transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] If Republicans go into this and see it as an opportunity to show the American people in the midterms, this is what we did with a very narrow majority, and for intransigent Senate Republicans, what if you deliver a larger conservative majority? Imagine what we can get done.

Speaker 2:
[00:16] Alright, so critics are going to hear you say that, and they're going to freak out. Oh, yes. And welcome back to The Kevin Roberts Show. Today, we're going to talk about something that's going to sound super procedural and wonky and inside the beltway and, well, it is. But we're going to make it accessible and actually make it make sense. And you're going to get fired up about reconciliation, my friends. I even I didn't believe that, Dr. Roberts.

Speaker 1:
[00:53] Yeah, and you were counting on me to do it.

Speaker 2:
[00:56] Last year, President Trump and Jason Smith, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, came up with a big, beautiful bill, which basically was a reconciliation package, but they tried to make it sound a little bit more appealing. What exactly is reconciliation? What is this thing that they talk about inside the Beltway?

Speaker 1:
[01:14] Fancy word for adding to the budget. But the nice thing about this particular fancy word, this procedure reconciliation, is that additional costs need to be offset. So there actually is a plan, even though sometimes Congress fudges the numbers, to that if there's additional spending, you have a plan for how you're going to pay for that.

Speaker 2:
[01:33] Well, and the only way you can pay for something is either you cut spending elsewhere or raise taxes. That doesn't sound very appealing.

Speaker 1:
[01:40] Yeah, but what you can do in this case for reconciliation in order to offset what will no doubt be additional spending for defense, for the Department of War, is to have some cost savings from fraud, waste and abuse. So while Congress will often play fast and loose with that desire, in this case, there's a real policy need to do it in addition to the economic need.

Speaker 2:
[02:00] All right. So the big reconciliation package, there was a lot of arm twisting last year that they got a lot out of it. They got the no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, they solidified the 2017 tax cuts from the first Trump term. That was all good stuff and we're already seeing the residual benefits. What's this reconciliation package going to include?

Speaker 1:
[02:21] As we sit here and have this conversation...

Speaker 2:
[02:24] Yeah, this is a dangerous game we're playing, by the way, because this could change tomorrow.

Speaker 1:
[02:29] The desire by Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune is to have a narrow reconciliation bill. And usually at Heritage, we would think that's the way to go because the likelihood of overspending is less, right?

Speaker 2:
[02:41] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[02:42] But in this case, the narrow focus is on Department of Homeland Security, ICE funding, Border Patrol, and likely Defense funding, which was probably going to happen anyway, even before the Iran conflict. We want it to be larger than that though, because we think this is an opportunity to deliver on some conservative policy wins that would augment some of the conservative policy wins from the one big, beautiful bill.

Speaker 2:
[03:07] Okay. Hold that thought. I want to get to that. But I also want to know why we got here because it seemed like Speaker Johnson and all of the committee chair, chairman and chairwomen from this last congressional session, they were doing a pretty good job with appropriations bill, with budgets. Well, I mean, they were actually moving into regular order. They were passing things. They were getting the votes despite his very narrow margins. The Speaker's a miracle worker on some of this.

Speaker 1:
[03:32] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[03:33] What happened over in the Senate? Why do we even need a reconciliation bill in the first place if the House did their job?

Speaker 1:
[03:39] Because the Senate is dysfunctional and doesn't work enough. It's really that simple. But what that means in practice is that we have one big component of the government still not funded, the source of the shutdown. Homeland Security. Homeland Security, thank you. And so one of the ways to end that and to fix this problem is to fund it through reconciliation. The other key thing about reconciliation, and I am going to swerve into procedure here just a minute, is that you're able to avoid another problem in the Senate, which is cloture, because you got to have 60 votes.

Speaker 2:
[04:14] That's how we got here, right?

Speaker 1:
[04:16] Exactly. So with reconciliation, you only need 51 votes, a simple majority.

