Speaker Johnson, Sen. Mark Kelly, & AI’s Talent War 10/16/25

24:56it's not as simple as it just extending. Here's the other thing that I might ask the Senator, Speaker Johnson. Both sides, we know what happens in this country. Republicans have fervent beliefs about something. Democrats have fervent beliefs and deeply held beliefs about healthcare. So in this case, they're saying it's different this time. This is so important that we are allowed to close down the government because it's so important to us because we want people to have healthcare. You have Republicans have issues that are just as important to them. And this opens the possibility of getting the other side through blackmail to do what they want by closing down the government.

25:39And it's hypocritical in anything that sugarcoats it. I don't see how they can look in the camera with a straight face and say anything other than that. That is exactly right. And they have voted over and over and over on short stop stopgap funding measures like CRs. In fact, 29 out of 30 times since 2017, Chuck Schumer has voted for CRs. He voted for this exact measure in March of this year, seven months ago, and gave impassioned speeches about how it was the only thing, the only option, regardless of all of our different preferences and opinions on legislation. Republicans care about health care.

26:15We're not just talking about it. We're doing it in the big, beautiful bill, in the working families tax cut. We reformed Medicaid to make it work better. But, Speaker Johnson, I mean, the president and Republicans have said, you know, replace, repeal and replace. And it's like we're in a wilderness. Republicans are in the wilderness on what to do to try to fix our health care. No, actually, we're not. We're not. We've got pages and pages and pages of ideas on how to reform health care. You can't rip Obamacare out at the roots. It's too deeply ingrained now. And that's the problem. No one's talking about repealing and replacing Obamacare.

26:53But we have to increase access to care, quality to care, and bring down the cost. The Democrats have demonstrated over and over the costs go through the roof when they're in charge. This was their health care plan, right? Young people don't need Cadillac plans, Mr. Speaker. They don't need A to Z. They're supporting the entire behemoth that's called Obamacare. It's unwieldy and dying of its own weight. Speaker Johnson, I can talk about that for 90 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker Johnson, I'm not a fan of playing politics, of shutting down the government like this, but there are situations where you're being accused of playing politics recently, too.

27:33There was a special election that was held for Arizona more than three weeks ago. Now, the Democratic congresswoman elect won that special election. Grijalva, she's waiting to be seated. And now Arizona's attorney general is threatening to sue you for taxation without representation if you don't seat her. I realize Congress is not in session, but it's been more than three weeks, and all the representatives in the House are being paid right now. Why can't you seat her? Well, A, not all the members of the House are being paid. I think all the Republicans— Well, some of them have chosen not to take a paycheck.

28:09They are all under law allowed to receive a paycheck. But they are saying that this is a huge amount of politics. you're using this as leverage and not ceding them. And Arizona is saying this is taxation without representation. Yeah, I'm shocked that there's another Democrat politician from Arizona seeking publicity right now. Now the state AG is involved. You haven't ceded their full delegation. But she's going to sue me, I'm sure. She's not going to sue you. The attorney general of Arizona is going to sue you for their people not being able to be fully represented. That's who I'm referring to, I know.

28:39And she wants publicity, too. And it's all a farce. Let me tell you what's happening here. The Rep. Elect Grijalva was elected after the House went out of session. So I have said this repeatedly. I'm delighted to administer the oath to her as soon as we get back to legislative session. The people who are preventing us from doing that, ironically, are the two Democrat senators from Arizona. If Gallegos and Kelly would vote to reopen the government, we'll get this thing done quickly. I'm following right now the Pelosi precedent. When my dear friend and colleague from Louisiana, Julia Letlow, in very similar circumstances, was elected to fill in a special election, to fill the seat of her late husband who passed, died because of COVID, Nancy Pelosi took 25 days to administer the oath.

29:21Rep. Grijalva, you know, won an election to take her father's seat in Congress. It's an amazing thing, and we congratulate her for that. And I'm looking forward to administering the oath, but we have to get back to work. The lights have been turned out here. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have shut down the government and the first order of business is to make sure that American people federal employees law enforcement agents border patrol agents TSA air traffic control get their paychecks So we can keep the government functioning and then we'll get to the ceremonial duty of Administering the oath in the meantime.

