The Excerpt podcast: Senate kills sweeping border, foreign aid deal

On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: The Senate has killed a deal on the border and foreign aid. Meanwhile, USA TODAY Congress, Campaigns and Democracy Reporter Ken Tran looks at what's next for House Republicans after a pair of embarrassing defeats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a Hamas peace offer 'delusional.' What if the government abolished your 401(k)? The SAT is going digital, among other changes. USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong discusses. Orcas trapped by ice in Japan weren't spotted the day after. Officials are unsure if they got away safely.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Thursday, February 8th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, an update from Capitol Hill on border legislation and more. Plus, Hamas proposes a ceasefire plan, hear Israel's response. And big changes are coming to the SAT.

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The Senate has killed a sweeping deal on the border and foreign aid with a 50 to 49 vote, the chamber voted against moving forward the $118 billion package that would've provided funding for foreign aid and revamped the country's immigration policies. The reforms would have among other things, tightened asylum laws and created a new mechanism to shut down the border if illegal crossings reached a certain threshold. The Senate may instead advance a separate $95 billion dollar package, stripped of border provisions that would appropriate additional funds for Israel and Ukraine. For a deeper dive on the situation at the border and where we go from here stay tuned to The Excerpt this afternoon at 4:00 PM Eastern when USA Today immigration reporter, Lauren Villagran sits down with veteran journalist and author Ray Suarez.

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Meanwhile, a busy month on Capitol Hill continues and house speaker Mike Johnson and his fellow Republicans suffered a pair of embarrassing defeats this week, I caught up with USA Today Congress Campaigns and Democracy reporter Ken Tran to discuss what happens next. Ken, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Ken Tran:

Happy to be on.

Taylor Wilson:

Let's start with what happened in the failed impeachment push of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Ken Tran:

So Tuesday night was frankly one of the most embarrassing days and a really big setback for house Republican leadership. First with impeaching Mayorkas. When Republicans took control of the house last year, a lot of members were already seeking to impeach the secretary over the crisis on the southern border. The crisis on the southern border they said was his fault and he should be impeached over it and removed over it. So this was something that was a very anticipated vote leading up to it and House Republican leadership went in fairly confident they had the votes to pass, but ultimately that didn't pan out and we saw that vote fail by a one vote margin

Taylor Wilson:

And the House also rejected a bill that would've provided billions in aid to Israel. What happened here, Ken?

Ken Tran:

So this bill that provided us funding for Israel had no funding offsets. This was something that was included in a last Israel bill that the House passed last year that included something called a pay for. This pay for took money from the Internal Revenue Service to pay for the funding and aid. Democrats ultimately did not support that bill because they said this is something that was championed in previous Democratic legislation, and this is something that they called a poison pill to get them to vote for Israel and try to stomach it.

That bill has never passed the Senate, has never even made it to Joe Biden's desk. So in response, Johnson put forward the second bill without any funding offsets to try to goad Democrats into voting for it. But ultimately those Democrats didn't even support it because there was a separate deal in the Senate that would've provided funding for more US allies, a more all-encompassing broad foreign package.

And this bill specifically was also a big defeat for Johnson because it was very evident throughout the day that Democrats would not have supported this bill. So Republican leadership was well aware that they didn't have the votes to pass it, but they did it regardless to have it fail, to use it sort of as a messaging point to say, "Hey, look at this. The Democrats voted against Israel funding."

Taylor Wilson:

Ken, this obviously puts a lot of pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson. How did he react after what many in his party view as legislative failures? How did he explain these losses?

Ken Tran:

So after a lot of these defeats that we've seen on the house floor from Republicans, a lot of the message is sort of democracy is messy, we'll get through it at some point and that is what he reiterated on Wednesday morning. After the House concluded its last votes for the week he did promise at some point in the future to put up the Mayorkas articles of impeachment on the floor where hopefully the math is better for Republicans. They do have one absence right now. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, has been absent from the capitol for about a month now. He's receiving stem cell treatment for a cancer diagnosis and he is expected to be back in the house soon, which will give Republicans a little more of an edge in these really tight votes.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. And you touched on this a bit, Ken, but what exactly does this mean for the House Speaker and his power in the chamber for some of these upcoming legislative fights? And Ken, what are some of those fights?

Ken Tran:

It certainly doesn't bode well for Johnson. A lot of the members have been a little confused about his decision-making to put some of these bills on the floor that we already all know that are going to fail because the votes have been already made very publicly evident ahead of the vote.

Some of these battles ahead, government funding. Government funding has already been temporarily extended three times. The next funding deadline is coming up on March 1st. We don't know how that's going to pan out. We don't know whether or not it's going to be another short-term extension or are they going to pass another long-term funding plan. That's still up in the air and that's now less than a month until that. Another issue that's coming up afterwards will be a foreign surveillance program, reauthorization of FISA. This is an issue that has deeply, deeply divided how Republicans on the merits of it and the exact specifics of how to address it.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Ken Tran, great insight as always. Thanks so much.

