<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking about politics on a like a whirlwind week?

Day?

Hour.

It's insanity.

We are trying our best to keep up.

There's just a lot.

We're going to try to give you a kind of 10,000ft view and talk about some of the context that matters here, but there's just a lot.

So we're going to do our best to kind of cover everything national and Texas.

First up obviously is like trade wars.

It's like a Star Wars prequel.

It's just all about trade, right?

But the politics of it are really interesting, right?

So obviously people have following this.

But just to kind of quick update, Donald Trump has pushed emergency sanctions to justify punishing, imports of Canadian goods and Mexican goods.

He cut a deal to basically pause that for a little bit.

We'll talk about in a second.

But the 10% tariffs on Chinese imports does hold.

What does this mean for kind of the economy.

Was it mean for the politics of Donald Trump?

Let's get into.

It.

Well, one first thing is that markets and investors, they don't like uncertainty.

Oh yeah.

The markets were a little rumbling right.

Oh yeah they were.

And they hate that.

Right.

And also in the in the future when big companies are going to make investments, they tend to be very hesitant to say, like, okay, if I'm going to do X. Yeah.

Is the deal going to hold okay.

Or they're going to change in 30 minutes after I invest.

So they are very right.

And that has important implications.

You make a great point.

Things happen fast right.

Yes.

Like they you know sort of it's been a long time coming right.

Because Trump ran on this.

It's not like a surprise but like there's a threat.

Then they negotiate the threat away.

Correct.

And in the meantime there's this kind of yeah market churn.

So these can work and apparently might be work in.

Yeah.

Oh I'm sorry for President Trump, but you cannot use the same playbook over and over.

We're in week three.

Yeah.

So it's becoming a point.

That is next time you're not going to use it.

Yeah.

Because people are finding out that this may be a bluff.

This is just the way.

Yeah.

For the Trump administration to extract something from.

Yeah I mean from Mexico.

Yes.

10,000 troops going to the US-Mexico border to control fentanyl and perhaps, undocumented crossings, Canada as well.

But there's going to be a point where countries are going to say enough of these bluff, like, I think we're going to call your bluff.

I think we're there, though, right?

I mean, Trump is using tariffs as a sort of all purpose solution to economic problems, political problems, so that it was only going to go so far before the country start to say like, well, wait a minute, we can give you a little something and then have it basically go away.

And that's kind of what happened, right?

I mean, depends on how you spin this, right?

The White House is saying, okay, these companies, these countries basically cave, right, made the threat for the tariffs and the countries came through with additional borders, security, some money for, you know, for, for border protection.

But that was something that was already promised.

Right.

So like in particular for the case of Canada, right.

They're implementing a border plan that they already agreed to implement.

Mexico is going to offer 10,000 or 10,000 troops to the border.

But this they already agreed to Joe Biden's, demands basically by April '21.

So it's sort of working, but maybe these leaders are figuring out that they can bluff a little bit, kind of offer you a little bit of a trinket, and it's going to work.

I guess that's the question is like, what's the reality here?

Right.

What is really happening for the Trump White House?

Is this a win for them or not?

I mean, it is kind of a win because it's wagged a dog's tail.

Yeah, I remember that movie I love that I need is just pretending.

Yeah.

That something that you did is actually working as you said, they have already committed.

On the one hand, the Trump administration, in terms of immigration policy, is not doing anything, radically different than what the Biden administration is.

When you look at the numbers that Biden deported, those are one of the highest numbers of any president in modern history.

Yeah.

So he deported a lot of people, right?

Right.

So again, it's how you depict it.

Right.

And the important thing is to give, I guess, win public opinion battle.

Yeah.

And send a signal to your base that, hey, I'm doing what you voted for.

It could be that this takes a little while to settle in because the China battle is still ongoing.

Oh, yeah.

There are some Republicans who think that Donald Trump is not hard enough on China.

So this will basically test their mettle.

