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Congress returns Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday break for a busy month ahead.
The House and Senate are facing a government funding deadline and must pass additional federal spending legislation by December 20th to avert a shutdown.
Both chambers plan to vote on the White House's request of nearly $100 billion in emergency disaster relief for hurricane victims over the next few weeks.
And Congress will also take up the final version of an annual defense programs and policy bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both spoke about these must-pass bills that their chambers plan to vote on before adjourning for the year.
We have some items we have to go through for the remainder of this year, as you all know.
We have a disaster relief package that's been presented by the Biden administration, their request.
And even before, I want to point out, even before Hurricanes Milton and Helene hit shore, House Republicans ensured that appropriate emergency funds would be provided to FEMA, as we did in that last funding package, as you know.
And now that we're back in session, we're going to continue to provide for the American people with the resources that are desperately needed.
So I saw firsthand, I went to the sites of the devastation.
I went to Florida where Helene made landfall and looked at the devastation there all the way inland, even to the agricultural areas.
And then I spent a lot of time in West North Carolina, where it looks like a bomb went off in most of those areas there.
So these communities can be rebuilt responsibly, and Congress has a role to play.
We'll be looking at all that.
When the Senate returns after Thanksgiving, senators can expect a very busy few weeks to finish our work before the end of the year.
Both sides must continue working together to keep the government open beyond the December 20th deadline.
Letting the government shut down just before Christmas would be asinine, plain and simple, and nobody wants that to happen.
Well, there may be a few in the other chamber who do, but they're a distinct minority.
We must pass the annual defense authorization bill to provide for our troops and hold the line against America's adversaries abroad.
We have passed the NDAA every year over the last six decades.
With so much going on around the world in the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, in Europe and beyond, passing the NDA is as critical as it's ever been.
We intend to get it done.
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Good morning.
It's Saturday, November 30th, 2024.
President-elect Donald Trump continues to roll out his choices for top positions in his coming administration.
And for some key roles responsible for the nation's health and well-being, he's chosen nominees that have controversial views when it comes to the science behind many of America's health care rules and regulations.
This morning, we want to know your thoughts.
Should scientists take more or less active role in policy debates?
For Democrats, you can call in at 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
For Independents, 202-748-8002.
And we have a special line for scientists.
If you're a member of the scientific community, call us at 202-748-8003.
That's also where you can text us if you'd like to reach us that way.
Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
And if you'd like to contact us on social media, we're at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
Now, for a bit of an overview of some of those choices President-elect Trump has made for healthcare policy positions in his incoming administration, some of them pending Senate confirmation, there's an article in PBS News.
President-elect Trump has assembled a team of medical contrarians and healthcare critics to fulfill an agenda aimed at remaking how the federal government oversees medicines, health programs, and nutritions.
On Tuesday night, Trump nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharia to lead the National Institutes of Health, tapping an opponent of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to lead the nation's top medical research agency.
He is the latest in a string of Trump nominees who are critics of COVID-19 health measures.
Bhattacharia and the other nominees are expected to play a pivotal role in implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s sprawling Make America Healthy Again agenda, which calls for removing thousands of additives from U.S. foods, rooting out conflicts of interest at agencies, and incentivizing healthier foods in school lunches and other nutrition programs.
Trump nominated Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH and other federal health agencies.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid PIC, Dr. Mehmet Oz, hosted a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known wellness and lifestyle influencer.
The PIC for the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty McCarry, and for Surgeon General, Dr. Jeanette Neshuit, had been frequent Fox News contributors.
Now, over at the New York Times, they point out recent surveys from Pew Research that found Americans have regained modest trust in scientists, according to that survey from Pew Research, and yet a sharp partisan divide remains over how involved researchers should be in policy decisions.
Now, some details from that survey.
Overall, 51% say scientists should take an active role in public policy debates about scientific issues.
By contrast, nearly as many, 48%, say they should focus on establishing sound scientific facts and stay out of public policy debates.
Americans also aren't convinced scientists make better policy decisions on science issues than other people.
Just 43% think this is the case.
More from Pew Research related to the confidence of scientists to act in the public interest.
A larger majority of Democrats than Republicans express confidence in scientists to act in the public's best interest, 88% compared to 66%.
And Republicans' overall level of confidence in scientists is up five percentage points over compared with a year ago, the first uptick in trust among Republicans since the start of the pandemic.
Again, that research from Pew.
Let's go to your calls, starting with Ed in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ed.
Good morning.
Well, you know, everything should be designed to be functional.
And a lot of problems with scientists is they disagree with each other.
I think it's good to have a scientist run for election to be in the House or the Senate.
That would help.
But I think everything has to be proven before you go ahead.
And what do you think about scientists in these key positions in federal agencies compared to the folks that President-elect Trump has chosen?
Well, are those, I have to ask you a question.
Are those people paid to be in there?
Usually those positions are paid positions in the federal government, yes.
Yeah, it's kind of iffy.
It really is.
You know, I don't want to go too far.
I just want to make sure that, you know, everybody kind of agrees that the solution is there at the time.
And if it's a good solution, I'm all for it.
Okay.
Thank you for the call, Ed.
Ralph is in Battle Creek, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ralph.
Oh, yes.
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about Robert F. Kennedy and his association with this group called Children's Health Defense.
And this, he's actually, he actually runs it, I think.
And he fundraises for the Children's Health Defense Organization.
It's a nonprofit, I believe.
And I'm looking up here, let's see, is if you look it up on Wikipedia, it says the Children's Health Defense is an American nonprofit activist group mainly known for anti-vaccine disinformation, which has been called one of the main sources of disinformation on vaccines.
So, I mean, to me, he's going to have, I guess Kennedy is going to have to be asked about his position on vaccines and his position on the COVID vaccine.
And I don't know if he can get through.
I don't know how we would answer those questions.
So, Ralph, if you don't mind for a moment, I'm going to read an article from Politico that has to do with his positions on vaccine.
This is a Politico exclusive from November the 22nd.
Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again transition team includes anti-vax activists.
At least three informal advisors connected to the anti-vaccine movement are assisting Kennedy in filling out his staff as he prepares to lead HHS.
And at least three informal advisors connected to the anti-vaccine movement are assisting Kennedy in filling out his staff as he prepares to lead the agency, according to five people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by Politico, highlighting Kennedy's continuing close association with the movement and its potential to influence with its potential influence within the nation's leading health agency if he's confirmed as secretary.
And I'm just going to go down because I believe that group that you mentioned, yes, here we go.
In an email obtained by Politico, Kennedy ally Kim Hain reached out to a prospective candidate to set up an interview for a top HHS job, identifying herself as part of the Make America Healthy Again transition team.
Hain is the president of the Hawaii chapter of Children's Health Defense, a leading anti-vaccine group that Kennedy chaired until he resigned in 2023 to run for president.
She also led the effort to get Kennedy on the Hawaii ballot earlier this year.
I believe that's the group that you're referencing, Ralph.
Yes, I'm sort of looking at this, the Wikipedia article, and it says here that they are a leading source of this misinformation on vaccines.
And then they mention their footnoting is a majority, this is one article, majority of anti-vaccine ads on Facebook were funded by two groups.
That's the Washington Post.
And then they talk about fluoride and drinking water.
I mean, to me, I guess they want to remove fluoride from the drinking water.
This has been a conspiracy theory, what, since the 1950s or 1960s.
So, and I don't think.
And what do you think about the role that scientists should be playing in policy debates?
Well, I mean, I would have preferred a medical person other than Kennedy.
I mean, I would have preferred someone who either worked in the medical field or, you know, either a doctor or a hospital person, something like that, or a public health expert.
Whereas, I mean, I think Robert F. Kennedy is kind of like a, what would you call it, you know, an amateur addict.
Okay.
And I don't know if he can get through the confirmation.
I mean, I don't know what is he going to say that we shouldn't be vaccinated against polio, measles, whooping cough, all these, all the childhood diseases?
I mean, he's going to reject vaccines entirely?
I think that would be disastrous, right?
Okay, let's go to another caller.
I'll remind folks that the lines for Democrats, 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents at 202-748-8002.
And our special line for scientists, 202-748-8003.
Let's go to Gregory in North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Gregory.
Yeah, I think scientists, you know, should have a more active role in politics.
You know, they could save more lives than not having a role at all.
They could come up with more of saving vaccines and without the government holding them back, So to speak.
No.
Gregory, I'd like to ask you about some of this research from Pew, and in particular, finding that confidence in scientists remains higher among Democrats than Republicans.
And you're saying that scientists should play a larger role, if I understand you correctly.
What do you think about this disconnect between Republicans and Democrats on the role that science should be playing in policy?
Well, you know, I think the government, I think the federal government is holding back.
I think I don't know which party is holding back, but I think they're holding back on some of these drugs that the scientist is creating.
But I think the scientists could have more of a role in politics so their drugs can come more out to the public.
Okay.
Joe is in Tampa, Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Joe.
Good morning.
So one thing I want to say is I think there's definitely an abuse of scientific knowledge and technology.
An example being surveillance technology and things like that.
I think that we have to invoke the Second Amendment to protect people when the government, when law enforcement abuses surveillance technology.
I think there's a lack of transparency to have access, to have the public have access to the scientist for that scientific knowledge, that technological capability that can be abused by law enforcement.
And I think invoking the Second Amendment to protect people from abuse of surveillance technology, there's surveillance technology being used illegally in the United States, and you have to be able to access those scientists, like the Jason group that research Havana syndrome, and be able to say, look, there is law enforcement or there's somebody abusing this technology.
It's probably a secret version of a surveillance technology or technological capability.
And if you don't have those kind of checks and balances, you're going to have law enforcement and all these intelligence services make an excuse that they should use this, that they're allowed to use it.
And so you're going to have an abuse of this type of technology.
And their excuse is going to be, is like, oh, we suspect this person's a threat and this technology is too important.
So I think there's a lack of transparency.
And we should be able to invoke the Second Amendment to protect people from abuses of surveillance technology and other types of technology that are likely secret and used for good reason.
But obviously they should be secret, but you can't use that excuse to abuse that technology and use it illegally, especially on U.S. soil around people that are not a threat.
Okay.
Marty is in Ohio on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Marty.
Hi.
Hi.
What do you think about the role that scientists should be playing in policy debates?
Well, if they're authentic scientists, so the problem recently, from what I see, is people posing as scientists that are actually marketing vaccines that are dangerous.
My sister just died last month from the vaccine.
very sorry about the loss of your sister.
Marty, if I can ask, oh, okay.
We've lost Marty.
Let's go to John in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
My issue is I don't think, well, I wonder if people should know what science is.
Science is a method.
And anybody that uses the scientific method is actually a scientist.
So at least everyone that calls should understand those principles.
For instance, the first thing is what's a hypothesis, a thought, an idea.
The second thing is that if you prove your hypothesis, it should be able to be replicated.
So John, if you believe that everybody, you know, as long as they understand the scientific method, should be considered a scientist.
What do you think should be the determining role of whether or not someone is, say, scientifically qualified to be active in policy debates or maybe even for a position in an administration?
Once again, I go back to the basic principles of a scientific method.
I think people should understand the history and the evolution of the scientific method.
It's a process, as I recall, which I learned in the seventh grade, that you have to understand what a hypothesis is, what your idea is.
Your idea is not necessarily the truth.
It's a hypothesis.
And therefore you develop ways of testing your idea.
And if it comes up in that moment that your idea is true or valid, then anyone else should be able to use the same techniques that you used and come up with the same conclusion.
Okay.
Let's look at some comments we've received on social media.
On Facebook, Bill King says, who identifies as an independent from Michigan, it depends on the type of scientist and which policy you're discussing.
On the whole, I'd say no.
Scientists are usually focused on their own corner of knowledge only.
Josh Mays, also on Facebook, says, the so-called scientists proved themselves to be political in nature and not truth seekers.
They betrayed the trust of the people countless times, but especially COVID.
The politically favored scientists are not to be trusted.
Lucy Howard says, scientists need to take a primary role in policy debates.
Women are dying in states like Texas because they cannot get the health care they need.
Climate change is real, and we need scientists to help us formulate policy that will help us design infrastructure for ecologically sustainable communities.
Let's get back to your calls on whether scientists should take a more or less active role in policy debates.
Thomas is in Vermillion, South Dakota on our line for independence.
Good morning, Thomas.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Adams, you do a fantastic job, and I really appreciate C-SFAN.
Thank you.
And you're welcome.
And I, first of all, want to clarify, I worked for Mr. Kennedy's presidential campaign from February all the way throughout the year.
And the answer to your question, should scientists make a major, you know, take a major role or not, I think the debate is on now anyway.
And I do think, as a gentleman called prior, get active, you know, run for Congress, some of them even.
But overall, I think Mr. Kennedy Selection is a good one.
He has an excellent record with the Water Alliance group he's worked with.
And I believe that things will work out.
America seems to work on a crisis mode, and we will be able to have the vaccines that we need to keep.
I really believe that.
Now, Thomas, if I can ask you, how did Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s positions on health care shape your decision to support him?
Healthcare?
Oh, healthcare basically, I think it would be the woman's issue, the reproductive right issue.
That view there.
But I see it's a more bigger picture, I guess, that the reason I supported Mr. Kennedy was not in relation to the COVID, the autism questions people have.
It was more of the, I'm sparring off the debate somewhat, the views on his military-industrial complex, which does relate to what we're talking about, in a sense.
But overall, I think I believe that he'll do a good job.
And when they come to a major problem, I think rationality will prevail.
And he'll do a good job, I believe.
And I do think that scientists should take a more role and even run for Congress, some of them.
But that's all I have to say today.
And I really greatly appreciate the chance to visit.
Thank you very much.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did an interview with NBC after the election, talking about his role in overseeing America's public health agencies.
Let's listen to a bit.
Well, he's been very specific in what he said.
He wants me to do three things: one, clean up the corruption at the agencies, particularly the conflicts of interest that have turned those agencies into captive agencies for the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry, the other industries that they're supposed to be regulating.
Number two, to return those agencies to the gold standard science, the empirically based, evidence-based medicine that they were famous for when I was a kid.
