Paulette in washington state, republican. You are on the air. Caller hello. Yes, i am just so frustrated at times when these hypotheticals are introduced, and wondering , or reduceld spend spending from the Social Security or medicare funds. Those are private funds. Those are not items that should be just entered into. And to say that we should cut those spendings for the sake of reducing the budget, should not even be entered into the equation. Host is there enough spending outside of those programs . Those large entitlement programs, is there enough to cut the spending . Yes, but not to enter in with Social Security or medicare. Paulette, what if president elect donald trump agrees with paul ryan or others who say, lets privatize medicare and Social Security . What if they move that direction . Caller i think if they do, they are going to bring along solutions and suggestions in doing that, not taking away from the existing funds that are already there that have been placed there by people who are entitled to it. There are not just entitlements coming from taxpayers, but the taxpayers themselves have contributed to those resources for the very purpose of ensuring some funding for their retirement and medical care. Host paulette in washington state, up early this morning. Joe in new york, an independent. What do you think . Caller good morning. Nobody ever talks about the defense budget. We are the greatest country and strongest hello . Host we are listening. Spend more than the 10 next nations in the world for defense. We control the universe. We have satellites like a web, like a spider web above the earth. We are the strongest nation in the world. And we are Still Standing spending more. They want to keep us in fear, you know what i mean . It is just horrible. They do not want to cut that defense budget. Concerned,m s and mass armies are obsolete. Wars are not that not fought that way anymore. What we need is special ops and intelligence and nuclear subs, you know what i mean . We do not need such a huge deployment. We are just arms dealers to the rest of the world. Host so you want to see an overhaul of the pentagon . Caller yes, without a doubt. We want to cut these entitlements that people have put into Social Security and all this stuff, and it is wall street and the petroleum controlling the whole financial structure of the American People. Know,in thing is, you have to cut down our fear. They want to keep us in fear. Host two stories related to what you were talking about. The Washington Post published pentagon berries evidence of 125 billion in bureaucratic waste. In an intel or internal study that expose this administrative waste was afraid congress would slashis as an excuse to the defense budget. Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back office bureaucracy more efficient and resolved any savings reinvest any savings and combat power. Which was issued in january 2015 identified a clear path for the Defense Department to save this money over five years. It would not have required layoffs or reductions in military personnel. It would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed highpriced contractors, and made that her use of information technology. Some of you may have heard donald trump the other day at trump tower talking to the cameras. He confirmed a tweet he sent out earlier that morning, that he was looking at owings contract for air force one. Boeings contract for air force one. The boeing chief has promised to keep costs down. Donald trump tweeted that the costs were out of control and more than 4 billion, canceled the order. He told reporters he thought the cost was ridiculous. The chief of boeing ensured donald trump that they would Work Together in an effort to keep the cost down. Donald trump confirmed the conversation on the today show and called the chief, a good guy, a terrific man, and we are going to work it out. Air force one is expensive. Ecause of what goes into it they are able to safeguard the president in a crisis, allowing him to direct the military from the air, speak with cabinet members, and speak with the nation. The plane can be refueled while in error and has extensive radar and counterattack measures of board. It is not just one aircraft, it is several. That is the update on the air force one spending and Pentagon Spending, as we are asking all of you this morning where would you cut federal spending . Robert in pikesville, maryland, a democrat. Caller we spend an inordinate amount of money in policing. The money comes from the federal level, over policing in neighborhoods instead of investing in jobs. Republicans blocked the president s desire to put people back to work. They were more than happy to have people bail out wall street to the tune of 1 trillion. We are paying for all of these wars. We have a bloated military budget. If we want to cut spending you have to raise revenue. Lobbyists for the last 16 years have controlled legislators and congresspeople. They implemented this antitax or tax cuts for corporations and wealthy people to the last 16 years. My last point is this i am sick of people, it seems like largely trump misguided whites who want to blame their fortune misfortune on minorities and immigrants. They have worked very hard and contributed to the economy, so i do not want america to embrace this xenophobia. You may not be doing well. If you are not doing well you have to get retrained and get back to work and go out and get after opportunity. Host ronald, greensboro, North Carolina, independent. What do you think . Caller ways i think we could cut federal spending is for Immigration Reform and ways to make illegal aliens u. S. Citizens. What we can do is tax them, find how long they have been in the United States illegally and tax them on that, and also reduce medical costs for prescription pills, and that would reduce some of the costs associated with medicare, medicaid, and so forth. The thing about immigration contribute to the tax dollars to fixing our roads and bridges, maintaining our schools, and i think that would make a big difference. I also agree with Donald Trumps policy even though i did not vote for him. I agree his plan to do a 35 tariff on Multinational Companies. If we could find a way to bring some of that money but those Multinational Companies are making overseas, i think it would produce revenue and help us cut our budget. Host take a look at the way the budget breaks down, mandatory versus Discretionary Spending. ,andatory spending Discretionary Spending, and interest on the debt. Mandatory and Discretionary Spending account for 90 of all spending and pay for all the Governmental Services that we rely on. Interest on the debt is the interest the government pays on its accumulated debt, minus Interest Income received by the government for assets it owns. This is a pie chart that shows 2015 spending broken into these categories. Mandatory spending is the largest chunk of this high, and then Discretionary Spending and the debt. Discretionary spending is decided by congress through Discretionary Spending bills. The pie short shows how congress allocated 1. 11 trillion in Discretionary Spending in 2015. Look at the pie chart. Must to that went to the military, followed by the government, education, medicare, health, veterans benefits. This is the largest portion for the military. Mandatory spending is spending that congress legislates outside the annual appropriations process, usually less than once a year and it is dominated by the wellknown earned benefit program and widely used safety net programs like the supplemental nutrition assistance program, and a significant amount of federal spending on transportation among other things. Take a look at that pie chart for 2015. Mandatory spending, social and healthedicare making up the larger portions of the pie. Lorraine in gainesville, florida, a democrat. Caller good morning, thank you for taking my call. I actually want to agree with portions of what ronald said and the gentleman before him. If we could get some of this corporate waste out and create , and put some pay into the system it will create money. Ost you are breaking up corporate welfare is your idea, taxing these multinational corporations. Anna in new castle, delaware, a republican. ,aller im calling about the always complain about cutting Social Security and medicare for the elderly. I said, i think it is about time that they started thinking about the welfare. They are keeping all of these young people, their food stamps, the wic program, snap, subsidized housing and that kind of thing, if they cut back on that or even review the ones that are on it, because i said when i go out shopping i see people that are out there that are capable of doing a full days work, and they are paying for their food with food stamps. Said,0 years old and i they have not been giving us any raises. I said Congress Needs to go to work instead of being off so darn much. They are off month after month and they think it is necessary. I think it is about time they clamp down on them. That is all i have to say.