♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report," Utah's members of Congress secure powerful committee assignments.

As cabinet nominees visit Capitol Hill, our senators weigh in.

And as the year comes to a close, new polling reveals what Utahns think about major issues.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Greg Bell, former Lieutenant Governor.

Leah Murray, director of the Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service at Weaver State University.

And Frank Pignanelli, attorney and political commentator.

Thank you for being with us for this week's episode of "The Hinckley Report."

A lot happening on the national stage, a lot happening here in the state of Utah, but as the time we're airing this show, Lieutenant Governor, we're facing potentially another government shutdown.

If this happens, this would be the 22nd time that this has happened, you know, it used to be a time when we wouldn't really hear people talk about this very much.

It was sort of unimaginable, but now we seem to be hearing about it regularly, and today, on Friday, we may find out yet again if the government shuts down.

Greg Bell: Well that's a drama and with razor thin majority and a pretty big minority it's really hard to get all the cattle on the flat bed, right?

I mean it's very very difficult so I don't envy Speaker Johnson, but I think the American people are at the bottom of this, tired of the charade.

I see it as a charade, as a power play, raise the debt ceiling.

President Trump wants to do away with the Trump ceiling effectively till 2029, but the point is we're not managing our budget, and if we are, we're doing it by this emergency threat, sort of trade off things.

So I don't respect Congress for the way they manage these affairs.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about a couple of the dynamics at play, Leah.

So, it's so interesting, there was a continuing resolution on this budget that was out and a lot of discussion happened about it, but President-elect Trump was not in favor of it, and he put two interesting people out there that were sort of carrying a lot of the water to kill that first continuing resolution, which was Elon Musk and Ramaswamy.

Leah Murray: Yeah, no, and my question is, I like how you started, Lieutenant Governor with drama.

A little bit what we were talking about a month and a half ago was the Republican trifecta and the mandate that they had, and they were going to govern well and President-elect Trump was going to fix all of the problems and the first test, right where they are supposed be fixing things, I feel this is a major stumble.

So, for me, some of the drama is, do we have any evidence that the Republican trifecta is going to deliver anything better than what we've seen with gridlock in Washington DC the last couple of years?

Jason Perry: Well, so Frank, what's interesting also about this is we're talking about Trump's involvement in this continuing resolution, a couple of his appointees like Elon Musk, but we do have a president of the United States who's still sort of in charge of what's happening right now.

Frank Pignanelli: Apparently, so there should be no surprise.

2024 is one of the weirdest election years we've ever had, so it's just appropriate that we end up being more weird.

We we essentially have had two presidents for the last month and a half, and now we have one president who's pretty much running everything who hasn't been sworn in yet.

And then you have two figures who are very wealthy, especially the richest man in the world who are, you know, playing a role in all this because there's threats that that if you don't play along with what they want, they'll be primaried.

And so, essentially what you have is Donald Trump really driving a lot of this discussion hasn't been sworn in yet, and you have this election which is on the minds of all these elected officials of how do you then appreciate the mandate that you talked about.

So, that's all driving this emotional carriage through this really again once again as you said this drama.

Jason Perry: Yeah, so--go ahead.

Greg: Chip Roy, extremely conservative, I mean nobody doubts his credentials, right?

He gets scolded by President Trump for not going along, but he finds what he said there's $5 trillion of fat in there, you know, so.

I don't get the politics of it.

Jason Perry: So, Leah, talk about sort of that scolding and ramifications of sorts.

We had the first bill that came out which failed, but then there's a second bill which people are called sort of the clean bill, this is one that was supported by President-elect Trump, and we had a couple of members of our own delegation here in the state of Utah that voted against that one, even though that was something supported by Trump.

Leah: Yeah, I mean John Curtis does a little no harm no foul, right, because he's leaving the House and heading over to the Senate.

I was very surprised by Blake Moore voting against it, Jason, because he's in the leadership group, so I do wonder then how much support he has for Speaker Johnson, who you said earlier is in a very bad spot, right?

You don't envy him, but I also wonder what that means for where Blake Moore is positioning himself going forward in that conference like I--there's a lot again, the word "drama" is perfect.

There's a lot of unknowns and I'm just interested.

I can't read it.

Does that, you know, I can't understand the choices that are being made to be able to predict with any clarity.

Greg: Remember, remember how upset people were and how betrayed they felt when Mike Lee and I think it was Tom, not Tom, but Ted Cruz shut the government down.