And number three, to make America healthy again, to end the chronic disease epidemic.
And President Trump has told me that he wants to see measurable, concrete results within two years in terms of a measurable diminishment in chronic disease among America's kids.
Let's get back to your calls.
Kevin is in Ohio on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Kevin.
Hi, I think the issue is conflating science with debate.
Now, there is science within debate, but that shouldn't be part of what legislatures decide to do with facts that are presented by science.
The concept that a politician is as smart as a scientist who's been working in his field for so long and follows standard scientific method practices to develop their evidence puts them far ahead of legislatures.
Now, once we agree what is the issue at hand, then I agree legislatures should debate on the best way to address it.
But to conflate the two and to even assume that a layperson or even a learned politician who probably is getting information from the wrong sources is equal to a scientist who's practiced in his field is just a waste of our time.
We are at sea.
And the main reason is our president feels that he knows everything.
And everyone says, well, if he knows that, then I know that.
And we're all bowing to the wrong totem there.
We should respect people for the work that they do.
We should respect the industries for what they've been doing for us for onwards of 100 years.
I think this dumbing down of the world is not serving anyone.
That's my point.
Thank you.
Ronald is in Kaplan, Louisiana, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ronald.
Yes, good morning.
What role do you think scientists should be playing in policy debates?
Well, scientists should be involved, but they should be part of what the decision is.
But one thing about scientists, if one finds one thing, but another finds another thing, that's where the discussion comes.
Okay?
For an example, global warming.
You have so much different viewpoints about global warming or global change and all this and that.
I'm listening to you, Ronald.
Okay.
I saw you mom moving on TV.
Anyway, going back to our global warming point, is that there's always another viewpoint.
Okay?
And I could see it right here at JU the way they see it and the way I see it and the way another person sees it.
So that's another thing.
That's what you need more of you.
That's what Kennedy is about.
Kennedy is not against vaccination.
Okay?
And I'm going to give you an example.
There were some vaccinations years ago that we give children.
And they were, the children, a day or two days or three days in, they end up being autistic.
Well, they said it was a good idea.
But then doctors started giving those shots in two.
Like they give you half of it this time in two weeks, they give you another one.
And all of a sudden, none of that, they didn't see that no more.
Okay?
So the vaccination was good, but it wasn't good for that particular child.
And it didn't affect another child.
So, Ronald, I want to read you a couple of things related to vaccines and public policy.
This is from a BBC article.
And in this BBC article, it highlights that Kennedy said in an NPR interview that vaccines are not going to be taken away from anybody.
He says he wants to improve the science on vaccine safety, which he believes has huge deficits.
And he wants good information so people can make informed choices.
But his critique of the vaccine safety regime has been roundly dismissed by experts.
While Kennedy has denied on several occasions that he is anti-vaccination and said he and his children are vaccinated, he has repeatedly stated widely debunked claims about vaccine harm.
One of his main false claims, repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News, was that autism comes from vaccines.
This theory was popularized by a discredited UK doctor, Andrew Wakefield.
Wakefield's 1998 study was later retracted by the Lancet Medical Journal.
Multiple studies since across many countries have concluded that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Now, Ronald, you brought up that there can be differing opinions within the scientific community on things.
And earlier you mentioned climate change as well.
When you have situations like this where there seems to be a majority of scientists agreeing on one position versus another, like with climate change, how do you sort of parse that information?
Well, in other words, the majority is supposed to say they're right, but the minority don't have no voice.
You understand?
You just read a perfect example on how, going back to my original thought of the vaccination on autism.
Well, they had another one that says it doesn't, nothing shows.
But then answer me this.
Why did those children end up with that?
The minority has no voice.
You see what I'm saying?
I do.
All right, let's hear from Scott in Richmond, Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Scott.
Good morning.
I just want to say my father was a scientist.
He had a Ph.D., and he taught at a university here in VCU in Richmond.
And I was raised up to understand a lot about science.
And, of course, science has a history with politics.
And sometimes there's mistakes.
Like George Washington, the doctor said, let's bleed the bad blood out because that was the leading science at the time.
But what we're looking at now with Trump is there's an undermining of science.
And I think it's very dangerous because what is, you know, who are the people backing them?
Big oil, religion, people in the particular right-wing Christian religion are backing them.
What do they want to do?
Undermine science.
We've had this issue going on for, you know, a long time with modern science.
And they're using the technology scientists have created to get this message out that undermines science.
And I would say if someone goes to a doctor, they want that doctor to have all the training, all the scientific backing to save their life.
They don't go to a witch doctor and say, perform a vulnerable ritual.
And to me, Trump is right there with the witch doctors.
He does not know what he's doing.
And he's getting all his people, cabinet people, that are just television personalities.
They don't know anything about science.
And there's something going on underneath the surface, I believe, that is supporting Trump.
And they have an agenda for money to make money.
And they're like, you know, let the world go into global warming, and they're going to profit from it in some way.
Okay.
Ray is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ray.
All right.
How are you doing?
Good, thank you.
Okay.
I really believe that the problem is not that there's scientists.
It's just people who have opinions.
And opinions is not science.
I mean, I hear politicians say all the time, it's my belief that this is this and this is that.
And they're not scientists.
They have beliefs.
They have opinions.
Everybody has opinions.
Opinions is not science.
So I can't believe that to put it in other words, these politicians get into what science is and they're not really knowing what science is.
I don't know about scientists taking leading action in policy, but you've got to have people making the policy who believe that science is good and science has the right answers and not people who think that it's their belief that this science is no good telling everybody else we don't think this is any good.
As far as Kennedy's concerned, he's changing his opinion from the time he was anti-vax now to saying, okay, vax is okay sometimes.
But his beliefs, you know, he keeps changing like a politician now.
And the one funny thing I'd want to tell you is that The fluoride in water, that was the cause for the end of the world in the movie Dr. Strangelove.
If people want to see that, they should play that clip about the fluoride in the water.
I thought it was pretty humorous because I thought of that when he started talking about fluoride in the water in that movie.
It was pretty funny, but that's pretty much my point.
Okay.
On Facebook, Janet Mitch says, in response to the question of whether scientists should play a more or less active role in policy debates, no, let them do their job studying and discovering, but providing the public with the findings.
We're all capable of reading and deciding for ourselves.
Sabrina Altieri says, I've always said that there should be more scientists, historians, and public service, including Congress, instead of business people, lawyers, career politicians, and the super rich as they have eroded our political system to the point we are at currently.
Now, one of the policy priorities that has been laid out by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in terms of what he might do if confirmed as the head of health and human services is to tackle America's relationship with food.
This is the topic of the front page of the Wall Street Journal's review section today, article by Thomas Farley and Tom Friedan.
We battled big food.
Can RFK Jr. succeed where we failed?
Two former top health officials say Kennedy can make America healthy again if he's willing to take on soda companies, ultra-processed foods, farm subsidies, and other powerful forces that shape the way we eat.
Among what's written here in this article, Kennedy's right that food is driving epidemics of chronic disease.
Unhealthy foods now compete with smoking for the title of leading underlying killer in America, contributing to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
Today, nearly half of Americans have high blood pressure, three quarters are obese or overweight, and 15% have type 2 diabetes.
If Kennedy truly wants America to have healthier diets, he would be in sync with just about every doctor in America, including the two of us.
We have worked in many public health roles over the years, among them Health Commissioner of New York City, and we fought many tough battles over food.
And goes on to lay out some of the challenges, including some of the issues with the broader food systems in the United States.
That's in the Wall Street Journal's review section.
Now, let's hear from Donald in Spokane, Washington on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Donald.
Oh, we've lost you there, Donald.
Let's hear Devine in Bronx, New York on our line for independence.
Good morning.
Oh, good morning.
Good morning.
This is Devine from the Bronx.
Good morning, Devine.
I was critical about RFK, but I support the fact that he wants to bring out the information about vaccines.
Since he's the head of the whatever department.
Department of Health and Human Services, if confirmed by the Senate.
Right, right.
He should be able to give us all the facts of all the doubts that we were having about vaccines before.
Or he should be able to prove that vaccines actually work the way they should.
So this is one thing I was saying that I used to follow this guy, Gary No, that RFK is with or is acquainted with, and he's a vaccine critic, not a denier, he's a vaccine critic, and he used to give very good scientific reasons on some of the vaccines and why they didn't and wouldn't work.
So since RFK is at the head, he should be able to let out the information that this guy was criticizing and squash the debates.
Also, this guy, Gary No, was also talking about all the processed foods that were eaten and why we shouldn't be eating them and stuff.
So again, if RFK is going to help us get healthier and cut out some of the corporate junk foods, yes.
Why not?
I'm willing to give him a chance.
I hate the fact that Trump is president, but I'm willing to give RFK a chance to see what he can do on our health policy.
But I'm afraid that since he's with Trump, he's going to be racist and it's going to affect brown and black people in their worst ways.
Okay.
We had on our program earlier this fall former NIH National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who was a guest on our QA program earlier this fall to talk about his book on wisdom on truth, science, faith, and trust, and talked a bit about vaccine skepticism.
Here's a portion.
Dr. Collins, do you see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his efforts with regard to vaccines as dangerous?
Yes, I do.
He is capable of putting forward information that's demonstrably false, beginning with the idea that vaccines have something to do with autism, which is one of the most clearly debunked claims that has ever been made about a connection between a medical procedure and an outcome.
He continues to cast doubt on vaccines for childhood illnesses, which if more and more people start to believe those, we're going to see children start to die of measles and whooping cough and other conditions that we had pretty much eliminated on the basis of totally falsified estimates of what the risks are of those vaccines.
Yeah, RFK Jr., for whatever reason, has identified himself with a set of ideas that are clearly not compatible with truth and yet sound compelling because he can quote a lot of data, mostly from second or third rate journals that have been pretty much disqualified and debunked, and people tend to go along.
Because we are right now a society that is distrustful of everything.
And we're particularly distrustful of expertise if it happens to be something that looks like an elite.
And you know what?
If you want information about your health, don't you want it from somebody who studied that issue for 15 or 20 years, who has an appropriate degree, understands all of the nuances of the biology and the medicine?
But somehow, these days, those are suspicious people.
And the people who just posted something on the internet, or RFK Jr. are seen as somehow being the ones you can rely on.
America, what happened to us?
How do we forget the principles of how we maintain a good repertory of established facts and depend on those and don't begin to throw those out the window when suddenly it's a fact we don't like or it makes us uncomfortable.
Truth doesn't care how you feel about it.
It's just truth.
Back to your calls on whether scientists should play a more or less active role in policy debates.
Ted is in Ocean View, Hawaii on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ted.
Good evening.
Oh, good evening, yes, of course.
In Hawaii, it's still evening.
Anyway, yeah, I've been listening to the different people on the subject.
A lot of people don't understand that when doctors or scientists give an estimate of effectiveness, It is an estimate of effectiveness, and there are always different things that come up that break that effectiveness.
So they'll say that this is 82% effective, and it is.
But if you happen to be in that group of 18 or 20% that's not in there, you're feeling betrayed.
And I think people need to really think about that.
Nothing is perfect.
For example, a metaphor, the educational department has gone with a set of parameters to educate people.
And I won't delve too far into this, but it's a good metaphor that using this method of teaching is so effective.
It's maybe 71, somewhere between 71 and 75% effective.
But there's a lot of people that aren't in that group.
And so when you're teaching with a method, methodology, and I have several teachers in my family that I talk to about this, that there's people left out because they don't fit in that category.
And so if you're 88% effective, 12% is a huge number in our population.
It's many, many millions of people are just left out, which is now why they have alternative schools to make it fit better.
And it's similar into what you're talking about with the scientists.
They can only be so perfect, and everybody really needs to remember that.
And you go with the best number you can, and then you make allowances for those that don't fit into that category.
And I think if you understand my train of thought as far as believing a scientist, I started in the solar industry to help because they said, oh, it's getting bad.
In 73, I started doing solar, and I drove a car that got 40 miles to the gallon.
And all this stuff, they said, well, someday everybody will do that.
Well, now we are.
I just had to wait 50 years for it to come about because people are a little slow sometimes, you know, groups.
And that's what I just wanted to show people that, yes, you can believe scientists, but there are exceptions to the obvious.
Okay.
Ted was talking about whether or not people believe in science and scientists.
Dr. Anand Pereik from the Bipartisan Policy Center was a guest on this program earlier this week and spoke about those results we mentioned at the top of the show from Pew Research showing that Democrats trust science more than Republicans.
Here's a portion.
You know, that's really concerning.
I will say sort of the silver lining, I think, in Pew's latest poll for the first time since the pandemic, those numbers have come up, and particularly for Republicans, which I think is really important.
So we don't have that divergence by party.
But look, I think it's really, really important that there be trust in science in public health.
And also it goes sort of both ways.
So how can scientists and public health officials and medical professionals, how can they better connect to the public?
How can they make sure they're communicating in the right way, that they're demonstrating empathy, that when the science changes, they're able to communicate that.
These are all, I think, really important lessons that we've all learned over the last few years.
Back to your calls.
Rob is in Kansas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Rob.
Yeah, good morning.
How are you guys today?
Good, thank you.
No, hey, just a couple quickies.
I'll let you guys go.
But like Dr. Collins was saying, the statement's on truth.
I mean, are we just sitting here complaining and not researching it ourselves?
I mean, are you watching Fox, MSNBC, CNN, or just Washington Journal for your update, or you just get that off your phone?
I mean, the more research you do, probably the better off you are.
The second thing is, yeah, science.
I think more Democrats or liberals believe there's only, how many genders are there, yes?
I mean, you guys are always talking about science.
How many genders are there?
And then I get a little upset just watching the show.
We get called racists all the time as far as being Republicans.
And, you know, we don't call, I don't think we call the other side that much names.
And, but yeah.
So basically, every time I have to watch this show, I have to take a Xanax.
So that's only maybe I'm going to watch it once or twice a month.
But hey, keep up the work.
God bless America.
Hope everybody has a happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you.
The Hill has an article.
Why is RFK Jr. under attack for questioning a broken system?
