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We'll begin with history this morning 15 years ago today.
This was a headline in the Washington Post.
Senate passes that so -called Obamacare bill on a 60 -39 vote.
Let's go into the C -SPAN archives and show you then -President Obama talking about the vote.
In a historic vote that took place this morning, members of the Senate joined their colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass a landmark health insurance reform package,
legislation that brings us toward the end of a nearly century -long struggle.
We're good to go.
We are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform that will bring additional security and stability to the American people.
Fifteen years ago today, the Senate passed on Christmas Eve their health care legislation that later became Obamacare.
This morning, is health care coverage a government responsibility?
That is our question for all of you this morning.
Take a look at a recent poll done by Gallup.
Federal government responsibility to ensure healthcare coverage, their question posed to those that they polled, and 62 % said yes.
36 % said no.
Here's how it broke down by party.
90%.
We want to know from you this morning.
Do you agree or disagree?
And if so, tell us why.
And we have a fourth line this morning for those that work in the healthcare industry.
We want to hear from you.
So start dialing in on this Christmas Eve morning.
President -elect Donald Trump in a recent NBC interview was pressed on his plans for health care in the coming year in his new administration.
Here's what he had to say.
I've been talking to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
They say it's no longer feasible to repeal and replace Obamacare because it's so entrenched.
So when John McCain let us down by voting, and Murkowski and Collins and whoever it was that voted against, but they really let us down.
They did us a great disservice because we would have had great health care.
Obamacare is lousy health care.
It's very expensive health care for the people.
It's also expensive for the country, but for the people.
It's lousy health care.
When John McCain gave his thumbs down after saying for 10 years, That he wants to repeal and replace, okay?
And then he came out, he put his now famous thumbs down, and he became a hero to the left.
Just let me just tell you, if we find something better, I would love to do it.
But unless we find...
But one thing I have to say, I inherited Obamacare.
Or anything else you want to go...
This guy had about 20 names.
But I inherited it.
And I had a decision to make with... Health and Human Services.
I had a big decision to make.
Do I make it as good as we can make it, or do I let it rot?
And a lot of political people said, let it rot.
And let it be a failure.
I said, that's not the right thing to do.
And I had very good people in the medical area that handled that.
And I said, what do you want to do?
He said, we really have an obligation to make it as good as we can.
And we did.
We made it as good as we can make it.
Instead of making it bad where everybody would be calling for its repeal, I made it so that it works.
But you did try to overturn it, sir.
Well, it's lousy.
You did have your Justice Department try to direct the Supreme Court to overturn it.
No, we got a little bit of a surprising opinion, to be honest with you.
If it would have been overturned, we would have had much better health care right now.
But right now, we have something that I made the best of.
I could have made the worst of it, and it would have fallen by the wayside.
I did the right thing from a human standpoint.
But, you know, I'm sort of proud of my decision.
At the same time, sometimes I regret it.
I told the people, and I gave them the money to do it.
I said, fix it.
Make it work.
Because people would have suffered.
Sir, you said during the campaign you had concepts of a plan.
Do you have an actual plan at this point for healthcare?
Still just concepts?
Do you have a fully developed plan?
Obamacare.
And I did the right thing.
I could have done the more political thing and killed it.
And all I had to do was starve it to death.
You did try to have your Justice Department effectively kill it, though.
No, no.
Kill it from a legal standpoint.
But from a physical standpoint, I made it work.
President -elect Donald Trump, in a recent interview saying that Obamacare is lousy, Gallup did a poll on this question as well, and this is what they found out: 54 % approve of the Affordable Care Act, 38 % disapprove.
When you break that down by party, 94 % of Democrats say they approve, 19 % of Republicans, and 53 % of Independents.
This morning, on this Tuesday, December 24th, is healthcare coverage a government responsibility?
Chris, in Auburn, Maine, Democratic caller, welcome to the conversation this morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Boy, it's really hard listening to Donald Trump do his pretzel lying gig thing about how he faked it.
Oh, my head is exploding.
Unfortunately, the right wing didn't believe him.
So I just had this conversation with, I don't know why most of my friends are far right wing, but we were having this conversation about...
Somebody said that healthcare is a human right.
And I really thought about that.
And I'm thinking, it's not a human right.
It's a social responsibility.
And so what I did was I equated it to a person walking on the side of the canal.
There's a guy in the middle of the river who's drowning.
And there's a rope right there in front of him.
And you can throw the rope to the guy to save him.
Now, the guy that's drowning, does he have a human right?
Is it a human right that...
He has to be safe, or is it a social responsibility of the person walking on the side to throw the rope?
And I think of health care as the same thing.
I personally got a cancer diagnosis, and I recently had to have an MRI.
And when I came back to see my cancer doc, the process took about an hour.
And I came and asked, I said, did you know what this cost?
And he said, yeah, I think it was like $1 ,500.
He thought, you know, your portion's $500.
I said no it was over six thousand dollars and my portion was five grand and when I posted this on Facebook because I'm just this is my first real experience with having to really get treatment a friend of mine from Ireland I went to school with an oncologist and he said Chris just come on over here it's only three hundred dollars so I'm literally going to pay less to fly to Ireland have another MRI done and have a nice little vacation than it costs here in the US and why is that because we have a CEO
So Chris, when you say it's a social responsibility, is it the federal government who holds that responsibility?
There's nobody else that can do it.
You can't just leave it to a bunch of charities to try to do it and hope for the best.
You've seen some of these Christian funding networks where they try to pool money and they found that because the cost of giving birth is too high, they're just running out of money.
Yeah, the federal government is the only thing that can effectively pull in all the funds necessary to do it.
Yes, I have experienced socialized medicine because my husband's family lived in Spain.
If people are prepared to wait for a surgery and wait for a whole year to get it, oh yes, that's fine.
But people think, oh yes, here you can get an MRI right away.
Not in Spain.
Okay?
It takes months to be called to have an MRI or something like that.
My husband's uncle was diagnosed with melanoma in February.
You know when he had the surgery?
At the end of June.
And by then, we were told Okay.
Delia in Miami.
Delia in Miami arguing against government Having the responsibility for healthcare.
That is our conversation this morning.
Jean in Delroy, Ohio, Democratic caller.
Jean, what do you say?
I would just like to point out that the government already takes a lot of the burden off of the insurance company.
They're already responsible.
When you get sick, you're too sick to work, you go on disability.
When you are old and you now have high medical expenses, I'm now 70, I've never been sick in my life.
Wonderful.
What do they do to me?
Offload me into Medicare, right?
And I'm glad.
But I'm just saying, look at the disabled children that are born.
What happens to them?
They're put on disability.
So the insurance companies are skimming the cream off, okay?
That's my point.
So, Jean, what do you think about these healthcare industry, these companies then?
Oh, we lost her.
So we'll leave it at that.
Your calls, more of your calls this morning here on the Washington Journal in this first hour talking about healthcare and whether or not you think it's the federal government responsibility to provide it in this country.
Take a look at the headline in the Hill newspaper recently.
Will anger at health insurers spur actions?
Democrats pessimistic.
Says Democrats are pessimistic that Congress will enact new rules around the health insurance industry even as they try to appear responsive.
We're good to go.
I think?
Good morning to you as well.
Happy and Merry Christmas and Hanukkah to everybody.
I just want to say that there's several points here.
First of all, our government can't even run itself, so why the heck do we want them running our health care?
Socialistic health care does not work, and that's proven just as that one other caller just spoke about.
A lot of people from Europe and those socialistic countries come to the United States because they can get in immediately.
I had a friend who got diagnosed with cancer in England, and she came here to the United States because it was going to take a year just to see the oncologist, not to even start her treatment.
Here, I think insurance industries collect a lot of money, and people get misleaded.
Just like that guy who shot the CEO, a lot of people feel that, oh, I'm buying into this healthcare, but all it is is healthy health care.
So you get once a year evaluation, you get this, but they really don't cover you or they deny because you don't meet certain requirements.
And a lot of people don't understand that that instead of going right away to get an MRI, you usually have to try medication and you have to try therapy and they drag everything out And our insurance companies are still banging big bucks.
Look at your EOBs when they come in after you have an appointment.