They were kind of the face of that, and people were absolutely furious and that--that has really harmed the reputation of some of those people going forward.

So, it's interesting now with $35 trillion of debt, will people still punish elected officials if they shut the government down?

I think that's a real interesting question.

Frank: Well, I was gonna say sometimes what happens and, Lieutenant Governor, having served in the legislature as I did, sometimes what happens with elected officials, if they see something going down, it's like, okay, I could jump on board the opposition because it's going down anyway.

So, why throw myself on a sword that may have been part of this?

Okay, I'll be part of the next step which is to solve this issue and there may been some of that was going on with our members of Congress.

Greg: What are the Dems doing?

Frank: They're watching them twist.

Leah: Yeah, and I think they felt, right, they felt they had a deal.

They feel that Mike Johnson reneged on the deal and what I heard from Hakeem Jeffries, right, one of the quotes was "That's a hard pass, we're not helping again," right?

So, if you're going to pass this with a suspension of rules, you need a supermajority, so you need Democrats, and now they feel, right, that they have been bamboozled, so they're not coming to the table and-- Frank: The weird thing is usually you've had shutdowns, the party in power is the one that has to own it.

And usually that'll be the Democrats because they have the Senate and the presidency, but because of Trump's assertion, it may be the Republicans that own the backfire from shutting the government down even though they're not in power.

Greg: Unquestionable.

Frank: So, that's another bizarre episode happening in 2024.

Jason Perry: Well, talk about how this plays out, Frank, a little too, because you start talking about the number of Republicans that are needed to get something passed.

The Democrats were united against the second bill, the sort of the clean bill, but people kind of look at the trifecta that happened here with the Republicans zoning all three areas and still we're having a little bit of dissension right here: talk about what that means because a lot of people are wondering if it would just be a free ride in terms of the numbers and percentages for stuff the president wants.

Frank: Trifecta isn't in place yet, so we're still dealing with the old Congress, which is, you know, a Democrat Senate and a Democrat president that and so, so the trifecta hasn't occurred yet, but we're going into the trifecta.

And what you're seeing is once again a split in the House that between the very conservative Republicans and the moderate Republicans and then that probably gonna play it also in the Senate too next year.

Jason Perry: Because this is playing out of course in the Senate which will turn to Republican Lieutenant Governor but right now they still need the Democrats.

How is that going to play out?

Greg: Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

This is unpredictable.

Leah: No, but I also thought the other thing that was interesting on the clean piece of continuing resolution, right, the what we've been calling it the clean one because it's not 1500 pages I think it's 115 pages is that Donald Trump asked for it and 38 Republicans said no.

So, a little bit I'm questioning going into January how much control, right, that Donald Trump has over his party.

I--that surprised me as well, right?

Like that there were 38 Republicans saying no when President Trump had clearly signaled support makes me also wonder about what's happening in January.

Jason Perry: One interesting tidbit maybe we can talk to you about this, Lieutenant Governor, because when you were in office we had these discussions where there was--the longest shutdown we ever had was 35 days and there was a period of time during one of them when our national parks were shutting down, which is so important for the state of Utah and Governor Herbert stepped in and agreed to pay for the costs of that.

Our own governor Spencer Cox has said he's willing to do the same.

Talk about that rationale just a little bit.

Greg: Well, these things fall so hard on different segments of our economy, you know, and so the park, especially, Zion and Bryce were going to be very hard hit by that and the governor and his chief of staff at the time said, "Hey, this is stupid.

Has really nothing to do with this political fight."

So, they talked to I think Secretary Deb Haaland at the time who was the Secretary of Interior.

Sally Jewell and so they said, "Hey, what if we pay the bill and you pay us back?"

And so, the federal government agreed and it cost Utah $1.5 million and the federal government never paid it back, but those negotiating Springdale and all those places were really spared a meltdown.

Jason Perry: Let's get into a couple of the committee assignments.

Interesting we have our members of Congress going back to DC and we're starting to get a feel for what their responsibilities will be and let's talk about a couple of those, Frank.

I know you watched them closely.

You work really closely with our federal delegation as well.

Congresswoman Celeste Malloy, House Appropriations Committee.

This is a big one.

Frank: This is a big one.

Chris Stewart, who she replaced, was on the committee.

He did a great job and so she had the knowledge and experience to be on the committee, which could be, and it's a powerful committee because it's appropriations.

