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House of Representative Fails to Pass Government Spending Bill to Prevent Shutdown; Vice President Elect J.D. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson Attempt to Work with House Republicans to Pass Spending Bill to Avert Pending Government Shutdown. Aired 8-8:30a ET.

Aired December 20, 2024 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Defend against these claims. The known risks and benefits are described in their FDA approved labeling.

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WATT: And so many commercials in between.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ozempic!

WATT: I can hum the tune from the commercial.

ANDREW VAN ARSDALE, PATRICIA'S ATTORNEY: There's a reason you can hum the tune. There's a reason everybody knows about this, because of the amount of money they're putting into the marketing of these products.

PATRICIA, FORMER OZEMPIC USER: I heard about Ozempic on the TV.

WATT: Patricia has now stopped taking it, but she says she is still suffering.

PATRICIA: Uncontrollable diarrhea.

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PATRICIA: Right, so I stay pretty much close to the house. I still have the effects of uncontrollable going to the bathroom.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news right now. A high stakes meeting happening on Capitol Hill, including the incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the conservative Freedom Caucus, trying to essentially break the ice and find a way for Republicans to get on the same page with Republicans as the government is set to begin shutting down operations at midnight.

Also this morning, accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione is now behind bars in the same federal prison as Sean Diddy Combs in New York. Federal prosecutors now weighing whether to pursue the death penalty.

Plus, Apple facing pressure to ax its new A.I. tool after it falsely summarized a BBC report. As one press freedom group put it, "Facts cannot be decided by a roll of the dice."

John Berman is out today. I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: Breaking news on the chaos on Capitol Hill. A critical meeting inside the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson as the clock is ticking towards a government shutdown. Members of the House Freedom Caucus sitting down right now with the speaker and Vice President elect J.D. Vance, as well as Donald Trump's pick to run the Office of Management and Budget. Vance and Johnson scrambling to get all Republicans on the same page after 38 GOP lawmakers voted against a Trump-backed spending measure last night, joining Democrats, a plan that was drawn up at the 11th hour after pressure from Trump and Elon Musk killed a bipartisan funding bill.

Joining us now, CNN's Annie Grayer. Annie, what can you tell us about this meeting that is happening right now and what it may signal?

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN REPORTER: Well, this is about Republicans trying to get on the same page. They desperately want to pass something to keep the government open. But as we saw last night, 38 Republicans bucked their own leadership in voting against the plan to keep the government open because they didn't support the extension of the debt limit. So now, by bringing all the key stakeholders in one room, the hope is that there will be enough consensus to try and move forward. In fact, we caught up with House Speaker Mike Johnson this morning who said that he believes that there is a plan and that they are going to be voting later this morning. That has not been officially announced or anything like that. But we are standing outside the meeting just down the hall trying to get new details, because right now Republicans are back to square one and it's clear they don't have Democratic support to rely on.

SIDNER: Annie Grayer, thank you so much for that late breaking news. Appreciate it. We will be checking back in with you. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And more of that. Just moments ago, Donald Trump took to social media to put out his latest statement. These are significant because it is clearly having an impact on what Republicans are doing or not doing when it comes to keeping the government funded. Here is what he put on Truth Social. We will read it for you, we'll read it all together. "If there is to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now under the Biden administration, not after January 20th under Trump. This is a Biden problem to solve. But if Republicans can help solve it, they will." That's a double backflip for you.

Joining us right now is CNN political commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin and Democratic strategist and consultant Simon Rosenberg. Alyssa, you want to decipher that one? I mean, what do you think of that?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: OK, so just for some historic context, I mean, I worked on Capitol Hill for years. Pretty much every Christmas there is, we come up to the 11th hour of a government funding deadline. But this one is looking -- this one was avoidable. It was extremely avoidable.

The last government shutdown I was in the White House, 2018. It was 34 days, the longest in history. So if the government were to shut down tonight or at Saturday evening, this would, and if it went as long, would spill into after Donald Trump was in office.

[08:05:04]

And so one thing I would say to pump the brakes of the idea of some really long term shutdown would be Donald Trump wants his transition to continue, and he wants his inauguration to continue. He doesn't want national parks shut down when he's being sworn in at the Capitol on January 20th.

So the House has to figure out what it's going to do, though. Mike Johnson has very limited flexibility here. Democrats are not inclined to bail Republicans out. But I do think it's interesting that he's basically saying, hey, Joe Biden is still president. Where are you?

BOLDUAN: Is that indicating also -- I mean, Simon, lets jump into the psyche of Donald Trump on social media, because I know you love to do that. Is this also indicating he doesn't think there is a deal to be had, and so he's this is the beginning of the spin?

SIMON ROSENBERG, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST AND CONSULTANT: listen, I think the real story this week is that Donald Trump's honeymoon has come to an end, his post-election honeymoon has come to an end. We saw yesterday the Fed signaled that the markets are worried about his inflationary economic proposals. We're going to have the Matt Gaetz report come out any day reminding us about his recklessness in choosing his nominees. And now we may have a government shutdown and just incredible Republican chaos on Capitol Hill. This has been an ugly few days for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

And so I think they are desperately trying to figure out a path forward. And yes, of course he's going to blame Democrats. Thats what he does for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. It's not a big surprise. I don't think it's going to work. I mean, we know from history that the people that crash, that caused the government shutdown get punished by voters. And Republicans are taking enormous risks right now. BOLDUAN: One thing that this one is going to be hard, I will say just

factually, if you look at the sequence of events, it will be hard for Donald Trump to claim this is a Biden problem, because this was going to be, as I said earlier, like a footnote in this Christmas tale, because there was a bipartisan deal until Elon Musk started putting out tweets, and then Donald Trump weighed in as well. This one is a little, there's more to it than this.