And points to some of the issues that the caller was just raising.
If you are a heavy consumer of legacy media, you probably believe that President-elect Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services was as shocking as it was dangerous.
The legacy media, big pharma, and some in the medical establishment have moved quickly to stop RFK Jr.'s nomination through a coordinated smear campaign.
Now then, let's hear from David in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence.
Good morning, David.
Hey, how's it going?
Good, thank you.
I just wanted to share a little bit of truth with your viewers.
Robert Kennedy Jr. played a part in one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent memory.
You can look it up as I'm telling you the story.
In 2018, two infants in America Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared to combine measles vaccine with an expired muscle relaxant rather than water.
Kennedy and his children's health defense group walked into this vacuum of mistrust, met with the Samoan prime minister, and flooded the area with misinformation.
The next year, there was a huge measles outbreak over on the island, and the disease tore through the population, sickening more than, I think, close to 6,000 people, killing 83, most of them young children.
So, David, if you don't mind, I'm going to read a bit from The Guardian about this story that you're mentioning.
The headline on this story, which is from November 25th of this year, we learned the hard way.
Samoa remembers a deadly measles outbreak and a visit from RFK Jr.
Four months before the outbreak in 2019, Kennedy traveled to Samoa and met with anti-vaccine figures, contributing to what health experts claim was a significant disinformation campaign.
The week before her three children died, Fauso Tuavale, forgive the pronunciation, and her husband took them for a swim in a river flowing behind their house in the Samoan village.
The next day, they went to the hospital.
And I'm just going to scroll down here.
Here we go.
In the small island country of Samoa, lives have been forever altered by an outbreak of the disease in 2019 that caused at least 83 deaths and 1,867 hospitalizations, mostly of babies and young children.
Thousands more fell sick.
The preventable illness was able to spread through the small, closely knit population of about 200,000 due to record low vaccination rates stemming from a medical vaccination error, the Samoan government's public health mismanagement, and fueled by anti-vaccine sentiment, including by Donald Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Health Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This is the story I'm guessing you're referencing, David.
Statement.
Look, can I make one last closing statement?
Trump's endorsement of this quackery, his embrace of the snake oil treatment and anti-vaccine partisans such as Robert Kennedy makes him a threat to the public.
And I just wanted to tell you, Trump supporters have voted for Trump.
You got what you asked for.
Thank you.
Mary is in Lincoln, Nebraska, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mary.
Good morning.
I want to mention that I have a degree in healthcare science.
What I learned 40 years ago when I got my degree has changed vastly, vastly.
The reason is science is ever-changing.
We have scientists that are hard, diligent working people every single day, always looking for a way to better or improve everything, everything from healthcare on down.
And so to dispute that, like RFK is doing, I feel it's on his behalf a theory.
It's not based on education and fact and trials and errors and one thing and another.
In healthcare, we rely on the CDC a lot.
And good thing.
And so I have no problem with going along with someone who makes sense.
But to me, Donald Trump saying he wants RFK to head this department and just go wild makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I just cringe for the sake of all people.
Now, Mary, you mentioned something that several other folks have kind of alluded to today: that what you learned early in your scientific career has changed and that there's new information, the science has changed.
Sometimes when people hear that science used to say one thing and now says something different, that undermines their faith in what scientists are saying.
How do you think people should balance that information?
I approach it is: I say, yes, you know, take your lawnmower.
You used to use spark plugs.
Now you do something else to make the thing run.
Everything is always changing.
And as we, in our minds, we always hope for the better.
You know, maybe you plan for the worst, but you always hope for the better.
And so sometimes things were not developed or discovered 40 years ago.
And now they are.
And maybe they were known but not refined.
It takes the FDA years to just pass one drug.
People may not know that.
You just don't, somebody just doesn't walk in and say, here, this is medication I think for this or that and put it on the shelf tomorrow.
These things are tested, tried, and then finally marketed over a long span of time.
And so the thing people need to think of is nothing in time stays the same.
Things change and they progress.
Are we still driving Model T's?
No, we're not.
It's the same with science.
We're not doing all the same things we did 40 years ago.
But hopefully now, either some things that they thought were good have been eliminated and some things that they think are better have been brought out.
But to have people spreading theories, listen, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Theories might be missing.
Let's, you mentioned the FDA, Mary.
I want to point out we had FDA Administrator nominee Dr. Marty McCary as a guest here on Washington Journal this fall to talk about his book, Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and what it means for our health.
Let's listen to a portion of that.
So we have a $4.5 trillion healthcare economy, and we've got to deal with the root causes.
We've got to deal with good scientific standards for our recommendations, and we've got to promote clinical excellence.
So increasingly, you're seeing doctors now go directly to the public and explain things in ways they can understand it, presenting the latest scientific research.
That's what I'm trying to do in the book Blind Spots.
And you're seeing a lot of these efforts now to educate the public.
We need a civil discourse.
In the past, there was a feeling that we should only have one position as a medical field.
That's what the small group of people at the top of the medical establishment believed.
But an open civil discourse among medical experts is not only important, it's how we learn, it's how we grow as a field, and we should evolve our position as new information comes in.
So I do believe in civil discourse, and I believe in civil discourse, not just in medical science, but in society at large.
There's a lot of agreement in America, and I think if we can turn off the polarization of all of these voices in the echo chambers, we can see that we all want the same things.
We want to address chronic diseases.
We want to address childhood obesity.
We want to address our food supply to live healthier.
And we want to lower the cost of health care.
It's now 48% of all federal spending goes to health care through its official direct forms and through indirect hidden ways.
We have two options.
We can increase spending or we can cut the waste and focus on promoting health and stop just dealing with a sickness business and instead actively promote health based on good clinical research.
Back to your call.
Stephanie is in South Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Stephanie.
Hi there.
Hi.
I actually am so happy that these conversations are happening now.
And I think it's a really good thing.
I know it brings up a lot of controversy, especially with the vaccine topic and RFK.
But just sidelining and talking about this food, big food, and what he's going to do, I think most people can get behind him on that.
And just cleaning up America's food, if we look at what's happening in Europe and how they have regulations and the artificial ingredients and all of the different chemicals that are not allowed in the food compared to what the U.S. does right now in our food system, it's ridiculous.
And I'm a mom of four, so I'm so excited that this is something that we are hopefully going to get some change on.
And when you go to Europe and you see how you can eat food there, you feel better.
It's a lot cleaner.
They're more connected to the farm.
And here in public schools, all the kids are just fed processed food.
And it's very toxic.
And it does affect, that's why there's so much chronic disease.
Stephanie, I just want to read a little bit.
I want to stay with you, but I want to read a little bit more of that Wall Street Journal article that I referenced earlier about this topic.
And it says, Americans are not irresponsible gluttons, and it's not that we hate the taste of healthy food.
In one study, people locked in a food lab for a month were just as satisfied with healthy, unprocessed meals, which made them lose weight, as they were with unhealthy, ultra-processed meals, which made them gain weight.
The problem is that we are up against a food system that overwhelms us.
Americans' unhealthy diets reflect how foods today are designed, produced, sold, and marketed.
Most foods stocked in American grocery stores don't grow from the ground.
They are complex, ultra-processed products that are mass-produced in factories.
That process involves adding salt, sugar, and fat that humans are biologically programmed to like.
So, all of us find it difficult to resist these foods.
Some would say they are addictive.
In addition, unhealthy products like soda, chips, and cookies are cheap.
They're placed in highly visible and easily reachable spots in grocery and many other retail stores to stimulate impulse purchases, and they are heavily advertised.
All of these marketing techniques work.
That seems to align with what you're talking about, your experience, Stephanie.
Absolutely.
The way that these big food companies are marketing to kids is just completely wrong.
And, you know, these bright colors that they're using in the USA versus real food, you know, things like spirulina and beets to color their foods in Europe, which is safer.
And this is why our children are going to be safer when RFK, you know, really exposes all of this.
I mean, there's a big Kellogg's ban right now going on because moms are so sick of it.
And we shouldn't have to give our food that we get to our children.
It shouldn't be really filled with poison.
And that America shouldn't have to worry.
We should be able to go to the grocery stores and get safer food.
And that's where we need government and science to come in and protect us and protect our children.
And so I think that this is great.
I think the vaccine conversation, this is good.
And RFK has said it again and again, he is not against vaccines.
So everyone that is worried about that, it just needs to be more of a topic.
And mothers, there are mothers out there who have vaccine-injured kids and they don't get a voice.
So vaccine safety does need to be talked about.
It's not about people being the first thing that people say is, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist.
That's not true.
It's just that people need to be able to have these conversations so that mothers do feel safer.
And that's the only thing when you go to your pediatrician, the pediatricians never even give you the risks, even though the insert on the vaccine does have risks.
So vaccines do have risks, but mothers are not even informed so that they can make an informed choice.
Okay.
Patrick is in Brookings, Oregon, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Patrick.
Good morning.
I was curious about homosexuality and how people become homosexuals.
I decided to look it up.
You got three.
And what role do you think that scientists should be playing in public policy debates, Patrick?
This is these are scientifically universities in the United States who look up homosexuality and the scientific reasons for it.
Then you get all the spook about transgenders and everything.
Maybe that'll clear a lot of thinking.
Patrick, your line is pretty rough.
I'm going to let you go for a minute and hopefully we can get a clearer one.
Angel is in Marysville, Washington on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Angel.
Good morning.
I'm going to take off my speech function here.
Okay, so yeah, that's a lot to unpack.
Oh, my goodness.
So many people giving their opinions, but my opinion is about the turbo cancers going on right now.
People are literally dying from turbo cancers, even young.
And this is from the actual mRNA vaccine that was for the COVID, which everyone was told was going to stop COVID.
Then it didn't turn out to stop COVID.
It wasn't going to spread COVID.
Actually, it did still spread COVID, yada, yada.
So we're in this kind of weird kind of a matrix where we're kind of like being told lies still to this day.
Even to this day, we're being told, keep taking the COVID vaccine.
That's not about it.
Angel, what role do you think scientists should be playing when they're making these policy decisions about things like whether or not to recommend something like a COVID vaccine?
What role do you think scientists should play?
I think science, well, this is the problem because they've actually been given like indemnity from actually being sued for like damages for people dying and stuff.
But I think with science, I think science is constantly fluid.
I mean, I have learned science.
I'm going on almost 60 now.
I don't sound like it at home.
But I'm like 58.
I'm going on 60.
I don't mind that.
Anyway, so but what I feel is that, and this is so important, and Dr. John Campbell on YouTube, look him up because he's been doing this amazing research on vaccines and all this stuff.
And people want to go like, oh, like, no, the vaccines don't do this and blah blah blah.
And it's like, you know what?
Maybe there is a little correlation there, corollary.
But with science, the thing about science is that it's beautiful.
I love it.
I love science because I've been a science nerd from a little kid and I love it.
But it changes all the time.
It's fluid.
You find out, oops, maybe we got this wrong, and maybe we got that wrong.
So science isn't just a stable thing.
You can't just always rely on science.
It's like a stable thing.
And once you kind of get off that pony and go, hey, maybe this pony I'm writing isn't always going to be stable.
And it might actually change.
And I might actually find out that, hey, oops, I'm wrong.
I was wrong about something.
It takes some humility with science to be able to say, hey, guess what?
I got that wrong.
And I want to make that clear to everyone so that, you know, you know what I mean?
Because it takes humility with science.
You have to be a humble scientist.
You can't be somebody who's like all egotistical or maybe even based on your like, you know, your people that are like giving you, you know, your benefits, your Bennies, to keep your scientist project going.
And then you actually, you know, like if you actually have humility, you will go, hey, guess what?
I might have gotten something a little wrong where I needed to tweak something here or there.
Angel, we're just about out of time for this segment, but thank you to everybody who called in on our topic of the role of scientists in policy debates.
Coming up next, we're going to hear from Shondell Newsom, who is with the Small Business for America's Future.
And he's going to be with us to discuss the state of small businesses in the U.S. here on Small Business Saturday.
And later, Robert N. Lowe, president and CEO of EdChoice, will join us to discuss how education policy could change under the incoming Trump administration.
We'll be right back.
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Welcome back.
We are joined by Chandelle Newsome, who is the co-chair of Small Business for America's Future.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
Thank you so much, Kimberly.
It's a pleasure to be here for Small Business Saturday.
Can you tell us a bit about your organization, Small Business for America's Future?
What your membership is like and what your mission is.
You know, Small Business for America's Future is a national coalition of small business owners and leaders.
Our mission is to provide small business with a voice at every level of government.
We spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill, but we also spend a lot of time in our local communities.
We have over 8,000 members spread across the United States, and it's really exciting and really something that is needed on Capitol Hill, but in our local communities to speak on behalf of our nation's job creators, small business owners.
And how do you define a small business?
Like, what are we talking about in terms of employees or revenue?
Well, you know, the SBA defines it as up to 500 employees.
We generally, because a lot of small businesses are less than 100 employees, we really focus and hone in on those main street employers and small businesses that are in our neighborhoods, that are in our communities.
Not really, you know, revenues range from, you know, as much as a million bucks or half a million or even less to whatever they're going to make.
I mean, the definition of a small business is really those people who are in the community, who is the local grocery store, the local dry cleaner, the daycare center.
All of those small businesses range in so many different ways and help a community to build on many different levels.
And you're a small business owner yourself.
What kind of business are you in and how did you get involved with this group?
Well, you know what?
I got involved with this group because in 2009, I was coming out of America's Great Recession and I was just not happy with the conditions we were in.
And, you know, so I really, I was invited to Washington, D.C. by Senator Harry Reid back in the days.
And he was asking what were the problems with small business owners.
And, you know, I sat at a roundtable and that's when I really, really got involved.
But later on, I met a group of people of concerned business owners who really wanted to help out other small businesses.
And that was Small Business for America's Future.
And we formed a group that was really all about looking at what are the issues and concerns of our small businesses because we didn't have much representation on Capitol Hill back in the days.
You know, it was kind of tough to get a voice and have some say into the policies that impact us.
As far as my business, you know, I love what I do.