Speaker 2:
[04:22] Again, just to retread a little bit, the Democrats shut down the government, they filibustered this thing, nothing moved forward, and it was because they wanted to make procedural changes to how immigration laws are enforced, right? Which that's not usually done at this point, is it? They wanted to make sure that ICE agents didn't wear masks, they wanted judicial warrants for something, for deportations, which has never needed a judicial warrant. How irregular was it for the Democrats to take up all of these issues at the point where they were doing the final vote on spending?

Speaker 1:
[04:55] You know, I'd hesitate to say it's unprecedented, maybe there's some example that's not occurring to me, but certainly in the modern era, it's unprecedented by either party to insert those truly qualitative big changes so late in the process. Usually, to your question, that would be hashed out in the committee. It would be hashed out in the bill drafting, or typically even in a somewhat polarized political environment, in a deal, an agreement that's made between the leaders of each party in both chambers. And in this case, the Democrats didn't want to do that because they saw this as an opportunity to embarrass the president. Why does it embarrass the president? Because this is his chief campaign pledge, and his administration has done such a good job thus far in closing the southern border and picking up the pace of interior enforcement.

Speaker 2:
[05:43] And on cloture, filibuster is what they call it. I know that there was some suggestion that Leader Thune should do away with the filibuster, just say, okay, enough of this. And he was reluctant to do that because it would set a bad president, and he respected the history of the Senate, and I get that. But this was the third shutdown via filibuster that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats did in 12 months. Isn't that unprecedented? Isn't that kind of a violation of Senate norms?

Speaker 1:
[06:09] Yeah, it is. It's a huge violation of it. And I can tell you that I and most of us at Heritage have sort of gone, not full circle, but half circle in our thinking on the filibuster, which is to say, yeah, we're institutionalists. We appreciate custom. We appreciate the long custom in the Senate of the filibuster. And we understand that when the left is in power, they're probably going to get, whenever that is, back in power in the Senate, they will likely get rid of the filibuster. Our concern at Heritage is, if we don't, if our side doesn't, in the meantime, so that we can then get real conservative policy reforms, we're not going to get anything done. And so I think, certainly for the first time in my career, doing political and policy work, I would be open to it, so that we can actually get some of this across the finish line. It's unlikely to happen because, as opposed to that idea.

Speaker 2:
[07:00] One last question on this, again, the institutionalist and how we respect the norms, love the norms, right? The fact that we've now moved to this place where they approved all the funding except for Department of Homeland Security, and now it's back in the lab, that's pretty unprecedented. It's like they're doing the Chinese menu thing. Okay, we'll fund that, but we won't fund that. Have we ever done this?

Speaker 1:
[07:23] No, and that's particularly worrisome, just on a general level, because that opens up a can of worms about not being able to fund key parts of the government. But secondly, on the specific agency that isn't being funded at this specific time, as we've talked about with so many illegal aliens here, it's a special problem.

Speaker 2:
[07:42] It's almost like the Democrats have now sort of created for themselves a line item veto. They've been able to vote for what they want and then just sort of say, nope, that we're not going to vote on. That's even a president can't do that.

Speaker 1:
[07:54] The good news is that even with, in terms of moving forward, that's not good news. The good news is, moving forward most likely, is even with narrow majorities in the Senate, especially the House, that intransigence by the Democrats and the unprecedented nature of that has been a real unifying factor for that narrow Republican majority.

Speaker 2:
[08:14] There's that, there's that. Okay, so I just wanted to set the table there so everybody knows sort of how we got here. So now Reconciliation 2.0, you sort of teased it. Beyond Homeland Security funding and ICE and CBP and all that, and increased military spending that's needed right now, what's your wish list? Sit on Santa's lap here, Dr. Roberts, what do you want?