Ken Tran:

Thanks for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

Hamas has proposed a ceasefire plan. It would last 135 days and include the release of remaining hostages along with hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails. It would also crucially involve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The Hamas offer would not require a permanent ceasefire at the outset of the deal, but calls for one before the last batch of hostages are released. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after meeting with US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said at a news conference, "Surrendering to Hamas's delusional demands that we heard now not only won't lead to freeing the captives, it will just invite another massacre." In a separate briefing Blinken said a deal could still be worked out. He said, "While there are some clear non-starters in Hamas's response, we do think it creates space for agreement to be reached and we'll work at that relentlessly until we get there." Blinken was wrapping up his fifth Middle East visit since October.

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What if the government abolished your 401K? Two economists argue that Congress should abolish the subsidies that allow people to make pre-tax contributions to retirement savings accounts. Two economists from opposing ideological camps wrote the research brief last month, Alicia Munnell, a former assistant treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

They argued that allowing people to shelter their retirement money from taxes is a policy that largely favors the wealthy and that Congress could use the money, nearly $200 billion a year in lost tax dollars, to shore up the underfunded social security program. Federal data does suggest that tax-favored retirement accounts help wealthy Americans, in particular. For households in the top 10% by income the median retirement account held $559,000 in 2022. According to the survey of consumer finances 93% of those households had retirement plans. For middle-income Americans in the 40th to 60th percentile by income, the median plan held just $39,000 and nearly half of that group held no retirement savings.

Still many in the financial industry applaud tax-favored retirement plans. Craig Copeland is Director of Wealth Benefits Research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit that works with benefit providers. He says that if you strip away the tax benefits, employers would lose their incentive to offer retirement savings in the first place. You can read more about this ongoing conversation with a link in today's show notes.

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Big changes are coming to the SAT. I sat down with USA Today education reporter Alia Wong, to find out what the changes mean for students going forward. Alia, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Alia Wong:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So the SAT is going digital this year. Alia, what inspired this move and what will the test actually look like now?

Alia Wong:

It will be administered entirely on a screen as the name suggests, so it'll be taken via your own device, whether that's a laptop or an iPad. Because of this digital format, it will be a lot shorter, nearly an hour shorter. What it also allows as more time per question. In terms of what inspired the move part of the reason was security challenges with the paper and pencil format, particularly in certain countries abroad, there were a lot of issues with people stealing the test and with the digital test, each student will, in theory get a unique set of questions, so that just makes it a lot harder to copy them.

The college board is also thinking about student wellbeing and how can we make this a test that is as appealing or manageable as relaxing, so to speak, as it can be. The SAT and test scores in general are, for the most part, still optional in admissions. So the college board has an economic reason to make it a more appealing exam.

Taylor Wilson:

You know Alia, the shift to digital is not the only difference on these new versions of the SAT. What other changes are we seeing on the test?

Alia Wong:

The reason the digital test can be so much shorter is because it's what the college board describes as adaptive. So there's a math and a reading section, and each section is divided up into two modules. And so the first module will be a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions, and then depending on how a student performs, the second module will be adapted in difficulty levels. So if a student did really well and kind of breezed through the first module, the second module of questions will be a lot more difficult. In the reverse, if a student really struggles in the first module, the second set of questions will be easier. Again, this statistically allows the college board to more efficiently gauge a student's performance level, and then the scoring is then adjusted based on the difficulty level, so it'll be calibrated.

Taylor Wilson:

You know, Alia, we talk a lot about standardized testing in the context of equity. Who benefits from certain backgrounds more than others? Who has learning differences? Do these changes to the SAT help or hurt certain students more than others?

Alia Wong:

With the adaptive system that comes with this test there will be students who benefit from that because it allows it to be shorter. There may be students who just have a lot of test anxiety, but it could disadvantage students who just really have bad luck in the first half, the test anxiety got over them, or maybe there was a technological glitch and they just fumbled in the first half and then are somewhat doomed if they get an easier module in the second half, even though they should be eligible for a harder module.

On the equity side, this is a digital exam that requires a device. It requires a good internet connection. And so what about the students who don't have their own device or who don't attend schools that have reliable devices they can lend out? The college board does say that it will distribute devices to students who need them, but there's a timeline for that and for the tests that comes up in a few weeks, that deadline has already passed.

Taylor Wilson:

Alia Wong covers education for USA Today. Thank you Alia.

Alia Wong:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

A pod of at least 10 orcas trapped by sea ice in Japan is now nowhere to be found. And local officials hope they were able to free themselves. According to NHK World, Japan, the pod was originally spotted on drone footage on Tuesday near the coastal town of Rausu in northern Japan. But there was nothing anyone could do to save the whales. A town official told NHK at the time, "We have no choice but to wait for the ice to break up and for them to escape that way."

The news outlet says that town officials looked for the orcas for 90 minutes in the morning, but could not find any. They told the Japanese news outlet that they hope the orcas freed themselves because the ice flows appeared to have loosened. But a lack of wind in the region means the ice may not divide to create enough space for the pod to travel through. In the initial footage, the whales were poking their heads out of a small section where the ice broke up and taking turns coming up for air.

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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt podcast: Senate kills sweeping border, foreign aid deal