They charge you $17 ,000.
Oh no, here, my husband's going through chemo right now.
They charge $50 ,000 for a chemo session.
But when it goes through Medicare, it's only $1 ,000.
And then your Medigap or your Advantage picks up the other $200.
What the heck is this?
I mean, you know, why is it that they can charge this ridiculous amount, but yet they've already got contracts to pay?
Why isn't it always that cheap?
So, Janine, what do you think the solution is, then?
If you don't think the federal government should provide it, then how do you negotiate those lower prices?
I bet if our legislators had the same insurance we did, I bet they'd figure something out.
Because they get...
Full coverage of everything.
They don't have the same coverage as regular people have.
They have a lot of special stuff going on.
What is the answer?
I think that we need to go back to rolling back and stop allowing the insurance companies to profit off of the taxpayers.
Because we're constantly, and look at, you've got people who say they're disabled.
My sister was a nurse.
We're good to go.
All right, Janine, I'm going to leave it at that.
Janine talking about her own experience, her husband's experience.
We want to hear those stories from you this morning as you tell us whether or not you think The federal government is responsible for health care in this country.
Back to that conversation in a minute, but want to share some headlines with you that are dominating the front pages of the national newspapers this morning and coverage of Capitol Hill.
We'll start with Politico and this story.
Ethics report alleges Gates paid a 17 -year -old for sex.
CNN reporting he paid for sex or drugs.
20 times according to this report put out yesterday by the House Ethics Committee.
That was released yesterday and you can find that in the front pages of the newspapers as well.
And then this story from late yesterday afternoon.
Former President Bill Clinton hospitalized for observation and testing after developing a fever.
CNN reporting this morning that he is expected to be home by Christmas.
He is alert.
And resting.
And then there is also this from the front pages.
USA Today, President Biden commutes sentences of most federal death row inmates, except for three.
And then there's also this in the papers this morning and coverage of Capitol Hill.
Back to Politico, President -elect Trump's big Mike Johnson.
That vote takes place.
We're good to go.
I think?
I want to share also another headline with you this morning.
This related to our conversation about health care from NBC News.
Luigi Mangiani pleads not guilty to New York State charges and killing of that UnitedHealthcare CEO.
The Ivy League educated suspect is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Midtown Manhattan sidewalk, pleading not guilty yesterday.
We'll go back to the phone calls in just a minute, but I want to show you more from our archive.
Speaker Mike Johnson on the campaign trail last fall previewing the GOP's health care overhaul plans when they continue with their majority in the 119th Congress.
Health care reform is going to be a big part of the agenda.
When I say we're going to have a very aggressive first hundred days agenda, we've got a lot of things on the table.
But health care, it's the secret.
Health care reform is not a secret.
There's some really important ideas on the table.
And we have a docs caucus, physicians who serve in the House, and they've got a menu of options about this thick.
And I think this is part of it, because if you take government bureaucrats out of the health care equation and you have doctor -patient relationships, Better for everybody.
More efficient, more effective.
That's the free market.
Trump's going to be for the free market.
You heard a little sample of that last night.
We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state, okay?
I mean, these agencies have been weaponized against the people.
It's crushing the free market.
It's like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers.
And so healthcare is one of the sectors, but we need this across the board.
And Trump's going to go big.
Promising a big agenda in the 119th Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson along with President -elect Trump in the second administration.
This morning, we want to know from you.
Do you think healthcare is a federal government responsibility?
Adele in Illinois, Democratic caller.
Good morning to you.
Good morning, Ms. Greta.
Happy holidays and Happy New Year to you and everybody at CSAN.
I wanted to say, the caller before me, It started by saying a criticism of socialized medicine and then began to criticize the private insurance.
So I didn't quite understand that.
It doesn't make sense.
The insurance company's business model is they collect premiums from employers and us and they use that money to pay, hopefully, any time that we need any type of coverage.
Thank you.
Well, Adele, if these insurance companies, though, don't scrutinize these claims, then would you have concerns there, too?
If they don't scrutinize, people are making claims that could be false, that could be fraudulent, etc.
And if they don't scrutinize every claim for fraud or...
Correct.
If, like Johnson said, leave it up to the patient and the physician, then that is where it should be.
But that's not where it is.
The physician then has to fight for that coverage.
And oftentimes that's the case.
99 .9 % of the time, that's the case.
If we say an average denial for, I think it was Blue Cross Blue Shield 7%, average for regular insurance 16, but UnitedHealth was 32%,
that means every third person that went with United, which is the largest provider, they're denying that coverage.
There has to be scrutiny there, Ms. Greta.
So if there's a profit model, and if you remove that, and have a universal coverage for all people, and then have these knucklehead Republicans, the rich ones that say,
I want privatized, then have an upper insurance for them that they have a...
Any time that they want to go and see a doctor, any diagnostic that's done, they pay a little extra, have extra coverage.
We can use that private insurance for those who want to use it and afford it, but in terms of coverage for any type, let's follow all of the other countries that use this model and say our collective taxes.
That fund the VA, that fund Medicare, which both of those are good models.
We have other instances of government providing public schools, colleges.
All your community college is publicly funded.
Your K through 12th grade is funded.
So I think if you wanted to do it, you could do it.
But the concept itself Well,
capitalism is what we have right now in the insurance company.
All right.
Adele in Illinois.
Same to you.
Related headline, New York Times.
UnitedHealthcare has faced scrutiny over denying claims the company has been accused of using algorithms to deny treatments and refusing coverage of nursing care to stroke patients.
We'll go to Franklin in California, Republican.
Franklin, thank you for joining the conversation.
What do you think?
Good morning, Greta.
Happy Holidays, America.
Can you hear me okay?
We can.
Okay, yeah, look, I don't have any easy, facile answers to this problem.
I know that our healthcare system as it stands today is an incredibly dysfunctional beast.
That clip you played earlier of Donald Trump, I do side with him because I think that the fact that he was standoffish and didn't try to attempt to give easy answers
No, no, you're watching on a delay.
We're listening to you.
Go ahead.
Okay, so, yeah, I have an anecdotal observation and a personal observation.
I'll try to keep it short because I know there's a lot of callers.
Okay.
Guy gets a snake bite in Georgia.
I read about this.
Walks into a hospital.
He was carried into a hospital.
Ends up with a bill for $75 ,000 for a sneak bite.
Okay, I think people can use their own a priori logical reasoning and see that there's something out of line there.
I don't want to go so far as to use the word malfeasance or corruption, but that, I don't know, I'll call a spade a spade.
The healthcare system is gouging the healthcare payer.
And in my own personal experience here in Marin County, I had a How much of it did you have to pay?
I only had to pay about $2 ,500 of it.
But I'm very fortunate in that regard.
I've mostly worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, even Fortune 100 companies.
Very good healthcare plans.
I have Aetna right now.
But I've been on the other side, too, where I didn't have any healthcare.
Well, I went without healthcare, honestly, for a couple of years.
And if I had gotten sick or fallen down the stairs, well, you know.
That would have bankrupted me.
Yeah, right.
Go ahead, finish your thought.
Yeah, I don't know what the exact...
Okay, so to your point, is healthcare a government responsibility?
I would say the government is responsible for its reformation and overhaul, yes.
As to the degree it should be responsible, I don't have a quick answer to that.
I know a lot of people say, well, look at what's in Sweden, look at what's in Canada.
It's going to take some deep think on this from people who are smarter than me to figure this problem out.
All right, Franklin, I will leave it there.
We're talking about the health care industry this morning.
A couple of callers have brought up health care insurance and denied claims.
We showed you the headlines about UnitedHealthcare and denied claims.
Take a look at the KaiserFamilyFoundation .org's website.
Claim denials and appeals in the ACA marketplace plans in 2021.
When you take a look at this graphic look, they say healthcare .gov issuers denied 17%.
Hi, good morning.
How are you?
I'm good.
The reason I'm calling is a few different things.
Healthcare has been an ongoing issue in this country for many years.
And it seems to me it all starts in Washington with the lobbyists.
Insurance industry has tremendous lobby in Washington and they cater to the politicians, the politicians cater to them.
And the first thing when a politician is elected to Congress or the Senate, the first thing they ask is where do I sign up for my health care?
