00:03So, you guys are obviously trying to get these nominees through as many as possible before the recess.
00:10Do you think that you guys are going to have to stay longer?
00:13Do you think that, you know, President Trump will want you to stay there?
00:17How do you balance those two things?
00:18Because obviously you've got to go sell the big, beautiful bill, too.
00:20Well, President Trump's like every other president.
00:24He wants his people confirmed.
00:26We've been moving at a pretty rapid pace.
00:31I think Foon's done a good job.
00:32The problem is even on minor nominations, which normally we would do by consent of both sides,
00:44my Democratic friends have chosen to make it as difficult as possible.
00:50I mean, I get it.
00:51They're angry and they're losing, and they're trying to show their base that they're fighting back.
01:02But it really has slowed us down.
01:04I have no idea what Foon's planning.
01:07If he tells us to stay, I'll happily stay.
01:10But we're moving at a rapid pace.
01:15The other thing we'd like to do before any kind of break that we take is consider a couple of the appropriations bills.
01:25Senator Kennedy, how are you feeling yesterday and today?
01:29Are you feeling all right health-wise?
01:31Yeah, I'm fine.
01:33Why do you ask?
01:34There was a clip on Fox News yesterday where you looked like you might have been feeling a little bit off.
01:39No, I was doing the interview.
01:41The same thing happened to Rand Paul right before me.
01:45All of a sudden, it sounded like a 747 was taking off in my ear.
01:52There was this loud screeching and white noise.
01:56And so I stopped talking until it cleared up.
01:59And frankly, I thought I was off the air.
02:02But if you'll call the producer of who was I interviewing, Cuddle Up.
02:07If you call the producer of Cuddle Up Show, they'll tell you they had a technical malfunction.
02:12And on the appropriations process.
02:14But I'm, how are you feeling?
02:16I'm feeling great, Senator.
02:17Thank you for asking.
02:18They've gathered in and thanked him.
02:20I wanted to tell them I'm talking.
02:22On the appropriations process, your thoughts moving forward.
02:25I know you had some ideas on how you'd like this to advance here.
02:30Well, they wanted to do three bills at once.
02:33They wanted to do a Milcon, Ag, and legislative bill.
02:38I said no.
02:40And I objected.
02:42And I'm not going to lift my objection because I'm voting against the ledge bill.
02:47That portion of our budget is up like 32% over the past few years.
02:53And when we're cutting everybody else, we shouldn't be giving ourselves extra money.
02:59So I told them if they'd lumped it in, I was going to vote against the whole thing.
03:04But they can't lump it in without my permission.
03:07So they're not going to lump it in.
03:09What they do instead, I have no idea.
03:12But some of the approach bills, if I think they've made a good faith effort to reduce spending, I'll vote for it.
03:22But others where it's business as usual around here and they haven't tried to cut spending, I won't.
03:28Look, I've been here for 10 years.
03:30I've seen us reduce spending in the federal budget one time, the rescission package that we just passed.
03:40One time.
03:41So all of this honking on like a goose that people are doing by saying, oh, the appropriations process, you know, the White House is destroying us
03:56and they're not respecting the Constitution, anybody with a brain above a single-cell organism knows we need to be reducing spending.
04:10You will never see it happen in the current appropriations process.
