The Senate has funded the government to 11 December and gone home, and Jason Smith says some of his own colleagues would rather the House did not follow. He named the reason plainly: a shutdown would help them in the election. The Ways and Means chairman's answer is that the House funds the government first and argues about everything else afterwards.
"We just crossed over $40 trillion in debt. This is a terrible, terrible problem"
Smith chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the tax code, so the reforms he is defending in the One Big Beautiful Bill are his committee's own work.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Jason Smith, the Missouri congressman who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel that wrote the tax and welfare provisions he defends here
🎙️ Host: David Asman, guest-hosting Kudlow for Larry Kudlow
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on Fox Business, and on the Kudlow podcast feed
🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 46 min
Key Takeaways
The House's whole week is the funding bill the Senate already passed
A continuing resolution to 11 December is what is on the floor
He says colleagues are publicly asking for a shutdown because it helps them in November
He named Democrats as the ones saying it, and said Republicans will prevent it
Debt has passed $40T and he calls it a terrible problem while funding the government anyway
He claims the largest mandatory spending cuts in American history in the last bill
Work or community-service requirements for able-bodied adults without children, and a bar on benefits for illegal immigrants
A further tax-cut reconciliation bill before the midterms is not ruled out
1. A CR to December 11
Asman opened on the House returning from a five-week recess with 16 House voting days and 14 Senate voting days left before the midterm break, and asked what Republicans can put in front of voters in that time.
Smith's answer was that the calendar is already spoken for. He said the most important thing before Congress this week is funding the government
"Before the Senate left they passed a continuing resolution to fund government until December 11", and that is what the House will address
A continuing resolution keeps agencies running at their existing funding levels rather than passing new appropriations, which is what makes 11 December the next deadline rather than a settlement
2. Who Wants a Shutdown
The most direct thing Smith said was about his colleagues' incentives.
"I have so many of my colleagues that are right now publicly stating that they would love, love a government shutdown because that would help them in the upcoming election."
He attributed that to his Democratic colleagues, and said Republicans are the ones who will prevent it by funding the government
Asman pushed back on the priority, putting it to Smith that many people are more interested in cutting spending, that spending rather than tax cuts is what causes inflation, and that the only thing the House has time for is paying the bills
3. Debt Past $40T
Smith rejected the framing that funding is all his side does.
He said cutting spending is a huge priority for House Republicans and that they have passed numerous bills doing it
His headline claim is about the last reconciliation bill. "We actually had the largest mandatory spending cuts in the history of America in the big beautiful bill", which he called a step in the right direction
The scale of the problem, in his own words: "We just crossed over $40 trillion in debt. This is a terrible, terrible problem"
The sequencing is the point he kept returning to. Keep the lights on first, then continue cutting waste, fraud and abuse
4. The Welfare Reforms
Asman put a set of enrollment and spending numbers to him and asked how the exposed waste actually gets cut.
The numbers were the show's, read off a chart. Asman cited Medicaid enrollment rising from 35 million people to 100 million, spending going from $206 billion to $964 billion between 2000 and 2025, and the same pattern in food stamps
Smith's first move was to date them: he assumed those figures ran up to 2025 and therefore precede the reforms he is describing
He said the reforms are the least-discussed part of the bill. Requiring able-bodied healthy adults with no children to work or do community service to qualify for benefits, and making sure illegal immigrants do not receive them
He reached for the 1996 comparison, and put it in someone else's mouth. "You have people who worked in the 1996 welfare reform law that said the welfare reforms that we did in the big beautiful bill made the 96 welfare reforms look like peanuts."
He called it a good start rather than a finish
Asman's own framing was about behavior rather than money — that people came off welfare, went out to work, got into the habit and became taxpayers — and Smith did not dispute it
5. More Tax Cuts Coming?
With about fifteen seconds left, Asman asked whether there is any chance of a further tax-reduction reconciliation bill before the midterms.
"You bet. We're always looking at ways to cut taxes for working families, small business"
The answer was cut off by the clock, and no vehicle, timing or size was given
Bonus Insights
The tax-relief numbers Asman used elsewhere in the programme were his own. He put the figure at more than 60 million Americans benefiting directly from deductions that did not exist before the bill became law, which is the show's number rather than the chairman's
The interview was scheduled around a hard out. Asman flagged fifteen seconds remaining before the final question, which is why the answer on further tax cuts is a sentence rather than a plan
Smith's bottom line is that the House will pass the Senate's stopgap and keep the government open, that the spending fight resumes after that, and that the welfare provisions of the last reconciliation bill — not its tax cuts — are the part he thinks is being undersold.
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