Because they have the best health care.
Now, if there are politicians and there are leaders, If they get that healthcare, why don't they give it to the people they represent?
Why don't they do that?
Do the right thing.
Okay.
Mel, in New York, independent.
Mel, thank you for joining us this morning.
What do you say?
Healthcare does not belong in the federal government.
It should be managed by state government.
The reason I say that, the Constitution mentions nothing about healthcare.
Are we going to be a people who abide by it?
Or are we going to trust bureaucrats in Washington, D .C., politicians who make these deals, instead of doing it in a way where the free market is a much better option in that?
And see which state does the best.
If the state wants to have government control at all, everything, then fine.
If the state says no, let's operate by the free market and let people choose.
All right.
Mel in New York with his ideas of who should be responsible here.
Our question this morning, is the federal government responsible for providing health care?
We'll continue with your calls, your text messages, your posts here this morning on The Washington Journal.
I want to tell you, though, about some breaking news here from ABC News.
American Airlines requests ground stop.
For all of its flight, according to the FAA, that was early this morning, a technical issue disrupted American airline flights nationwide early this morning, the airline said, at the start of a busy Christmas Eve for travelers around the country.
The FAA said Americans requested a ground stop for all of its flights.
Your safeties are our utmost priority.
Once this is rectified, we'll...
We'll have you safely on your way to your destination.
A quote there from American Airlines.
Back to the conversation with all of you.
Tony in Buffalo, New York, Republican.
Good morning to you, Tony.
Good morning, ma 'am.
Good morning, America, on this beautiful Christmas Eve day.
I'd just like to state some facts.
I know there's a lot of opinions going on this morning, but I'd like to state some facts.
During the Trump administration, Okay, my health care as a single person was $542 ,000.
It has gone up to $980 ,000.
I mean, I do the math, it's a double.
And, you know, we all have to understand also, I disagree being in federal government.
First of all, where are we going to pull that out of with $36 trillion in the hole and to pay everybody, you know, be in the federal government's hands?
All right, Tony, you and others might be interested.
In the year -end spending proposal that was debated and finally approved after several iterations last week, related to that debate was the pharmacy benefit manager.
There were reforms in the first year -end spending bill.
They were then dropped.
They failed to make the cut in the federal funding package.
For a moment, it looked like Congress would actually enact reforms of controversial pharmacy benefit managers after several years of introducing bills and holding hearings.
But it was not to be.
The slate of measures that would have injected more transparency into the industry and changed some of its practices were stripped from the massive bipartisan government funding package that was torpedoed by President -elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
The final, vastly slimmed down legislation, which prevented the federal government from shuttering, was signed by President Joe Biden on Saturday.
The pharmacy benefit managers serve as middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurers, employers, and governments.
They negotiate rebates from pharmaceutical companies, determine which medications are covered by insurance plans, and pay pharmacies.
But they have raised the ire of Congress and others with their opaque practices.
The now dead funding deal would have required these PBMs to provide more information on the rebates they negotiate and retain as well as what they pay for drugs and how much they compensate pharmacies.
It would have removed the connection between the price of drugs and the compensation the PBMs receive in Medicare Part D drug plans and shifted the payment model to flat fees.
That was not included or signed in.
We'll go to Trish in Seattle, Democratic caller.
Trish, good morning to you.
Hey, happy Festivus, everybody.
Let's see.
So, yeah, I'm a retired nurse.
I worked in research, and my last gig was as a case manager with a big insurance company up here in the Northwest, where I just checked the CEO made $20 million last year.
I'm on Medicare.
I have an Advantage plan.
And let me tell you, it is not effective.
It is not watching out for the patient's best interests, ordering tests that don't need to be ordered in order to code the paperwork to a higher um cost level.
So, for example, I went in, had my annual Medicare Well Medicare wellness check and that's supposed to be free and then I got a bill for a five dollar copay and they had coded up the um reason for that and i'm like No,
I'm not going to pay that.
I did not come in with anything brand new to discuss with you today.
And so between the doctors and billing departments, they will find a way to up code your billing charge to make you pay more or get less service.
And regarding health care, let's look at women's health care, particularly maternal
All right.
Trish in Seattle there.
On the floor recently of the House, Democrat from California, Ro Khanna.
Earlier this month was talking about the anger toward health insurance companies.
Here's what he had to say.
Across our land, there is outrage at national health insurance companies, private health insurance companies that are denying claims,
denying claims for heart disease, denying claims for cancer, denying claims.
Mr. Speaker, the average cancer patient in America will lose their entire life savings in two years.
42 % of Americans who have cancer lose their life savings in two years.
Mr. Speaker, 18 % of Americans have had their health care claims denied.
1 million Americans.
On a very small matter, I had my healthcare claim denied by UnitedHealthcare when I wanted to get a $100 nasal pump for allergies.
Back it came denied.
And I couldn't get that reversed.
Imagine people with more serious problems.
One of the people who died in my district, Sarah Bouton.
She died of a sinus infection because her health insurance companies denied her claims for basic health care.
As Americans face denial after denial after denial, what is happening with these private insurance companies?
Let me tell you.
1 .4 trillion dollars in revenue.
$70 billion in profits for the top seven private insurance companies.
Now, they say, oh, it's only 5 % profit.
But it's $1 .4 trillion sucked out of our economy while basic Americans are denied health care.
And what is this money going to?
It's going to administrative costs.
It's going to advertising.
It's going to bloated executive pay salaries.
While we can't give people treatment for cancer, for diabetes, for basic health issues, the American people are outraged and they're rising up across our country demanding fundamental change to a broken healthcare system.
Enough!
Congressman Ro Khanna, on the floor of the House of Representatives earlier this month talking about the anger toward healthcare industries.
This morning, do you think the federal government should be responsible for our healthcare in this country?
Here are some posts this morning on X.
One of our viewers says...
Any government that provides free coverage for illegals and other benefits but not its citizens is incapable of rationally and unpartially managing the citizens.
And then another viewer says, texts in to say, I believe as a civilized society we should at least start our children off on the right and healthy track, a national health care system for zero to five -year -olds.
That's Kristen in Portland, Maine.
Patty in Wisconsin.
A retired healthcare worker.
Good morning to you, Patty.
Good morning to you, Greta.
Thank you for the excellent reporting.
It's tragic that this CEO was assassinated to bring attention to the injustices in the healthcare system.
I worked for many years in large major hospitals and in some smaller rural hospitals.
There is discrimination.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would have everyone...
We're good to go.
You've witnessed those conversations, Patty.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I'm the nurse standing by.
What am I supposed to do?
Do I continue on with treatment or do I step back?
Do they have a responsibility to treat?
I mean, don't they have an ethical code?
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
We all do.
And interestingly enough, if you're of wealth, they will...
They charge you more to cover their losses on someone who walked in without insurance.
How do they do that?
How do they do that?
They just do it through billing.
And I came upon it accidentally.
And it was in a Christian facility.
How did you come to explain?
What did you discover?
They had none doing paperwork.
And I had to move some papers over to get at my charting on the night shift.
And I kind of looked at it, the paperwork, just briefly standing up, and I saw the name that I knew, and the sister explained, and she said that's the name of the game.
So I left that facility.
So just explain a little bit more.
That's the name of the game.
What did she mean?
Just that you have to compensate.
This particular patient...
Apparently not.
Apparently not.
But that being said, and then I also have a number of family members retired and in the VA system.
And even though they served in the military, they have to battle to get their payments through the VA.
To me, if you're a veteran, you have a card, you walk in, everything's taken care of.
We can manage this.
Just eliminate the middleman.
So God bless you for reporting, and I'll be listening to the next callers.
Thank you, Greta.
Patty in Wisconsin.
Kevin, Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent.
Hi, Kevin.
Hi, Greta.
Thanks for taking my call.
Morning.
Most of the people in this country are covered by either Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, or employer insurance.
All of it is subsidized.
All of it is controlled by the government.
The first three are obvious, but the problem with employers, people don't understand.
You know, the taxpayers are paying for that.
100 % of that is a write -off for the corporations.
That means that the taxpayer is paying for that.
And, you know, I just think that people don't open their eyes to that when they say a poverty employer.