29:51She can be working for her constituents. She has hired staff I've noticed they keep doing stunt videos outside of her office knocking on the door and pretending it's closed It shouldn't be she should be in there taking calls from her constituents and doing her job. Mr. Speaker you're we heard Chuck Schumer, Senator Schumer say every day that we're closed, it gets it gets better for us. Obviously not a not a probably very smart thing to say, but I think he's alluding to polling and I don't expect polling to help. You've got a lot of media entities that, you know, if Republicans shut down the government, you might have the coverage that we're seeing nationwide might be a little bit different.

30:28OK, so we get that. It's always going to be that way. Always going to be that way. There's no way around it. Do you believe the polls, though? Do you believe that the Democrats have sold that bill of goods, that this is a Republican shutdown? And do you think it's going to hurt? Should Republicans be rightly concerned about the midterms because you're, I don't know, once again, pushing grandma off the cliff in her wheelchair? No, I'm very bullish about the midterms. I'm absolutely convinced that we're going to grow the House majority here and keep the Senate, of course, and we'll be able to give President Trump four years and not just two.

31:03And part of the reason I'm confident about that is I know we're doing the right thing. This is the simple thing. This is the historic thing, by the way. We passed a totally clean stopgap funding measure, a clean CR. There's no Republican priorities or policy writers or anything on that at all. It's 24 pages in length and every person in the country can see it for themselves. Now, do we have headwinds from the mainstream and legacy media who, parrot Chuck Schumer's talking points every day, of course. But the American people are not stupid, and they understand what's going on here. And the polling that we're seeing is moving the needle rapidly in our direction because they know our message is simple because the truth is simple.

31:42And it's very easy for me to go out and debate anybody or do interviews. I'm constantly out on the airwaves trying to just relay the simple truth. And it sounds repetitive, but that's what it takes to saturate the message. And people are getting it. And I know, and Chuck Schumer knows, that what he's doing is wrong. And you can roll the tape and play his own speeches, in fact, play the floor speech that he gave in March of this year on the identical scenario, where he said it would be morally wrong and outrageous and selfish to close the government down because it would hurt real Americans. Remember, as you said earlier, Joe, their counterproposal CR is a joke.

32:20Look, it's not just health care. They want to add a trillion and a half dollars in new spending on a seven-week stopgap funding measure. They want to give health care, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, to illegal aliens. Yes, that is in the bill, page 57. Look at Section 2141. They want to unwind the, we cut all the fraud, waste, and abuse in the one big beautiful bill. They want to reverse all that. They want to give a half a billion dollars to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting again. I mean, all sorts of things. And they want to pull 50 billion dollars from rural hospitals while they're claiming that they care about Americans health care.

32:57It is a joke. They know it. They need to give it up and open the government. Yeah, it should be made clear that obviously it's against federal law to cover illegals with Medicaid. But the way you can, for example, the way California does it, they do cover 1.4 million illegals using that loophole that allows them to, they game the system with those provider taxes to jack them up, to get a bigger reimbursement from the feds, which allows that money to go do all this other stuff, which allows state money to get freed up to cover illegal aliens from cradle to grave. It's not just young or old or anything else.

33:34So that's factual. You're saying if people hear you say that and they don't believe you because Hakeem Jeffries. They need to go read it themselves. But they can immediately point to that federal funds. So they will stick to that. Federal funds are not being used. But money, federal funds go out there to California. You can use the federal funds for this and then take the money you're going to save from that to pay for the illegal aliens. And that's what's going on. We know. But you've got to look at it closely to figure that out. What's the end game? Well, at this point, how are you going to get, once we get no kings out of the way, Chuck will feel okay about negotiating?

34:12Let's pray that that's true. Just to put a bow on what you just said, we closed those loopholes in the one big beautiful bill. Section 2141 of their counterproposal says they want to repeal that. Okay, so how does this end? I do think it has a lot to do with the Hate America rally that will be on the mall on Saturday. You're going to have all the Antifa and BLM and pro-Humas. speak. Watch. Watch who assembles there. All the Marxists will be on the mall. They can't open the government, apparently, until that rally is over because they can't face the angry mob. So as soon as that's done, what's that?

34:43As soon as that's over, you think that there is an impetus or a way to kind of break this by next week? I think you've got it. We just need five Democrats in the Senate to join and do the right thing with the majority of the Senate that's already there to reopen the government. And then we will have all these debates. And I can't wait to have all these debates with all these folks on all these issues. That's the way the system works. It's the way the process works. It was always, we were always going to do that. This is a game. They're trying to play a game because they had to draw a line in the sand to show a fight against President Trump and Republicans so they can protect their own careers.