I have a small business marketing firm, a family-owned business with my wife and my daughter in Las Vegas, Nevada.
We do a lot of public engagement and public involvement, which is like, to me, it's my ministry is going out to the community, informing people about some of the projects, some of the issues that concern them.
So it kind of aligns with Small Business for America's future.
And what are some of the most significant challenges facing America's small business these days?
I think, you know, it ranges from health care.
I mean, affordable health care is always an issue with small nations, our nation's small businesses.
Why?
Because, you know, we typically have employees who live, work, and play right with us, right?
So we have a different view of opinion on how it works with affordable health care.
We know that the Affordable Care Act is something that really helped out a lot of our employees.
We got single mothers that work for us.
We got grandmothers that work for us.
So we know that everybody is impacted every which way when it comes to health care and affordable prescriptions and things like that for our employees.
But also, you know, for us, we always want to make sure that we have the ability to grow and the ability to expand and the ability to excel.
And the other part is access to capital.
We always look at opportunities to have access to capital so we can do creative things and innovative things with our business.
And then finally, you know, one of the big things is always taxes, right?
You look at it from the more we can keep, the more goes back into our neighborhoods.
So Kimberly, let me just tell you that when it comes to small businesses, we invest in all of our Boy Scouts and some of the soccer clubs and different organizations that are in our community for our kids.
We invest in our churches.
So a tax code with a great advantage to small businesses, we put it right back into our neighborhoods and right back into our local economies.
You mentioned at the beginning that it's Small Business Saturday.
Can you talk about the significance of this day for some of the small businesses in your organization?
You know, small businesses love, we do our work out of passion, but we love to celebrate.
We love to celebrate our wins.
We love to celebrate our communities.
We love to celebrate everything that we get to do.
And I think that the nation should go out today and make sure that you patronize a small business, that you go out and you take your family to all small businesses right now.
You know, we're the creators of net new jobs.
And that's what's important, Kimberly, to understand.
Like, we, you know, a lot of people look at us and say, oh, they're just, you know, mom and pop, and, you know, they don't have any impact.
But we actually have the greatest impact since the Great Recession.
We had the greatest impact on net new jobs since the global pandemic.
We have the greatest impact on net new jobs.
And so I think it's very important not only that you support because you, you know, because of Small Business Saturday, but you should support throughout the year because that's how we help to grow our economy.
We're going to be taking your calls with questions about small businesses in the United States.
We're going to have regional lines for this conversation.
In the Eastern and Central time zones, you can call in at 202-748-8000.
In the Mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
And if you happen to be a small business owner and want to share your experience, 202-748-8002.
Switching gears a little bit, Mr. Newsom, I'd like to talk about the incoming Trump administration.
What do you think, based on what you've seen thus far, the incoming Trump administration is going to do or mean for small businesses?
Well, you know, Kimberly, you know, any type of transition brings uncertainty to small businesses.
So no matter who's coming in charge, who's going to be the new administration, and we just hope that the rhetoric or the campaign things that are promised is not always consistent with what is going to be actually implemented in policy.
We know that politicians have to jockey for position and they have to say certain things so they can get elected.
But what small businesses love is stability.
We love for things to be.
So what do you mean by that?
Were there specific things that President-elect Trump said on the campaign trail that you're hoping he doesn't actually do in practice?
Well, I think, you know, a lot of my, and this is not Shondell, this is a lot of our small business owners.
You know, a lot of them talk about tariffs and they don't want to see tariffs because it changes the price of goods.
It adjusts what are you going to do with that additional cost?
That additional cost, you're going to have to pass that on to a consumer.
So again, and then that goes full circle back to our employees.
Like we don't have the luxury as small business owners to kind of dodge our employees.
If their lives are not well and they have increase in cost or anything like that, we hear about it.
We walk in that front door.
So I think it's important.
And a lot of small business owners that I talk to, they don't want to see any type of adjustment to their cost of doing business.
One of the big issues facing President-elect Trump as well as the incoming Congress will be what to do about expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
And you guys did some research in your organization about sort of the impact of those tax cuts, finding that in your survey, 68% of respondents feel that wealthy individuals and large corporations benefited the most from those tax cuts.
80% said it did not help them in hiring new employees.
76% said it did not help with increasing salaries.
And another 76% said it did not help them purchase new equipment.
Many of these things aligned with promises that were made around the time that those tax cuts were announced.
And there's been a lot of support among President-elect Trump and his team, as well as congressional Republicans, to extend many of those provisions.
What is your take on that policy and what you hope to see from the outcome of the tax debate?
Well, thank you.
Thank you for that question, Kimberly.
You know, it did fail the bulk of Main Street, according to our survey.
Lot of our members said that they they wish that they were able to come with a resolution for small businesses.
It is fine that our corporate brothers, brothers and sisters want to have their 40 tax cut cut, rate cut, but we didn't receive.
We're not feeling that same boost or that same uh opportunity.
And and again it goes back to this is, uh, you know when it comes, when it comes to stakeholders and corporations and Wall Street operations uh, they don't do the same thing that small businesses do.
I mean, i'm not hating on them, i'm just, i'm just stating the fact.
Small businesses we, we walk right to our grocery stores, we go to the pet groomer, we go and we support other small businesses.
So it makes for a greater economy and it makes more sense that those tax cuts if you're going to give tax cuts and huge tax cuts, they should go to small businesses because we come right back in the community and spend right back in the community.
We don't, we don't go out and build other stuff or go to remote islands.
We are right in our community, impacting every, every American once again.
Our phone lines for this segment, in the eastern and central time zones, 2027 88000.
In the Mountain and Pacific time zones, 2027, 8800 and one, and if you are a small business owner, you can call in at 202748 800 and 2.
That's the line that Thomas in Rockville Maryland, called in on.
Good morning, Thomas.
What kind of business do you have and what's your comment?
Yes, this is Tale Kareem, actually with A Legal, and what we do is we help both uh individuals and businesses to kind of keep their wealth by creating trusts, uh and will products for them.
We're online platform and so you don't have to go into our office.
You can just get your um, your will or trust, done um and by visiting our website, which is Www.abe.legal.
And then Thomas, what's your question?
Yeah, so two questions.
One is the speaker, do you think that the best um instruments that can be used by the incoming Trump administration to grow small businesses um are similar to what they're doing in Virginia?
They provide both direct grants as well as competitive investments to grow the ecosystem in uh, in Virginia um as well, you know, as opposed to focusing on, as you said, on like tax breaks, which really only really benefit the, the uh, the very top of the food chain, and then, second of all, a policy that um creates more incentives for government contracts to go to small businesses.
One of the things they used to do in the district of Columbia is to make sure that every you know large contract that was issued uh, they had to have a a small business partner.
So, like a 50 51 percent partnership, do you think that those types of mechanisms would really be just super beneficial to increasing the opportunity and the growth of small businesses across this country?
Thomas, First of all, thank you for being a small business owner and happy small business Saturday.
And your business is extremely important to generational wealth.
I benefit from that from my father.
When he passed in 2009, he had a will, he had a trust, he had everything in business.
So you're important.
You're very, very important.
You're the type of small businesses that we love to talk about.
Going to your question, you know, one of the things that is important is access to capital.
And we saw with the PPP starting out as a loan and then a forgivable paycheck protection program, which was rolled out during the pandemic.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you very much, Kimberly.
You know, I'm Air Force veteran, so you know, we're talking a lot of acronyms.
So one of the things that I think is important is how access to capital is always infused into small businesses.
And small businesses utilize that same capital and turn around and give it back to their employees or give it back to their community.
So grants are great.
Any type of technical assistance is great.
Anytime that you can infuse and invest in a small business, it comes back tenfold to me.
It's really important.
So I just think that what you talked about is excellent ideas.
So you just mentioned the Paycheck Protection Program.
I want to point out some data from the Department of Treasury that found that there was a surge in small business entrepreneur formation following the pandemic.
The post-pandemic economy with its higher levels of household wealth and renewed support for small business has kick-started entrepreneurship.
There's been a well-recognized surge in applications to start new businesses since the pandemic with over 19 million new applications since the end of 2020.
While the pace of new business applications has eased somewhat from its heights last year, that pace remains well above the steady pre-COVID rate.
While business formation data from the pandemic period are not fully available, application rates are predictive of actual business formation.
Actual business formations from the subsequent eight quarters have a correlation from likely employers.
So that kind of follows to what you said.
Now, Thomas also asked about government contracting.
Did you have any thoughts on that?
You know what?
I do.
And you know, we work on a lot of government contracts.
So we've been working on government contracts since 2007.
So one of the things that I think is important is small businesses having access and opportunities to work on government contracts.
And the national infrastructure law, the bipartisan infrastructure law, actually did a lot to infuse work with small electrical companies, small construction firms, small engineering firms.
So I think that when it comes down to government contracting opportunities, that is always a wonderful way for small businesses to grow and expand.
All right.
Let's hear from Bill in Arkansas, who is also a business owner.
What kind of business do you have, Bill, and what's your question?
I have sales and marketing and product development.
It's all been, it can overlap through the last discussion, too.
It's all been in food and beverage business.
So I have a small business that I just celebrated the 20th anniversary of, and I still have my first customer.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
I did see a hit.
I produce, having been a chef before, I produce flavor profiles that can be turned into shelf items or in the back of the house for people that use a lot of it.
And I do seasoning blends and sauces.
And I represented West Coast wineries for about 20 years as well.
Small, small business West Coast wineries that I could say, hey, you ever thought about selling any of that in Arkansas?
They go, no, we haven't.
So I said, well, how about I do it for you?
And then I worked with about five or six other states around there to help small wineries have an opportunity to be in that 80-20 world out there, the 20% that make it and sell 80% of it.
It's just been a wonderful experience.
Retired from marketing sausages and cheeses and all sorts of things in the food business to food service distributors as well as big box stores.
Well, then, if I can trouble you, Bill, before we get to your question about small businesses, given the last segment, we were talking about RFK Jr.'s positions on America's food system and what he plans to do about it.
It seems like you have an interesting interaction of sort of the small business opinion as well as the food opinion.
What are your thoughts?
Well, my thoughts are that I was a very lucky guy because in the 70s and 80s and 90s, everybody was trying to improve the quality of product that was going into the finished good that people would eat.
So there was a wave of that.
Now, if you read the book, I think it's called Sugar, Salt, and Fat, it tells you about things that they've got psychological doctorates in finding the bliss point of sugar, salt, and fat.
So people will just want to eat more.
And I can't help but think that if there really are 200 or 2,000 or whatever the number of it is of big business food processing individuals each season, they can't sell that in other parts of the world like Canada or Europe or wherever, then maybe we ought to look at it real close and that everybody ought to take a deep breath, not freak out.
I don't think that our country's going to allow any one department head runs willy-nilly on everything, but they may discover a lot of stuff and it could be really riddled deep with big business people that have gotten in there to control things to go there that way.
And did you have a question for Mr. Newsom?
Yes, I just wanted to ask him, what does he think liberty is for the small businessman?
Wow, that's a great question.
Liberty.
You know, and thank you for your businesses.
My wife is a food and beverage person.
So thank you for all of that, everything that you do.
You know, liberty for us, it comes to giving us the ability to continue to help our employees, help our community, and to build and grow our businesses.
Our return on investments is a little bit different than I would think, you know, the tradition in Wall Street.
Yes, we do want to make money because, you know, we want to take care of our families.
But at the same time, it's more about the community and our neighborhoods and the people around us than anything else.
So you have a lot of family-owned businesses that are small businesses.
You have a lot of solopreneurs or individual mom and pop small businesses.
But I think everybody, the consistent factor is how we're able to impact our local communities.
And I think that gets to a question that we've received on X from someone with the handle as tech.
Has the definition of small business changed?
With the ability for any individual to start a website, podcast, blog, vlog, are they all considered a small business?
Does a small business need to have hired someone to be considered a small business?
Well, I'd say that all small businesses are great.
I know a lot of members of our various chambers who do those type of things is, you know, have a website or they have, you know, it's a single man shop.
They're all important.
But one of the things that happens with employers is it helps to grow the community.
And then when it goes back to even government contracts, what you were talking about earlier, Kimberly, you can't really do a government contract as a solo shop.
So we've learned that, especially in small businesses and in minority communities, that you need employers to expand and grow your business.
And you need employees, I'm sorry, we need employees to make sure that we have the capacity to provide value on contracts.
It's not just about getting a contract because a contract impacts everything all the way around.
So let's say if you're building a new road, everybody on that contract, including the small businesses, have to provide value in order for that road to impact safety or impact what happens in your community.
So I think that every small business is important.
But when you talk about employer-based small businesses, they are extremely important, especially in minority communities who struggle with capacity in taking care of some of their businesses.
Thomas is in Delray Beach, Florida.
Good morning, Thomas.
What's your question?
Yes, good morning.
So my question is about Trump's tax cuts and his corporate tax cuts.
You said that small businesses didn't feel the effects, but my question is, how is that possible if the percent of tax cut was the same for a small business?
The 40% would have been the same 40%.
So how is it possible that they paid less taxes and yet didn't see any benefit?
And then a second question that related to that is how would you feel about Trump's tax cuts, corporate tax cuts for small businesses being either expended, sorry, expanded or left to expire?
Because surely if you allow the cuts to expire, if Trump's tax cuts expire, small businesses will be paying more taxes, right?
So would you want to see the tax cuts being extended, expired, or amended?
Thank you.
So large corporations got a permanent 40% tax cut rate cut.
A permanent.
Okay, so the difference between permanent and ours about to expire is huge.
And then think about this from this perspective as well.
Many, just as Kimberly alluded to, more small businesses are growing right now, right now at this current point in time.
And not due to the Trump tax cuts or the TCJA, but it's really about some of the resiliency, some of the policies that have allowed us to do more government contracting to give us more access to capital.
Small businesses, in my opinion, need more access to capital and access to contracts than we need any type of tax cut in the ways that benefit the wealthy.
We're not wealthy.
A lot of us are really sort of middle class, sort of hardworking, middle-class working people who have created businesses.
And we don't necessarily benefit from any type of tax cut that we can't take advantage of.
