Bill Kristol: Republicans Are a Mess

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily, I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we are back with Bill Kristol.
We're in the doldrums of August. And you know, there's still terrible news out there, though, in the doldrums of August. How are you doing, Bill?

**Bill Kristol** (0:27)
Yeah, I'm doing fine. But I agree that the news is not universally great.

**Tim Miller** (0:33)
We're going to run through some of the stuff. I'm going to start here because it seems like me and Bill are the only ones who are upset about this. So I'm going to put it at the top of the podcast. The US Senate on Friday did pass a government funding bill that will prevent a shutdown to the midterm elections. The CR passed 90 to 6
So only five Democrats voted against it. Actually, Rand Paul always votes against this sort of stuff. The senators, according to reports from Hill types, noticed and punchball, senators seem to be gearing up for a bigger fight in December.
Why? I don't know. Hard to say. I saw silver lining. Bill saw silver lining. One silver lining I saw is that the CR does push back the ban on weed beverages, which I can't believe that they're going through with. It's just a disaster for small business people all over the country, including in red states and districts. But we're going to need our weed beverages to get through the midterms. So any delay on that, I guess, would be good. Besides that, I'm mystified why all the Democrats went along with this. I guess I should say, forget the bill. It's not over yet, or I wouldn't have led the show with it. The CR they passed in the Senate is different than the one in the House. Now, the House has to vote on it again. So conceivably, if Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats in the House decided that they wanted to pick a fight over something, that is still possible. I encourage them to do so. Bill, what's your thoughts on the state of play over there on the Hill?

**Bill Kristol** (1:58)
You and I have this in common that we take a position, it loses 96 in the United States Senate, and we're still thinking, hey, we're right.
What are those 44, whatever they have, 41, I guess Democratic senators know that we don't know. I mean, look, it's a CR, so there's some argument always for keeping the government open, and not getting into a frantic September bargaining, where which parts are going to be open and stuff. But they are funding a lot of bad stuff. They're funding the ongoing operations of ICE, the ongoing operations of the war, the ongoing operations of this and that.
I at least would have made Republicans withdrawing the reconciliation bill, a condition of the vote. Maybe they did that tacitly because the Republicans, or quietly, because the Republicans did withdraw, or have not moved on the reconciliation bill, which has the $60-plus billion for defense and various other appropriations, most of which are probably bad. So that is a bit of a silver lining, which means there will still be fights in September, as you say, partly in the House, as they move to accept the Senate bill. If they don't accept it, then they have to go to reconciliation, not reconciliation, I'm sorry, to a conference committee. Wasn't that a thing that used to happen in the... And I kind of remember that for major pieces of legislation. That seems not to happen anymore, but anyway. So it still is alive in that respect. And that is to say, there still will be fights on reconciliation and on other issues as well.

**Tim Miller** (3:15)
Well, these guys don't work, really. And so the House is not back until September.

**Bill Kristol** (3:20)
Right. I think very end of August, and I think the Senate is September 14th right now.

**Tim Miller** (3:24)
It's like unbelievable. So this could be one of these situations. I mean, we're being a little glib about it, but as I recall, the last shutdown fight, or maybe it was two shutdown fights ago, was really, it was the events of Minnesota that caused it. The Democrats were on path to doing this, continuing kicking the can thing, and then there's this righteous outrage, for good reason, over the behavior of ICE that then gave a kick in the pants to the Democrats, who are like, okay, well, we can't fund this government right now, and that led to the last fight. A long time till September, I guess, now, who the hell knows what's going to happen, what horrors the Trump administration will inflict upon us between now and then, but I do think that anything that extends that timeline creates a possibility that there's another galvanizing event to organize around. I agree that just like the facts of this is that this is continuing the status quo through December versus a reconciliation bill would have given them more money for the stupid war and for the stupid war at home in deportations. But to me even still, the status quo is like a no. The status quo is a no.