- As lawmakers continuetrying to figure out

how to keep the government open,

the President is promisingto build a border wall

with Mexico one way or the other.

That may involve some tricky accounting,

but it's not impossible.

White House Press SecretarySarah Hucakabee Sanders

said Tuesday that the administration

is looking into different funding sources

to come up with the $5billion in border wall funding

the President has called for.

- Top Democrats hitback on that assessment.

Here is Minority LeaderChuck Schumer this morning

on the Senate floor.

- The president's spokesperson has claimed

that the administrationcan reprogram funds

given to other areas of the government

to build the full wall.

Let me be very clear.

The administration cannot reprogram funds

appropriated by Congress for the full wall

without our assent.

To do so would violateCongress' Article I powers.

They cannot do it on their own

and the House and Senatewill not approve a wall.

- Schumer there from his standpoint,

making very clear thatfunding across agencies

could not be made available

to build the wall in its entirety,

but the White House maintainsit's looking at every avenue.

And here to help us break it all down

and to find out if it's possible

is our chief politicalanalyst, David Brody.

David, break it down.

Is this possible at all for him

to find this round-about,work-around, if you will.

- He's gonna try, for sure,

and he's gonna have tofigure it out pretty quickly.

Definitely, he's got a year.

He's got 2019 to figure it out

and then he goes on the campaign trail

and he better have some money for it.

Look, I think the waythis is gonna work, folks.

Folks, Jenna and John. (laughs)

Who are you, exactly?- Multiple personalities.

- Exactly.

Is through the military.

He's gonna look to the military.

Let's take a look at a couple options.

Okay first of all, hemight use some of the money

from the Defense Department'scounternarcotics funding.

That currently amounts tojust over $500 million.

The Pentagon's funding is supposed to be

counternarcotics operating programs,

so maybe the fence somehow gets in there.

Number two.

A second way he could do this.

This is also, once again,without congressional approval.

He could use some of the emergency

military construction money.

It's called MILCON.

It's up to about $50 million, not much,

and it can be used withoutcongressional approval,

as you said, in casesof national security.

Now the third option's interesting.

Use funding of the emergencymilitary construction fund,

that's called MILCON,with no spending cap.

In other words, he canspend as much as he wants,

but he has to say it isfor a national emergency.

And if you notice, he'sbeen using those words,

national emergency, a lot,so that's interesting.

Finally, this is the oneI think he may go with.

Using funds allocated forthe Army Corps of Engineers

by declaring a national emergency.

$10 billion, 10 billionin unused funds there.

I think that's the place to look

right now.- Double the amount

that he's calling for

right now.- That's right

That's right.- Well, speaking of doubling,

president doubling down,

David, the president, he took to Twitter

to double down on somethingthat he's said before,

and this is a quote.

On Twitter, the president tweets:

Mexico is paying indirectly for the wall

through the new trade dealwith Mexico and Canada.

How can he say that?

- Well, I think he might'veconfused the verb tense

because he said is.

Hold on for a moment.

Congress hasn't approved it yet,

so how can it actually be happening?

So that's inaccurate.

But what he is trying to say,

if he changed the verb tense

to say could be or will or inthe future, that's the point,

that the idea between the trade deficit

we have with Mexico now

compared to what he believesthe trade deficit will be

after this deal is implemented

could be anywhere from $15to $20 billion of savings,

and he believes that savingscan somehow, some way,

basically say that Mexicowill pay for the wall.

- All right, David Brody, thank you

very much.- Thanks, guys.

- Well, American troopsare returning from Syria.

That came as a big surprise announcement

from the White House today.

The president tweeted thereason the administration plans

to bring home around 2,000service members, saying, quote:

We have defeated ISIS in Syria,

my only reason for being thereduring the Trump presidency.

The US got involved in Syria back in 2014

launching air strikes there.

Since then, Americantroops started partnering

with Syrian ground forcesto fight ISIS extremists.

The Pentagon recently saidISIS now only controls

just 1% of the territoryit originally held

during the Syrian civil war.

A senior administration official says

they believe the remaining pocket of ISIS

can be eliminated byregional partner forces.

- Well, for more on this, we'rejoined now by Andrew Gabel

from the Foundation forthe Defense of Democracies.

Andrew, today's White House announcement

came as a bit of a surprise.

What do you think this was prompted by?

- I think the President's view

is that he campaigned onremoving all the troops in Syria.

He now has, or hebelieves he has an opening

to make good on that promise

and he's exercising his legal authority

to remove the troops from Syria.