That one wasn't really able, we weren't able to take advantage of a lot of those cuts.
Jeff is in Fort McCoy, Florida.
And what's your question, Jeff?
Good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to give you an idea, see what you think of it.
We have a lot of government regulations, and of course a small business owner doesn't have a legal apartment that they can pass, you know, get a bomb.
What if we made government more friendly and created what I call a government regulation website for each type of business?
For example, if you LE The regulations would be for a delicatessen, specifically pointed the ones that affect a delicatessen, they'd all be on there.
And what if the state and the local regulations could be integrated into that?
What if, I mean, if you did that, you'd see where there's overlap, where there's gaps.
And what if feedback in that built into that small business directly back there?
Jeff, your line is a little bit difficult to hear.
I wonder if you can maybe move closer to your phone if you're using headphones.
Yeah, is this better?
It sounds a little bit better.
Go ahead, Jeff.
So if you had a as I said, the small business website, the specific kind of business, and you had a waiving idea, Jeff.
Just because your line is hard to hear, I'm going to ask our guests to respond to this idea of sort of concentrating regulations pertaining to various industries on single websites.
But maybe you could also respond to this proposed Department of Government efficiency that the incoming Trump administration has proposed as a way to roll back regulations or maybe even shrink the size of government.
So that goes back to my original thing, Kimberly.
Is like we're uncertain about what that means, right?
I get what the concept sounds like, but uncertainty creates confusion and stagnation with small businesses.
And so since we don't know what that new office is chartered to do, we have to just wait and see, which puts us in the opposite of where we're going right now.
We're growing tremendously.
We're very optimistic.
We're having record numbers of openings and record numbers of employment.
So with anything that's not baked or not really explained to us well, we start pulling back a little bit because it's very, you know, we put our life savings into this.
We put everything we have.
So we can't really take risk on uncertainty.
So the idea that the guy had, Thomas, I believe it was, I think the idea works as far as when it comes to specifically looking at things that impact specific industries.
A lot of trade organizations do that as well.
So I think it's good when you can specify what impacts and help small businesses.
A previous caller mentioned the tax cuts and in terms of how it could be possible that small businesses didn't benefit given the outcome of that legislation.
I want to read here from an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which is a DC-based think tank that analyzed the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and found that the corporate tax cuts are even more concentrated at the very top, with the top 1% receiving 36.2% of the corporate provisions compared to 16.8% of the expiring individual provisions.
To comply with the congressional budget rules, Republicans could not make all of the 2017 laws tax cuts permanent, so they prioritized making the less popular corporate tax changes permanent to avoid having to debate those cuts when the other provisions expired.
And then it shows here that the share of benefits by income group in 2018, which was after the law was implemented, that the benefit to the top 1% and the top 5% and things like that were skewed very much.
And the bottom 60 percentile only received 13.5 percent of the benefits of the corporate provisions, and the bottom 60 percentile only received 18.7 percent of the benefits from the individual provisions.
All right, let's get back to your calls.
Herschel is in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Good morning, Herschel.
Good morning.
If you can hear me.
Yes, we can hear you.
President Trump said in 2019 at the historically black colleges and universities we conference, the first and highest duty of government is to take care of its own citizens.
African Americans built this nation through generations of blood, sweat, and tears.
And you, like all of your citizens, of our citizens, are entitled to a government that puts your needs, interests, and families first.
So my question is based on the over $26 billion that we were able to put together with PNC Bank in the community benefit agreement that expires next year.
Is your guest aware of the $88 billion agreement with PNC Bank?
Are you familiar with this?
Not in particular, but I've heard about it from the detail.
So I'm one of those members, and we've created over $400 billion worth of bank-based community benefit agreements.
So under the Trump administration, he's saying on January 20th that he's for Americans first in small business.
Have you developed a business plan to be submitted to the America First Policy or the Transition Committee for small business?
Have you put together a policy position like we've done with the Black Folks Plan for the administration to access changes in tax policy through the LMB?
No, I haven't put together a business plan personally.
Are you asking me personally if I put together a business plan?
Are you asking me?
I'm going to talk about you as your organization.
So he's going to manage the first 100 days through executive orders.
And so in those executive orders, in terms of small business, have you put together an executive order like 13985?
Oh, Herschel, are you asking whether his organization has come up with proposals that they plan to submit to the administration as sort of advice for those first 100 days?
Yes, submit now, not January 20th.
Submit now to the transition as they land at the SBA, as they land at the various departments.
You know, have you submitted it or have you put together a task force to develop such a proposal to the administration for small business?
So let me answer it this way.
We are constantly, no matter which administration, we are constantly speaking to them about policy changes and policy adjustments based on policies that we know are coming to fruition or definitely.
But right now, everything is talk for us.
I mean, we're prepared.
We've been talking about the tax policy for almost a decade as far as my organization.
Small Business for America's Future was actually built on talking about all of these policies that impact small businesses.
So we've been doing this for quite a while.
So we don't like, we're not reactive.
We're pretty proactive in all these different things, whether it's minority businesses or it's other mainstream small businesses.
We have been doing this since our existence.
So we don't really look at one particular opportunity.
We do this consistently every day, every month, and all year long.
President-elect Trump has nominated Scott Besant to be the Treasury Secretary.
As a headline here in the Wall Street Journal says he sees a coming global economic reordering.
He's a fierce defender of former President-elect Trump's activist approach to trade.
What is your take on Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary and for some of these other top administration positions that could affect small businesses?
You know, and I go back again to this, Kimberly, is that we don't really know and it's uncertain, right?
It's like what these people, these folks who are coming in and transitioning, they have to tell us what the plan is, what are they actually doing versus what was said on the campaign trail.
So we just want to know what is happening.
And that builds that trust factor for us.
It rolls us back a little bit.
We just got to see what's going to happen.
I don't really have opinions on when it comes to some of the cabinet members until they show me what they're doing.
And then once they can show us whatever they're proposing and it comes in, then we can look at how it impacts small businesses.
But until we see something, it is really difficult to kind of form an opinion.
James is in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Good morning, James.
Hi.
My question is pertaining to the Christmas season.
I plan to spend a lot of money on gifts.
And I'm trying to look for goods that are manufactured in the United States.
And I'd like to actually buy small businesses that manufacture in the United States.
How can I get a list of, because as I go to Amazon, every gift I try to buy is made in either China, Indonesia, or some other state, but none of them are manufactured in the United States.
So please advise me as to how we can do that.
And what is small business plans to get manufacturing done in the United States?
I would check with your local small business administration or your local small business development centers.
They typically, especially the small business development centers, they're typically housed at your college universities, and they can research who are the manufacturers in your state.
They do a great job of gathering information like that.
I will also point out that the Alliance for American Manufacturing generally puts out a 2024 Made in America holiday gift guide.
That's not necessarily small businesses specifically, but they are products that this advocacy group says are manufactured in the United States, and that's from the Alliance for American Manufacturing, James.
All right, let's hear from Bruce in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Good morning.
Good morning, Kimberly.
Good morning, Mr. Newsom.
I was calling because I wanted to find out what is going to be the relationship between the small businesses and the federal government regarding the increase in the federal minimum wage.
It hasn't been increased since July of 2009, as you are aware.
And at $7.25, it's hardly enough for anyone to make a living on.
Could you explain what small businesses feel towards increasing the federal minimum wage?
Well, again, we are, as small businesses, we are very employee-centered.
But let me just tell you this.
Most small business owners that I know and most of the small businesses in our network don't even, they don't pay minimum wage.
They're very good at paying livable wages.
So I think that increasing the minimum wage, if it helps the employees and it helps the economy and it helps the traditional family, you know, we don't really, we don't really dive that much, but we would support anything that helps employees and help our mainstream families.
All right.
Well, that's all the time we have for this segment.
Thank you very much, Shondell Newsome, who is the co-chair of Small Business for America's Future.
We appreciate your time this morning.
Thank you, Kim.
And thank you to all the small business owners who are out there who have survived the global pandemic and continue to grow.
Happy Small Business Saturday.
And thank you to my team at Small Business for America's Future for continuing to help us be advocates for our nation's small businesses.
All right.
Well, up next, we're going to be joined by Robert N. Lowe, who's president and CEO of EdChoice.
And he'll be joining us to discuss how education policy could change for the incoming Trump administration.
we'll be right back sunday on q and a yokin jack werfel author of my two lives talks about surviving nazi germany as a half jewish member of the hitler youth the steps taken to conceal his identity and the day his Jewish mother was arrested by the Gestapo.
As we got out of the subway, which was right around the corner from where my mother lived, where we lived with my mother, I saw all kinds of Gestapo and SS cars in front of the building.
Now, this was a large building.
There were many families in there.
And my brother and I decided that better than going in and going there with all these SS and Gestapo people, we waited on the corner and watched it from there.
And we decided to ask our mother as to why these cars were there and what the Gestapo was doing there once they were to leave.
We would go home and ask our mother.
Well, after a while, all of a sudden, to our surprise, it was my mother.
They were wagging out of the building, put in one of the Gestapo cars, and they took her away.
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According to Brown University professor Corey Brettsnyder, the following presidents in history threatened democracy.
Here are his words from the introduction of his book, The Presidents and the People.
Quote, John Adams waged war on the national press, prosecuting as many as 126 who dared criticize him.
James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans.
Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents.
Woodrow Wilson nationalized Jim Crow by segregating the federal government.
And finally, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts ordering the Watergate break-in.
Corey Brettznyder teaches constitutional law and politics at his Providence, Rhode Island-based Brown University.
Brown University professor Corey Bretschnider with his book, The Presidents and the People, Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
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Welcome back.
We're joined now by Robert Enlow, who's the president and CEO of EdChoice.
Good morning, Mr. Enloe.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for getting up for us this morning.
Can you remind viewers what EdChoice is and what your mission is?
Sure.
EdChoice is the intellectual legacy foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman.
So our job is to basically make sure that every child can get every option with all the dollars set aside to educate their children.
We really don't care where children get educated.
We care that they get educated in some of our nation's great public, private, charter, online, or at-home schools, or in any way we haven't thought of yet.
Our goal here is to make sure American children have access to the best quality education ever and that dollars follow them.
So we do research, training, advocacy, and litigation around that issue.
And our goal is to make sure all kids have freedom to choose the best schools for their children.
And how is your group funded?
We are funded by every single person that was interested in funding us, mostly individuals.
We have around 2,200 donors, mostly individuals and foundations every year.
We are excited that so many people support our issue.
Now, President-elect Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration, to lead the Department of Education.
What do you think she brings to the position?
So that's a great question.
First of all, I think she brings some experience in understanding how education works at the state level.
Time on the Connecticut State Board of Education is going to be a good experience for her to understand what happens when Washington comes to a state.
So, I think she understands the impact of how federal government programs work on a state education system.
Second, I think her experience in the Small Business Administration with the delivery of so many of the loans that she did during a very, very challenging time gives her an experience and understanding of how to deal with a huge bureaucracy like the Department of Education.
And third, I think she's also going to be very supportive of the president's agenda for school choice and certainly for parents' rights.
And so, I think overall, we're very excited about the potential incoming commissioner or Secretary McMahon, and we think there's going to be a lot of positive direction, movement in the right direction.
A representative of the National Education Administration was recently on News Nation and expressed some concerns about future policy changes under Blinda McMahon.
I want to listen to a portion of her comments and then get your response, please.
Well, the question is whether or not she pledges blind allegiance to the Trump agenda, which, as we know, calls for national vouchers that will divert public taxpayer dollars into private schools.
And voters all across this country, and in fact, just this November, voted against that in wide numbers in Kentucky, and Colorado and Nebraska.
It's a hugely unpopular kind of an initiative.
The vast majority of Americans support their public schools.
And so, our question to the nominee is whether or not she'll continue the Trump agenda.
What is your take on her statements there?
Well, there's a lot there, and I really appreciate you sharing that clip.
First of all, one, the idea that school choice takes money away or diverts money from traditional schools has just been proven wrong again and again and again.
There are over 75 studies looking at the fiscal impact of school choice programs in America.
Almost all of those find that schools and schools, taxpayers save money.
And that's just logical because in states with school choice, the average scholarship for a child to go to a private school is $6,000.
And the average amount that the same child will get to go to a public school is $17,000.
The reality is that they cannot divert money.
So we hear that all the time.
There's a conversation about how to make sure we do school choice correctly at the federal level and whether it's the right place to do it at all.
There's currently a program working its way through Congress right now called For a Tax Credit Program, which makes a lot of sense.
It's a tax credit that would give individuals and corporations the ability to support school choice opportunities for families in all of America and across all those states.
It's a program that makes a lot of sense, and it certainly is a program that doesn't have a lot of top-down, a lot of top-down sort of federal bureaucracy with it.
So I think when you look at what school choice has done, it's actually saved taxpayer money.
So I think when you look at what the federal government's idea is to advance school choice, it's going to be a program that's beneficial and not cost the taxpayers more money.
So I think we're headed the right direction.
It's very interesting when we have this conversation about, I heard the term that came across to me, which is interesting, was blind allegiance.
I think we've had blind allegiance to a system for a long time.
And I think what's happening in America, particularly since COVID, is parents are saying we can no longer have blind allegiance to a system that kept itself closed for too long, that's not serving families well enough.
And I think the incoming administration is very serious about cleaning that up.
You mentioned some of the criticisms that are often lobbied against school choice programs in various states.
There's been a lot of criticism recently of the program in Arizona, including in this Politico magazine article, which calls this system no-limit vouchers or blowing up America's budget, and that conservative parents seeking educational freedom have found a taxpayer-supported way to opt out of public schools.
Other states want to imitate it.
Among other points in this article, which is talking about empowerment scholarship accounts, the school voucher program that in 2022 opened to every family in Arizona, originally created for students with disabilities who needed services they could not get at their neighborhood public schools.
EF's ESAs have morphed over the last two years into a budget-busting free-for-all used by more than 50,000 students, nearly 1 in 20 school-aged children in the state, many of whom were already enrolled in private and religious schools or home schools.