Speaker 1:
[08:38] If I were Santa putting together the Reconciliation 2.0, I would name it, I would stop using the reconciliation word, and I would name it the American Opportunity Agenda. And I would definitely fund ICE. I would have some modest defense spending. Let's not go crazy. Let's be sure we're spending on things we need for the next war, not the favorite munitions program of XYZ congressmen in a certain district. So spend the people's money well. But I would insert in there an expansion of health savings accounts, which even moderate Republicans would find to be a good vote going into the election year because it would increase health care freedom. We would increase deregulation on some of the oil and gas permitting, very important given the effect on oil and gas prices from the Iran conflict. We would tackle affordability on housing and some other fronts, and we would also make sure that we continue the great reform that's going on in education. It's a good opportunity to accelerate the dismantling of the Department of Education.

Speaker 2:
[09:37] I would say- So you're saying get aggressive.

Speaker 1:
[09:40] Get aggressive.

Speaker 2:
[09:40] Let's think big.

Speaker 1:
[09:41] Get aggressive. In order to win some of those votes, usually the way a reconciliation battle goes is you got to tolerate some things you don't like. I mean, even in the one big beautiful bill, there's some things that Heritage didn't like. But net net, if Republicans go into this and see it as an opportunity to show the American people in the midterms, this is what we did with a very narrow majority and for intransigent Senate Republicans. What if you deliver a larger conservative majority? Imagine what we can get done.

Speaker 2:
[10:11] All right. So critics are going to hear you say that and they're going to freak out.

Speaker 1:
[10:15] Oh, yes. I hope so. You do that on purpose. Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] Because they're going to say, listen, reconciliation by design is going to have somewhat limited debate and it's not meant to do these sweeping giant changes that Roberts is dreaming up in his fever dream. What's your answer to that?

Speaker 1:
[10:35] Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not a fever dream that I'm living in. It's a very real place where Democrats have been allowed to take hostage a very popular political agenda.

Speaker 2:
[10:43] They've created this situation.

Speaker 1:
[10:45] Conservatives have the trifecta. They have the executive branch, they have the House, they have the Senate. It's pastime for all of them to start governing like they are there to do the people's business and to stop listening to the naysayers who capture their attention through goofy Washington media outlets.

Speaker 2:
[11:02] So one loophole though that you've already mentioned in reconciliation is if you're going to do big sweeping things with big ideas and the stuff that you're talking about, you got to offset that. It can't affect the budget.

Speaker 1:
[11:13] Ideally, that's the conservative desire, ideally.

Speaker 2:
[11:17] How do you do that?

Speaker 1:
[11:18] Well, it would be great if we could insert in there some accelerated tax reform. And I won't say that that's an impossibility, but that is very difficult, or I think that would be very difficult with narrow Republican majorities. But that would be the kind of thing when Heritage formally issues its proposal for Reconciliation 2.0, which we're going to call the American Opportunity Agenda.

Speaker 2:
[11:38] American Opportunity Agenda, I'm already doing that.

Speaker 1:
[11:40] It will be in there, and it may be that Congress decides that we're just going to select 5, 6, 7, 8 from these menu options, but you're not able to have a nice meal unless you have a really big menu.

Speaker 2:
[11:52] What about our debt? What about our debt? Because you've talked about it is a serious issue.

Speaker 1:
[11:57] It's a huge issue. We would love to see reductions in the federal budget, and every bill that Congress passes, it's simply not going to pass. That provision does not have majority support in the House and Senate right now. So what we're saying at Heritage is, let's make some changes that at least indirectly can lead to that, that in the meantime will hopefully increase conservative majorities so that in the next Congress, we can really tackle that deficit and debt.

Speaker 2:
[12:24] There will be a temptation for some congressmen, we heard them last time, I think, to take this opportunity to really affect the debt and spending and sort of, would you be open to having those conversations or do you just think politically?

