You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty Handle Morning Crew on a Foody Friday, March fourteenth, Pie Day three fourteen, of course coming up at I love Fridays because especially the last hour because we have Foody Friday, which means Neil and I get into it with food, which we do all the time anyway. And then at eight thirty it is to ask handle anything we end the show with embarrassing me.
Okay.
Now, one of the big stories that we are covering, and it affects every one of us, and that is the government shutdown maybe and unless there is what's called a stop gap bill to keep the government running because Congress has to vote itself. The ability now it is to borrow money because the income of the government is far far less than the expenditure by the two trillion dollars a year insane deficit anyway, so your usually there is a stop gap bill when you're about to shut down.
The government's about to shut down, and it turns out that Republicans and Democrats can't agree. So here's what the Republicans did. They want a bill that extends to September, allowing all the negotiations to go in for the fiscal year, which means you're halfway.
We're halfway through this now it's a kind of October November.
Yeah, three months into the fiscal year before there is a budget agreement. And usually what they do is they cut a deal which continues the government with no changes. You know, while we're figuring this that we'll leave the government alone. All right, We'll leave the budget alone and then.
We'll figure this out. Republican are saying no. Now they have introduced the bill.
Their bill is we'll have the stop gap bill, but here's what we want in it. And this is where the Democrats are going completely crazy. What it is is it takes away a lot of governmental programs, education programs, programs to various disability issues. I mean, it just goes on and on, substance abuse treatment, international peacekeeping, the DC budget because the federal government pays.
For Washington d C.
And federal government in this case, because it's a Trump government hates Washington d C. Because it is a very liberal area and it's a city state sort of things very unique. So in any case, here's the Democrats dilemma. If they say no to that bill. Therefore, the government shuts down Saturday night, shutting down meaning that only essential workers are allowed to get paid, and the government can't borrow money. And literally, if it can't borrow money to
keep on going, it doesn't keep on going. So the Republicans say, okay, we're going to keep on going, but this is what we want in the bill.
We want those cuts. But wait a minute.
Usually you have a stopgap bill that sort of keeps everything the same. Nope, not this time around. So now it's up to the Senate House. It's already passed. Now it's up to the Senate. Chuck Schumer, who is the minority leader, said, oh, we have enough Democrats to keep this from going forward. Well that was on Thursday, or that was on Wednesday, next day Thursday. He changes his mind because look at he calls it a Hobson's choice,
which is true. If the Democrats stop this, which they could, if all the Democrats voted that way, then they're going to be blamed for the shutdown. The Republicans are already saying, we're looking at a Schumer shutdown. Now if they let the government run out, where the uh, the stopgap bill isn't passed, then what happens is that the president has complete power to determine, for example, which employees are essential,
which employees are non essential. It gives Trump enormous more power to run the government during a period in which there is no budget. So the Democrats are looking, we have no choice. Look what the Republicans did to us. By the way, it's a good move on the Republicans, very smart political move.
But they have everything.
They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the White House, so they have a lot of power. Obama had the same thing in his first two years. How do you think Obamacare got passed? Well, it changes midterms. Is it going to change midterm this thing this time?
Yeah.
I think if there is a recession, I think if people lose their jobs by the handful, I think if businesses do not move in the do not move as quickly as Trump promises, do not make as much money where people as he said, you're going to be better off. Now, there may be a slight delay. I mean he went from day one, I'm going to change everything. We're gonna have the best economy in the world, to now, okay, there's going to be a period of adjustment and then.
We're going to have the greatest period in the world.
If none of that happens, I think the Republicans are going to get nailed in the midterm, nailed. But for the next two years, things like this are going to happen.
Will fund the stop gap, We'll pass it. But here's what we want.
And you Democrats have no choice because you're going to get blamed for shutdown. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of Republicans want to shut down of the government because first of all, the Democrats get blamed. Second of all, their president gets even more power than he has now. By the way, that's the biggest fight
that's going on in the United States right now. This is the largest number of lawsuits that have been filed against the federal government and how to remember how many years and it's all about the president's power.
How far does it go? Right now? Trump is not winning a lot of it. But we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say.
Okay, moving on to the story of undocumented immigrants and undocumented health care. Gavin Newsom has been very proud of the fact that California is the first state in the nation to offer health care to all income eligible immigrants one year ago as people who don't have any money,
which is virtually all virtual the illegal immigrants. Nine point five billion dollar price tag for state sponsored healthcare for undocumented immigrants is not only is it expensive, it's three billion dollars above the budget estimate and is expected to grow. Now new some of the Democrats under.