How's it gonna play though if you've got this new dynamic of the DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, putting pressure on reduced expenditures?

I'll be interested to see how the Appropriations Committee and Celeste Malloy deal with this new pressure that's not been there before from a president and from this new quasi department.

But it's a significant achievement for her.

Jason Perry: Yeah, we always loved having an appropriator in Congress, and we have one-- another one with with Celeste Malloy.

So Leah, Blake Moore, we started talking about him a little bit, the vice chair of the Republican Conference, sort of a big deal also in sort of that leadership position, but also running the DOGE caucus or a co-chair.

Leah: Yeah, I just, oh, let me just be a little snarky and say I find it very ironic that the government efficiency requires two people running the Doge and an extra caucus in the House, I mean a little bit feels very inefficient to have so many people being efficient for us, but again, right?

So, that would signal that Blake Moore is tight with what is the incoming kind of headwind, if you will, of Donald Trump and that efficiency.

But again, I think does that put him out of step with leadership and then you're in the House, how do you manage as vice chair?

Yeah, I'm interested in how he does that.

Greg: There is a bottom line issue here though, and that is we've tried pretty.

We've tried polite.

We've tried symmetrical to reduce the government budget and overspending, and it hasn't worked, and we've ballooned the budget in the last 4 or 5 years coming out of the pandemic and you know, okay, let's give people a pass about the pandemic to some degree, but $35 trillion, 130% of our gross domestic product?

It is unsustainable and military commentators have said the greatest threat to our national security is our indebtedness and who holds those bonds?

I mean, a lot of people throughout the world, but a lot of it is China and that's just, you know, Frank could write a great political thriller about that, but we have to do evidently sledgehammer politics here.

We got to do something really out of the ordinary if we're gonna get control of our debt.

I mean, Senator Romney said that my major concern in leaving government is our runaway debt.

Jason Perry: He did.

Let me talk about one or two more committee assignments really quickly.

So, Frank, we've been wondering what our new member of Congress, Mike Kennedy, what his assignments would be.

He's now in the House Natural Resources and Science and Space and Technology Committee.

Interesting assignments which he is already saying he will use to benefit the state of Utah.

Frank: Yeah, I'll be honest, a lot of us in the financial services sector wanted him to get on the House Financial Services Committee, so, but he tried, but obviously natural resources are key to the state.

So, he will succeed well.

He was a great state senator.

He'll be a good congressman in that role.

Jason Perry: Part of the administration depends on who gets put into these positions.

So, a couple of these cabinet choices are really under discussion right now and a couple of those, I want to tie it to our own elected officials, Leah.

So, this is, I'm gonna talk about Congressman Curtis just for a moment now.

Senator-elect Curtis, he's been in the news a lot about whether or not he's going to approve all these nominees or not.

This week, he said, "I think it's fair to say I'm not a rubber stamp."

All right, and he's kind of just seemed to be proving that might be the case.

Leah: No, and I love this about him.

I mean, I think one of the things he is replacing is Senator Mitt Romney, who absolutely was not a rubber stamp, and I am happy to have a senator in our nation's capital who is someone who is going to check and balance, right?

Having read Federalist 51, I understand the role of the Senate in some of these negotiations is to be a check and balance and not be a rubber stamp, right?

So, and then I do think he is a senator, if it's about Donald Trump and people are worried about questioning him, Senator Curtis doesn't go up for election until after Donald Trump's no longer president.

So, maybe he's a little--right, he won't be on the ballot with him next time, so maybe he's got a little more latitude to do that.

Jason Perry: It's such an interesting point, Lieutenant Governor, because I'm wondering about that because people have talked about whether or not he's going to be a lot like Senator Mitt Romney who is willing to take these kind of votes, or is it really sort of that cushion that Leah just talked about that he's got 6 years, he can really vet these people and vote the way he would like as opposed to what politically he might feel like he has to do?

Greg: Well, Representative Curtis is nobody's man.

Nobody owns him.

He's very independent, he's a pleasant, thoughtful person.

He's gotten a lot done.

He's passed a lot of legislation and possibly with these narrow margins and even in a Democratic House.

He's been very effective in passing legislation so he's shrewd, he's canny.

I think you'll see him wait to see how things shake out, but he's nobody's fool and he's nobody's man.

Jason Perry: Yeah, so Frank, it's interesting to me, talking this week.