But the Chinese government came back with tariffs of 10 to 15% on U.S imports of natural gas, coal, crude oil, farm equipment.

Beijing is also opening up an antitrust suit against Google.

So there will be a kind of dribble effect here where there could be some implications.

And I guess my question is in addition to sort of the politics of all this in terms of public opinion is like, Will the Republicans hold the line when things get really tight?

The gap here, the delay for implementing tariffs on Mexico and Canada, if they ever come, is it gives John Thune, the majority leader in a Republican time, to put a bill together to protect farm states from some of the problems that might come as a result of these tariffs.

So the little bit of a cushion here is probably good for them.

But how long will Republicans hold out?

The other question is like whether the Democrats are able to kind of rally around this moment.

Where are.

They?

The oh, sorry, the opposition party, the blue team, they have a like donkey like that.

They're completely absent.

Right?

That's a great point.

I actually I want to make this exact point with respect to Texas in the state of the state, but I think that they're waiting and trying to bide their time because they don't know what's going to happen.

Right?

The kind of constant chaos of it isn't really good for the economy, as you say.

And they're trying to basically put this on Donald Trump.

But I think they're kind of almost begging him to do this because they know the implications could be really severe and grave for the economy.

So they're like asking him to do this, which is odd, because here we have basically like sort of politicians saying that they would like something to happen that is knowingly going to be bad for the economy, but it's going to hurt their political opponent.

That's the height of affective polarization.

So, okay.

I do think that that kind of slight pushback is probably relevant, but at the same time, yeah, they've not been is vocal is perhaps they could have been on this.

Why.

Well, I don't know.

And I think we're seeing the same repeat of the campaign.

Yeah.

Donald Trump is speaking and his administration is speaking in very clear terms.

Right.

It's saying, these agency is corrupt.

Yeah.

Period.

Yeah.

Who doesn't understand that?

Yeah.

There's no one in this world that does not understand that.

And then on the other hand, you listen to Democrat leaders and it's this is Anti-constitutional this is a constitutional crisis.

This is, a fight against the fall down of democracy and the principles of the Federalist paper.

I think it's okay.

Like, sure.

The Federalist.

What?

Yeah.

I mean, people do not understand that because we have never had a constitutional crisis.

If you were talking to Mexico, you were talking in all the countries.

Yeah.

Even in, in, in France, people understand the consequences of meddling down and having a constitutional crisis right here.

We haven't had one in hundreds of years.

Right.

Like the reign of Terror.

Exactly.

So people it's it's like whatever.

They're not used to that type of language.

And it's once again, 10,000ft above everybody's heads.

And it's like.

Well, no, makes sense.

Like but the third story of this event is always like, what's the rules on this?

Right?

The first story is always like, what's the reaction?

And then what's the impact politically?

And then it's like, well, what's the rules here?

And that to me is the most interesting story because there are fail safes and a lot of these things.

So for instance, the president is using a particular act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to basically justify this.

That act requires a number of things.

First is that there's a strong connection between what the emergency is and then what the solution is.

And the question for Congress, and really, maybe the courts will be whether or not the president's, outcome here, whether the tariff implementation is connected strongly to the fentanyl crisis or to the kind of undocumented border crossing crisis, it's not clear that it is.

But that's what presidents have to do.

And I think the real crisis here that Democrats could point out is that, like Congress already has the law in place.

The law is very clear.

I spent a lot of time writing about rules and trade rules in particular.

And one of the things you find is that basically these laws are all like they have failsafe.

They have kind of cutouts so that, like, Congress can come back and say, well, look, we don't think the emergency exists the way that you do.

So we're going to go ahead and limit that.

It requires very little or all it requires them to do is to sort of basically have a joint resolution of both houses.

But, Oh, but wait, what do you mean.

President Trump has control.

Yeah.

Over Congress.

And control is the key word.

Yes.

Control over Congress.