- When you heard the news,what was your initial reaction?

- It came, as you said, as a surprise.

As recently as Monday afternoon,

the special envoy to Syria,Ambassador Jim Jeffrey,

had reiterated the long-termUS presence in Syria.

What has been the administration policy

for the last few months isthat there are three thresholds

that have to be met simultaneously

to remove US presence in the East.

Those three thresholdsare the defeat of ISIS,

not just as a territorialentity, but as an organization;

the removal of Iran's proxyforces and ground troops;

and a political processthat, a political reform

process from the Assad regime

that is in accordancewith UN Resolution 2254.

As of today, not only arethose three thresholds not met,

not one of them is met,and so this does come

as a very sudden 180degree change of strategy

from the President.

- I would imagine that'swhy we've already seen

from members of the President's own party

a little bit of backlash.

Senator Lindsey Graham saying,

characterizing this asan Obama-like mistake.

Thoughts on that?

- Well, one does rememberPresident Obama's decision

to pull every last troopout of Iraq in 2011

having campaigned to do so.

If that is the new strategy,I think one might benefit

from looking at what the practical results

of that strategy in Iraq were in 2011.

The removal of US troops

meant the removal ofUS political influence.

There was a power vacuum

that followed the precipitous withdrawal,

and that power vacuum wasfilled with Iran and ISIS.

And I think that, ifthe US were to similarly

remove its troops from Syria,

it would lose all itspolitical leverage in Syria

and the territory that's now controlled

by US-backed proxy forces,the Syrian Democratic Forces,

would fall into the hands ofIran, Assad, Russia and Turkey.

- [Jenna] How much doesTurkey factor into this?

- What's interesting is thatPresident Erdogan of Turkey

and President Trump hada phone call on Friday,

and according to an unnamed US official,

it was on the basis of this phone call

that Trump began to rethink what had been

a fairly consistent US strategy.

President Erdogan, in recent days,

has been threatening toconduct military operations

across the border from Turkey to Syria

because of what he perceives to be

existential threats comingfrom Kurds on the Syrian

side of the border, Kurds who I might add,

dominate the US backedground proxy, the SDF.

- [John] They've been our allies.

- They have been and soit looked like there was

this military crisis brewing.

Erdogan and Trump sharea phone conversation

on Friday, the interestingthing is on Monday,

Jim Jeffery reaffirms the strategy,

reaffirms the previousstrategy I should say,

the commitment to the east

but the today, Trump announcesunilateral withdrawal

and so I don't pretend tohave any insider knowledge

on what's happeninginside the administration,

but it does seem that therehas been a fundamental change

of thinking at least asfar as the President goes.

- You have a lot of Republicanlawmakers blasting the

President for this announcement.

But then there are otherstoo who do support it,

like Rand Paul, he wassaying he's very supportive

of this decision and sayingyou know the United States

is so many places and that at some point

we do have to pull out of different areas.

What do you say to that line of reasoning?

- Well I think Rand Paulactually represents a minority

within the Republican caucus.

From the reaction I'veseen there's been unanimous

skepticism of the unilateral withdrawal.

Senator Paul is right, that we have

a global military presence.

It's not clear that the2,000 troops we have

in Syria are low returnon investment troops.

In fact I would argue they're amongst the,

they generate the highestreturn on investment

because their political significance,

which I touched on before,and I wanna emphasize

that the US presence in Syria is really

nothing like it's presence in Iraq.

We had over 100,000 troops in Iraq

for years upon years on end.

We were taking hundredsof casualties a year.

It's nothing like this in Syria.

I mean this is really a drop in the bucket

in terms of our aggregate force structure

and so even though thetroops there are highly elite

and they're doing atremendous job and they punch

above their weight, it'snot, it's not leading the US,

either literally or bleedingit's treasury the way Iraq was.

I would argue that we canafford to do what we have to do

in Eastern Syria, especiallygiven how favorable

the situation is right nowrelative to the alternative,

which could easily be a repeat of Iraq

and then you're lookingat a situation in which

Iran functionally controlsterritory from the west border

of Afghanistan all the wayto the Mediterranean Sea.

- Andrew Gabel with a Foundationfor Defense of Democracies.

Thank you for helpingus makes sense of this.

- Thank you very much.

(pounding)

- [John] Speaker of theHouse, Paul Ryan says good bye

to Capital Hill on his lastday as a member of Congress

later in today's show.

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- Well the US deficit issoaring as the economy booms.

Right now the US national debt

is more than $21.8 trillion and climbing.

- This after unemployment fellto it's lowest in decades.