They don't consider it being government subsidized, but it actually is.
That's my comment.
So I just did a quick search here, caller, and it...
From what I found, in the United States, most people get health insurance through their employer.
In 2023, 53 .7 % of the population had employment -based insurance.
You said it's coming from the government in some sort of way.
It is, because these companies write off every nickel, dime, and quarter on their taxes that they pay for that.
That's coming from the people, from the taxpayers.
On that end of it.
Okay.
Stuart, in Nebraska.
Republican.
Hi, Stuart.
Yes, ma 'am.
I consider myself the most fortunate person you're going to talk to on the phone about this today.
Okay.
Okay.
My Social Security check is only $1 ,250, which means that I am eligible for Nebraska Medicaid and Medicare.
It's all subsidized, and I get subsidized.
I live in a housing and urban development apartment, a condominium that pays all rent and utilities for $377 a month.
All my medical bills are paid, and I'm getting UnitedHealthcare, their supplementary deal, which I don't really need because I'm going to get
So, Stuart, do you agree with this?
Do I agree with this?
I mean, some would say that's the safety net at work, right?
You don't make enough money, or you make a certain amount of money, so the safety net kicks in in all these different ways.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
What a wonderful country.
You know, okay, they just shot down an Air Force plane that cost $50 million, right?
So all this money is government money, plus we're $35 trillion in debt, and they just added another $200 billion on the deficit.
This isn't going to last very much longer.
We're living in, really, if you read the book, The Last Days of the Roman Empire, we're living in the last days of it, and I'm grateful for what I have.
Okay.
Stuart there in Nebraska.
We showed you what President -elect Donald Trump had to say in a recent interview with NBC about his plans for health care.
Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra recently speaking at a public health symposium at Johns Hopkins University had this to say about the Biden administration's record on health care.
Today in America, there are more Americans who have a chance to go to a doctor.
Or to visit a hospital and leave their child there and not worry about going back.
More people in America today can do that than ever in the history of the United States.
More than 300 million Americans today have their own health insurance, whether it's private or whether it's public.
But they have their own health insurance, which means they can walk into a doctor's office without bowing their head.
They can leave their child in that hospital.
Without worrying whether they'll be able to pay the mortgage or the rent because they come with coverage.
That has never happened in this country before.
Today in America, we are inventing the next generation of medicines and vaccines that will continue to save lives.
Today in America, we're developing some of the best ways to move our country's health system from one that treats illness to one that promotes wellness.
Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra talking about the Biden administration's record on health care.
We're asking you this morning, should the federal government provide it?
Liz in New York, Democratic caller.
Hi, Liz.
Hi, how are you?
Morning.
My belief is that, yes, health care is a human right and that the federal government should provide it.
The reason is the federal government doesn't have a profit motive like all of these other. insurance companies.
If you're on traditional Medicare, not Medicare Advantage, you are getting some of the best healthcare in America.
It's an efficient system.
There's very little fraud and waste because we root it out.
And we can do this.
Taxpayers are going to pay for this, whether we pay through We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
$20 million a year and we're going to put money in the coffers of all of these insurance companies.
If we take the profit motive out, healthcare will be better.
Alright, Liz in New York, Democratic caller.
Here is Mark in Canada saying, speaking as a Canadian physician, it's unconscionable to take advantage of human misery, collective responsibility with no expectation of profit.
Hello.
Good morning and happy holidays.
I want to just point out a few things.
A general outline that we owe it to Franklin Roosevelt, LBJ, and Barack Obama.
Everything we have.
To aid our health care.
Further, I just want to suggest to the audience, perhaps someone in New York or DC has a contact with either Hillary Clinton or some of her workers that helped her with her investigation on this subject.
You will not find a better informed person in the world.
And thank you very much for taking my call.
Have a great day.
Same to you.
Ann in New Mexico, independent.
Ann, what do you say about this?
So right now I'm in the hospital.
I'm just getting over surgery, which would not have been, according to Blue Cross Blue Shield, would not have been covered because they went over if that new law would have been passed.
So that made me realize that right now I think ultimately the government should be responsible.
However, I would look at a transition time.
Whereas they would regulate the cost instead and be upfront with the cost of it and then move into a single payer afterwards in the transition.
We can't do anything cold turkey the way everything is right now.
Another thing is when I have PPO and I took my two children to the doctor for a well check and each of them had a separate bill that was differently coded than the other one for the exact same thing.
So that's why I think there should be some sort of oversight on the insurance industry that includes more of the codes that they use, which I don't believe they do.
It's the doctor who's putting in those codes or the hospital administrators who are putting in those codes.
So oversight over them as well?
Over and what sort of codes can be used instead for the same exact.
All right.
And in New Mexico, we wish you a speedy recovery there.
Eric in Tennessee, Democratic caller.
Hi, Eric.
By somebody.
And the problem is, if you look at Canada and I've got personal experience there and Europe, a lot of those systems you get really good emergency hospitalization treatment, but anything that would be a scheduled procedure you get it's rationed and you get put on the interminable waiting list And it's all about cost.
And, you know, the money doesn't grow on trees.
And you've got to tax the citizenry if they want that kind of, you know, coverage for everything.
And the people, regular people, can't afford it.
All right.
So that's the problem.
And we saw that with...
HCA, Obamacare, you know, the cost just, you know, it skyrocketed.
Anyway, thanks.
All right.
Thanks, Eric.
A few minutes left here in this conversation this morning in our first hour of the Washington Journal here on C -SPAN.
Over on C -SPAN 2, you may have noticed our promotion here on the screen.
There is a marathon session of the Trump nominees, those that President -elect Donald Trump have put forth to serve in his cabinet, in their own words.
We're digging into the C -SPAN archives to show you what these nominees have said over the years, either about policy...
Hi, Joe.
Hello.
I just wanted to say that last year, when I wasn't doing too well financially, I was briefly on Medicaid, I think it is.
It's the one for people without money, or Medicare, Medicaid, always get that mixed up.
But it was, frankly, the best healthcare I've ever had.
And it just, things were made easy instead of difficult.
So tell me Joe, what made it easy?
There weren't any, the copays were a dollar.
You know, everything was covered instead of covering, you know, 80 % leaving you with still, you know, really deep financial hardships.
If something bad happens to you, 20 % of a huge amount of money is still a large amount of money.
But, you know, I don't know what all the things that go into...
Medical costs are, it seems, like a very tangled system, but I don't see why we have to have entirely government -sponsored healthcare and nothing else.
But why not let the federal government compete?
They're a large agency that's a competent system.
Why not let them compete in the same way that private companies do?
I would gladly buy in or pay taxes for it.
So, Joe, you're talking about then perhaps the way that works is if you remove the employer -based insurance, that just like with car insurance,
you go and you find the best deal that works for you rather than getting the insurance through your employer.
I think that employer -based insurance is a...
Got it.
Got it, Joe.
I'm going to leave it at that.
We are at the top of the hour, 8 a .m. here on the East Coast.
Coming up next, we continue with this week's Holiday Author Series here on The Washington Journal, eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
After the break, we'll be joined by author and journalist Ray Suarez discussing his book, We are home, becoming American in the 21st century and oral history.
We'll be right back.
During Christmas week, each night at 9pm Eastern, C -SPAN will feature interviews with departing members of Congress, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from both chambers.
They'll discuss their careers, key legislative achievements, the state of Congress and American politics, and their farewell speeches.
Thank you.
We're good to go.
On C -SPAN's Q &A, Don Scott, Virginia's newly elected Democratic Speaker of the House of Delegates and the state's first black speaker in 405 years, talks about his life, including spending almost eight years in prison.
I had never been in trouble before.
I had served my country, and I was hoping that I would get a little more grace and maybe get the judge to have some latitude to go with the law.
And he probably could have gave me even more time than he did.
I remember hearing my mother when he said 10 years, you know, she couldn't believe it.
And that yelp of pain, it always stays with me.
And it's always motivating.
And it always lets me know how fragile our freedom is and how perilous it is.
And if you make one wrong move sometimes, it could be literally the end of your life as you know it.
Virginia's Democratic House Speaker, Don Scott, Sunday night.
