CSPAN - Washington Journal Open Phones
Aired: 2024-12-05
Duration: 02:57

[00:00:00]  So I can buy a house, so I can educate my kids, so I can have health insurance, and I can retire one day without being scared.
[00:00:07]  Let's get back to the basic issues of what we need to do to make people's lives better.
[00:00:13]  You know, in America, in 22 states, the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
[00:00:18]  If you make $10 an hour and you work 40 hours a week and you work 50 weeks a year, you only make 20 grand a year.
[00:00:23]  If you make $15 an hour and you work 40 hours a week and you work 50 weeks a year, you get two weeks vacation, that's only 30 grand a year.
[00:00:30]  You're not going to be able to buy a house, educate your kids, pay for health insurance, and retire one day without being scared.
[00:00:35]  Let's, as elected officials, get back to the basics.
[00:00:38]  How can we improve people's wages and their benefits and their quality of life when it comes to public safety and to the environment?
[00:00:47]  And let's stop talking about all these fringe topics and all this attacking of each other and focus on the basic things that are affecting everybody in their everyday lives.
[00:00:56]  So I think that was a great question and something we've got to work on.
[00:01:00]  And a place for us to end this morning.
[00:01:01]  Congressman Tom Swazi, Democrat of New York.
[00:01:04]  Always appreciate you chatting with the callers on the Washington Journal.
[00:01:07]  Thanks, John.
[00:01:08]  Some of the headlines from the nomination of Pete Hegseth.
[00:01:13]  This is the Washington Post.
[00:01:15]  Allegations of excessive drinking have shadowed Hegseth.
[00:01:19]  This is the headline from the Washington Times this morning.
[00:01:22]  Senators await more information on Hegseth.
[00:01:25]  The sub-headline, defense nominee vows not to drink.
[00:01:29]  This from the New York Times, the lead story today.
[00:01:32]  Hegseth asserts he won't give up as support sways, making that assertion both in appearances in the media and in an op-ed that published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
[00:01:44]  This is part of what Pete Hegseth wrote in that op-ed.
[00:01:48]  The press has been peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down.
[00:01:54]  It's a textbook, manufactured media takedown, he wrote.
[00:01:57]  They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf.
[00:02:03]  They need to create a boogeyman because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity.
[00:02:08]  That is the only thing that they are right about.
[00:02:10]  I have never backed down from a fight and won't back down from this one.
[00:02:13]  I'm grateful President-elect Trump chose me to lead the Defense Department, and I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing with our distinguished senators, not a show trial in the press.
[00:02:24]  One of those distinguished senators that Pete Hegseth met with yesterday as he made the rounds on Capitol Hill, Kevin Kramer, Republican of North Dakota.
[00:02:33]  He spoke to the press after that meeting with Hegseth.
[00:02:36]  This is some of what he had to say.
[00:02:38]  Well, I give him the benefit of the doubt.
[00:02:42]  I am ready to be supportive of getting him to that point.
[00:02:45]  I'm ready to get him in front of the committee.
[00:02:48]  I did warn him, I said, you know, not everybody on the committee is as friendly as I am, which I don't think surprised him.
[00:02:53]  But I also said, there's nobody on the committee that doesn't earn our respect.