CBN's White Housecorrespondent, Ben Kennedy,

sat down with Deputy Director

at the Office of Managementand Budget to uncover the case,

the cause for the spike.

Ben what did he have to say?

- Well John and Jenna youcould say D.C. is in the midst

of a bipartisan spending spree,

which clearly is not the wayto go since the federal budget

deficit is projected to hit$1 trillion this fiscal year.

Washington racked upa $305 billion deficit

in October and November alone.

That's up from $202 billionduring the same time last year.

Major deficits like thatare expected to drive

the $21 trillion national debt

to 33 trillion within 10 years.

As John was saying, I justspoke to Russel Vought,

the Deputy Director of theOffice of Budget and Management.

He's not taking charge of the agency

since OMB Director MickMulvaney shifted his focus

to his new roll as WhiteHouse Chief of Staff.

He said that the risingdebt yes is a major problem

but that tax payersshould not foot the bill

to offset the rising debt.

Russ what do you so forpeople calling out for demands

for tax increases tokinda offset the debt?

- This is where we wouldhave a dispute with them,

we don't think that the revenue side

is where the problem is.

You look at what American'sspend in food, clothing,

and shelter and it amounts toabout $4.6 trillion, right?

We don't think that, andthat's generally what we spend

in terms, or what we take in in revenue.

We don't wanna cause them,the American families,

the American tax payer to have to absorb

a greater share of responsibility.

- Now Vought says one wayto possibly resolve this

is to fine programs that areno longer used or inefficient.

He also calls on Congress topractice restraint on spending.

In just the last two years,Washington paid out more than

$450 billion in interestpayments on the national debt.

Now with the fed raisingrates half a point,

he could add another 100 billion

to those payments each year.

Now I asked Vought whatimpact his faith has had

during his time at the OMB, take a listen.

- Day to day it is who I am.

My faith is incredibly important to me.

I can't actually answer the question

because I don't divorce the two.

So it gets into how Itreat people to how I think

about issues and it'sincredibly important to me.

- Federal borrowing continues to rise,

thanks to Congress voting to suspend

the debt ceiling earlier this year.

The government won'tface any borrowing limit

until March of 2019.

Ben Kennedy, CBN News, the White House.

(pounding)

- [John] Well comingup, the Federal Reserves

latest decision on raising interest rates.

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(upbeat music)

- [Announcer] Young people, millennials,

are flocking to church.

- [Narrator] It's not anexaggeration to say that we love

to meet them and that welove to know their stories.

- [Announcer] Bring home amiracle this holiday season

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- Welcome back.

The federal reserve is setto raise interest rates

for the fourth time this year.

The move points to anoverall strong economy.

Their quarter point hikewill take interest rates

to a range of 2.25 to 2.5%.

That's the highest rate since 2008.

The increase will meanhigher borrowing costs

for many consumers and businesses.

That updated forecast predictsjust two rate hikes next year

down from three the fedpredicted in September.

- Well it was a bad news from the Fed,

so Wall Street on another downward dive

as the, at the closingbell, losing all gains

it had throughout the day.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed

down about 350 points,the S & P 500, fell 1.4%.

Well Paul Ryan is sayinggoodbye to Congress today,

after three years as theSpeaker of the House,

a 2012 vice presidentialrun and some two decades

as a representative for Wisconsin.

- Speaking at the Libraryof Congress where he first

laid out his vision to fixAmerican's entitlement programs,

Ryan called the failureto overhaul those programs

our great unfinished business.

Ryan oversaw major changes to the tax code

after the passage of lastyears signature tax cut bill.

- Well done is always,always a better pursuit

than well said, isn't it?

In this business youcatch slings and arrows.

It is a price that Ihave been happy to pay

because nothing is asfulfilling as pursuing an idea

that will truly make adifference in people's lives

and seeing it throughfrom start to finish.

- And Ryan told CBNNews earlier this year,

that his faith is anintegral part of his life

as a husband, father,and Speaker of the House.

- The Speaker announced this spring

that he would not run for reelection,

saying that he wanted his children

to remember him more just as a weekend,

more than just a weekend dad

and I think that's a pretty good reason

to wanna kinda slow thingsdown, hit the pause button

and spend more time with the family.

- 20 years is a lot of service.

- Long time.

Well that's gonna do itfor tonight's Faith Nation.

- Have a great evening.

(upbeat music)

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- [Announcer] Young people, millennials

are flocking to church.

- [Narrator] It's notan exaggeration to say

that we love to meet them

and that we love to know their stories.