At 8 p .m. Eastern on C -SPAN's Q &A.
You can listen to Q &A and all of our podcasts on our free C -SPAN Now app.
The house will be in order.
This year, C -SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
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Washington Journal continues.
Washington Journal's annual Holiday Authors Week series continues this morning.
Eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
And this morning, we want to welcome author and former PBS NewsHour chief national correspondent Ray Suarez.
His book, We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century and Oral History.
Mr. Suarez.
Good morning to you.
Why did you decide to write this book?
I guess one of the conception moments for a book like this was when I was sitting in my living room watching the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia and watched a long torchlight parade of young men Chanting, you will not replace us.
And I knew something had gotten really off track in the American, the great American family fight over immigration.
And I started to, we'll gather the way you do when you're starting a book project, clipping out articles, saving files, and starting to write a pitch.
And things only got worse from there on.
When you started your research then, what did you find?
Have higher levels of workforce participation, lower levels of involvement with the criminal justice system, and higher levels of education than earlier generations of immigrants.
They are undoubtedly a net plus to the United States.
And at the same time, because for the first time in our history, most immigrants to the United States are not white.
We have a much more conscious feeling of the presence of a different kind of people among us that's causing social anxiety, cultural anxiety,
and again the panic that accompanies that idea that America will be a non -white majority nation in the future has led us to some places where the The way we handle immigration,
the way we set policy around immigration has not really been best for the country or best for the immigrants.
I want to read from the book for our viewers, We Are Home.
Of American ideological battles to somewhere much closer to the emotional center.
As Tucker Carlson climbed the greasy pole at Fox News Channel, he frequently told his audience, among the largest in cable television history, that the Democratic Party was trying to replace the current U .S. electorate with new people,
more obedient voters from the third world.
And that's a quote that you pull.
Well, in part.
I mean, the Great Replacement Theory needs oxygen to get traction, to move, as I mention in the book, from the fringes of American discourse to the center of it.
And it's personalities like Tucker Carlson who have Given the great replacement theory, that kind of attention that gives it currency, that gives it power,
that gives it the kind of cultural currency that it might not have had otherwise.
And it is an ugly, un -American, anti -American idea that the new arrivals...
Unlike those from Palermo and Warsaw and Dublin of 120 years ago, that these people can never get the hang of being part of us.
That's, I think, part of the ugliest part of this whole idea about new immigrants.
That while my great -grandparents or my great -great -grandparents could get the hang of being American, these new people from these new places won't.
And that really needs some examination.
People have to ask themselves why they believe that when so many millions of immigrants are succeeding so phenomenally in our country.
How does your book tell the opposite of that?
Well, it does a deep dive.
I spent a lot of time with immigrants from recent decades, talking to them about why they came, how they got here, how they got the hang of being here, what they make of the place.
How they feel about being American.
And you come away with a kind of heartening, encouraging idea about the future.
Listen to the immigrants themselves.
They realize this country is a hard place to get ahead.
They realize that it takes a phenomenal amount of hard work to get here and start with very little and make a secure life for yourself.
The othering of these new people.
Casting them into some new place in our history that's different from our own ancestors is really doing them a disservice.
Tell us one story.
I begin the book with a guy who came from Kenya at the age of 18 from Mombasa City on the Indian Ocean.
He was from the very, very old Arab community in Kenya, so he was not a Black African.
His name was Samir.
He came to Columbia, Maryland as he finished high school.
And he was immersed in American pop culture and thought he would immediately get the hang of being here.
And before long, he was working two full -time jobs, one doing the breakfast run at McDonald's.
He would go home, get a couple of hours nap, and then do another shift at the convenience store Wawa.
There he is working 80 hours a week.
Going slightly crazy and his answer is to join the United States Army.
And the stories he tells about being a brand spanking new resident of the United States and a member of the United States Army are sort of touching and hilarious at the same time.
He gets shipped out to Korea.
And they often pair American units with Korean counterparts so they can work together.
And his Korean soldiers all have relatives in the United States.
And they're asking him, pumping him for information about what it's like to live in America.
And he finally had to tell them, I don't know what it's like to live in America.
I was there a couple of months and then I joined the army.
He has an amazing story with, I think, a very redemptive He goes and protests at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D .C. against the Muslim ban,
the Trump -era policy that blocked arrivals from majority Muslim countries, and realizes that he couldn't do that in his own country.
He would be surveilled, he would be photographed, he would be tracked.
He was there with all kinds of other people.
protesting against this policy with his son they made cardboard signs at home and ran down to the airport and he's he had been ambivalent after 9 11 11 with the rise of anti -muslim feeling and he said he felt very american at that moment with the freedom to protest the freedom to be seen in public opposing the government and a government policy and his son
Our guest this morning, Ray Suarez, author of the book We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century in Oral History, part of our Holiday Authors series this week.
Ray Suarez is also the host of On Shifting Ground with Ray Suarez, the podcast.
We wanted to have you join us in the conversation this morning.
We're talking about immigration and immigration policy.
Here's how you can do so.
We're going to get to your calls in just a minute.
Ray Suarez, I want to show our viewers and have you respond to President -elect Donald Trump.
He was at Turning Point USA on Sunday, and this is what he had to say about his border and mass deportation proposal.
On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to...
Close our border to illegal aliens and stop the invasion of our country.
And on that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.
Larger even than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
And as part of Operation Aurora, you know all about Aurora, how horrible that's been.
Every single foreign gang and illegal alien member.
All of this criminal network operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported, and destroyed.
Gonna get 'em out.
Think of it.
They sent their gang members to us.
Busload after busload.
We had an open border.
Their gang members, their drug dealers, their drug addicts.
People that were sick.
People that were healthy and strong.
What the hell was that?
You get the little yips up here every once in a while.
I wonder why.
That was a strange sound.
I've heard some very strange sounds.
Every foreign gang member will be expelled and I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
We're going to do it immediately.
And we'll unleash the full power of federal law enforcement, ICE, Border Patrol.
How good is, by the way, how good is Tom Holman, right?
He's phenomenal.
I've known him a long time.
I'll bet you Sheriff Joe likes Tom Holman, right?
Sheriff Joe, yes?
Yep.
He goes, yep.
The DEA, the FBI, the intelligence community and financial sanctions to remove the migrant gangs and criminals that are killing and raping and maiming our citizens.
We're going to get them out.
We're going to get them out.
We're going to get them out fast.
We have no choice.
We have no choice, by the way.
I don't want to do that, but we have no choice.
President -elect Donald Trump from this weekend.
Ray Suarez, when you hear the president -elect talk about border proposals, the mass deportation plan that he ran on, and he won, what goes through your head after writing this book?
Well, it's part of a very ugly American tradition.
In the second half of the 19th century, tens of millions of people came to this country, mostly from Europe.
And people who were not happy about that said that they were diseased criminals and bringing foreign ideas and foreign ideologies to the United States,
basically making the U .S. a less happy place by being here, instead of making it...
An economic superpower, which they did by coming here and going to work.
It's really running the 19th century playbook again.
Instead of admitting that of these hundreds of thousands of people who've made it across the border and go to work, picking your crops, busing your tables,
pounding roof shingles and running electrical wire.
He makes it sound like they're all members of criminal gangs.
Now, obviously, some of them are members of criminal gangs.
And some of them are criminals.
But the stuff during the campaign about emptying out insane asylums and emptying out prisons and citing certain countries from which an infinitesimal number of immigrants come,
like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he kept bringing up Congo.
What was that all about?
Think about that.
It was really a disheartening display.
I don't know if he doesn't know or if he knows and he says it anyway, but it was just a pastiche of untruth and fantasy,
lurid fantasy about who comes to the United States, how they get here.
We've never had an open border.
The border has never been.
Why?
Because there's a worldwide migration crisis.
Not because the United States is peculiarly or particularly open.
They've got the same problem in Turkey.
They've got the same problem in Greece.
They've got the same problem in Italy.
They've got the same problem in France and Great Britain.
The idea that the United States, one of the biggest...
and most powerful countries in the world, with one of the largest populations in the world, was somehow going to sail by, while 25 of the entire population of Venezuela left the country because it's a cratering, failing state.