35:17Chuck Schumer's worried he's going to get a challenge from a Marxist in New York. You might have noticed Marxism is all the rage in New York now. We're going to have probably a Marxist mayor, I think. Looks like he's going to win. And Chuck Schumer thinks AOC, or one of Mondami's disciples, is going to run against him and he's going to lose his Senate seat. He's been in Congress for 44 years. He came here when I was nine years old, in the third grade. He doesn't want to go home and do anything else. And so that's what this is about. It is a selfish political game so that they can get cover. And I wish it weren't true.

35:45And it gives me no pleasure to tell you that. But everybody can see through this and they know exactly what's going on. Speaker Johnson, thanks for your time this morning. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Joining us right now from the other side of the aisle and the other side of the Capitol, Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. Good morning to you. We just spoke with the House Speaker. He thinks you need to come to the table. That's basically the message. I imagine you think he needs to come to the table. We could we've been asking for a negotiation with Mike and Republicans for weeks now. We've been talking about it for months since they passed the president's priority legislation that gave the big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.

36:33So we're here. I've been here for weeks since the shutdown started. He gave the House of Representatives a lot of time off. They haven't been in session for weeks. That has impacts. He needs to sit down with us and discuss this to come up with a real solution that works for people. Mike Johnson said he could predict what I was going to say. And he's right. I want to talk about the people that this impacts. He didn't mention that. You know, he talked about some, you know, Washington BS that nobody really understands. So in terms of, I mean, look, this has become, you know, a massive game of finger pointing.

37:10And there's a game of chicken going on here, basically. Who's going to come to the table first? What can be on offer? this judge obviously in San Francisco has said that the Trump administration can't you know fire people on masks does that make you think that you are now in a better position than you were 24 hours ago I don't think this is about who is in a better or worse position this is about people many of them my constituents but they're all over the country people like a woman I talked to last week, Emily, whose husband's a pastor. She doesn't get health care through his work. She's got three kids.

37:50She says the Affordable Care Act, including these subsidies, is what makes her finances work. She's had a complicated pregnancy in the past. Without this, they go bankrupt. I talked to another woman who was 63 years old who had a head injury with a$10 ,000 bill, but because of the ACA, it was$1 ,000. If her premium spike, which is what it's expected, she's not going to be able to afford health insurance anymore. And then she's one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. You guys know how this works. I mean, on your show, you know how, you know, financial stuff works for families. Mike did. Go ahead, Rebecca.

38:33Thanks, Senator. Just on MSNBC this morning, Senator John Thune was on and he offered a deal for the Democrats. He said that if they reopen the government, there will be a process and a vote on the ACA tax credits. Is that a deal you'd take? Well, we're looking for a negotiation with Republicans, which is impossible to do this when House members aren't even here. I can talk to Republican senators about this, and we've had some good conversations. They know that this is hurting their constituents in some states, Alaska as an example, premiums going from$600 to$4 ,000 a month. That's unaffordable for most people.

39:12One of Mike Johnson's Republican colleagues, Marjorie Taylor Green, has been very vocal about this. She says her Republican leadership has no plan for how to deal with people's premiums. They're going to double. And Mike doesn't want to talk about this. Yes. All he brings up is some Washington process on this issue. But you know that we're not going to fix all the things that need to be reformed about Obamacare before the government reopens. And you talk in a very principled way about so many things so often, Senator. And in the past, Democrats and government shutdowns, whenever there's been even a possibility of it, they would stand tall that that's not the way to do things.

39:58Always. And both sides, I know how much health care means to you, and I'm not questioning what you're saying and your sincerity there. But the next time Republicans have something and feel the opposite side of the aisle, feel just as strongly about something, if they take the tack of closing down the government, not reopening the government, to try to force their opponents to do what they want, it's a terrible precedent. And I think you know that. And I can't believe Fetterman's the only one that acknowledges that a shutdown has been something you have taken off the table again and again and again.