Big pressure to hey, reduce that coverage.
It's just way too expensive, especially since California is under a budget crunch right now. I mean, there's no issue that we used to have a ton of money. We used to have surpluses that were astronomical. Now they're going the other way. For example, you go to Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, pretty liberal guy. He proposed a three hundred and thirty million dollar budget cut last month to stale to scale back his expansion of healthcare coverage for undocumented illegal aliens.
So it's getting really expensive here in California and expected to grow.
There's an assembly member Carl.
Demeyo who's always on joining on John Cobot show. He's a Republican out of San Diego.
He says we.
Shouldn't bury these costs. Period, especially in a budget crisis. And where are the politics here? Oh my god, this whole issue is ridden riddled with politics. So California's position coverage for all residents, illegal or not, we become a state very right for conservatives. Elon Musk weighed in saying that healthcare here in California is a mechanism by which Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them
to come here and then turning them into voters. I don't know how many illegal immigrants have become voters in the last five years. None, or it's almost infinitesimal. I must say Democrats are pushing hard to maximize payments to illegals. Free luxury hotels in New York, free medical care for illegals in California, And that's for their future voter base.
Wow, you know, I don't think that's the reason.
I do think Democrats view that healthcare should be for everybody, illegal or not, no matter how expensive it is. And in this day and age, you know, there's just not a lot of money there and where do you cut? And now here is the difference in political outlook of life in general? If you're a liberal Democrat you give health care to everybody in the United States, regardless of immigrant status.
You're a conservative, you.
Don't illegals are illegals or illegal immigrants are illegal immigrants? Is there undocumented I don't even if say, you can say illegal undocumented immigrants.
Is there any way for us to back charge or have an agreement with Mexico?
Which or sure Mexico agree, Yeah, Mexico agrees to it, like they're going to for sure?
Come on, yeah, yeah, you can argue that.
Someone coming over the border is the money has to be paid for any.
Health care that undocumented immigrants are voting even legally.
No, they're not. No, they're not. There is virtually no evidence that there is. It's the other way. Actually, you know, the Republicans are arguing. Trump argued during the election, there.
Are millions and millions.
Of people who are illegal, and that's just not who voted. That's just not true. It's simply an allegation the Democrats want to pay for illegal immigrants medical care just to make them voters.
Come on, I mean, that's not true.
Now, they do want to pay because they believe it's a very liberal approach that everybody, everybody gets medical care come hell or high water, and Medicaid, particular medical which is our version of medicaid, which gives medical care to people that are extraordinary poor. It really goes to if we give medical care to illegal immigrants, which we do right now under Newsom's plan, it's almost every illegal immigrant. Because illegal immigrants have no money, they do not buy
medical insurance. They just don't. And if everybody is entitled to medical care notwithstanding illegal status or illegal status, you know what that means is that proportionally illegal immigrants are going to get far more medical care than others.
I have insurance, you have insurance.
The illegal immigrant that's crossing the border, which is not because Trump has successfully shut down the border, which I'm fine with, is that person has no money.
That person walks into.
An emergency room and has to be treated by law, by the way has to be treated. If I walk into an emergency room, I'm handed a bill, and I either go to Kaiser if I go to another hospital, they pay, Kaiser pays the bill. Who pays the bill? When someone has no money? Virtually every illegal immigrant we're talking about the government does, And so some states say illegal immigrants, too bad, You're on your own if you have a medical issue, that's cheaper than California, which says
everybody gets medical care. Remember, used to have anchor babies. Anchor babies were babies that were born of women who came over the border, who illegally had the baby. Because again, a baby born in the United States is of course
a citizen, notwithstanding any immigrant status of the parents. And so what these anchor baby, how these anchor babies work is the prospective mom would sneak over the border and go to a hospital where she would get treatment about one hundred times better than she ever could in Mexico.
It was absolutely free, and the kid was an American citizen. That's the way it worked, or did work, not anymore, by the way.
Okay, now moving on that, I want to talk about what happened during the fires. If you remember, of course you remember it because it just happened a little while ago.
During the course of the fire. There was huge controversy afterwards when there wasn't enough water where the fire hydrants, especially in the upper regions of the regions of the Palisades, didn't have enough water pressure and or there wasn't water period in the fire hydrants and we had one of those reservoirs that was empty up in the hills, because our reservoirs all over up in the hills of southern California, and so that.
Became really controversial.
And the argument is had there been water pressure, had there been that reservoir and it was operating, then that would have helped.
Now fire officials.
Are saying, people that know fire saying nothing would have helped. When you have one hundred mile an hour winds that are kicking up fires.