Whoever came up with that idea?
Of course, the United States was going to be put under pressure.
The developed world is being put under pressure, and even many, much poorer countries.
Ray Suarez is our guest.
He is the author of the book, "We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century." We want to have a conversation with all of you this morning about immigration and immigration policy.
We'll go to Jo in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Hi, Jo.
Welcome.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
It's actually North Plainfield.
Good morning, Mr. Suarez.
I know you're working on PBS.
I'm calling because I wanted to address two issues.
I'm wondering if your book at all addresses the fact that many people come here, particularly from south of the United States and South America, because of the economic issues that they were facing,
not only because of drug cartels, etc., etc., but also because of the fact that many people there ...suffered under Americans' practices of coming in and taking their products out of their countries at a reduced price that made it profitable for the United States.
I'd like to know if your book addresses that.
And I'd also like to know if your book addresses the kind of... if becoming American in the United States also requires, in many ways, the idea that you must take on the morals, and in some ways the prejudices,
That Americans, the dominant American culture has.
Because I noticed that you mentioned that the person you just talked about profiling, you mentioned that he was not a black African.
And I'm wondering, and I see how often, probably because people don't want to be seen in a certain light themselves.
I'm wondering if your book addresses that as Well, thank you very much for your call, and thank you very much for your question.
One of the chapters in the book is specifically about Black immigration to the United States, particularly from Africa.
I think it is a remarkable and redemptive story that after America's very tangled and very unhappy history with race, and particularly with slavery, that now, today in America,
One out of every 10 black people in the United States is an immigrant.
And one out of five black people in the United States is either an immigrant or the child of black immigrants.
So immigration from the Caribbean and particularly from Africa is soaring.
And there are now among us people who are ready to throw in their lot and do the work of being a newcomer to the United States from Nigeria, from Liberia, from Senegal.
From Ethiopia.
I profile some of those people in the book and talk about how many of them are aware when they come to the United States very aware of this country's history, and they set it aside.
They assume that the country is a better place today.
And I talked at length to a Nigerian oncologist working in Chicago, an Ethiopian who came during the Ethiopian civil war because they were recruiting child soldiers and his family sent him out of the country.
And he went to high school in the United States and then to college.
And when he watched the World Trade Center fall in lower Manhattan, On a beautiful work day in September of 2001, he realized this was his country.
This was the country that he knew as an adult.
And his fantasies about going home to Ethiopia, his dream of someday going home an educated person and getting back to work in Ethiopia really weren't going to happen.
And he became a United States citizen at that point.
A man who came From Senegal, when all his friends were aspiring to immigrate to France, he said, no, I want to go to America.
And he had it as a dream.
All from college, he became an English teacher in Senegal and then won the diversity lottery, got a visa and came to the United States and before too long, did a long hitch in the army and now lives in Harlem.
and is a religious teacher so a very a wide variety of stories color is very much a part of this story because until the post -civil war constitutional amendments only white people could naturalize if you came here from anywhere else in the world you could only become a citizen if you were white uh chinese were specifically barred then later asians more generally were specifically barred from naturalizing,
from becoming citizens.
And I tell the story of how our concept of widening the net has been a steady progression over the last century.
And now people are coming here from everywhere to become citizens.
And it's changing what we look like as people, changing our image to the rest of the world.
But color is very much a part of this story because American law.
Ray Suarez is our guest this morning talking about immigration.
The lines are regional this morning.
Eastern Central part of the country, 202 -748 -8000.
Good morning to you.
The gentleman, he lives in La La Land.
I've lived among immigrants.
I've seen them, given their color is their advantage.
They were given affirmative action.
They were put in med schools.
They were put in law schools.
They destroyed our elementary schools.
My mom was a teacher for 30 years.
She had to get out because they're not to the benefit of the American people.
Why so, Brad?
Why do you say that?
Because I see them every day.
They live better than the Americans.
They have a man that's out working.
They have a woman with four or five kids getting welfare.
It's almost always that way.
That's why it's over 70 % of all immigrants are on welfare.
These people are living off the flood of America with immigrants.
Ray Suarez.
Okay, Brad, we'll get Ray Suarez's response.
Well, it's checkable and it's simply not true that 70 % of immigrants are on welfare.
Uh.
Immigrants, whether naturalized American citizens or legal permanent residents, or certainly undocumented, are simply not qualified, they're not allowed to take advantage of a lot of social welfare programs.
I'm talking to you this morning not from La La Land, but from New York City, a city where 40 of all the residents were born somewhere else outside the United States, out of a city of eight and a half million people, That's about 4 million people.
600 ,000 of them, or roughly the size of an entire city of Milwaukee, are undocumented immigrants.
And this is a bustling, hardworking city.
Do people cheat?
Yeah.
Oh, people cheat to get benefits.
Native -born people cheat.
Foreign -born people cheat.
Some.
There's some cheating in the system.
But this idea that immigrants just Flood in and then don't do anything.
You just got to look.
You look at the world that you live in, in restaurants, in travel, in parking garages.
Everywhere you go in big metropolitan areas, there are people who were born somewhere else doing jobs that we're happy that there's somebody to do.
When unemployment is at 4%, you got to wonder just how many of these people are taking jobs that Americans want.
I, I do some of them.
Yeah, probably in construction and in transportation and in other specific job categories.
There are probably jobs that Americans would like to compete for and either don't or feel that the wages have been bid down by the presence of an immigrant workforce.
But a lot of that work is not work that our caller from Texas is dying to get out there and do.
Ray Suarez, perception is reality.
So how do you then tell the story that you're telling so that people understand from what you found out about why immigrants are coming here and what they are doing when they get here?
Well as an earlier caller alluded to A lot of them come from places that have long and troubled histories with the United States.
And one of the people I profile in the book, Jaime, came to the United States because his country, El Salvador, was mired in a terrible, destructive, blood -letting civil war.
At the end, he started as a student and then an office cleaner in Washington, D .C.
At the end, he reflected on his American life.
All of his kids have gone to college and done quite well.
He said, would I have liked to continue growing up in El Salvador and having a life there among my family and everything I knew in my own hometown?
He said, yeah, that would have been great, but that was not possible.
It just...
Wasn't possible.
Nelly came during the worst years of the Lebanese civil war and she didn't want to leave her country.
Her family forced her to go.
They said we've got to get out of here.
She was from the Armenian minority in Beirut and they moved to Los Angeles and she hated it and eventually got the hang of it.
During the Iranian revolution, a couple, the Maars, came To Texas.
She was a trained and qualified nurse from Scotland.
Her husband was a librarian from the countryside in Iran.
They didn't want to leave Iran.
They didn't want to come to the United States.
But they had to get out of Iran.
And they came here and they went to Texas because there were Texas hospitals that really needed nurses and they were glad to have her.
People come for a variety of reasons.
They come in a variety of ways, legal and illegal.
You've got to admit that.
Yes, some of them come in ways that are contrary to the law, but the a lot of the people I spoke to came with a real desire to get their lives in order And they saw the United States as a way to do that.
They saw the United States as a place where people like themselves could succeed.
There's a lot of countries in the world that people look at and say, that's not a place I want to move to.
And that's not a place where I can live out my dreams.
And that's not a place that's going to let me live out my aspirations.
I wrote a chunk of this book while working as a teacher in China.
China has a very different attitude toward immigration and toward immigrants.
And part of the strength of the United States, one advantage it has over its competitor, China, is that we make immigrants into Americans.
And you could live for decades in China and you'd still be a foreigner.
You were teaching English in China.
Is that what you just said?
I was teaching in the political science department at NYU in Shanghai.
And when was this?
In 2022, during the pandemic.
And that was part of that experience what shaped this book?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because it forced me, living as a foreigner in a big, complicated society like China, really helped crystallize my...
Hello.
So, in...
I think everyone realizes that we want people to come to this country legally, but the issue is it's the people that don't want to assimilate.
It's the people wanting to commit crimes, and we're seeing it in New York.
We've seen it with the woman that was lit on fire on the subway.
These things are horrible, and this is becoming more evident.
But another issue is we're seeing it all over Europe.
We're seeing it in Germany in the Christmas market.
We're seeing it in France.
We're seeing it in England.
