Republicans win control of House and Senate in Congress sweep | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The GOP has won a trifecta in Washington. Plus, Sen. John Thune will be the next Senate majority leader, while President-elect Donald Trump continues to build his next staff. Paste BN White House Correspondent Joey Garrison takes a closer look at the tasks Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be asked to do as part of a new 'Department of Government Efficiency.' Paste BN Reporter Andrea Riquier explains how mass deportations could make a housing shortage worse. Inflation is still here, according to the latest Consumer Price Index.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Thursday, November 14th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Republicans will have a trifecta in Washington. Plus, we take a closer look at what exactly Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be asked to do in the next Trump term and how mass deportations would hurt the US housing shortage.
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Republicans have won both the House and the Senate, giving the GOP total control over Congress for at least the next two years. The GOP will have a majority in the 435 member house after defending enough key seats in New York, California, and other swing districts that appeared more competitive before Election Day than they ultimately ended up being according to multiple networks tracking the results.
Republicans also have taken control of the Senate by toppling democratic senators in Montana and Ohio and winning in other closely watched races. Their win set up a Republican trifecta in Washington for the next two years, laying the groundwork for President-elect, Donald Trump, and the party to implement their priorities without major resistance. We're also getting a clearer look at the leadership positions on Capitol Hill. Senate. Republicans have elected Senator John Thune from South Dakota as the next Senate majority leader after rejecting a push from allies of Trump who backed a different candidate.
John Thune:
It's a new day in the United States Senate and it's a new day in America. The American people have loudly rejected the failed policies of the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans endorse Speaker Mike Johnson to return as their leader next year. Johnson still must notch a majority of votes from the 435-person chamber during a public floor vote in early January. Also, yesterday President-elect, Trump, met with President Joe Biden. The pair met at the Oval Office for nearly two hours, marking an awkward post-election ritual that took place despite the personal animosity between the two.
Biden has spent months calling Trump a threat to democracy, and Trump has repeatedly called Biden the worst president ever. As part of the meeting, Biden stressed to Trump the importance of continuing to stand with Ukraine and its war with Russia, according to White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. And Trump continues to fill positions around his next presidency. He announced earlier this week that Fox News host, Pete Hegseth, will lead the nation's military as the next defense secretary. The position still requires Senate confirmation.
Yesterday, he unveiled a series of new hires, including plans to nominate two Florida Republicans to critical jobs, Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General and Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. The other major personnel announcement, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii Democratic Congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate whom Trump picked to be Director of National Intelligence. You can follow along with all the latest on the transition to the next White House with a link in today's show notes.
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President-elect, Donald Trump, this week tapped billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. What exactly will that entail? For more, I caught up with Paste BN, White House correspondent Joey Garrison who joined me from the White House. Hey there, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, how are you doing?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, Joey. Thanks for hopping on today. So let's just start with this. What do we know here, what has Trump actually tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to do? What will this role entail?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, so Trump has brought on Musk and Ramaswamy to lead what he's called a quote, Department of Government Efficiency. Now, the way Trump described this, however, it's not really a new federal department or agency, rather this is going to be acting as almost a commission or panel that comes in, looks at the federal government, and tries to find things that they see as waste and unneeded spending and unneeded bureaucracy and regulations that Republicans have long tried to target.
And so they're going to bring them in. It's unclear whether this is by contract or what the kind of formal arrangement is, but the team's work is supposed to conclude by July 4th, 2026. That's the 250th, of course, anniversary of the founding of the country. And that's how Trump has set this up. And so it's going to be kind of an unprecedented in American history kind of set up here where we have the world's richest man playing at the front seat of things in the next administration. But that's where Trump is steering this at the moment.
Taylor Wilson:
I'm curious how surprised you were by all this. What led up to this moment and why did Trump and allies really argue this is necessary?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, it wasn't totally surprising. This is actually an idea that Trump has talked about a little bit on the campaign trail. He brought it up in an economic speech September in New York. And when Musk after Trump's first near assassination attempt, he got behind and endorsed the former president really. Has been out there pumping over a hundred million dollars of his own money into a super PAC, helping Trump's run. Musk helped with the ground game in the final weeks, particularly in Pennsylvania.
And so he's been a very much an outspoken supporter of the former president, and it was quite clear that there was going to be some role for him in the new White House. Trump was openly talking about that. And that's what led to this. Now, the inclusion of Ramaswamy a little interesting. We kind of figured that he might have a role in the new White House. It wasn't clear what that is. So he'll be working in tandem with Musk. Ramaswamy, of course, was the former Republican primary candidate opponent of Trump in the '24 election. He quickly embraced Trump after he got out of the race and became a favorite of the former president.
A lot of Democrats, funny enough, mocked this arrangement. I saw Elizabeth Warren, the U.S. senator from Massachusetts says so much for government efficiency here with this name. They got two people doing really the job of one with Ramaswamy and Musk at the helm there.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So you mentioned some of the Democratic critiques. Really, what are some of the potential concerns here, Joey, especially as it pertains possibly to conflicts of interest?
Joey Garrison:
Well, I think the concern from the left here is they're going to come in and target programs for the poor, social welfare programs that they might see as waste and entitlement programs that have long been targeted by Republicans. I think that'd be the most logical assumption that we would think that those could get highlighted here.