Yeah, it really doesn't matter.
I mean, the fire outraces everything and there isn't enough water on the planet of any city that could take care of it. And the argument, another argument where a ton more water it would be available, is that the amount of water that was necessary to deal with the fire, and even it couldn't be dealt with, let's say it would have made an impact on the fire.
Not that it would have stopped it, but let's say would have made an impact.
Well, there's no city in the world that can sustain that much water being needed and used for that period of time. That's what firefighters and water experts were saying and explaining. Not that it matters because the lawsuits have already filed, especially against PG and E, because they may have started the fire with a power pole, a transmission line hitting vegetation under those transmission poles could be don't know yet, probably, but that doesn't mean that the fire could have been put out.
Because this thing started, well, we knew.
We knew because National Weather Service was telling us that we are looking at a cataclysmic event coming up, a life threatening event with the winds, and if the fire is going to start, and it always does someplace, look at massive damage and loss of life.
I mean, they were warning us.
They even warned Karen Bass when she was in Africa, of which she promised during a campaign she would not leave Los Angeles.
And of course there was the politics of it there, not that it would have changed anything.
By the way, as far as Karen Bass is concerned, what the hell could she have done if she were in Los Angeles?
Just the optics of.
Her not being here. And anyway, that's the political part. Let's talk about the other political part, and that is the amount of water that was released from northern California and this was upon the order of President Trump. And what happened and what didn't happen and how that was pure one hundred percent politics, having nothing at all to do with the fire, although it was portrayed that it did.
This is a segment as to what happened during the fires, the Eating Fire, the Palisades Fire, Malibu, and what ended up happening was, of course, there was a lack of water. There wasn't enough water pressure in the Palisades fire particularly, and that.
Reservoir was empty.
And so what the President did is ordered water to be released from northern California into southern California as some kind of aid to the firefighting.
And the government was told it's going to do nothing.
That water is not going to go to the Palisades, it is not going to Altadena.
It's just going to be released. That's it.
But the politics, oh my god, where the politics absolutely terrific. The President said, I have released the water. I have helped the situation, even though you know the water was not. So here's what he did did not help, Okay, he calls for the federal government to maximize water deliveries in
California and during the course of the fire. And there's a memo that just been released by the government and shows how the Army Corps engineers responded, because the Army Corps engineers were responsible for this, so they went ahead and and they emptied two dams to carry out the water.
Even though officials knew the water couldn't be moved out of the Central Valley as he wished. They released the.
Water anyway by releasing the dams and downflow the water. There's only one bit of good news about that that I'll share with you in a minute. So the water, and this is water that is held to be used during the summer months for irrigation where it's hotter than hell in the Central Valley, and he ordered it released and flowing down southern California, not to the Palis Aes area or Altadena area. Remember that's those two are not connected. And he said, I release the water. It's a beautiful thing.
This is what I have done. I'm paraphrasing, but those are his quotes. And it's the Army Corps engineer that.
Had to do it.
And they did, even though the water managers of the various water districts saying what are you doing? This is going to do nothing except release the water so there won't be water for the summertime for the Central Valley. I mean, everybody involved. We're told you can't do it, you shouldn't do it. And the Army Corps of Engineers, according to this memo, responded saying, this is a presidential order. The president says, we release the water. We release the water, which,
by the way, the president does have the authority. No one's saying that he didn't have the authority to do this. It's just did it make sense? Absolutely not. Was it a political issue? Absolutely now. Was the water wasted? Here's the one bit of good news.
The water did not go to anything that it was intended to do. Nothing.
It was a political move. So the president could say, look what I did. I made the water flow. Where the water went was it went, It was absorbed by the ground, and it filled up the aquifer.
Helped our aquifer.
Underneath southern California, which is a good thing. The water was not wasted, it was not thrown away. It did some good. Now that it do more harm than good. Probably, We'll see what happens this summer and how droughty the drought is going to be, and if we hit very drowdy droughts, if we're into droughdiosity in a major way. That water well, it could have, would have should have been used. We'll find out. Okay, there there it is.
Let me see if I have the quote here. This is a story out of the La Times. Where was it? What he said?
Um? I had the quote, and there we go.
There we go. Okay, I can't find it. Excellent.
This is a show that is so well planned, and I have such control of these topics. It's extraordinary.
Coming out is well planned. Yeah, you're right. I take that back.
Okay, I will rephrase that it is well planned. It is not particularly well executed coming up foody front.
I'm sorry. Does someone just say something? Yeah, I said, I appreciate that.
That's true.
It's true.
This is KFI A M sixty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.