People are getting tired of this.
That's the issue.
We want these people, if they're coming here, to assimilate.
Look at Japan.
If you actually go and you stay there permanently, you have to assimilate.
All right, let's take that.
Ian, we'll take that concept.
Ray Suarez.
I think part of that is scale.
I think Ian is onto something.
There is a moment of reckoning in the countries that he mentioned.
Germany took in a large number of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
And there's a great deal of political back and forth inside and some soul searching inside Germany about whether that was the right thing to do at that scale and whether or not those immigrants are succeeding.
In France, similarly, there are, and there have been for decades now, arguments inside French society about the scale and extent of immigration to largely French cities.
And in Britain, similarly, all over the Anglosphere, in Australia and Canada as well.
So, yeah, I mean, Ian's absolutely right.
The idea that people don't acculturate, don't assimilate, is, I think, encouraged in every encounter you have with an immigrant who's not totally fluent in English yet.
Every person that you see on the street who wears the garb and outwardly appears foreign, wears the garb of their country, maybe a headscarf or a hijab.
presence of immigrants among us does not require I think there's a new model for immigration language acquisition is going on at the same speed that it did with earlier generations of immigrants this idea that they come here and never speak English is not it wasn't true in 1920 and it wasn't true in 2020 what's different is that modern communications and modern commerce
So, an immigrant can remain who they were and take on The culture of the United States instead of being forced to set aside everything they were before they came here.
It's more a la carte.
It's really up to the immigrant how much of their home culture they want to retain.
Some people jump in with both feet and set aside who they were immediately.
They want to be American.
And others want to be who they were and take on this new thing.
We'll go to Joyce next, who's in Las Vegas.
Morning to you, Joyce.
Good morning.
We're listening, Joyce.
Question or comment here?
Oh, good morning, Mr. Juarez.
I was wondering...
I wonder why we America, do not have open borders and we and I hear that on all the time even that's why I guess the election was won by Mr. Trump.
But why won't?
Why don't?
I don't understand why the media or people just tell the truth, we do not have open borders, that we have an area where where the people can come in on the border legal and apply for legal Citizenship.
But when they say we're going to...
What they're talking about is getting rid of the people that come over illegally through water.
But it's not...
America's the only one that that's happening.
That's happening in other countries, just like you said.
I have not read your book, but I'm going to get it and read it.
And I would just hope that the media would just let...
All right, Joyce, we'll take that.
Ray Suarez.
More agents on the border than there have ever been in our history.
More surveillance cameras, more heat sensing technology that in the night can figure out if bodies are moving across the border.
More encounters, more deportations.
The Democrats were so afraid of this issue, they treated it like kryptonite.
And instead of pushing back and saying, this is what we do, this is what's been done, this is what hasn't changed.
since donald trump was president this is what hasn't changed since barack obama was president and deporting many more people than george w bush the number of people trying to come across the border increased the number of encounters with border patrol agents increased the difference was more people were trying to use International law regarding refugees.
They weren't sneaking across.
They were coming across with their documents in their hands and saying, here's my passport.
Here's my ID card.
Here's who I am.
I want to stay.
And that gave the United States a challenge that it is still coping with to this day.
And instead of being honest about it, I fault the Democrats for not making it a real fight.
Okay, Republicans, you want to fight about this issue?
Here's what we're up to.
And they would have been able to make Donald Trump sinking that deal in the Congress earlier in 2024 a more potent issue if they had argued more effectively against this idea that there was an open border.
There's never been, well...
There has been an open border earlier in our history.
There hasn't been an open border in our recent history.
Not at all.
Echoing what Ray Suarez just said is a headline from December.
Just actually days ago, Joe Biden administration deports more migrants than Donald Trump's and hits a 10 -year high.
Mark in Ocean City, Maryland.
Mark, you're next.
Good morning, Mr. Suarez.
Yeah, I just want to take exception to...
The way you portray Donald Trump as if he's the only president in recent history to take such a strong position.
I mean, you can look at YouTube videos from Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Joe Biden saying very much the same kind of thing.
Even Joe Biden was a proponent of having immigrants, forcing them to learn English.
You know, so...
I think Donald Trump was the only one that was actually doing something rather than talking about it.
And perhaps his presidency just coincided with a lot of other things like the DEI initiatives, you know, just teaching people,
whether it's in the workplace or teaching the kids in our schools that if you're white, you're the oppressor and things like that.
Okay, Mark.
I think that's a fair point.
I think some of the cultural anxiety about these questions uh, has to do with a lot of things happening at once, that sort of meshed in a way as, as Mark hinted at yes, every recent president has had something to say about illegal immigration, and all during the time.
Since the 1986 Immigration reform and control act, the number of people living long -term and undocumented in the United States has continued to rise.
You can't have a country Where the commercial sector, where private business has a 100 -foot -high blinking neon sign that says, "Help Wanted," and, at the same time, have a government that's saying,
"Don't come here." That's what we've had for the last 40 years.
We are reaping what we sowed.
People come here and make a living and tell their cousins and tell their brothers and tell the people that they grew up with back home.
We're good to go.
I think?
They're not just Latinos from south of the border.
They're also Chinese and Ukrainians and people from West Africa who've made their way through Panama, up through Central America and Mexico to the southern border.
The United States has experienced something that's part of a worldwide crisis.
And right now, I'd say politically, socially, culturally, we're not handling it all that well.
Immigrants, if we allow them to work, will succeed.
Uh, the rising tide will lift all boats, as it has throughout our history.
We can't deny it.
It has throughout our history.
And yes, there are these cultural anxieties.
It wasn't immigrants tearing down statues, it wasn't immigrants marching with torches.
And in Charlottesville Virginia, it's just that, as Mark suggests, a lot of these cross currents in our culture are happening to coincide.
It wasn't immigrants closing down highways after the killing of George Floyd and carrying Black Lives Matter signs, for that matter, either.
But it just comes at a moment of high cultural conflict and immigrants attract our attention in that moment, even as they're quietly picking crops and bussing tables and plastering and painting walls.
Ray Suarez, the former PBS NewsHour Chief National Correspondent, is our guest this morning.
His book is We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century in Oral History.
Ray Suarez, did you look at laws, immigration laws, that have come about in our U .S. history and what impact they have had on where we are today?
Well, you know, a lot of today's Americans who ...to dimly remember immigrant forebears and praise them for "doing it the right way" or "doing it the legal way" as a way to contrast them with today's immigrants.
Uh don't really grasp the fact that for much of American history, until 1924, there were virtually no rules.
If you arrived, it was really easy to come into the United States.
So doing it the right way when you arrive on a ship from uh, from Ireland or from Hamburg, wasn't really much of a big deal.
Today, immigration is far more complicated cumbersome expensive, Time consuming and a lengthy process that sends immigrants into a Byzantine maze of laws and requirements and documents and filings.
Something that would have driven the immigrants from 1890 crazy.
It is a very different world.
As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, for much of the earlier part of American history, we systematically excluded people from most places in the world except for Europe, so we got European immigrants.
And because of that reason, as I also write about at length in the book, America's religious landscape is changing at the same time.
There were virtually no Hindus in the United States, very few.
Until 1965, a very, very small number of Muslims in the United States until 1965.
And then we changed the laws.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 scraps the quota system that favored Europe and basically opens the door to a much broader set of countries.
And America starts to change from 1965 on.
With that law signed by President Johnson, championed in the Senate by Edward M. Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts and America, they both, at the time that that law passed,
promised the members of Congress that the country really wasn't going to change that much if that law was passed.
I don't know whether they were just saying it to get other members on board of the Senate in -house.
I don't know whether they really didn't think that the country was going to change that much, but who comes here and from where changed a lot after that law.
So I write about a lot about the laws that were enforced during the 19th century, the early part of the 20th century, and of course the 1965 Act that really changes immigration to the United States and makes us the complicated and diverse place that we are today.
We'll go to Joseph in Baltimore.
Good morning to you.
Good morning.
We're listening, Joseph.
Question or comment?
I have a question and a comment.
All right.
Go ahead.
Can you give us, Mrs. Suarez, a little bit of comment about the Hispanics or what you call back in the day before there was a United States and also the reason why they're really here?