Families, mostly from high-income zip codes, have applied to taxpayer funds for everything from ski lift passes to visits to trampoline parks, a $4,000 grand piano, more than a million dollars in Legos, online ballet lessons, horse therapy, and cookie baking kits.
Do you think that this is one of those programs that has actually done well, or is there a problem opening itself up for some of the criticisms that are laid out here?
So first of all, I know it's done well because it's gone from 50,000 now to 70,000 families.
Families are coming to this program in droves.
They want more freedom.
They want more capability to control the education of their children, to direct the education of their children.
One of the things I would be interested to share with your viewers, I don't know if you know this, but Lego has a division for selling Legos to public schools for $7,000 a classroom.
This concept that we spend money on things for children's education, and somehow if a parent does it, it's bad, but if a school district does it, it's fine.
So I think there's certainly some balances that we need to put on these programs.
But here's what I know about Arizona.
If it's causing the state to go broke, then why is the program that is run out of the Department of Education actually flush with cash?
The Department of Education under Tom Horns basically said they manage this program and they've said that they actually have a surplus in their budget.
So if the program is managed by the Department of Education and the money comes out of the Department of Education and they have a surplus, it's shocking to me to find out how the state is having its budget broke.
I'll just I want you to finish your point, but I'll just read the line related to that in the article.
It says ESA costs have ballooned from the legislature's original estimated price tag of $100 million over two years to more than $400 million a year, a figure critics have noted that would explain more than half of Arizona's projected budget deficit in 2024 and 2025.
I do appreciate that they are making that point.
The Secretary of Education in Arizona has actually refuted that point and said that's not correct.
Plus, here's an interesting point to make about that as well.
If you give a child an ESA, typically worth $6,000, and the public schools typically get somewhere on average around $17,000, how is it that it's going to cost the state a lot of money, particularly if children are moving?
The best studies that we have seen show that about 57% or so of families who are taking choice are switchers, i.e. they're going from a public school to a private school setting.
So most of the families are switchers.
In Arizona, the vast majority of families were coming from prior programs, which means they were coming from traditional public schools.
I think it's really important.
First of all, as a moral question, we want kids to get in where they fit in.
We want families to do the best for their kids.
And if we can do that in a way that is actually logical, saves the state money, is making sure the kids are progressing.
And based on all the data we've seen, school choice is actually a positive for kids.
Arizona's budget is not being broken by school choice.
Here's the other thing I'll point out in the program.
The latest data on how many funds have been misused.
So are funds being misused in these programs.
According to what we found, only 1% of the funds are being misused in the state of Arizona.
The overpayment rate for SNAP in Arizona is $188 million, over 9%.
Again, we're not talking whether that's bad to provide SNAP benefits.
We're trying to say government-run programs have a lot of overpayments, and ESAs are not near the top of them.
And so it's really interesting when you hear that the budget busting is coming from a program that has less than 1% overpayment and no conversations about programs that have millions and millions of dollars of overpayments, particularly when you're talking about families who are getting in to fit in, where they're actually doing better for their kids, where children with special needs are getting the kind of services they need.
Families in areas that don't feel the schools are serving their values or their needs are also getting in.
In America, it's very interesting.
In America, we're okay with giving rich people $17,000 to attend a gated income segregated community school, but we balk at giving them a $6,000 ESA.
I think there's a moral point here.
There's a reasonableness point.
It's much more reasonable to say we'll pay less for a child if they want to take that option in a school choice.
And then there's a practical point.
The data proves that it's not actually costing the states money.
And so this is, of course, something we should continue to delve into.
These are new programs, and we continue to need to learn from them.
But the early data suggests there's a lot of positive to them.
President-elect Trump said on Truth Social related to this on Linda McMahon, as Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand choice to every state in America and empower parents to make the best education decisions for their families.
We have special lines for this segment.
For parents and students, you can call in at 202-748-8000.
Educators can call in at 202-748-8001.
Everyone else can call in at 202-748-8002.
Now, before we get to the callers, I'd like to ask you about the sort of balance that you see between these calls to expand school choice state by state and create more federal support for that, that federal legislation that you were mentioning earlier that would address some of these things with some calls from within the incoming Trump administration to actually eliminate the Department of Education.
Yes, so allowing families to reclaim their money or individuals who want to give their money voluntarily through a tax credit is really not expanding the scope of federal government.
It's actually trying to make sure that individuals can direct money as they wish.
The department has a task in front of them.
I do believe the incoming administration is very serious about doing something with the Department of Education.
Obviously, it'll take some time and congressional oversight to do so, but they're very serious about it.
Things they can do.
They can absolutely change the debacle that was the FAFSA introduction under the current administration.
They could streamline Title I.
They could take the 600 lawyers and move them over to the Department of Justice.
There's things they can do pretty quickly to streamline the Department of Education.
They could look at, they're likely going to rescind the administration, the current administration's Title IX order.
They're certainly going to have some conversations about the loan, the federal loan program that the Biden administration tried to do.
But some things that the department can work on right now are streamlining Title I, streamlining FAFSA, and certainly working on the 600 lawyers.
And that's not in any way going to take away from the ability of individuals to get a tax credit to help families, particularly low-income families across America, access education that works for their kids.
Some details about the Department of Education.
It began operating in 1980.
It has about 4,400 employees, and it's the smallest of the cabinet agencies, and then had a 2024 budget of about $238 billion, which is just 1.8% of that year's federal budget.
Do you think that the department should be eliminated?
I think the department should definitely be streamlined, right?
And remember, 1980 is when it was elevated to a department position.
It was actually established under Andrew Johnson back in the 18th century when it became an office of education.
So it wasn't elevated to a department until the 1980s.
Every government institution, every government agency can be streamlined.
You know, I love the 1% number because that's exactly what it says about school choice.
In Arizona, the school choice program is less than 2% of all K-12 expenditures in the state.
Actually, less than 1% of all expenditures in the state.
So using those numbers, yeah, it's certainly not a huge impact on the federal government.
However, all government programs like that can be streamlined.
And I think there's a lot of opportunity to do so.
All right, let's get to some calls.
Joanna is in Germantown, Maryland, and is a parent.
Good morning, Joanna.
What's your question?
Good morning.
First, I want to say that my kids are in parochial school and it costs an arm and a leg, but let me tell you something.
I'm against these vouchers, and I'll tell you why.
Under the first Trump administration, one of the figures that was bandied about was $12,500 per student.
I want to tell you that private and parochial schools, it doesn't go very far.
Land and school out here, their base tuition is $50,000 a year.
$50,000 a year private school.
The parochial schools are just a tad less than that, and that's just the tuition.
That doesn't cover books, fees, uniforms, everything else that goes with it.
The problem, what happens is, is when you have a voucher like that, it benefits higher-income people.
If they get a $12,500 break, I'm just throwing that out as a figure.
You know, if they're making $300,000 a year, that's great for them.
But it doesn't help people of modest and low-income.
They're going to be stuck still in the poorer schools.
And charter schools, by the way, don't show any better outcomes than regular public schools.
So poor people are really not going to benefit by this.
Upper income people will benefit by vouchers.
And that's something that people don't realize.
If you've got a kid and they're in parochial school and you're paying $35,000 a year for their education, base pay, base tuition, that $12,500 deduction still leaves you with $20-some thousand dollars to pay.
Joanna, I want to give our guest a chance to respond to some of the points that you've raised.
Joanna, thanks very much for asking the question or posing the question.
I think a lot of this depends on how you design programs, right?
Originally, the programs were designed in America almost exclusively for low-income kids.
So it was low-income families who are benefiting the most from these programs.
That's just based on the historical evidence.
The programs that are now being established that allow all families to choose, you could design them like Arkansas has done, which says we're going to prioritize those who have greater need first and make sure they get the most opportunity up front.
So there are ways to design these programs to alleviate some of your concerns.
The next thing I would say is the numbers you float in Maryland, that may be the case in Maryland, I'd have to go look, but the average parochial tuition in America for high school is somewhere around $14,000.
It's not anywhere near the $50,000.
There's a lot of exclusive out there, and we look at that and say, oh, that's the cost of education.
We also have created a system in America where since your housing price determines often the quality of your education, we've dramatically advantaged higher-income families by the fact that they can buy a house and connect it to where they go to school.
One of the goals that Milton Freeman had for K-12 Education Choice was he said it's fairer, more effective, and more equitable to separate the government financing of education from the government running of schools.
So we know that on the whole, most private schools in America, particularly the parochial schools, cost less.
The elite schools do absolutely cost more.
There's no hesitation about that, but they're the few and the far between comparatively.
The goal here is to make sure that families have as much access, particularly those who need it the most.
And the people who choose choice are often the ones who need it the most.
They're the ones who are most dissatisfied with their current education.
A family is not going to leave a school if their kid's doing very well.
But if their kid's getting bullied or the kids are not getting academically progressed, and by the way, what families are telling us in the polling is really clear.
They want their children to move to different schools because they're tired of their kids getting bullied.
They're tired of their kids not being safe environments, and they're tired of their kids not learning.
And so families are making a lot of sacrifices to do that, particularly low-income families.
And it's certainly something we should continue to keep a watch on.
But the vast majority of programs in America have been helping low-income families and will continue to do so.
There are several other groups that challenge that point, including, among others, the National Coalition for Public Education, which argues and highlights data finding that most voucher recipients are wealthy families who never attended public schools.
And they say that these wealthy families can afford to pay for private school tuition without help from taxpayers in the form of a voucher.
And they give a few examples.
Obviously, this is another advocacy group.
But it does seem to be that there's competing data on these things.
Earlier, you mentioned that students do better.
There's research here from Brookings that says tax-funded private tuition programs actually reduce student achievements in several states.
I mean, there does seem to be some mixed research on this.
So the only mixed research that you could even come close to saying is the participant effects or how are kids doing, right?
Are kids doing better on test scores than their peers in public schools?
The vast majority of the programs that have been studied, there are 17 of these studies out there right now on how kids are doing and the highest quality studies.
Of those studies, 11 have found positive effects, four have found no effects, and two have found negative effects.
Those two were in Indiana and Louisiana.
In the end of a study, which you'll see coming out shortly, the newest cohort is showing positive gains.
So you're seeing the vast majority of the resources in the studies.
And we publish all the studies, by the way.
We don't just publish the positive ones.
We publish every single study at EdChoice.
And if you look at the 188 studies that have been done that are high-quality studies on school choice, there are 163 of them that are positive, 19 that show neutral benefits.
That's 97% of all studies in America around all these issues are showing gains in positive ways for kids, either through test scores or through attainment.
So it's important not just do they do well in a test, but do they graduate and go to college at higher rates?
They do.
Do they help public schools?
This is an area of very clear settled research.
And I'd be interested in Josh Cowan's response to this from Brookings, right?
So public schools in areas of choice do better than their peers around them.
And that's evidence-based.
That's the evidence of choice.
Choice is leading to those things.
Civic values.
It's very interesting to find that children in choice programs are more tolerant of other people's opinions and more tolerant of other people's attitudes.
It's interesting.
There are positive civic values that are gained.
Children end up participating in society more.
Families who choose end up getting more involved in their kids' education, getting more involved in voting.
There's a lot of benefits that we're seeing from school choice.
And so the most recent studies we've seen, a couple of them, Louisiana and Indiana, and I think Indiana will be seeing a more positive one on participant effects only are showing that we have some lessons to learn and things to go.
And that's great.
But the vast majority of the studies, 97% of them, in fact, are showing positive or neutral gains.
And so when you look at when you see these.
Since you mentioned Indiana, I'd actually like to go to one of our callers, John, who's in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is a parent there.
So maybe he can speak to that program as well.
No, I can't speak to that particular program, but I will be doing research on it as soon as I get off this phone.
My question to you is this: private academies, private segregated academies, shall I say, are they entitled to government subsidized funds?
In our opinion, and I think the rules are written this way: no school in a private school should violate title of the U.S. 64 Civil Rights Act, right?
None of them should be doing that.
And in the state of Indiana, all the schools that are receiving choice vouchers are required to be accredited by the state and reviewed by the state.
So this is there already.
This oversight is there.
And John, I really appreciate you calling from Indianapolis.
It's a great place, and there's lots of opportunity for choice in Indianapolis.
Okay, let's go to Robert in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Good morning, Robert.
Yes, hello.
How are you?
Fine, thank you.
What's your question?
I was just wondering how much of the actual tax dollars that a person making about $50,000 goes to education on the federal level versus the state taxes that you pay.
And isn't this just a diversion of funds from the rich elite trying to take money out of a good public system and funnel it into the private system?
I really appreciate that, Robert.
That great question.
About half of every dollar spent in every state is spent on K-12 education.
Depends on the state, but mostly about half of your state taxes or half of your state dollars are on K-12 education.
In Indiana, where I'm from, it's more than half.
Then you look at your local property tax, depending on every state, it's between 30 and 50% of every dollar of local property tax dollars is spent on K-12 education.
So vast majorities of your local and state taxes are spent on K-12 education, less so on the federal level.
Remember, federal government spends between 9% and 11% of the total cost on K-12 education.
So it's vast majority of the money is coming from state and local sources, of which take a lot of your resources from you as a taxpayer.
Look, we believe, and I think it's important to say this, we believe in an educated public.
I think that's a very different thing from a government-run school system.
There are lots of great traditional public schools.
That's fine, but there's not one size fits all.
Parents don't need a one-size-fits-all system.
They want the funding from the government, which is great.
But that is different from saying that we want the funding from the government and we want the government to run our schools.
We know it's been happening with that for the years and years and years.
And I think parents are saying to themselves, we've had enough.
This is why you've seen a dramatic increase in choice across the country.
13 states now have universal school choice in America, and that's since the pandemic.
And one of your states is Utah, where families are saying we want more access to control of the dollars that our kids get for education.
So we've seen a dramatic increase.
And the ballot initiatives that were mentioned earlier, very unique situations.
The irony here is that Colorado almost got 50% for a school voucher program, and that being a fairly blue state.
So I'll just add some more detail to what you're mentioning about the places where the ballot initiatives did not make it through.
The Nevada Current has a story.