This is about Kash Patel, the director nominee for the director of the FBI.

He said, "I just read his book," this is Congressman Curtis, "I just read his book.

I've been talking to his former employees."

He's taking it pretty seriously.

For someone who watches politics so closely, I mean, is he, you know, what kind of safe ground is he in right now?

Are there ramifications for how seriously he's taking this through his own lens?

Frank: I don't think there's ramifications by taking it seriously.

I mean, first of all, he's an amazing politician.

You think about it when he was mayor of Provo, he did a great job then in Congress, and just this year alone, I mean, he did very well in the primary as it was pointed out in the previous program of the show.

He won Salt Lake County, which was amazing, but the ramifications of this is that what's interesting, the respect for the FBI amongst Republicans is now at 20%.

So, you do have this drive that no matter who is being put by President Trump for FBI, they want to clean house in there.

So, the ramification may not be that he's taking his time.

The ramifications may be ultimately the vote on this, does he support him or not?

Because there does seem to be a drive among the GOP to really have a significant change at the FBI.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about another very important--.

Greg: Still, you could have a change agent, not and not be Kash Patel.

I mean to me this is an unserious choice.

I just, I think it's reprehensible.

Jason Perry: We'll watch this closely.

I want to get to the issue, it's a federal issue with a lot of people weighing in locally, and that issue is immigration.

Leah, I want to talk about this for just a moment.

The Trump administration largely ran, you know, the Trump--the candidate Trump largely ran on this particular issue, and it's having some conversations here in the state of Utah.

I want to show a clip from our governor this week on immigration, the talk where Utahns are on this issue.

Let's show this video clip and then we'll give you a comment.

Spencer Cox: We're going to start with criminals, people who are breaking the law and causing harm to to Utahns and to Americans.

That's where we have to start.

Let's get the worst element out of here.

Let's focus there.

Look, I wanna be very clear about this.

We care about those who are here, those who have come here legally, it's really important that we fix legal immigration.

I am not saying anything now that I haven't been saying for 15 years.

This is not new.

It may be fun to make it more controversial, but this is something that should have been happening.

Leah: Yeah, so then my question is why hasn't it happened, right?

So, the first clip he says we should get rid of criminals, which by the way we should have always been deporting criminals, like that was the law.

So, I do wonder then what is the difference?

Like so is the answer because there is a Trump administration will have more support, right, with federal agencies to be able to do deportation better?

But then why wasn't that true in the first Trump administration?

So, a little bit I want to see if it's the same thing you've been saying for 15 years and why haven't we done anything before this conversation.

Jason Perry: Lieutenant Governor?

Greg: Well, again, at at the bottom level, try to sneak into Germany.

Try try to sneak into Austria.

Try to sneak into Australia.

I mean it, it's effectively impossible.

They have borders.

They respect their borders.

And now the EU kind of mixes some of that up, but civilized nations enforce their borders.

They're not porous.

We, the United States, the most sophisticated nation upon the earth, let millions of people across our border illegally.

Now, there are a lot of economic, humanitarian asylum issues in that, but at bottom, Americans want their borders controlled and we have to get it done.

We've tried again polite and pretty.

Now, we've got to do some things that are more draconian, but I just think you have to do it.

Jason Perry: Frank, we hear from the Trump administration, the potential calling for the use of the National Guard to carry out those deportations, resources from other federal government agencies, potential national emergency, and birthright citizenship, a lot of things in the potential Trump agenda I think that were signaled well before this election.

Kind of talk about how that plays out just really quickly?

Frank: Well, a couple things.

First of all, remember, President Trump, when he first ran, said he was going to build a wall, have Mexico pay for it.

Neither one happened, but yet he owns the issue.

Because the Biden administration really just fumbled how they were dealing with it.

So, he still owns the issue.

On an interview that he did the President Trump, President-elect Trump, he walked back some of this.

He said the first thing we do is get the criminals, and that has the support of the American people, get the criminals out.

When you start going down further, you're gonna start hitting the service industry.

You're gonna start hitting the agriculture industry if we start deporting people.

So, that's why I think you're gonna see more-- And you can be more of a measured response.

So, I think he talks about a lot of that, but I think President Trump is savvy enough to know there's a support to get the criminals out, then he's gonna be more judicious because then you're hitting the bottom line for a lot of businesses, industry, and families.