And the third thing, is the difference between borders and crossings?
And one more thing.
The original slaves that came over here, chains, are different than those folks coming over here underneath the sea, over top the sea, in trucks, in the back of anything, throwing children across the borders, and all kinds.
It is a big, big difference.
And then another thing.
Most of them, when they get here, are told that black people here in the United States do not want to work.
And they are told by employers that's why they're here.
So for the last four years, the United States has fell asleep on that boy.
Yep, he's up in there, he's getting ready to leave this office.
All right.
All right, Mr. Suarez.
I think Joseph is getting at something that's very interesting and important to understand about America in the 21st century.
Black immigrants to the United States, whether they come from the Caribbean, from Africa.
Or from the African diaspora and other parts of the world, are given terrible social messages about being black in the United States when they arrive as immigrants and in that way they share an experience with immigrants from other places in the world who all come here, and it's been said ruefully by historians and by oral historians that one of the first things An immigrant learns is the N?
-word.
Earlier in our history, you know, on the social ladder, you could arrive from the poorest village in some place in the world, and if you were white and you got here, you knew you were a couple of rungs up the ladder from day one from people who were born here and lived here their whole lives,
that is, Black Americans.
It's not a proud part of our history, but it is part of our history.
There are tensions between Black immigrants and Black Americans.
There are misunderstandings that go in both directions.
And I also want to speak briefly about something that Joseph mentioned earlier, which is the way that the United States border moved in the 19th century meant that a lot of Latinos in the United States are not immigrants.
They're the descendants of people who came here and were part of the Spanish Empire.
And then the expansive United States moved from sea to shining sea, and under Manifest Destiny, they became part of the United States in Texas, in Arizona, in New Mexico, in California.
And they are part of a much older civilization on this continent and have never been immigrants.
And it's useful to remember that and understand that.
But they have been.
Marty in Massachusetts.
Good morning to you, Marty.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Ray.
First, I want to say Merry Christmas, and I look forward to a happy Three Kings Day, and happy holidays to everyone.
Thank you.
The gifts are right behind me for tomorrow morning, so we'll wait.
Yes, sir.
And I also want to lift up Brian Lamb and everyone at C -SPAN for democratizing the information that's out there.
I want to lift up how great I think the style of journalism that you do is, and how some of these callers have some Different opinions than other folks,
and I think it's really wonderful the way you handle and have a through line.
My question or comment is around the economic organizing that's happening right now within the immigrant and refugee community and the history that we have in America.
Right now, there's a whole slew of low -wage worker organizing that's happening across the country.
um you know from waffle house to amazon to the airports and much of that work is being done by uh folks that are in a precarious uh situation with their legal status uh and the consequence of mass deportations or the the attempt of master deportations not only are we going to have uh you know this cultural anxiety but it's you know there's an economic interest there and there's a really beautiful history of um You know,
the Justice for Janitors campaign and 1199 in New York with Dr. King.
Right now in Minnesota, there's this alignment that's happening.
Harold Meyerson wrote an excellent article called Turning the Table to Minnesota.
And so for your next project, I really think you should take a look at where this intersection of economics and immigration and what's coming next.
But, you know, again, you know, thanks for all you do and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Thanks, Marty.
Thanks a lot, Marty.
Marty, thanks a lot.
As Marty mentions, as he implies, it's impossible to talk about the history of labor in this country without talking about immigration.
But an interesting thing is happening.
Shout out to the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, is organizing immigrant workers throughout the country, United Food and Commercial Workers.
People who work in meat plants and work with chickens and pigs.
People who work in the needle trades in Southern California.
There is a lot of organizing that needs to go on.
There's a lot of organizing that is going on.
And it connects in a lovely way to Union Square, a couple of miles from where I'm sitting right now, where you could see signs in Italian and Yiddish as Union Rallies went on in lower Manhattan.
That is part of the story with low wage workers.
Another one that's less talked about, I think, is home health care workers who are in the nascent months and years of organizing a national movement.
You know, 14 % of the United States was born We're good to go.
I think?
My beard is turning white.
As the country gets older, we're going to rely on those workers a great deal more to look after our mothers and fathers and grandparents, to allow them to age in place, to allow them to age with dignity.
And immigrant workers, people who might have otherwise never met your grandma. are going to spend their most intimate moments with her, bathing her and feeding her and making sure she takes her meds on time.
This is close -up work and work that creates loving, intimate bonds between people at the most helpless times in their lives.
And we should value this portion of immigrant labor a little bit more and we should give them a little bit more training.
And we'd save a lot of medical expenses down the road because they'd be the early warning system for knowing something's going really wrong with your mother or father as they stay in their apartment instead of moving into institutional care.
So, Marty, thank you for the Christmas wishes.
And yes, immigrant labor is going to be a big part of the future of organized labor in the United States.
Ray Suarez, let's go to Thomas, who's in California, an immigrant to this country.
Thomas, where are you from originally?
Good morning, and I appreciate you for taking my call.
I am from Liberia, West Africa.
Thomas, and how did you come to the United States and why?
Well, so we had a 40 -year civil war in Liberia that really destroyed the country.
And like other people,
And Thomas, how do you view America today?
So when you look at the country, and it's so sad, I appreciate Mr. Suarez for telling the story of immigrants in America.
And this topic has become a political issue.
Every four years, immigrants are beat down and treated like nothing, right?
And I'm so sad that Americans don't read history.
They don't even know their own country history.
But when you look at the history of Liberia, it's the history of America.
We have the same flag, the same constitution, the same kind of government.
The first ten presidents of Liberia were white Americans.
Americans.
White.
White people.
And so when we come here, we love this country.
I'm part of the military.
Alright, Thomas.
Let's get a response from Ray Suarez.
Well, Liberia is one of the few African countries that has a long history of contact with the United States.
Unlike the European powers, that divided up Africa in the late 19th century and basically just carved it up like they were carving up a birthday cake.
The United States stood apart from that and Liberia was established as a home for freed slaves from the United States and there was a transportation shipment of freed people who wanted to go back to Africa and a movement in the United States to help Africans who wanted to get back to Africa, to go to Liberia.
Liberia's had a troubled history in much of the time since then.
The displacement and the domination of the native -born people of that part of the West African coast is a very tangled and unhappy story.
But Liberians do have a connection with the United States that makes it one of the places that they have fled to.
When they had to leave the country during the terrible recent past.
I mean, between Sierra Leone and Liberia, Burkina Faso, some other countries, there have been some terrible wars in West Africa.
And this has become a haven, a place of safety for people like Thomas and many, many others.
So it's a great story.
And yeah, I mean, when Thomas is...
Americans should know their history better.
I fully agree.
And certainly on this topic.
It's one that is endlessly fascinating.
But, you know, because we didn't have a big network of colonies throughout the world, the way France and Britain did, the way Germany wanted to and then had them all taken away after the First World War,
we don't have those kind of connections.
As an earlier caller noted, our connections have been commercial.
When you talk about the history of United Fruit in Central America, you're talking about instead of going and taking over other countries the way the British did, we had our companies go places and become very important parts of the way those countries were run.
And it's a different kind of relationship, and it has made people both admire and love.
And fear the United States in other places in the world.
It's very, very complicated.
But I think on balance, the country is still pretty well thought of in the rest of the world in ways that I think are not totally appreciated by Americans here in the United States.
For our viewers who want to learn more from Ray Suarez, the book is We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century in Oral History.
Listen to Ray Suarez on his podcast.
It's called On Shifting Ground with Ray Suarez.
Thank you, sir, for your time.
Happy holidays to you.
Thanks, Greta.
Thanks for having me and for everybody for whom tomorrow is Christmas.
Have a wonderful day.
Thank you.
This week, we're showing encore presentations from our weekly interview program, Q &A.
Tonight, author Malcolm Gladwell discusses his book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, about the downside of social epidemics, including the rise of opioid abuse and Medicare fraud.
A follow -up to his international bestseller, The Tipping Point, on how ideas and behavior spread in a society to create positive change.
These guys in the fraud task force took me to an office building in Miami.
Which had been divided up into hundreds of tiny closet -sized offices, each of which basically was the mailing address for a different fraudulent