| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Then Stat News Washington correspondent Daniel Payne will discuss President Trump's executive order on prescription drug pricing. | |
| And Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen talks about the GOP budget, aviation safety, and other congressional news of the day. | ||
| Also, Stephen Moore, economic advisor to President Trump and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, looks at the Republican budget and the President's economic agenda. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, May 14th. | ||
| Markups to the reconciliation bill are underway in three key House committees. | ||
| Ways and Means, which oversees tax policy, Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, and Agriculture, which manages food stamp programs, or SNAP. | ||
| For our first half hour, we're focusing on Medicaid and SNAP benefits and asking if you support or oppose changes to those social safety net programs. | ||
| Here's how to reach us. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can send a text to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name and your city-state. | ||
| And you can post your comments on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Well, the Agricultural Committee has wrapped up their work, but energy and commerce and ways and means are still going. | ||
| Let's take a look. | ||
| They've been going all night. | ||
| Here is the Energy and Commerce Committee. | ||
| We'll take a live look at what's going on right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The bottom line is that if you can't meet those red tape requirements, work requirements, exemptions, whatever for pregnancy, whatever, you cannot get the subsidy on the ACA. | |
| Correct? | ||
| Yes, if an individual does not meet the requirements, then they would not meet the definition. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| Gentlemen's time has expired. | ||
| Is there any further discussion? | ||
| Seeing none, there is a roll call vote requested. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The clerk will record the call. | |
| The clerk will call the roll. | ||
| Mr. Lada. | ||
| Mr. Lada votes no. | ||
| Mr. Griffith. | ||
| And that's going on right now. | ||
| So if you would like to, we'll give you, we'll definitely give you clips of what's been going on since yesterday. | ||
| They started at 2 p.m. last night. | ||
| Ways and means started at 2.30 p.m. yesterday. | ||
| We have live coverage on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| This is Punch Bowl News with this from this morning. | ||
| It says, yes, the Senate will change the GOP reconciliation bill. | ||
| Here's something Speaker Mike Johnson should be worried about. | ||
| Senate Republicans are gearing up to change the House's reconciliation package. | ||
| The big questions are by how much and can House Republicans live with those changes? | ||
| Johnson hopes to have the House GOP reconciliation package on the floor next week. | ||
| If Johnson and his leadership team can pass it, then Senate Republicans will have several weeks to debate and revise the package to pass it before the debt limit needs to be raised in mid-July. | ||
| That's Punch Bowl News. | ||
| If you'd like to take a look at that. | ||
| Here's the Energy and Commerce Committee markup from yesterday. | ||
| Chairman Brett Guthrie from Kentucky said the bill would ensure Medicaid continues to benefit all those it's intended for. | ||
| We make no apologies for prioritizing Americans in need over illegal immigrants and those who are capable but choose not to work. | ||
| Our priority remains the same, strengthen and sustain Medicaid for those whom the program was intended to serve. | ||
| Expectant mothers, children, people with disabilities, and the elderly. | ||
| We are prepared to stop the billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program by beginning to rein in the loopholes, by ensuring states have the flexibility to remove ineligible recipients from their roles, and removing beneficiaries who are enrolled in multiple states. | ||
| These are all common sense policies that will return taxpayer dollars to middle-class families. | ||
| Medicaid was created to protect health care for Americans who otherwise could not support themselves. | ||
| But Democrats expanded the program far beyond this core mission. | ||
| That's why we are establishing common sense work requirements for capable but not working adults in the expansion population. | ||
| Let me be clear, these work requirements would only apply to able-bodied adults without dependents who don't have a disqualifying condition, encourage them to re-enter the workforce and regain their independence. | ||
| All of this is part of our effort to strengthen Medicaid for the people that need it most. | ||
| We're taking your calls this morning. | ||
| Do you think there should be changes to those safety net programs to Medicaid to SNAP? | ||
| What would those changes be if you're in favor of changes? | ||
| This is Politico reporting that CBO says that $7.6 million would go uninsured under the GOP Medicaid bill. | ||
| It says that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that many of the major Medicaid policies would account for $625 billion in savings, though the CBO didn't calculate the impacts of all those provisions. | ||
| It said that it would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the Health Safety Net Program and 7.6 million people going uninsured. | ||
| That's according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and that's being reported by Politico. | ||
| If you would like to read the full article. | ||
| Also from yesterday's House Energy and Commerce markup, Ranking Member Frank Pallone said that Republicans and President Trump broke their promise to keep Medicaid secure. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| In February, President Trump said, and I'm quoting, Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched. | ||
| House Speaker Johnson doubled down on that promise, stating, and again, I'm quoting, the White House has made a commitment. | ||
| The President has said over and over, we're not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've made that same commitment. | |
| Now, I have to say, Mr. Chairman, those are promises that Republicans made to the American people, and it's clear that they have broken that promise. | ||