If a institutional member of Congress, whether it's in the House on the Senate says like I think professor Rottinghaus is right.

And yes, I read that I get those emails.

All right.

Of course.

Just yeah I know.

It's really embarrassing.

I think we should have a joint resolution.

What's going to happen.

Right.

If you go against my will you will be primary out there going to be consequences.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe like quite.

Yeah I know it's a great point, but that one minute a minute says that in context, like this is only a crisis inasmuch as people are kind of willing to execute and the Congress has to step up here.

You made a kind of reference to another issue that happened this week, and that's the USAID, which is the agency that does national development.

They basically got shuttered.

People showed up for work, and the people the door were like, sorry, you know, we're closed.

And they're like, wait a minute, we work here.

That is a problem in the sense that there's this legacy here where Elon Musk and the like, Department of Energy.

And if you're listening to this and not watching, and I'm putting air quotes around Department of Energy because there's no formal process through which they can do this.

So that is a different kind of crisis, a real kind of crisis, where it is the case that the President and Congress have to work together to solve what legislatively they want to do with USAID.

Instead of just sort of saying, well, don't come to work anymore tomorrow, right?

That's not a solution to this.

The other connection here is that there are a lot of people who are worried about Elon Musk.

Now, obviously, he's been in the news very vocal about things.

Treasury seem to have given him access to some confidential information, which is potentially problematic.

But you do see Democrats on that pushing back.

Right.

The trade issues.

One thing because that may or may not happen, right?

It may not come about the way they think.

Right.

But this is a different kind of problem where, number one, they may have violated laws, that is that the like laws on cybersecurity Privacy Act laws.

Yeah.

But the optics of having Elon Musk and like these, you know, technocrats like these like, you know, 20 year olds who are basically.

Just graduated high school, some of them.

Right.

Which I don't discount their skills for sure.

That's great.

But the worry is that then that's what Democrats are using.

So I guess my question to you is this after a long prelude and that's, you know, how is it that Democrats are adequately affecting the kind of change here?

Are they is USAID going to be an issue they can win on?

Is the constitutional separation of power story something they can win on?

Are they adequately putting Elon Musk at the corner of this and saying, that's a huge problem politically for Donald Trump?

No, no and no.

Good.

Him because it like I think the answer for.

Sure the constitutional question is going to be resolved at the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

And we know that they're going to be playing a huge role.

There is a number of, case law from the 1930s that prohibits the president to do what he's attempting to do.

But we know since the campaign that this was the strategy.

Yeah.

The Trump administration wants to get to the court because the final price and you said it last week, is these unitary executive doctrine, right.

How much power can the president have based on article two of the Constitution?

That's that's the end game.

Yeah.

So what they're doing is they're doing these potentially illegal maneuvering, USAID, this and that.

Yeah, you're low hanging fruit.

USAID doesn't have like huge implications for domestic public.

1% of the federal budget or.

Something.

Nothing.

Right.

So but it is a very good test case to go to the Supreme Court.

The big question here is what we have in July, the Supreme Court ruling that, yes, when you're president, you cannot be like, basically you can do whatever you want to do and there's not going to be any legal recourse.

As long as it's within the confines of your, like, your job, right.

Whatever that means.

Right?

But sure, it's good enough.

So the next step is to see if how far the Supreme Court is willing to go.

Yeah.

Because this is complete obliteration of separation of powers and of lead obliteration of Congress and saying Congress's X. Yeah, I'm the president.

And I say, why?

And I don't care.

What do you.

Say?

Yeah, this is not like drilling a hole in the wall.

This is like Kool-Aid man style busting for destroying this.

Yeah.

And I don't know that the courts are willing to go that far.

And now how far they're willing to go.

We'll see.

That's a different matter.

Yeah, that will no doubt take off in the future.

But for sure, it's the case that this is going to be an issue that they're going to have to resolve.