Speaker 1:
[12:38] Oh no, I would be really clear, every time Heritage makes a proposal to Congress, we want less spending. I'm just, there's real mathematical reality and our thinking about this opportunity agenda. I think Congress ought to make a run at additional tax reforms because when you do the modeling, which the Congressional Budget Office will do very imperfectly, you can find those spending offsets over a 10-year window. And that's really good for those of us who are still, wait for it, supply-siders, who understand that when you cut taxes, depending on the structure of it, you're very likely to reap benefits and increase revenue because there's higher compliance.

Speaker 2:
[13:14] They're all going to say trickle down in the comments now. They're all going to say that already.

Speaker 1:
[13:20] Why do we worry about that? We should just be guilty of what they accuse us of.

Speaker 2:
[13:24] So you're laying out an aggressive agenda here. I know that's a surprise. I know, but this is a good thing because people have to understand that these congressmen and their staffs, they don't come up with all these ideas on their own. There are a lot of organizations like Heritage that are engaged in these conversations and trying to represent what so many Americans who support Heritage want done on Capitol Hill. So how does this happen? How is Heritage going to engage and shape the narrative and debate that we're about to engage in?

Speaker 1:
[13:54] What we're trying to do at Heritage is take a step back from, maybe two steps back, from the day-to-day tyranny of the immediate on Capitol Hill. And certainly Speaker Johnson feels that. He's done an admirable job. What we're saying is, let's look to the midterms with the reality that Americans know that the last big piece of legislation passed by Congress was July 4th, 2025. And on the whole, it's a good piece of legislation, the one big, beautiful bill. And we'll see the economic benefits of that, I think, as we get deeper into this calendar year. But Americans have a short political memory. And so what we're saying is, think big and bold and courageously about how you could deliver an equally important bill, maybe not as expensive, maybe not as big, so that Americans understand what a conservative governing majority can do. So that, second point, even longer term, at Heritage, we're thinking about what it will be like to have a conservative governing majority, not just for the remainder of the 2020s, but for all of the 2030s. Let's think about what we can accomplish by 2036, by 2040. In other words, when you're a member of Congress, when you're a staff member, and this is not to malign any of them, this is just a reality, you only have time to deal with what's right in front of you. What I've learned, probably the greatest compliment I get from members of Congress and both chambers is, heritage helps us get above that fray and think aspirationally. Then of course, that's not where heritage stays. We're not just going to be up here in the clouds. We can connect it down to the reality, in this case, reconciliation. We see, to sum up here, sorry to be saying this, although it is my show. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of used to. Fair. To sum up, we see a real opportunity here to be really bold with this really technical process inside Congress. And the reason we're so convicted of that is because we know what the American people think, unlike too many entities in Washington.

Speaker 2:
[15:59] Yeah, and it's smart, I think, to frame this with in the context of the midterms, because that's all anybody wants to talk about anyway. But it seems to me, Democrats are going to go to voters and they're going to say, vote for us, because we're stopping Trump. Which I guess is an argument for some voters in this country, but isn't the better argument for Republicans to go and say, vote for me, because we just did this, and now we're going to do that, if you keep us in office. That's what voters want to hear.

Speaker 1:
[16:25] That's exactly right. And for those of us who care about politics, because our mission, our passion is conservative policy, I can't wait to see really good campaigners, like the president and vice president.

Speaker 2:
[16:38] We're going to be making this claim. So let's go into how this congressional battle happens, because on the face of it, and if you just watch cable news or something, you think this is all about one big vote at the end of the day. But I've heard you talk about this before. There's 1,000 battles that happened before you get to that vote.

Speaker 1:
[16:55] Yeah, 1,000 is probably the right number. Inside the Republican Conference itself, which is probably where this is going to be crafted, is this is going to be a partisan vote. And one or two Democrats in each chamber who would consider voting for this. So there will be an intraparty process, and then there's the committee process and so on. But then there's a step towards the end, which is really vital. And it is the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian about what is germane, what is allowed inside a reconciliation bill, and it has to be focused on spending. So this is not the opportunity for either conservative or leftist, you know, dreaming on policy. It's got to be about spending. And our position at Heritage is that the parliamentarian of the Senate is given too much power.

