Rome and Washington

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 15th of April.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

Congress is back after a two-week recess…and Republican leaders are gearing up to use budget reconciliation to end the partial government shutdown and fund the President’s priorities.

WORLD Washington bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta has more from Washington.

LUMETTA: Reconciliation is an obscure mechanism that Senate Republicans are pitching as the solution to Democratic opposition to funding the Department of Homeland Security. It allows Senators to pass legislation on a simple majority vote, rather than 60 votes…as long as it focuses strictly on revenue and spending laws. Here’s Majority Leader John Thune.

THUNE: We need to keep this process tight and focused so that we can get this done.

That means not adding other Republican priorities to this bill. House Republicans previously shot down a similar plan because it would not include a voting reform bill called the Save America Act. Now, Senate leadership is promising to use as many as three reconciliation bills this summer: to pass ICE funding, Iran war funding, and the Save America Act. But that might run up against the Byrd Rule…requiring the Senate Parliamentarian to ensure every provision directly relates to spending. Here’s Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

HAWLEY: We could absolutely put more ICE money in, and we should. On Save, I would love to pass Save America by reconciliation. Can we? I don't know.

Senate Budget Committee chair Lindsey Graham is more optimistic and has a narrower focus.

GRAHAM: You can make a down payment on SAVE Act later. Okay. We're going to do Border Patrol funding and ICE funding in the reconciliation package. And that way, we won't ever have to worry about needing a Democratic vote for years to fund the border and to fund ICE.

If it passes, it’s up to the House to approve the Senate’s plan to fund the rest of DHS…or send lawmakers back to the drawing board.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta, in Washington.

EICHER: Joining us now, Hunter Baker. He’s a political scientist and commentator for WORLD Opinions. Morning, Hunter.

HUNTER BAKER:Good morning!

EICHER: So you heard the report. Give us your sense of the strategy—using reconciliation to move pieces of the SAVE Act, immigration enforcement, and government funding. Step back for us: what’s realistic here?

BAKER: Senator Mike Lee, who I think is legitimately a constitutional scholar, somebody who someday could maybe sit on the Supreme Court. He is the author of the Save Act, and he himself has said we can't pass it through reconciliation. Is there some way to to break it and break it down into smaller pieces, or sort of attach something via the federal spending power to be able to get it through? Maybe so. But the bigger thing that is in play here is, are we going to be able to fund ICE, are we going to be able to fund Border Patrol? And of course, I just want to say, I think that had we not had the difficulties in Minnesota, those things would have been passed and we wouldn't have had a problem. So it just shows you how you know a bad situation like occurred there can affect something much larger, which is appropriating the money for those federal functions.

The second thing I want to say is, I just think that this is Exhibit A and why we need to get rid of the filibuster. The filibuster is not in the Constitution. The filibuster is a Senate rule. We do not have to have it. We have checks and balances. We have the separation of powers. I don't think that we need the filibuster. I think that, I think that whoever is in the majority needs to be accountable to govern, and the filibuster and its 60 vote rule makes that almost impossible, and so we end up playing these kind of games, like we're playing with reconciliation, where we try to take something like the SAVE Act and turn it into somehow kind of a budget bill, which it is not.

So in my view, we need to get rid of the filibuster and work with legislation in a more clean and simple way. I do hope that they will be able to pass funding for ICE and the Border Patrol without separating out the rest of DHS for special funding.

MAST: Let’s stay on Capitol Hill—but shift to something more unusual.

Two members of Congress—Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales—say they’ll resign as the House returns to session, both facing misconduct allegations and the threat of expulsion votes.

And they’re not alone. Another Democrat and another Republican are also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

So at the moment—you’ve got two out, and two more in serious trouble… evenly split between the parties.

Hunter, when you’ve got this kind of symmetry—two leaving, two more under investigation, split between both parties—what does that do, if anything, for instilling confidence that misconduct is being addressed?