40:33And now suddenly the ends justify the means for what you're looking at. And only one person in the Democratic Party has broken with the ranks. It's like, I don't understand it. It hasn't been working well for Democrats. Joe, this is pretty simple. The government does not have to be shut down. It doesn't have to be shut down. We can fix this here in a matter of just a couple days. I mean, this could be easily solved by sitting down at the table. To get past 60, you need some Democrats to reopen. That's what's going to have to happen, Senator. You close the government down because you want$1.5 trillion for all these different things that Schumer wants.

41:15It's obvious to everyone, although maybe you can convince the public that it's the Republicans, but it's not. Joe, we are trying to prevent 2 million people from losing their health care coverage. And Joe, I think you know this. When people lose their health care coverage, some of those people die. Other people go bankrupt. We're trying to prevent this from happening. I've seen estimates that you're talking about tens of thousands of people a year that could have that kind of outcome if this isn't fixed. and we very simply can get this fixed and open the government. And here's the thing. The president has talked about how he wants this fixed.

41:57He wants these subsidies to be dealt with. So he agrees we should open the government and we should fix the subsidy issue under the Affordable Care Act, and that's all we want. So I don't see what the problem is. And if the president was to get engaged on this... I saw you say that yesterday, sir, on I think Fox. that you said if the president comes out and says, I will make that happen, you would trust him and go along with that. Is that how this ends? Is that how we reopen? Well, I think we need the president to make that happen. He needs to engage with Mike Johnson and John Thune. They seem to follow his lead on everything.

42:36That's the way this ends. That's the way this ends. Senator Kelly, we've got to end it there. We will talk to you soon, we hope. Coming up on Squawk Pod, or should we say Sock Pod, Bombas, the popular sock brand's CEO, Jason LaRose, joins us on the strength of the consumer, the impact of tariffs, and the business's expansion to brick and mortar and other things. We started as a sock company. We've become a company that also makes intimates, makes t-shirts, makes slippers and some other footwear. And so as our categories have gotten broader and broader, it's a chance for us to tell our whole story.

43:18Welcome back to Squawk Pod with Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross-Organ. Okay, we're talking stocks, folks. Bombas, the stock and apparel company, about to open its first standing store in New York City, followed by two more in Florida and Texas happening. I mean, some new questions, of course, about the strength of the American consumer. We've got to deal with tariffs and everything else. Jason LaRose is here. He's the CEO of Bombas, and he joins us live this morning. Good morning to you. Good morning. Thank you. And you I see you brought slippers and all sorts of socks. So what is going on here?

43:48Why are you why are you going brick and mortar here? Well, I mean, we're still in a category where 65 percent of sales happen in physical retail. We've had some wholesale relationships that have been very good to us for a certain period of time. But you see a little bit of the breadth here. You know, we started as a sock company. We've become a company that also makes intimates, makes T-shirts, makes slippers and some other footwear. And so as our categories have gotten broader and broader, it's a chance for us to to tell our whole story. and excited for our first order. Okay, let me add something to your story, which I imagine was probably not on your bingo card a year ago, which is tariffs.

44:20Yeah. And how is that affecting you? What are you doing? Well, I mean, from our perspective, we're very flexible, and that's a lucky thing for us. We've got a very flexible supply chain. I'm not sure I know all the tariff rules yet. They feel like we get new news every week or every month. Where are these, you know, the stuff that's on the table here, we got some low, what would you call that? We would call that an ankle sock. Ankle sock. We're talking the kids don't like ankle socks, by the way, right? Well, my kids don't like ankle socks. Yeah, that's fair. My kids like a higher sock, so they'll make some of those.

44:51We're not talking like knee highs again. No, I think my kids would prefer a half-calf sock. Yeah, but there's a new fashion to socks. I thought there was a whole period of time where people only wanted to do the no-show sock. You remember that? Yeah, exactly. And that's now out. Well, no-shows are still a big part of what people wear with loafers and things like that, but I would say there's definitely a little bit of an age discussion there about what your sock height says about how old you are. I don't know what you're talking about. You would wear something where you can feel the air on your freaking legs?

45:22Like a sock that's only that high? Why would you ever wear it? In the old days, I'd call it a tennis sock. I would never wear one. With long pants? I mean, with golf shoes? No, no, no, no. Oh, shorts. If you're wearing shorts. Okay, okay. I've seen you do it with long pants. I always thought it looked better with the no-show sock. I thought you were wearing tennis shoes. I agree with that. I am told the young kids will tell you that if you want your calf to look better, they like to have a higher... It was explained to me that you want to have a higher sock because it makes your legs look better.