But this raises once again, the Mike Johnson problem. And "Playbook" put it well this morning about Plan C, saying this, "Mike Johnson's challenge is to find a path that can, one, keep Trump happy, two, placate House conservatives, three, win the support of a substantial number of House Democrats, four, pass muster with the Democratic controlled Senate and White House, and five, allow him to take to keep the gavel. Do you see him doing that?

GRIFFIN: Correct. And just to remember, in the new Congress, he is going to be voted in as speaker again and he's going to need the votes. But what complicates this further is that House conservatives, traditionally their issue is they don't want a clean lifting of the debt ceiling. They've committed to not ever voting for it. Donald Trump actually hates the debt ceiling. He wants to do away with it. He thinks it's arcane and unnecessary.

BOLDUAN: Sometimes a progressive Democratic position.

GRIFFIN: Correct. And even more so, he doesn't want to have to raise the debt ceiling six months into his first term.

Donald Trump still has a lot of sway with the Freedom Caucus. I think that because this is a mess of his own making, he's going to have to step in. Mike Johnson does not have the flexibility to, on his own, bring some of these folks along. And you've seen Anna Paulina Luna, a very Trumpy, MAGA member of Congress saying she probably needs to vote for this because her district expects her to. I think Donald Trump's going to have to twist some arms, and he may spend his Christmas break working on fixing the deal he blew up.

BOLDUAN: So, but that then poses something interesting, Simon, if Donald Trump jumps on a plane, gets to Washington and starts basically what he will, then -- we're going to do, let's just assume because we don't know what's going to happen in the next five minutes, he starts trying to break the logjam between Republicans. I just had Greg Meeks on making very clear that Democrats, they negotiated this once, and they have -- they have no motivation to start heading back to the negotiating table again. Could the Democrats be looking at a worse deal than they had if they had just gone along with, I'm going to call it Plan B last night?

ROSENBERG: Well, I mean, the reality here is that anything that passes the House, and whether they do it under the suspension rules they've been doing, which requires two thirds of a vote, meaning they need lots of Democrats to come on board, or they go back to a three day period where they just get Republicans, it then has to pass a Democratic Senate, and Joe Biden has to sign it. And so Democrats have to have a seat at the table here, right, at some

point. And we did have a seat at the table which got us to this bipartisan deal on Wednesday, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump blew up. But the notion, this kind of fantasy notion that they're going to be able to pass a bill that has no, that Democrats are not consulted on, they are not negotiating, that's being shoved down their throats, is a recipe for keeping the government shut down. It's just reckless. It's wasting all of our time. The Democrats have to have a seat at the table here because of our political system. And this fantasy that they have that they can do this purely with Republicans I think is part of what got us into this mess that we're in today.

BOLDUAN: And what is always so frustrating for people not in Washington watching this is the government eventually will get funded, but a lot of people are going to potentially feel pain in the meantime.

[08:10:05]

And it's just, these always feel like -- to not be eloquent -- the dumbest of fights.

GRIFFIN: No one wins a government shutdown. The blame games goes around --

BOLDUAN: No one wins. More people get hurt. And then we move on, and it just leaves that ick in, like icky feeling for people watching it. And this is not going to get easier in the next Congress, right? The Republican majority in the House is going to be, what is it, the slimmest in the modern era.

GRIFFIN: Right. And Donald Trump wants to focus on things like broadening his tax cuts in the first term. He doesn't want to be dealing with government funding battles and deadlines. And I think there's already this expectation, it feels weird to talk about the midterms before Donald Trump is even sworn in. But this would be a really negative way to start a new Congress if he's hoping to keep control of the House going into his the second half of his term.

So there is no win. There'll be a lot of furloughed federal employees, people who won't be getting paid. They'll eventually get back pay. It should be avoidable. But honestly there's really limited paths out at this point.

BOLDUAN: It is a strange moment that -- there's always like a Plan C, like a Mitch McConnell comes in right at the last second.

GRIFFIN: I don't know that there's a hero in this one.

BOLDUAN: I know, but that's the thing. You always are waiting for, like, the Mitch McConnell to come in and be like, I've got this thing. I'm not going to tell anybody about it because this is what I do. And they fix it. This one feels different. But let's see, let's see. Let's buckle up and like buckle up again. It's good to see you guys. Thank you both very much.

Sara?

SIDNER: Right ahead, after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the U.S. is now revealing it has more troops in Syria than previously known. That news coming as an American delegation is in Syria today. We'll talk about that.

And also, the holiday travel rush underway, folks. Guess what? The weather might not let you rush at all. We have the forecast.

And later, a disturbing rise in the number of homeless families in America. Learn how one group is trying to make a dent in housing insecurity.

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