'Special Report' All-Star Panel on Democrats' 'dangerous' spending bill

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Democrats push ‘reckless’ and ‘dangerous’ spending bill

‘Special Report’ All-Star Panel break down the left’s agenda to pass massive bill.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," September 27, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, (R-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: It only takes four Democrats to say no to stop this. And remember what this is. This weekend we learned in the budget committee it wasn't $3.5 trillion. It was $4.3 trillion. They will continue to spend more. If you add that with the infrastructure bill, you are talking more than $5 trillion, more money than we spent in winning World War II.

And what has it caused? Inflation. That's why you find there are some Democrats who said they cannot go along with this.

NANCY PELOSI, (D-CA) HOUSE SPEAKER: This is the vision of the president. This isn't about moderates versus progressives. Overwhelmingly, the entirety of our caucus except for a few whose judgment I respect support the vision of Joe Biden. We're going to pass the bill this week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: It's a heavy lift, but Speaker Pelosi has done it before. You hear the Speaker and the House Minority Leader. Here is now "The New York Times" writes about all of this. "For newly two decades lawmakers in Washington have waged an escalating display of brinksmanship over the federal government's ability to borrow money to pay its bills. The dance is repeating this fall, but this time the dynamics are different, and the threat of default is greater than ever. It all adds up to impasse rooted in political messaging, midterm campaign advertising, and the desire by Republican leaders to do whatever they can to protest Mr. Biden's economic agenda, including the $3.5 trillion spending bill that Democrats hope to pass along party lines using a fast-track budget process."

Let's bring in our panel, FOX News senior political analyst Brit Hume, Harold Ford Jr., former Tennessee Congressman, CEO of Empowerment and Inclusion Capital, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Guy Benson, political editor at Townhall.com, host of "The Guy Benson Show" on FOX Radio.

Brit, to hear Democrats over the weekend, and the president himself on Friday, say that this will cost zero, that kept on come up like it was a talking point. What about that?

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It's ridiculous. And they keep saying this. And I suppose what they're trying to say is because it's paid for it didn't cost -- it doesn't cost anything, which is preposterous on its face. It's like saying my kids' education, college education didn't cost anything because I was able to raise the money to pay for it. It's ridiculous on its face, but it does show you that there is at least some resistance, obviously among Democrats, to this level of new spending on top of the reckless spending that went on all through the Obama and Trump years as well. So people are balking at this.

But remember, Bret, the price tag is, you know, $3.5 trillion on paper but it would be upwards of $4 trillion by the time all is said and done. Let's assume that they have to compromise on that and cut in half. That's still $2 trillion more in social spending on top of everything else. So, even if these Democrats resist, the country on this isn't out of the woods yet by any means.

BAIER: Harold, Speaker Pelosi has juggled a lot of things before and managed to herd the cats around big pieces of legislation. She can only lose three this time around because the margin is so small in the House, her majority. We are not even talking about the Senate yet. But it's tight.

HAROLD FORD JR., FORMER TENNESSEE REPRESENTATIVE: Very much so. Thanks again for having me on. I think when we think about this, I think the Democrats find themselves in a little bit of a bind because they've got to talking about process and things that don't really resonate with the American people. I think Brit's analysis of this and how he articulated it is an argument that on its face will win.

I do think you have to give President Biden some credit, although you may not like the way he is paying for it, at least is. When I was in Congress, we passed expansion to the Medicare bill under President Bush called Part D. We didn't pay for it. We did the right thing after 9/11 and invested $4 trillion in our military, trying to fight and prosecute the war on terrorism. It was the right thing to do. In 07 and 08 during the housing crisis, we spent trillions to stabilize the economy, and obviously in the last two years we have done the same during the pandemic.

One of the things we should do with all of these pieces of legislation going forward is to insert language in there saying you cannot allow the country to almost default. Always raise the debt ceiling to do these things. Where Democrats have to do better if this thing is going to pass is to lay out how this will America better. Lincoln did it with the transcontinental railroad. Eisenhower did it with the interstate national highway, and Reagan did with excessive defense that made us safer, defeated communism, and gave us the Internet.

Thus far Democrats have not done a good enough job at explaining this. If they do it, they will succeed. Not at $3.5 trillion but probably, maybe half of that.