So as it is now, they're still kind of churning through all these things.

And we are too.

Right.

And I think part of what we've seen the last few weeks is that this the rapidity of information, the kind of frequency of it is really causing havoc with the system.

And I think, you know, you're right to criticize Democrats for saying, like, we don't know what to do here.

We don't know what kind of avenue to pick.

But it's hard because there are so many different things that are happening.

So I think that's a real crisis that Democrats are facing as a kind of political entity.

Correct.

And I'll give you these and I'll keep these to the Democrats.

Is, inaction is also a form of, oh, yeah, of political or public policy retaliation for so inaction may be, as you say.

Yeah.

You know, like, excuse me.

Like you're going down to the precipice, like you're five feet away from falling down and is like, all right.

Or what they did is they put up a warning sign, like a few years ago, caution, Cliff.

And they're like, we're not going to listen to you.

So you want to go off the cliff that's on you.

Yeah.

And that's why, I mean, is earlier the Democrats are basically almost like asking Trump to do this because they know it's going to backfire.

Maybe that has implications though economically for everybody, not just oh yeah, kind of Trump supporters.

So I hate that we're at the point now where we have this sort of affective polarization.

We just hate each other so much that like, we can't kind of try to come to some resolution here.

But the way that this is shaping out is definitely going to be pretty hectic.

Yeah.

At least for a little while longer.

And I don't know how much longer.

I mean, I think also people at home are thinking is like, you know, how long are we expected to sort of have this information overload?

And my guess is it'll slow down, like after the first hundred days.

I think that, you know, one of the real rush here, the president wants to make a big splash at this sort of state of the union in quotes.

That is going to happen in March.

So perhaps at that point we'll see things kind of settle down.

But, and the nominees will be in place, but that's still going to be an issue.

So we'll monitor that.

But let's talk about some things that are also very much in the news.

And that's about the Texas House and Senate budget along with Governor Abbott's budget.

We're going to package that with vouchers.

And then the governor state of the state.

So it's like a big juicy sandwich.

Homer Simpson, we're very pleased.

Basically, the House and Senate budgets are pretty big.

Both of them are north of 300 billion with you include federal funds.

330, 320, in that category.

What's interesting to me is that they're not really spending all the money that they can spend.

And one of the things Governor Abbott mentioned at the state of the state was, I don't want to spend all this money, right?

I want to keep us under this concessional caps, which they have to by law.

So why even say it?

But it sounds really good and I think they will do that.

But there are a lot of booming needs here, and a lot of pieces of this budget.

So what's going on in the budget?

What are some things that you kind of were picking up on?

I mean, obviously we have school vouchers about right now, SB two, Senate bill number two that it talks about vouchers the House hasn't come up with so far.

It's about $1 billion, right.

And it's a cap in terms of the number of students.

But once again, is the question about how that money's going to be distributed, right?

And what happens if suddenly, the millions of kids decides to take that right, that the price tag of that thing could go to billions and billions of dollars, $50 billion, right?

A year.

So that's a lot of money.

It's a.

Lot of money.

A lot of.

Money.

And it's possibly more money than the state has, which is even worse.

Absolutely.

So how that bill is going to turn out at the end, who knows?

It has to go to the house.

Yeah.

It's going to be something.

I don't know what's going to happen.

The Senate, like, has violated a cardinal rule of negotiation, which is don't make the first move.

Right.

And so they made the first move.

And I won't talk about vouchers in a second for sure, because that's like a policy issue that's going to be expensive, but also really politically fraught.

So that's definitely one piece of this.

Governor Abbott's also asking for a lot of stuff in his budget, much of which probably will get passed.

He wants to raise the cap on personal property exemption for small businesses.

So if you're like a dentist and you have like, you know, kind of my do you have like property that kind of belongs to the business.

He's going to increase that cap.

That's going to be possibly pricey.

He wants to increase special ed.