And by the way, even the American people don't support just this wholesale just shipping them across back across the border.

Greg: But maybe some of that will bring about a compromise if we get serious and really start deporting people and I feel bad for those who are in that situation, but still, if we're going to get to a place we can accept, maybe that push will finally get us to reform our system.

Frank: And to your point Lieutenant Governor, every time that either party's been in control of the trifecta as you call it, they've--nothing has happened and maybe while they're getting the criminals out they can actually pass something while they have the trifecta that establishes a good policy to prevent the porous borders, but it--this now is the time to do it.

Jason Perry: I want to get to some polling that was done--we did recently this with the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics because we're talking right now about faith in the election process itself.

How secure is it?

How do people feel about it?

I'm going to go through a couple of questions really quickly and get your thoughts about it because a lot of elected officials are talking about this issue as well.

The question here was about confidence in government officials conducting a fair and accurate election.

And what's interesting, the overall percentage, Leah, if I can have you talk about this first, the overall is 81% confidence in the state of Utah in fair and accurate elections; 14% were not confident.

5% don't know.

But here's what's interesting to me, is the Republican Democratic breakdown.

Of those Republicans were at 87% in confidence.

Democrats were only at 70%.

Leah: Right, it's very interesting, and I'll use a sports metaphor.

You know, when your team loses, you often blame the refs, right?

So, the answer is not that my team lost, it's that there was a bad call in the game.

It's interesting, what I love about that data, Jason, is if we go back, Republicans in the last time we were polling, they were the ones who didn't have confidence and Democrats had confidence, and the answer quite simply just is who won the election in November.

So, I think it's more about, right, like where you sit determines how you look at something.

Jason Perry: Talk about it for a second.

I'll give you the numbers.

So, Leah is exactly right.

So, in 2020 Republicans were 60% to this question.

Now they're at 87%.

The Democrats in 2022 were 91%, and now they're at 70%.

So, is it just because of who wins?

Greg: The voting process is not easily understood, right?

I mean, once you hand your ballot and people don't know what happens, especially with electronic voting machines that we had used to have and pretty well phased out.

So, you know, there's room for conspiracy theories and Rudolph--Rudy Giuliani and you know Mike the pillow guy.

So, people being frustrated that the Trump suddenly lost look behind that and there was just a lot of noise.

So, I think it's just confusion on the public's part.

I'm glad for this audit.

I mean, yeah, there were, I think, two people who voted illegally and mailed by vote, I mean.

That's a great margin of error.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Frank.

Frank: Well, I was gonna say in 2017, a year after President Trump was elected, half the Democrats in the country thought the election was stolen.

So, this happens all the time and what it is is basically what you said is that if your team loses, I mean you're not gonna--Americans don't concede well.

And we--in fact there's a lot of people who still won't concede the Utah BYU game, the results of that, we just don't do it.

Greg: Anybody here?

Leah: At this table.

Frank: I've got my opinion, but what the poll does show is that in Utah we do some things really well.

We do fry sauce well, high calorie cookies, and voting by ballot in the mail.

Jason Perry: It makes me go--go ahead, Leah, you're gonna dispute any of those?

Leah: No, I agree completely, yes.

Jason Perry: Yes, so, Lieutenant Governor, in our last 60 seconds or so, the confidence in vote-by-mail is high in the state of Utah, 84% confidence in this, but we still have conversations about whether or not our legislature may want to adjust some of the parameters and use of vote-by-mail.

Your thought as an elected official on vote-by-mail?

Greg: Well, I've never understood the resistance to showing ID, at least initially, right?

I mean, I don't understand why people resist when registering that you have to present ID, but vote-by-mail works great.

I think you're gonna have a lot.

My wife with pitchforks and all of her friends will be at the Capitol if you try to take it away.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Leah.

What do you see happening?

Leah: I mean, I think most of our citizens vote-by-mail because it is easy, right?

So, instead of you get your ballot, it's a family activity at the kitchen table.

You can have a conversation with your family, show your children how you're voting.

I mean, I love--.

Greg: 90% of registered voters.

Leah: Right, and so, I think there's--I don't understand the question.

I agree with you.

I don't understand the question.

Jason Perry: Okay, we'll be watching this one closely.

We know some bill files are being actively discussed.

Thank you so much for your great insights this evening.

We'll watch this government shut down very closely throughout the day.

Thank you very much and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

The show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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