BAIER: Mollie, people forget we are only two presidential cycles away from candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan campaigning in front of a giant debt clock. The thought about the national debt, a concern about it from both parties, has changed dramatically, and people glaze over when they hear trillions of dollars. But this eventually is real money.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Yes. Neither party has covered itself in glory when it comes to this issue, with Republicans giving pretense to caring about it but then not actually governing as if they care about it.

Contrary to what Harold says, though, I don't think you have to give Biden credit for this on two counts. One, this is just an insane amount of money that we are talking about. Back at that time when we were referencing a few years ago, we had the troubled asset relief program. That was $700 billion. People were horrified by how much money that was. This is at best five times more than that. And it's not $3.5 trillion as was referenced earlier. Independent budget estimates say that it might be as much as $5 trillion or $5.5 trillion, more than our budget was just a couple years ago.

I think that the Democrats probably have a good chance of getting this through, but it completely gives lie to the entire Biden administration's pledge that they would be moderate and that they would be centrist and that they would unite the country. Forcing this through, and they'll probably be able to force it through in such divisive manner and to cause so much long- term damage to the country, that's not what a uniter does. That's not what a centrist does.

BAIER: Guy, do you think that there will be pay back if this does cruise through along party lines for some of these House members who vote for it on the Democratic side, much like the Obamacare backlash that we saw after it passed?

GUY BENSON, POLITICAL EDITOR, TOWNHALL.COM: Yes. We have already seen the NRCC, the Republican campaign arm, running ads preemptively against one or two vulnerable Democrats. One I saw in Iowa, for example, on this very issue, before any votes are cast.

I find it, frankly, incoherent. Brit, of course, is right to say that it is completely insane to argue that this costs zero dollars, which is the talking point that sprung up on Friday and now it's everywhere. Some people in the press have even swallowed it, which is what they often do with Democratic talking points.

But they are also claiming that this is a completely historic investment. We're making history here with all these trillions. But the price tag is really zero if you think about it this way, but only in the context of deficits. I think that is very hard for most people to take seriously, as it should be. It's nuts.

And even on the point of whether this is paid for or not, on paper thus far, they are not even close to $3.5 trillion when it comes to raising taxes. The president said it will only be rich people, only be corporations, although they're going to raise the business tax they're proposing is higher than China's. A separated issue, but I think that's an area of concern.

But they're also looking to add pay-fors that would hit the middle and working class, like tobacco and vaping taxes, like a carbon tax is being discussed. The math doesn't work. And so it seems like they are just redefining math and saying never mind, it's a huge investment that costs zero. Come on.

BAIER: It is redefining, Brit. It is, if it passes, transformational as far as the way the country looks at different things. But inside, as in every massive bill, there are interesting things -- $3 billion for tree planting, $4 billion to fund distance learning, $12 billion to equip the federal government and the post office with electric cars even though we are not sure how all of them are going to get charged around the country, and $300 million for more frequent federal government environmental reviews, and we are not even sure what that means. So, there is thousands and thousands of pages here.

HUME: Proof, if anyone needed, that what this is all time, all Democrats' wish list of spending. And they live to spend. Sometimes I think they spend for the sake of spending, or would like to. And this, those items you just ticked off, Bret, are a sign of how reckless and far out some of this is, and how wasteful at a time when we have spent ourselves into a very deep hole thanks, as everyone has pointed out, to the profligacy of both parties. But this is no time to be piling on to that. It's dangerous.

BAIER: All right, panel. Stand by, if you would. Up next the border crisis and what the administration is saying about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Of the 17,400 that weren't deported back or didn't return on their own back to Mexico, how many of them either -- first, how many have been released into the U.S.?

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: They are released on conditions.

WALLACE: Yes.

MAYORKAS: Approximately, I think it's about 10,000 or so, 12,000.

WALLACE: So are we talking about a total of 12,000, or could it be even higher?

MAYORKAS It could -- it could be even higher. The number that are returned could be even higher.

REP. TONY GONZALES, (R-TX): These numbers don't surprise me at all. As long as folks are coming in and getting released and given court dates years on end, this will continue to spiral.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT, (R) TEXAS: They have created a magnet. They have sent a message and signal to the entire world that they're not going to secure the border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Border crisis continues. We are back with the panel. Guy, 10,000, 12,000, higher. We couldn't get the number for a number of days. Now after the Department of Homeland Security secretary said it, he said that's an acceptable number.