He wants increased teacher pay, school safety, career technical ed, $5 billion for the grid.

It's a lot of money here.

Is the state writing too big a check?

Is this going to bounce?

What?

I mean, eventually, yeah, I think I mean, the way that I see it is, everybody's for increasing teacher space.

Yeah, 1000 school.

Sounds really good.

Right?

But there's other stuff that I think, like, I don't know if we should be spending on these things.

For example, border security.

Right.

About $6.5 billion is going to be destined to border security, wall, etc., etc.. Yeah.

Well, we don't know how effective Operation Lone Star State had been.

In reality, yeah.

We had we the operation already you're seeing.

Yeah.

The biggest immigration crisis during the Biden administration.

And he's like, is it working?

It's not working.

And we have put a lot of money.

Yeah, it's a great question.

A lot of money, billions of dollars into that.

And those billions of dollars could have gone somewhere else.

So the way that I think about spending is what is the opportunity cost that we are leaving behind.

Right.

Yeah.

So if I spent $100 on this thing, what could I have done differently and spend those hundred dollars on something else?

Yeah.

And for me, the something else has to do with the grid.

And has to do with water infrastructure.

Yes.

Water infrastructure is there, there's going to be that's on the water reserve.

Fund or something like that.

But in my mind we are five minutes to the fourth quarter right.

Yeah.

And now we start.

Oh we're going to spend $1 billion in water infrastructure.

Yeah.

It's like, oh five minutes into the fourth quarter.

You have to well timeout.

I don't think that $1 billion is going to be enough.

And in ten years we're going to spend what we have spent already in one session on border security, on water infrastructure.

Yeah, that we are very, very, very, very, very, very, very behind.

Yeah.

Well in your scenario.

Yeah.

Are you winning or losing the game.

Right.

Because if you're losing the game, the strategy is different than if you're winning.

No no no no no we're losing the game in terms of infrastructure 100%.

Yeah yeah I think that's right.

And that's the question is like kind of where you prioritize that money.

Now Governor Abbott has asked for this money back from the federal government.

Basically, he says, here's a bill for $11 billion.

How can we have our money back?

I don't think they're going to get that money or even a fraction of it.

But I do think that that underscores the reality of this, that Texas has spent a lot of money on this, and they we need the money.

Right.

And part of the reason we need the money is that there's a kind of structural imbalance here, potentially.

Right.

So I'm talking about vouchers in a second, but it potentially kind of leaves this lingering kind of money that has to be paid every week.

Right.

It's like you have a subscription to this thing.

You have to pay it every week.

Whether your income goes up or down, the problem is, for the comptroller, they implied that there are some serious flattening of the Texas economy.

So just a couple of numbers here.

The all funds revenue was about, $180 billion.

It was down 3%.

Sales tax have gone down, by a little bit.

Sort of and then there kind of overall tax collections is basically flat.

The controller's report says that overall that the state's economy is basically okay, but flat.

And the question is, you know, how that's going to play into this idea that they need to have this additional revenue kind of constantly re upping the kind of budget, coffers so that they can pay for this.

Now, the rainy day funds are really flush.

It's as high as it's ever been.

It's too high, in fact.

Right.

The cap is there.

And so they're going to have to spend that money potentially on something.

And so water is definitely a big ticket item.

But they're also pushing vouchers.

Right.

And so obviously Greg Abbott's push a lot of money into the voucher story.

But the voucher story is really compelling.

It is a kind of major political narrative that's going to shape this session.

Governor Abbott talks about this in the state of the state.

He has a bunch of things we'll talk about in a second.

But vouchers is basically the whole deal.

The state Senate plan, like you said, has $10,000 per person.

It's got 1105, 11,500 for students with disabilities, $2,000 for people who are homeschooling and $1 billion cap.

The House and Senate have the same kind of cap.

Correct.

That's a lot of money.

But there's more.