A lot of folks are kind of rolling their eyes at this process saying, Hey, really, the biggest expenditure's long-term for the federal government are Medicare and Social Security. Trump, of course, said he's not going to touch those items. So I think a lot of people are looking at this endeavor with a lot of doubt saying, Hey, let's see what they actually find, and they're going to learn that there's not really all this fat ready to be trimmed as Republicans have long talked about.
So I think that's kind of the criticism we're seeing. Yeah, and there's also major conflicts with Musk's contracts that he has with the federal government. I think a lot of folks are bracing for kind of the solutions here to be, oh, we should privatize this function of government. That's often a cost-cutting measure backed by the political right. And so yeah, the whole arrangement right now when you have a president teaming up with the world's richest man and a very powerful person in Elon Musk, it raises a whole host of questions that we'll be unpacking over this early part of Trump's second term.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, we will see. Joey Garrison covers the White House for Paste BN. Joining us from the White House. Thank you, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thank you very much.
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Taylor Wilson:
The U.S. is short millions of housing units and mass deportations as Donald Trump has promised to bring as president would make the shortage worse. I spoke with Paste BN reporter, Andrea Riquier to learn more. Hello, Andrea.
Andrea Riquier:
Hey Taylor, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for hopping back on The Excerpt today. So interesting story here, Andrea. You and I have talked about this housing shortage before, but let's just reset the stage here at the top for the listeners. How bad really is the housing shortage right now and what are some of the factors? Why is housing in such short supply?
Andrea Riquier:
I mean, it's pretty obvious to anybody who has seen the rent go up or has tried to buy a house and is priced out. There just aren't enough homes to rent, to buy in apartments, and houses. And there are a lot of reasons, but one of the single biggest, probably the single biggest is that starting during the Great Recession over a decade ago, home builders cut back on the number of homes that they were building sharply. Arguably, they were overbuilding in the lead up to the recession, but they went down to a fraction of the building activity and stayed at that very low level for over a decade, arguably up until around the pandemic time.
So we have 10, 12 years of underbuilding relative to a growing population, including the millennial generation coming of age. So really, again, there's a lot of small reasons, but the home builders cutting back is really the single biggest one. And so it becomes a natural question if they lose a big chunk of their workforce, what happens next?
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, so we'll get into that, Andrea. I am curious just how big is labor from immigrants when it comes to building homes and do we have data on whether these folks tend to be documented or undocumented?
Andrea Riquier:
Immigrants account for 25% of all the construction workforce, overall. So a quarter of the construction workforce, but in construction trades, which is to say in the physical labor, it's nearly one-third. Now a separate analysis that I had run for this piece, a professor calculated for me that the share of undocumented workers in construction is probably 15%, so pretty significant. And my understanding is that there's still some questions about whether these mass deportations are going to only target the undocumented or some people who have been here a long time and may have papers. So we just don't know. But either way, it could be a pretty big blow to the construction industry.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, and we are hearing concerns really from the immigrant community across the U.S. following Trump's election win last week. We're still trying to figure out exactly what some of these claims around mass deportations might look like Andrea, but ahead of next year, how would mass deportations ostensibly make the housing shortage that we've been talking about worse?
Andrea Riquier:
Again, losing whether it's 15%, 25%, or one-third of your workforce would just absolutely devastate the industry. What's interesting is that I went into this story trying to figure out what the impact would be to wages. I thought, well if you lose immigrants who ostensibly make less than native-born workers, what is that going to do to the price of homes? And people I talked to said it's not even about the price, they just won't get built.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So in terms of this industry itself, Andrea, have you heard from home building leaders about all this? I mean, what do they say?
Andrea Riquier:
Yeah, I was a little disappointed. I actually put the question out to 10 of the largest home builders around the country, and not a single one of them wanted to speak. They either declined to comment or did not respond. We do have some commentary from the National Association of Home Builders, which is an industry group. They did talk about the impact on the economy, and they did share some numbers. So I would encourage listeners to look for the story. But if this does start to happen, I would hope to see maybe a little bit more leadership from the industry.
Taylor Wilson:
Andrea Riquier is a reporter with Paste BN. Thank you, Andrea.
Andrea Riquier:
Thanks, Taylor. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
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Taylor Wilson:
Inflation is still here. Prices were 2.6% higher in October than a year earlier, according to the latest consumer price index released yesterday. That's a much lower inflation rate than American consumers endured through most of 2022 and 2023, but it's higher than the inflation rate for September 2.4%. Shelter prices rose 0.4% in October, accounting for more than half of the rise in prices, overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Economists say that the nation's inflation crisis is not over and that the Federal Reserve's battle against rising prices must rage on. You can sink your teeth into the numbers with a link in today's show notes.
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DIY medical tests offer the convenience of monitoring your health at home, but they also come with ethical and medical concerns. Still, is there reason to be optimistic about the future of DIY medical tests? Dr. Karen Kaul, Chair of Pathology at Endeavor Health North Shore Hospitals joins my colleague Dana Taylor this afternoon, beginning at 4 P.M. Eastern Time to discuss.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.