BENSON: Yes, after saying last week, warning illegal immigrants don't come, it won't work. You won't be allowed to stay. Well, actually 12,000 of you from this one area alone can stay. And I thought it was interesting, Chris Wallace followed up by saying, well, you are releasing these thousands of people into the country, and then you are relying on them to show for a court date. Many of them, almost half of them based on DOJ numbers, do not. What about that? And Mayorkas said, well, you have got trust the system -- I'm paraphrasing -- trust the system, there are protocols in place. And then Wallace followed up, but there are 11 million plus illegal immigrants a lot of whom didn't follow the system. And then Mayorkas said, well, of course, the system is broken. So it's trust the system that of course is broken, more incoherence, this time on a different front from the Biden administration.

BAIER: Harold, barring congressional action here, it seems like we are going to be going around in this circle a lot.

FORD: That's because we are. Look, Secretary Mayorkas is nice. He seems smart and he's definitely decent. But he is not the man you want managing a crisis. And we have a crisis at our border. I think at some point when you are in the middle of a crisis, political parties, it's incumbent upon them to sit back and say let's figure out what we are for, what each party is for. And then let's figure out what we're against and figure out how we negotiate.

Democrats, give them the wall. Get more money for the asylum courts, immigration courts at the border so we can speed up these processes. There is no reason for people to be waiting for years for answer to this.

Republicans, accept a plan to invest in the hemisphere. This is our hemisphere. It's unstable. There is corruption all across it. There is poverty all across it. That's why these people are coming.

And finally, if you don't do this, for Democrats who want to path citizenship, I as a Democrat would not vote for path to citizenship if we don't get control of the border. This is what the president and Democrats in Congress are going to have to do, and Republicans are going to have to stop using it as an issue. Democrats use it two years, Republicans use it two years, every two years. Let's try to get an answer to this problem.

BAIER: Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: Well, part of the problem fort Biden administration is that everybody can look and see what a disaster it is on the border, and they pretend like there are no answers for what ails us there, except that we actually did have policies that were working pretty well in the previous administration. Part of that was about having increased fencing or a border wall. A lot of it was about changing policies and working with other countries so that people could wait while they applied for immigration status in other countries.

The Biden administration took all of those things, went out of their way to tear them down, and now they're acting like it's a mystery why we are having this crisis. They changed the policies. They changed these issues. And so people now know that there are things you can do, and that the Biden administration is going out of its way to choose not to do them.

BAIER: And Brit, for days, the focus has been on this image about the horseback riding Border Patrol agents where the photographer said he never even saw anybody get hit by the long reins, let alone what's happening here with the president making the decision.

HUME: Well, that was a way for the Biden administration to show that it has compassion and concern for the people who are crossing into this country illegally.

Look, let's get down to the boot line here, which is simply this. The only reason the Biden administration regards this as a crisis down there with this huge crowd Haitian migrants legally crossing and being stuck down there under that bridge is it looks terrible. They're suffering. It looks terrible. It looks lawless. It looks messy. That's the crisis, as far as they are concerned.

What is not the crisis, obviously, is 12,000 illegal aliens released into this country as Mayorkas admitted over the weekend. Believe me, Bret, the administration wants these people here. They think they will be voters for them. They do care about them, so that's one reason why they want them here. But that's what this is about. They want these illegal immigrants. They are now referring to them as irregular migrants. They are using a euphemism for that even.

BAIER: Yes. And they'll have to deal with other batches that are making their way, as we saw from Griff Jenkins, through Mexico to the border again.

OK, panel, when we come back, tomorrow's headlines.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel. Harold, first to you.

HAROLD FORD JR., FORMER TENNESSEE REPRESENTATIVE: America's historic Ryder Cup victory shows what can happen when a team with a whole lot of talent decides to play together. They can win. Congrats, boys. Well done.

BAIER: Yes, congratulations. Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: Yes, Liz Cheney currently serving as Nancy Pelosi's handmaiden in Congress just received the endorsement of Occupy Democrats in her congressional bid.

BAIER: All right, that's a headline somewhere. Guy?

BENSON: My headline is Milley and Austin on the hotseat on Capitol Hill, of course, this is tomorrow, over the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco. And I would add every tough question that they will get they deserve to get.

BAIER: We will have that all day tomorrow, that testimony by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the defense secretary. It should be interesting. Brit, wrap us up.

HUME: The Biden administration announces that under its new accounting system all government spending that is financed by tax revenues will be on the book -- recorded on the books as having cost zero.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: Zero. There you go. All right, panel, thank you so much.

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