The fiscal note says that the increase could end up being about $4 billion in the next biennium, which is a lot bigger than what they have already budgeted for.

Absolutely.

And that number is no doubt going to get bigger now.

People look at Arizona and they say they budgeted to be kind of this certain number, the certain amount of money, but the problem is that it ended up exceeding that greatly.

So now a place like Arizona that needs water infrastructure the same way Texas does, is having to take money from the water infrastructure program to put into public schools.

That's not where Texas wants to be.

So it's a conundrum, right?

For Republicans to Republicans.

Also look at the fiscal note that says that you've got to have an extra 400 or 500 people to implement this.

And they say that's not small government, right.

So lots of questions here about what vouchers are going to end up doing.

And like, will the specific bill pass.

I don't know.

And then is it going to be the same thing as property tax.

Yes.

Nobody likes to pay taxes.

I understand that homeowners need absolutely.

There's things that need to be done in terms of local government, tax rates.

But it's all about you cannot see them independently.

It's about everything all together.

I mean, it's all together in terms of, local governments, autonomy, local governments, in order to make, you know, informed decisions, etcetera, that have been curtailed by the state legislature.

Yeah.

So having that then having vouchers, etc., etc.

is if you want to send your kid home, which private institution.

Yeah.

Is 10,000 bucks.

Yeah.

You're still going to have to kick in extra money.

Absolutely.

And that gets expensive for families now.

Yeah.

But then that is how the target population that is going to use this money.

Right.

Yeah.

May not necessarily be.

Yeah.

Equal or across the entire population.

Yeah.

Now the Senate bill has 20% set aside of this money for people who currently in private schools.

And those are people who are already right.

They probably have the money less than 80% of set aside for people who are in public schools who want to move to a private school, those are the people who have to come up with the extra money because $10,000 may not go the whole way.

That could be an issue.

That that could be fixed.

Right.

And the Senate, of course, has its bill and their priorities, but that could that could change.

But this is basically a huge check that they've written that may not have like the money to back it up at least in five years.

Right now initially it is because the states flush happily.

But that may not last forever.

So that economic growth could be potentially problematic.

And we will see.

The other thing is I want to make note is that the comptroller is in charge of watching this money.

Do they have the capacity to do that?

We don't know.

And this includes things like whether or not like your home school kids are using the right materials, and that materials justifiably written off in this bill from this money.

And that's unclear that the comptroller has that capacity right now.

So again, expanding government is going to be part of this.

And some Republicans are balking.

But speaking of Republicans and, joyous accolades for Governor Greg Abbott, he had a huge list of things he.

Oh, yeah.

So do now the governor over the last few years has gotten more or less what he wants, rising from, say, mid 80s to about 90% of the time, he's getting what he wants, but he's shrunk his agenda.

So he's basically kind of aimed small Miss Small.

But this is a big agenda.

What struck you in the state of the state that was interesting that you weren't expecting?

Well, I mean, in reality, nothing struck me that I said, well, this is completely different from what I like, what I like, what the, you know, Senate and the House one, I think there's just different adjustment and different perspectives.

But I think that in terms of public policy issues, they're pretty much aligned once again, border control or immigration control or infrastructure degreed.

We have, issues about school vouchers or essay, education, health savings account, increasing, teachers pay.

Yeah.

Nothing really that I said.

Well, the only thing that was interesting to see was, the creation of a cyber command in San Antonio that I thought that that that that could I mean, that's very neat.

And then the the, revamp of nuclear energy production, which is also a very interesting way of things, because nuclear energy, in terms of, of of how it's evolving, has evolved a lot today.

So that's something interesting to watch.

It's an achievable agenda, but a familiar agenda.

Lots of greatest hits here.

He'll get a lot of this, but not all of it.

So we'll see.

And we're going to keep track of these and many other items in the following week.

But be sure to follow us on our digital updates midweek.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

I'm Brandon Rottinghaus party keeps up next week.

<Music>