Three states blunt school choice momentum.
Voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska put the brakes on the school choice movement.
This was earlier in the month, rejecting ballot measures that would have instituted or expanded state support for parents to send their kids to private school or protected other school choice options.
There are at least 75 private school choice programs available across 33 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, according to EdChoice, a group yours, that supports such programs.
And the movement has been gaining momentum.
All right, let's get back to the calls.
Christine is in Lutz, Florida, and is an educator.
Good morning.
Yes, I taught for 25 years in public school, and I know that in Florida, in private schools, you can have teachers that are not certified to teach.
Also, the transportation.
You do not get free transportation to these private schools.
So that means that a lot of people that don't have money in poverty, that cannot drive their children to these private schools, miss out.
Christine, I really appreciate you bringing that.
And the transportation one is one that we are very concerned with.
In Florida, the state actually gives a $750 stipend to families to make transportation decisions for their children to go to private schools.
May not be enough, but it's certainly a start.
And I absolutely agree we need to make sure that gets taken care of, particularly taken care of effectively and equitably.
As for the certified teachers, look, there are lots of ways we could have children get educated.
Right now, technology is changing it dramatically.
One certified teacher can teach millions of kids.
Also, the data on certified teachers versus non-certified teachers show that there's not a huge difference as long as they have experience.
So the key here is to make sure kids are getting educated by experienced educators.
We think educators are amazing people, and we think there's a lot of them.
This is why, so educators are leading the way in starting the micro school revolution.
A lot of these new microschools, these new small things called pods, are being driven and led by educators who are tired of the system.
We want to see more of that because, like you, we think educators have the right way of looking at the world, and we just don't want them to be curtailed by a system that doesn't work for them.
And so we want many options for educators just as much as we want for families.
Becky is in Wisconsin.
Good morning, Becky.
What's your question?
Good morning.
I have two things.
One of which is in Wisconsin, private schools do not have to take special needs students.
And it seems like that would put an undue burden on the public schools.
That's just a comment.
My second one is, how am I represented as a retiree with no children in the school system?
How am I represented in these schools where I can't run for office that I know of or have any vote in what they do?
So that strikes me as taxation without representation, which is why we threw tea in the harbor, if my memory serves me.
Thank you.
Becky, I really appreciate that question.
Special needs children in particular.
So as a parent of a special needs kids, I know how important it is to make sure they get the right kind of education.
In the mid-2000s, the fastest growing type of school voucher program in America was school vouchers for special needs kids.
Wisconsin actually has a program just for special needs kids to attend private schools that work best for them.
We're also seeing from the data in places like Indiana and I believe in Wisconsin, over time, private schools are taking more and more kids with special needs.
So we're beginning to see that, that private schools are stepping up to the table.
They certainly did when these programs were created, these special needs scholarship programs.
They certainly did for the ESA programs.
The ESA programs were originated for families with special needs, for families who, let's say, had MS and they needed horse equine therapy.
And that is something that is amazingly successful for certain special needs families.
So there's a long way to go, but private schools are definitely doing that.
And as for your voice being heard, your voice is heard in whether you take a vote for a state representative or state senator who supports or doesn't support this.
It's interesting on the ballot initiative conversation.
While those three states, with very different reasons, didn't see the ballot initiatives be successful for school choice, at the same time, you saw state after state passing and enacting school choice programs for families.
You saw Ohio increase its program, Indiana increase its program, West Virginia, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Iowa.
You see all these states, New Hampshire, growing for school choice.
And you can have a voice through doing one of two things.
Get on a school board, right, at the private school level or at the public school level, and vote for your representative.
That's the way the Democratic process can work in this instance.
Dwayne is in Westbrook, Maine, and is a parent.
Good morning, Dwayne.
Hi, Kimberly.
First of all, I want to say that I think you have the best C-SPAN has to offer.
I've been watching C-SPAN since 1980.
Everything you do, you're great in terms of your objectivity.
You bring information that is objective, and I love what you're doing.
So I'm really happy to have you personally on C-SPEN.
Second of all, I just want to say, this is just a privatization scheme, what your guest is pushing right now.
It's a privatization scheme to consolidate wealth, defund public education, undermine school unions, and to destroy the public education system in this country to increase the wealth of private investors.
He needs to be repudiated, as every caller that has been calling in has been saying.
What he's doing is pushing a scheme to defund public education, enrich wealthy investors, and undermines and dumbs down our public education system.
He has to be repudiated.
It's essentially factual.
Well, Dwayne, let's let him respond to some of these criticisms.
Go ahead.
First of all, I agree with the collar on the fact that I think your way you're approaching this is amazing.
And so thank you very much.
Look, I know what our traditional system has done right now.
Only 40% of kids can read on grade level.
That doesn't matter whether you're black, white, or any other color.
The reality is, is we don't do a good enough job.
And if it were me pushing a privatization scheme, why are millions and millions of families, mostly low-income families, desperate for this change?
They're picking charter schools.
They're picking homeschools.
They're taking these choice programs.
They're doing something for themselves regardless of whether there are bills out there or policies out there.
And so the reality of school choice has been that families who are wanting to get in in a different way are getting in and need to get in.
And a one-size-fits-all system just doesn't work.
And it never has worked in America.
And it shouldn't work in America.
We're in a country where we believe in freedom, where we believe in liberty, and we understand that we can support a family's right to get an education.
And regardless of whether it's provided in a government-run school system, it is the only, we're one of the few countries in the world that link the idea of where you live with where you get educated.
You know, even places like England allow public dollars to flow to private institutions and don't even think about it.
So, the reality here is we're very different.
We're not seeing the benefits that we need to see from the current system.
I think it's a moral problem in America if we're okay with keeping the system as it is and saying, Well, we'll just change it in five more years.
Well, we'll just change it in five more years.
Listen, families don't have five more years for their kids, we don't have enough time to wait around to try and improve it through a governmental system.
And so, I'm all for doing anything we can to ensure that kids get the ability to get the best possible education.
And I don't care if that's provided in our great public schools, charter schools, online, at home, or in any other way we can.
I'll point to research that you all have on your site from a survey that you've done looking at public favorability of K through 12 choice policies 2013 to 2024.
And according to your group's research, showing increasing support for these ESAs, tax credit scholarships, vouchers, as well as charter schools seem to be a bit on the decline.
Actually, some of these seem to be on the decline compared to the ESAs instead, is what you're seeing.
Correct.
Yeah, so what we're seeing is families.
So, think about it this way.
So, we fund public education through taxpayer dollars, and you can either fund it and give it to a government-run institution, you can either fund it and give it to a private or charter-run institution, or you can fund it and give it to a family to customize.
ESAs are giving it to families to customize, allowing them to pick and choose the kind of education that works best for them.
This is why it's so popular.
Families want this concept of letting me pick and choose.
Over half the families in America tell us now that they're okay with their child being educated out of a building, maybe one day a week.
About 30% or so are okay two days out a week.
The world is changing, and we need to make sure education changes with it.
All right, let's go to Tim in North Carolina, who is a parent.
Good morning, Tim.
Yeah, I'd like to ask Mr. Inlo what he thinks about in North Carolina.
They started a lottery, and it's called the North Carolina Education Lottery.
And the money was supposed to go to the schools for the profit off from it.
And our legislature recently voted to take a half a billion dollars and turn it over to private schools instead of using it in the public schools.
We have a hundred-year-old high school here that they have to do some renovations on, and it still needs $98 million to renovate a school, and they're giving it to private schools.
It's unbelievable.
So, I'd like to know what you think about it.
So, Tim, I appreciate that.
So, your legislature, there was a choice program in the state of North Carolina for all families, and they had a cap on the number of kids that could join.
And they created a waiting list for that.
And that waiting list became bursting at the seams with families, particularly low-income families.
And the legislature said, Hey, it's clearly immoral for us to let these families languish when they want to actually get an education, when they want to do best for their kids.
And so, they basically said, We're going to fund the kids who are in the wait list, who are having to go through a lottery.
By the way, I can't imagine how unjust it is to say, Let's hope your child wins the lottery to see if you can get a good education.
That strikes me as immoral.
I believe that he may have been referencing the lottery funds going into it, or was it something else?
Well, so I know that there's a group of families in North Carolina that are on a wait list that have been, and that program was created eligibility through a lottery.
If it's the lottery system funding, yeah, look, I think the reality is the state legislature has to determine how it spends its money.
It's decided to spend its money on families for choice, in addition to, I'm sure, providing more and more dollars for public education.
I don't know if you know this, but we can share this.
There is no state that has seen a reduction in its dollars for a K-12 education in states with choice.
They've continually seen increases every single year.
So it's really hard to say school choice is taking money when you've seen state budgets increase every year for traditional public schools.
I don't know if you know this, but there are now more than half of the staff in traditional public schools are not teachers.
We're the first time ever, based on Ben Scaffani's study out of Kennesaw, they're showing that schools and school districts don't have teachers in them as much as they have administrators.
And so maybe it's a question of how we're using these funds, not whether we're giving enough.
Mildred is in New York.
Good morning, Mildred.
What's your question?
Good morning.
My concern is about the schools in New York City.
The children are suffering.
And people can sit behind a desk and say statistics, this and statistics that.
Once they get out of the office and actually research what's really going on in these schools, then they can really talk about statistics.
Then, other than that, the children are suffering.
A lot of things was taken away from them, which that's why the kids are straying away from school.
They need to start putting things back into the schools where it'll catch the children's interest.
And that way, learning will be a little bit more easier for them and the teachers.
Thank you.
Mildred, thank you very much for that.
So in my former life, I was a social worker dealing with homeless men and women in the city of London, voluntary sector social worker.
And I was on a school board in Brixton, England, one of the poorest areas in the city of London.
And I've seen the challenges that children face.
I go to schools all the time and I see what happens.
And it's terrible and it's tragic.
And we need to do everything we can.
And for me, that includes fixing New York's public schools, allowing families in New York to get private school choice, increasing the number of charter schools, basically doing every single thing we can to help those kids get the best education.
And if it's working in a traditional school, that's great.
If it's not, let's let them get out and go somewhere else.
And so I couldn't agree more.
This is why school choice has become so popular with families.
They recognize that it's not working for them where they are and they want something different.
Anthony is also in New York and is a parent.
Good morning, Anthony.
Hi, good morning.
What's your question?
Well, I just wanted to point out that a lot of people seem to get upset if federal funds are being used for private schools.
But we've been doing that for decades.
If you look at the GI bill, it has already been used for college students, and they can take that to like private colleges.
So what's the difference with elementary and secondary schools?
Which is, I would argue, more important that kids get a good foundational education.
And there's other federal programs, tuition assistant programs, that use federal funds to go to college.
And, you know, the argument that federal money should not go to private institutions, you know, I think it should be attached more to what parents feel the kids' needs are.
Anthony, I appreciate that point.
The GI Bill, Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, one of the largest choice programs in America, allowed returning servicemen to go to private schools using public dollars, including religious schools.
We have a huge history in America of allowing dollars to go to pre-K institutions that are both private and religious.
It's just somehow, when we get to the doors of K-12, we say that it has to only be run and funded through the government.
Otherwise, you have to pay for it yourself.
And I think what Anthony's bringing up is we have a long history of providing funds to families in America for private education.
Remember, traditional public schools didn't really get off the ground until the 1830s.
And so we have a lot to do to improve our K-12 education, but hurting and choice, but saying choice is a bad advert is not one of them.
Ann is in Lake City, Tennessee.
Good morning, Anne.
What's your question?
First, I want to say good morning to my good friend Carol.
But I'd also like to say that there are schools around here, there are religious schools that the lady said it's $35,000 for private schools.
It's around $600,000 to $800 a month.
I had a grandson that wanted to go to that early child care program that the federal government was running because his mother worked and made just a tad over the income.
He couldn't go until later on in the school when all these parents that don't make a living wouldn't get their kids to school, and the school was about to lose the funding because they didn't have any students.
They contacted my granddaughter and her son could go.
We need to get the states back in education, get it away from that big bureaucracy in D.C. that's controlled by Democrats and Randy Weingarten and put the kids first, not government first, kids first, and what suits the child.
He should be allowed to go.
How much money would the government save if they would just let the states panel education rather than the federal government?
Thank you so much, Anne, for that.
We actually know from the choice programs how much money state and local taxpayers would save.
It's $19.4 billion at the minimum and up to $50 billion or higher at the maximum over the last few years.
And so we know it could save quite a bit.
And we do believe that education is primarily a state function and it should remain that way.
Ingeborg is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is an educator.
Good morning.
Yes.
First of all, I listened to everything that was said so far.
I didn't hear too much from teachers.
And so it seems like everybody's telling teachers what's wrong with education.
And the teachers are the ones that come in contact with their children daily.
So I go back, I'm retired now.
I'm 86, but I go back to the 60s when we still had prayer in school.
And now some schools of some states want to have prayer back.
It's time that that was stopped at that time.
I don't know how you can get prayer back in school now.
Anyhow, schools are a microcosm of society.
So all the ills of society are reflected in school.
And so the reason that the public schools don't do as well because more kids from lower incomes attend schools.
And that is the reason my observation is the teacher is only as good as the child that says him.
And my time used to say him and not him or her.
So how good a teacher you are often determines, or most of the time, determines how good your students, or we used to call them pupils back then, how good they are.
Do they pay attention?
Do they absorb what you're saying?
They don't have to learn by osmosis like plants do.
They have to pay attention.
And it's hard work.
And some of the kids are.
I want to allow our guests to respond to the point that you're making, which is often raised, this idea that the difference in the educational outcomes is more attributable to sort of who attends public versus private schools versus the actual systems themselves.
Well, first of all, I think thank you for your time as a teacher.
We think teachers are super important, and we will never see us blame teachers for the problem of education either then or now.
The reality is, is teachers are the most unsatisfied.
If you look at poll after poll, they're very disappointed with how schools are working and for lots of different reasons.
But we don't believe that it's because kids are worse now that education is not as good as it could be or good as it was.
What we do believe is that the system is basically grinding itself to a halt.
It is not capable of keeping up with the ever-changing needs of families.