BAKER: I was listening to Bloomberg Intelligence earlier today, and they had a commentator who was very upset, because this situation gives the impression that we can only expel a wayward lawmaker if it will not upset the balance of power in the Congress. So so, you know, clearly, that's that's how it appears, right? It's like, okay, you know, you guys, you guys, get rid of two, and we'll get rid of two, and then it will be okay. And I understand why that would upset people and why that looks bad. It is bad. But at the same time, I also think that there is kind of an injustice in potentially upsetting the knife's edge of government power based on the bad behavior of one or two or three or four people in Congress. You know, voters don't deserve to get a bad public policy or to have good public policy blocked based on somebody misbehaving. I think that what we really need is some kind of new mechanism to replace somebody when they have to leave. That puts in kind of a good proxy for the person who was already there. You know, we all know that you could put an R jersey on anyone, and they basically could vote with the party or a D jersey with somebody on the other side. So it's just, I understand why Congress wants to resist blowing up their party's position because of this kind of thing, but again, it's a terrible look for voters, and all I can say is that I don't know how to make it better.

EICHER: One sentence, answer, are these guys just sacrificial lambs here? Is that what you're saying?

BAKER: Yes, there's that too. I mean, how many, how many people in Congress are misbehaving sexually and otherwise, we have no idea, but yeah, these are the ones who are getting the attention.

EICHER: Well, now on to a growing clash between the White House and the Vatican, one that is beginning, of course, to ripple into American politics. Thus we discuss it here. President Trump's criticism of Pope Leo is drawing some pushback from Catholic leaders in the U.S. are raising concerns about Republicans as well, who are counting on Catholic voters in this year's midterms.

Notably, the two leaders have not even met yet. The Pope has already declined an invitation to visit the United States this year. The United States this year 2026 being the “quarter mil,” as you like to call it, Hunter, or the semi-quincentennial. So kind of an interesting snub, if indeed it is a snub for an American Pope not to visit his home country in this important year.

So let's start with kind of the big picture here. How unusual is this kind of tension between a U.S. president and the Vatican?

BAKER: I think it probably is somewhat unusual. I think that typically, if you're the Pope, you want to meet a president in a very statesman like sort of a way, right? We remember that the Pope is not only the leader of the worldwide Catholic church, but also is in charge of this sort of small nation state, which is the Vatican. So they don't want to be dealing with an American president in a pugilistic way. You know, even when it comes to a policy like abortion, where there's very clear divide. The Catholic popes have have been content to issue their statements right and to promote their moral teaching without really engaging into a kind of combat with American presidents. I think it's a little bit sad that Pope Leo doesn't want to do something for the semi quincentennial. I think it would be great to have the first American Pope arrive and, you know, and have an official sort of a state visit for that celebration. But otherwise, I do understand why he's holding himself at a little bit of a distance.

MAST: Well, Hunter, we've only had two Catholic presidents, and that question always comes up, who's influencing whom? But here it's almost reversed, the pope weighing in on U.S. policy, and a Catholic vice president responding, is it appropriate for the church to speak into political matters like this? And where's the line?

BAKER: I think it is appropriate. It's always one of the big debates, though. So I'm a, I'm a church and state guy, and, you know, there are all these debates about, Does it ever make sense for this church to speak into political matters, you know. Or is it simply the case that the church should only confine itself to kind of broader, more nebulous sort of statements that relate to morality without ever specifically engaging policy. I tend to be on the side that says that that Christianity, the Lordship of Christ, applies to essentially everything, and so I'm always looking to integrate that into how I look at almost anything in life where it could be applicable. So I think that it is valid. Now there's a separate question of prudence. So for example, Billy Graham was once a very big supporter of Richard Nixon. And then when Richard Nixon had his big difficulties over Watergate and other things, you know, Billy Graham felt himself to be somewhat stained by that, and he and he kind of withdrew. And so he became kind of a general counselor to American presidents, but never in the same way of being a big supporter, as he was with Nixon. And so I think that Catholics and Protestants generally want to retain some distance, so as not to just sort of totally embroil the church in politics. And J.D. Vance is kind of trying to take that same sort of position. He's talked about how well he thinks that the church should speak to morality, but he doesn't want the church to dictate a position on prudential politics.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. Thank you, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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