Speaker 2:
[17:45] Yeah. I miss that job in the Constitution.

Speaker 1:
[17:49] Who has the power to overrule the decision of a parliamentarian.

Speaker 2:
[17:52] And that's not unprecedented, by the way. If I remember, it wasn't at Bob Dole when he was the majority leader who heard from the parliamentarian once and said, well, thank you for your opinion. We're just going to move on.

Speaker 1:
[18:02] Right, which makes sense. And if you were to do that routinely, then that would violate order. I would agree with that. But that's not what we're dealing with.

Speaker 2:
[18:08] Well, in that case, I'm going to stir up the hornet's nest a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[18:13] All right.

Speaker 2:
[18:14] I've seen your social media platform on X recently, and you've been very animated about the Save America Act, which has a pretty simple notion to me. Only an American citizen should register to vote, and you should be able to prove that. And then you should prove you are who you say you are when you go to vote. Right? That's stuck right now in a big filibuster. And there's been some suggestion that that could be incorporated into a reconciliation bill. I think Senator Mike Lee is your friend. He's been a warrior on this thing. He's a hero. Fantastic. He says that's not possible. What do you think?

Speaker 1:
[18:49] I agree with him.

Speaker 2:
[18:50] Oh, come on.

Speaker 1:
[18:51] You know, the reality is they could try, but the problem is getting all of the components of the Save America Act through reconciliation because it has to be focused on spending, especially given the pattern of this particular Senate parliamentarian.

Speaker 2:
[19:09] Well, the argument I've heard, just real fast, is that if you tie funding for voting and securing, pulling places and all that stuff to all of these procedures, then it becomes a financial consideration that reconciliation could include.

Speaker 1:
[19:21] I've heard that too. The problem with that was, which is a very well-intentioned idea, so I appreciate the intention, other friends have suggested it, is that in practice, the way it will have to work because of the nature of reconciliation, is that there will be optional grants that states can opt into, and the only states that are going to opt into such a program for voter ID, will be red states who already have very good voter ID laws.

Speaker 2:
[19:45] I see.

Speaker 1:
[19:46] Is there an opportunity to augment existing state laws on voter ID that could benefit maybe in three or four or five states? Would we take that over nothing? Sure. But should we accept the argument of some Senate Republicans that that's just as good as doing a talking filibuster and passing the Save America Act? Absolutely not.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] So before we get to the parliamentarian though, there's the big rules committee in the House too, but we are getting wonky today. I love this.

Speaker 1:
[20:13] This is great. This is what we do at Heritage.

Speaker 2:
[20:15] Well, and it's fun actually, and it's super important. Nobody pays attention to the rules committee in the House, but they actually determine a lot of the rules of engagement for this reconciliation battle in the first place.

Speaker 1:
[20:25] They do, and the rules committee has been really important under Speaker Johnson's tenure, because to his credit, not following the pattern of recent Republican predecessors, he's appointed two or three stalwart conservatives to the rules committee. And those members have shown a willingness to be very courageous about what they expect in terms of the contours of the bill. The upshot of that, Larry, is it's very likely once again that what comes out of the House Rules Committee is going to be satisfactory, if not very good, from the perspective of conservatives.

Speaker 2:
[20:57] So it sounds to me, based on what you're saying, the sort of heritage is engaged with right now, at the sort of precipice of this reconciliation process is, you've got your priorities that you've laid out called the American Opportunities...

Speaker 1:
[21:11] American Opportunity Agenda.

Speaker 2:
[21:13] Agenda, thank you.

Speaker 1:
[21:13] We'll do some more work so that you don't forget.