And so you cannot keep up a system that is run in the 1800s with a 21st century mindset.
We have to change that, and it's the very machinery and mechanism of current K-12 education.
This is where the opponents of school choice, I think, fall down.
They think that people like me blame educators.
We think educators are the future.
We blame a system and a structure that is very oppressive to families, particularly low-income families.
And we think that's going to be the thing that families want to change.
And that's why they're driving to choice more and more and more across America.
Well, Mr. Enlo, thank you very much for your time.
Robert Enlow is the president and CEO of EdChoice.
Thank you for your time this morning.
Thanks for having me.
And thanks to everyone who called in this segment.
We're taking more of your calls coming up next during Open Forum.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000, Republicans at 202-748-8001.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're in open forum, ready for you to call in with your thoughts on politics and the state of the American system.
But before we get to your calls, a couple of other stories we've been following this morning.
One here in the Washington Post, that Trump is set to collide with a court he molded.
His agenda will test limits of presidential power.
Donald Trump's greatest legacy is arguably the conservative supermajority he created on the Supreme Court.
His second term could put him on a collision course with the institution he reshaped.
With Republican allies controlling the House and Senate, the Supreme Court could emerge as the most likely check on the President-elect's promise to assert sweeping powers in ways that could test the boundaries of the law and the Constitution.
If pursued, Trump's controversial agenda to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, end birthright citizenship, impose extensive tariffs, fire or relocate thousands of federal workers, and abolish the Education Department would surely unleash a flood of legal challenges.
Trump has lost at the Supreme Court more than any other modern president, according to one study, and several recent high court rulings that curbed the power of regulatory agencies could hem in his agenda.
At the same time, Trump's three nominees have moved the Supreme Court further to the right, establishing a supermajority that greatly expanded the definition of presidential immunity.
Another story from the Washington Post also about President-elect Trump and specifically about that move related to tariffs that he's proposed imposing.
Canada's Trudeau met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the tariff threat.
The prime minister of the United States' largest trading partner dined with the president-elect and some of his cabinet picks in Florida.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had dinner Friday evening with Donald Trump at the President-elect's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The sudden visit to Florida came days after Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods, along with an additional 10% on Chinese merchandise.
The President-elect has said the tariffs would be aimed at halting and, quote, invasion of drugs and migrants into the United States.
Trump and Trudeau were joined by dinner by some of Trump's cabinet picks and their spouses.
Now, let's get to your calls in open forum.
Stephen is in Pennsylvania on our line for independence.
Good morning, Stephen.
Good morning.
If a private school has 100 places and a thousand students apply, who gets in?
So our previous guest has already left, but was there a larger point that you wanted to make with that?
Well, I think that parents have a choice in where they decide to buy a house or rent a home.
That's why the choice is in choosing what are the stronger, better school districts and the ones that maybe are not so good.
Okay.
W. On is in Manchester, Connecticut on our line for Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I taught in the schools of Hartford, Connecticut for 38 years.
I think they call it inner city schools because the students were overwhelmingly a minority.
There were no white kids.
Two points that I want to make.
The first one is that I agree 100% with President Trump that that Department of Education should be abolished.
It was created not for educational reasons.
It was created for political reasons to give my union, the Teachers Union, a reward for supporting Jimmy Carter.
And ever since then, the scores have not, the scores of especially minority kids, have not gone anywhere down or at best remain stable.
So the thing that comes out of there is the same drivel that comes out of schools of education, and it's all woke.
So the money that the department dishes out, it could be done through other agencies.
Second thing is that in inner city schools, if a kid is not doing well, it's not because of a lack of resources.
The school that I was in for 38 years, they have the exact same resources, technology, the special ed, the whole nine yards.
And if I may say so, excellent teachers.
So I am all for vouchers with one caveat, and that caveat is get these kids out of those schools early, like, I don't know, elementary school, that's for sure.
Because when they get to the high school, like where I taught, they are two or three years behind the grade that they just left.
And if you're going to send that kid to a private school, what is the private school going to do about that?
Nothing.
They're going to put him in a regular class, which means that the standards will come down because the teacher will be held responsible for, as they say in the special, in the jargon, the special needs.
How does the teacher meet the needs of the student?
And the way that he meets the needs of the student is to lower the standards so that everybody is held to the lowest denominator.
So yes, I'm 100% behind President Trump in his plans for the Department of Education.
Thank you.
Shirley is in Franklin, West Virginia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Shirley.
Good morning.
Yes.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to address the education topic this morning.
And I've taught in private schools, taught in Indian schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I've also taught in the public schools.
And I went to private schools, parochial schools, from the time I was in kindergarten through high school.
So I've got a lot of background in that.
And also went back and taught in some of those schools that I was in when I was a child in private schools.
And I would say, just honestly, with my experi, given my experience, that there's no comparison between private schools and public schools.
The quality in public schools is amazing.
And you, in private schools, you don't have to accommodate the way that you have to in public schools.
If you have a student that's not doing well, they're probably going to drop out.
If you have a behavior problem, believe me, they'll be gone in three weeks.
I've seen it with my eyes.
But in the public schools, they have so many more materials, manipulatives and math, really quality schedules, time for the teachers to prepare.
In the private school, I had one half an hour a week to prepare something apart from the work that I stayed after school and came in early to do.
Thank you for sharing that experience, Shirley.
Let's go to Lisa in Alexandria, Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Lisa.
Good morning.
I wanted to comment on tariffs and education.
Tariffs can't be any worse than NAFTA was because NASA promised to bring prices down and prices have steadily gone up.
Jobs have gone out of the country.
On education, education can't be any worse back at the state level with the funding than it is right now at the federal level because we have no educational system that is consistent in the public education with educating our children because it is based on your zip code.
If you don't live in a good zip code zone, your kids are going to be in a public school zone that is overcrowded and the teachers aren't going to be focused on educating them.
Okay.
Next up is Carolyn in Ohio on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Carolyn.
Hi.
I just wanted, since it's the last day of military month, I just wanted to thank C-SPAN and all the veterans who spoke on Veterans Day on your channel.
It did my heart good.
I'm a senior citizen and my dad has been deceased for 15 years, but to hear them talk just brought my dad back to life.
And it was so good to hear that some of them have, oh, a hard time talking about their war experience.
And I just really enjoyed hearing what all they had to say.
And I hope they keep calling in so I can hear what it was like.
Because my dad was like a lot of veterans and he didn't want to talk about his experience in World War II.
It was not real pretty.
So it just helped me to hear your veterans.
And I want to say, even though it's the last day, I want to say happy Military Month to all the veterans and thank them once again and C-SPAN for having that special day for Veterans Day where they all got to talk.
I appreciate that.
I appreciated that very much.
Thank you, Carolyn, for pointing that out.
I'll remind our audience that you can find those conversations that we had on Veterans Day, including with U.S. Marine Corps veteran Travis Partington, on our website, cspan.org.
Next up is Richard in Kingsford, Michigan on our line for independence.
Good morning, Richard.
One of the things that I wanted to say was regarding public schools, public schools have to take everyone.
They have to take everyone from broken homes.
They have to take learning disabled.
They have to take children that have drug problems, born addicted.
It's just a mess, especially in the poverty areas that I happen to view.
Teachers, for example.
I get a report, a monthly report.
There's asterisks behind their names, meaning that they froze their retirement.
They've got enough time in.
They can't handle the system anymore.
They get burned out in no time.
And it's just overwhelming for many of the teachers, especially in the poor areas or the core areas.
And I think a lot of it stems to broken families, drugs, and alcohol.
And I don't know how we're going to fix that.
That's all I have to say at this point.
Bye.
Bonnie is in Delta, Colorado, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bonnie.
Good morning.
Really cold here in Western Colorado.
I tried to get on a few days ago when the subject was infrastructure.
And I kind of consider this a wake-up go to America.
We have got to simply start making our own things here in America.
We had a horrible, almost catastrophe that happened between two of the small towns.
They discovered that all of the bolts that had been holding the big, long structure of bridge between this big span of the Blue Mesa Reservoir, all the bolts had been purchased in China and probably saved money.
And guess what?
All those bolts are falling apart.
We're having to replace the bridges here in Colorado.
And it's a serious matter.
I don't know where else this has happened, but it caused a horrible mess.
The people that live in Gunnison couldn't get down to the hospital in Monroe's for many, many, many months because they were afraid for people to cross the bridge.
And I hope the other states are looking into this possibility that the bolts that are anything that they purchased in China, which so many things are finding out was bad for us or produced poorly.
And it just really worries me.
When the coronavirus happened, President Trump found out that all of our equipment, our health equipment, our medical equipment was made in China.
I'm just trying to find some information about this story that you're referencing.
You're talking about the U.S. 50 bridge west of Gunnison.
Is that the one?
It was.
And they just opened.
Yes, I see that story.
This is a story in August from the Colorado Sun about this bridge that four months after its closure, more traffic was being allowed then.
But in this article, it actually says that these repairs require 410 tons of steel, including 1,400 individual steel plates and 55,000 individual bolts.
But here it says that the majority of these bolts, the new bolts at least, are coming from a manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon before they are tested in Ohio.
And so it's been a pretty big deal.
Here it says attention was drawn to bolt bridges.
After federal highway officials ordered mandatory inspections, CDOT identified five potentially problematic bridges across the state that use this problematic T1 steel that is now being replaced by those domestically made bolts.
Further inspection revealed that there were three that fit the federal criteria for further action.
And so it looks like the new bolts for that bridge are going to be coming from a mill in North Carolina that have been tested in Ohio as well as those manufacturing companies in Portland, Oregon.
Well, that is good news to me.
Very good news because the bolts that were originally put there when the big bridge that was a big span across Blue Main Reservoir, those bolts caused steel.
They showed pictures, but and they showed the pictures of the steel starting to break away because the bolts were very shabby bolts.
And anyway, I'm really glad to hear that they have got an answer to the problem.
And we had better watch other things that I know I ordered some things from China from Amazon.
And when I got here, it was made in China.
And it was for oxygen, for my that I have to have oxygen.
And the material was just shabby.
And I had to just throw it away and buy some here locally made.
So Bonnie, I want to get to a couple more people before we have to end the show.
Let's hear from Vince in Idaho Falls, Idaho on our line for independence.
Go ahead, Vince.
Yeah, how are you doing?
Thanks a lot for taking my call.
You guys had a great show today.
I'm going to go back to your first topic, which kind of threw me off guard.
But my answer to that is definitely you want more science.
So just as a reminder to folks who might have missed it, our first question was whether scientists should play more or less of a role in public policy.
Go ahead, Vince.
Yeah, and it just seemed like the public calls and everybody got kind of wrapped into RFK and that's just a small piece of science there with the viruses.
Because science is strictly, it's more of a philosophy than anything.
And it's about ways to, you know, systematically figure out your structure and your behavior of your physical natural world through data collection, experimentation, and then developing theories.
And I still hear a lot of stuff.
And it's not an ideology.
It's a way that's been very, very successful for humans going back to the Greeks, but especially after the Enlightenment.
And I think we get wrapped around science and the other aspect of it, the technology.
Yeah, technology is is is a tough one.
But yeah, you do you never want to do with less science.
So I think if you look at the back end of your situation here on education, I mean, we need to go back to some real basics on what strictly words mean.
You know, science is, like I said, it's not an ideology.
It's a very successful way of thinking and trying to live as a human in our universe.
And I hear things like just a theory.
I mean, that statement can really rub about any scientist the wrong way.
When a thing's a theory, it's rock band.
It's there.
There's nothing that's just a theory.
Roger is in Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Roger.
Yes, thank you for taking my call.
You're so patient in looking at the different subjects.
Thank you so much for C-SPAN.
Just want to say we supported President Trump.
He selected a great person for CDC, Dr. Gary Weldon.
But we are really hoping that the Senate does not confirm RFK Jr.
Who is we, Roger?
Yes.
Who is we?
Well, a lot of the medical community does not support RFK Jr.
And we supported Trump, but we are not supporting RFK Jr. as AHHS.
And we're hoping that the Senate is going to ferret out all of the negatives that RFK brings as HHS secretary.
And hopefully Dr. Ben Carson will be his replacement.
Okay.
Eva is in Daly City, California on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Eva.
Good morning.
I would like to express my feelings about scientists and policy.
Of course, it's logic and common sense that scientists should enforce policy.
Unfortunately, the studies are done today according to the pharmaceutical, and that's why we lost faith in scientists.
I was on a study and I got a lot of experience, and I am disappointed.
That's why I want to express my thoughts out.
Thank you.
All right.
John is in Cleveland, Ohio, on our line for independence.
Good morning, John.
Yes, it's not a question of science.
It's a question of whether science and so-called scientists are tainted with gargantuan conflicts of interest.
I've got a couple of articles I'd like to mention.
AMA instructs doctors to use deception to push vaccines.
I think that element of the big farm is massive corrupt control over the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, and all the other so-called regulatory agencies that have been captured by the money that they're getting from the big farm and drug companies.
And there's another article I'd like to mention about gladio crimes of the U.S. Empire, Gladio crimes of the U.S. articles from.
I'm trying to look it up along with you.
What's that?
Where are the articles from?
I'm just trying to look it up along with you.
GlobalResearch.ca, GlobalResearch.ca.
Okay, go ahead with your point.
Pardon?
I was just saying to go ahead, please.
Okay.
And I think there's a lot of doctors that have been persecuted, have been censored by big farmers' control over the media.
And I would suggest I put together a search and a CIA military-industrial complex controls media to defame, to demonize countries for war by the United States against them.
And I think that until we begin to question everything that we hear on the media, that if you check the code name CIA Operation Mockingbird, there are actually Senate and congressional committees that proved under oath the directors of the CIA admitted that they had hundreds, literally many hundreds of agents throughout the media to disinform us,
to propagandize, incite hatred and slander against countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, to soften up the American public to have to stop you there because we're out of time for the show today.
But thank you to everyone who called in for Open Forum and for all of our topics today.
We are going to be back with another edition of Washington Journal starting at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow.
Hope you'll tune in then and have a great day.
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