music

Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Wednesday, December 21st, 2022.

I'm John Puthore. It's the editor of Commentary Magazine with me as always executive editor

eight Greenwald hi eight. Hi John. Media commentary colonists that American Enterprise Institute

fellow Christine Rosenhykrstein. Hi John. And associate editor and author of the rise of the

New Puritans No Rothman high Noah. Hi John. So a lot of years of Lensky is taking a daring trip to

the United States arriving I don't know maybe he's already arrived who knows for the day he's going to

meet with president Biden this afternoon they're going to have a joint press conference at 4 30

Eastern time and then he will address a joint session of Congress at 7 30 this evening.

This comes at an interesting moment for for two reasons one of which is that the honor of a

spending bill is basically about to be passed by the House and Senate and go to president for

signature so they can all get out of town maybe in advance of the big snow storm so they can all

get home for Christmas and one of the many if but not certainly there's 10 billion other things

in the bill things in the omnibus spending package is 40 some odd billion dollars in supplemental

assistance to Ukraine to help fight the war against Russia and apparently Republican leadership

is counseling Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote against the omnibus spending

package which like all such spending packages is full of really reprehensible and odious

stuff that people shove in so that they can get money for their pet projects and things like that

and it is a it is a budgetary policy and legislative disaster but I'm sorry this is the way that

things are done now and Republicans do it Democrats do it Republicans did it during the Trump years

Democrats are not doing it this way and the question is whether we're going to find ourselves in a

weird position where Republicans and I'm voting against this omnibus spending package and the

...