45:51Or you could just not skip a leg. You mean like more muscular calf? I guess it does. I mean, I don't have the most muscular calf. I mean, I'm working on them every day. Can you do those? Like you've got to keep going up on your toes. I know. I'm training for a marathon right now, So I spent more time in a run sock than anything else. Let's go back to the business of all this. So this stuff is made where? Well, we have a diversified supply chain. We make product in about nine different countries around the world. But the stuff here generally? I mean, our biggest countries are Vietnam and Cambodia.

46:19We make product in Turkey, Mexico, some in Thailand. And how much of it have you moved around in the last six months? I don't know if I have a percentage on how much we've moved around, but we're always optimizing the supply chain as the rules change. But do you think 20 % of your supply chain has moved? I would guess a little more. A little more? Yeah. And do you expect it to change again? Well, if the rules change, then we continue to change, but we have a very flexible supply chain. Is there anything you could do or any in your imagination where you would manufacture this stuff in America? I mean, we would have to have the capabilities, I think, as a starting point.

46:53There really aren't great places for us to make this product in the U.S., to make yarn here in the U.S. So we continue to go where we can make really high quality product, but we have a very diversified supply chain and we'll keep moving it around. And in terms of the strength of the consumer, which we keep asking questions about, you are seeing what? I mean, from our business, we certainly hear the noise from a macro perspective. I watch the show, we see the conversations, but from our perspective, our business has been up more than 20 % year over year. We see our basket size 10 % higher year over year, and every one of our businesses is up double digits.

47:27So the consumer keeps voting for us and we're excited about that. Is that a function, just you think, of either innovation in the product, increasing the product line? You now have more SKUs than you've ever had. We do have more SKUs, but I think what's really happening is customers, when money is a little bit tight, they run to people they trust. And I think we've become a brand that people really do trust and they know what they're going to get with us when it comes to quality and comfort, our commitment to our mission. so we're one of those brands that even when the macro might be you know a little bit sketchy uh we continue to do well okay so i got a gross question for you okay ready moisture wicking moisture wicking on the sock to me that is the ultimate sort of technology what are you doing there i mean our sport socks are all moisture wicking for sure um moisture wicking do you know how much do you have the average foot you can take a vial about this talk because i did a story at upon it the average foot it'll really producing that much sweat every day thin vial that tall yeah well i mean let's let's try it out let's let's put you in some of our some of our best socks and let's see what you think our merino wool socks are unbelievable for wicking sweat so we're going to get you in some of the right stuff evaporates or something is that what it pulls it away from the skin and then it's easier for it to evaporate from the outside i mean a little tmi i find in the winter specifically in the winter i find sometimes my feet feel a little um cold because I think that there's moisture and then it's cold outside and then my feet are cold.

48:54Do you ask these questions about like your jockeys? Your boxes? No, I'm here with a sock expert. Is wicking important there too? I'm here with a sock expert. How much are you going to tell us about your thing? My socks? We can talk about feet. Remember, do you remember when, who was it? Becky, we're going to talk about feet. Text that guy. No, remember when that, what was his name? Ben. Sweet to him. who massaged my feet on the set. Do you remember that? I do remember that. Remember that back in the old studio? And that guy would do anything. And you let him. Ben Kaufman, great entrepreneur, Ben Kaufman.

49:29Willingly let him. And you seem to enjoy it. I'm always up for a foot massage. Jason, I want to thank you for coming. Jason, do you want to break? I'm not. We're going to break, Jason. You got anything to do now? We're now doing these sort of, we have a streaming show during the commercial breaks. So if you want to do a foot massage, I think we'd get a lot of clicks. Very quickly. Yeah, I think I'll probably pass on the foot massage, but I'll invite you to come see the store that we're opening in New York. If you happen to be in Florida or Texas, we'd love to show you. Okay, appreciate it. Thank you for coming in.

49:57Great. Thank you for having me. Thanks. That's the podcast for today. Thank you for tuning in, as always. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross-Organ. Weekday mornings on CNBC, starting at 6 a.m. Eastern, going all three hours until 9. To get the smartest takes and some of the silliest takes from that TV show right into your ears, follow us here on Squawk Pod wherever you're listening now. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. Have a great day. We are clear. Thanks, guys.