Speaker 2:
[21:15] I'm sorry, I didn't stick there. I didn't write it down. You gotta do that. You gotta be engaged in sort of the mechanics of it with the parliamentarian and given Speaker Thune some juice there to be able to do what he needs to do and involved in the rules process. But then you also need to build consensus in America. You need to make sure that this is sold, so that there's momentum behind the American people. Put the cart in front of the horse or however this is supposed to go, or all at the same time.

Speaker 1:
[21:43] We'll get Inside Baseball not just about congressional rules, but also about heritage. And to tell you in the audience something that I think y'all know, that we've been doing at Heritage over the last few years. In order to get to increase the likelihood of Congress passing good conservative legislation, we realized over the decades that we need to get upstream of that process. And upstream is not just with, you know, white paper analysis earlier in the process. It's actually doing what you do for a living, which is communicating. And so you often hear me say, we're not so much a think tank as we are sort of a messaging operation. We start with ideas and policies, I think the best in the business, but we have more influence over the outcome, legislative outcomes, the earlier we start helping to shape public opinion on things. And so we've already been polling on some of these questions. We have more to do there. We do focus groups occasionally in order to learn how to talk about these things. None of this is rocket science, but basically we're taking some pages from the playbook of political campaigns for candidates and taking our ideas that we would like to see come to fruition in legislation and thinking about them as if they're a candidate. And that's very helpful if you're a member of Congress because you've got a million things coming at you every week. And part of what you need is not just the substance of the policy, but you need to know, you know, what are the real messaging opportunities with your base? What are the pain points?

Speaker 2:
[23:08] People are going to rip portions of this episode, I can tell you right now, and use it as a weapon and say, heritage is too involved, heritage has too much influence. I never hear that, by the way, about there are left-wing groups in this town who try to, you know, they're not as good as heritage, but they do things like this. There are libertarian groups in this town who have some influence. I don't hear it about those groups, but I always hear it about heritage.

Speaker 1:
[23:30] Yeah, it's amazing when you're damn good at what you do.

Speaker 2:
[23:33] That's why, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:34] We're the best in the business. We are not perfect, obviously, but we are the best in the business that people are going to do what they do with that. The left ought to be worried about heritage's influence, because we've got a plan for taking back this country and we're winning.

Speaker 2:
[23:48] By the way, for all the supporters of Heritage or potential supporters who might be thinking about supporting it, just listen to what the critics say. Yes, we have influence. That's the point.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] One example of that, and I say this to give the president and vice president and the cabinet credit for this, in this little project you never heard anything about, Project 2025.

Speaker 2:
[24:07] I'm not familiar with that.

Speaker 1:
[24:08] We made nearly 2,000 policy recommendations, and the administration has implemented something like 750 of them. Now, they deserve the credit. We do this work in service of them. A lot of other organizations across the country participate in this, but the point is that the American people want a plan for making America, America again. And that is Heritage's charge. So we're very proud when the left spends a bunch of money talking about the hard work that my colleagues do because we're totally over the target.

Speaker 2:
[24:40] Let's wrap it into an America 250 conversation. I always love to talk about our founding. Our founders were not thrilled with the idea of taking on debt at the time and too much federal spending and all that stuff. But they did. I mean, I think we were in debt right at the beginning.

Speaker 1:
[24:57] Yeah. And especially when Jefferson became president, he didn't have a problem with debt.

Speaker 2:
[25:00] No, no.

Speaker 1:
[25:01] Personally or at the federal level.

Speaker 2:
[25:02] Well, he was a Democrat.

Speaker 1:
[25:04] Fair.

Speaker 2:
[25:04] It's a little different then, but.

Speaker 1:
[25:06] But even he knew that it was a problem, and even he, if he wasn't as animated by that, that knowledge understood that politically it was a non-starter.

Speaker 2:
[25:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:19] And so up until really the Vietnam War, the confluence of the expense of the Vietnam War and LBJ's misnamed great society, did we actually become accustomed to running consistently a federal deficit, and to be fair, under both parties.

Speaker 2:
[25:37] Yeah. And heritage has been historically very solid and sound on fiscal responsibility, and I don't think anything that you said today suggests otherwise. Do we, do we not talk about it enough when Republicans are in power? Do we? And COVID is an outlier. I think we should set the pandemic aside for various reasons, but I don't hear us talking about fiscal responsibility as much as we used to.

Speaker 1:
[26:00] Yeah, I think that's a fair criticism, and I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One of them, which is probably the overriding one is, there's so much to fix and a finite amount of time to do the work and communicate about that work, that when you're doing education reform and immigration reform, and now this is turning into a pretty seriously foreign policy focused administration, it sucks up the oxygen. But the other thing is sort of a political one where just to state the obvious, fiscal discipline has not ever been a big policy plank for President Trump.

Speaker 2:
[26:35] It's rarely. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[26:37] And so there's some of that has a bit of a freezing effect.

Speaker 2:
[26:39] Is that because he's a builder and he's-

Speaker 1:
[26:40] Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2:
[26:41] It's like he understands debt and debt isn't necessarily nice. Sometimes you can't build a skyscraper without some debt.

Speaker 1:
[26:47] That's right. And we, as friends at Heritage, disagree with that, but we understand where that's coming from.

Speaker 2:
[26:52] Yeah, yeah. Also, let's face it, very rarely does a politician win an election because they've cut spending. Sadly, that's the truth.

Speaker 1:
[27:02] Yeah, that is.

Speaker 2:
[27:04] So based on this opportunity that you have laid out here, what do you think the odds are that things come out rosy with this reconciliation package? Because it's going to be tight. The votes are tight.

Speaker 1:
[27:13] It's going to be tight. Two months ago, when we first started working on this with some allies in Congress, we thought the chances of reconciliation were about 10 percent. And we were full, or all systems go doing that because we thought, well, you know, we get involved, maybe we can help a little bit. It's now a near certainty that it's going to happen. It almost has to. I mean, there's a chance it doesn't get across the finish line. But I think Speaker Johnson's been at the top of his game. Leader Thune has exceeded conservative expectations. Doesn't mean he's perfect. And the president will be very involved. And so I think it will get across the finish line. I think we've got an opportunity in the conservative movement to persuade our conservative policymakers to make this the American opportunity agenda, because it will be so beneficial, most importantly, to the quality of life for Americans. But also, its benefits will be down to the midterm messaging.

Speaker 2:
[28:06] The big, beautiful bill was very tax forward. It was all those tax cuts that needed to be enacted. So Chairman Smith from Missouri was a big player in that. Who are you looking at as the big players for this reconciliation process?

Speaker 1:
[28:19] Well, Chairman Smith did a great job with that. He deserves all of the accolades you just gave him and probably been some. In this case, Speaker Johnson, which is a really good sign, because he's a really good legislator. But the other entity is the Republican Study Committee. Headed by my friend, Chairman August Fluger of Texas, has done a great job. That's sort of like the Republican Conference's think tank inside their party. Most Republican members of Congress are part of it. And it is fiscally conservative first. Heritage helped found the Republican Study Committee. So we have a sort of wedded history. And with every leader of the RSC, the Republican Study Committee, we've had a good relationship. In this case, some of the key members of the Republican Study Committee are driving this conversation. That's very good, because they're very good legislators.

Speaker 2:
[29:07] All right, then. Well, we'll leave you with that. And we'll let you know that this episode has really been sort of a foundational presentation and a primer, I guess, is the best way to put it, for what we're all about to go through in the next couple of months in Capitol Hill in terms of spending, budget, debt, priorities, opportunities, and ultimately the election this November. So make sure you use this, bookmark this video, and check back to see how well we did. Next week, the Monroe Doctrine. What does it mean to America first and reshaping the Western Hemisphere? Thanks for watching.