| And I just want to reference on Sunday night, Mr. Chairman, in a Wall Street Journal interview, you actually said that the Republican plan to trim Medicaid spending, you were commenting on the Republican plan to trim Medicaid spending, and you said, and I quote, we're going to go as far as we can go to get 218 votes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the bottom line is you're going pretty far here in either trimming or cutting, whoever you want to call it. | |
| You refer to it as trimming Medicaid. | ||
| You don't have to take my word for it. | ||
| The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office' own analysis shows that at least 13.7 million Americans will lose their health care coverage as a result of Trump and Congressional Republicans' action. | ||
| And we will take your calls now and go to Eric first in Modesto, California, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a question. | |
| I know now that we are talking about Medicare, Medi-Cape, and Social Security. | ||
| I was told that Social Security, I mean, Medi-Cal is for people that retire, and then Medicare is for people that cannot afford to have enough money because they have either not worked or they don't have, they're just here illegally. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| So I can't answer that because that's specific to California. | ||
| But Medicaid is the one for aiding those that can't, that are low-income. | ||
| Medicare is for the elderly. | ||
| But you mentioned Medi-Cal, which would be specific to California. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So, okay, that's all I need. | ||
| Now, thank you. | ||
| Susie in East Flat Rock, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Susie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a sister that is on disability, and so therefore she gets Medicare, Medicaid. | |
| She has a severe back injury, and she has been to, oh, I can't tell you how many doctors that she's been to. | ||
| They just doctor shop her around and around and around and around to try to relieve her back. | ||
| They finally, she went to enough doctors that they finally decided to put one of those lecto ports in her to relieve her back pain. | ||
| They put it in her for a week, took it out. | ||
| They took it out so that she could be on the wait list for it to be implanted permanent. | ||
| Therefore lies the waste. | ||
| She did not need to go to five or eight doctors to get that done. | ||
| She just needed her one doctor, and that's all. | ||
| That's all I got to say about it. | ||
| The doctors are the ones that's ripping the Medicaid off. | ||
| All right, Susie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all I got to say about that. | |
| And here's Betty in Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I support the Medicaid because I have a 56-year-old daughter. | ||
| She has a linear disability, and she's been on there since she was 18 years old. | ||
| And then they send a lot of people, able-bodied people on Medicaid. | ||
| I don't believe that because you have to go through a lot of trouble to get on those benefits. | ||
| And I think they should keep it for people because my daughter, she can't understand reading. | ||
| She can't spell. | ||
| She can't do anything. | ||
| She's still here with me, and I'm 83 years old. | ||
| And she needs her Medicaid. | ||
| Do you think there's any, so our previous caller was saying that there's a lot, that there's waste in Medicaid. | ||
| What have you seen with your daughter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't seen no waste in Medicaid. | |
| All right. | ||
| And here's some information for you from the Kaiser Family Foundation. | ||
| This is at kff.org. | ||
| 10 Things to Know About Medicaid. | ||
| It says that Medicaid is the primary program providing comprehensive coverage of health and long-term care to 83 million low-income people in the United States. | ||
| It accounts for one-fifth of health care spending. | ||
| More than half of the spending for Medicaid is for long-term care. | ||
| So long-term would be nursing homes or those that are permanently disabled, home health aid, that kind of thing. | ||
| And a large share of state budgets. | ||
| Medicaid is jointly financed by states and the federal government, but administered by states within broad federal rules. | ||
| Because states have a degree of flexibility to determine what populations and services to cover, how to deliver care, and how much to reimburse providers, there is significant variation across states in program spending and the share of state residents covered by the program. | ||
| Here's Jared in Delaware, Democrat. | ||
| Jared, what do you think of these social safety net programs? | ||
| Should they be changed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, before I say anything about that, I just want to let you know that I love your show and I love that you guys let everybody speak. | |
| I think that social safety net programs should not be changed, but here's why. | ||
| If you remember or if anybody's history buff, there's two people, Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred Hampton. | ||
| Both of them talked about bringing poor people, whether it's black, white, Asian, Hispanic, bringing them all together, because at the end of the day, the government was set up for the rich and to keep the poor poor. | ||
| These Republicans over this last election cycle knew exactly what Trump did. | ||
| He put it in Project 2025. | ||
| He said it. | ||
| He was going to do this. | ||
| He was going to do that. | ||
| He was going to cut Medicaid. | ||
| They said, oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| They said they wouldn't cut Medicaid, and Kamala Harris screamed it to the top of her lungs that they would indeed cut Medicaid. | ||
| So now every other call this morning is a Republican calling, talking about one of their family members or them on how, you know, the government is now going to slash their benefits. | ||
| Duh. | ||
| Duh, duh, duh. | ||
| We told you this would happen. | ||
| We screamed it to the mountaintop. | ||
| She told you it would happen. | ||
| It's not a poor thing. | ||
| I mean, it's not a white thing. | ||
| It's not a black thing. | ||
| It's a poor and a rich. | ||
| The rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer. | ||
| And they voted for it. | ||
| Republicans voted for it. | ||
| That's what they wanted to happen. | ||
| And now, you know, the chickens are coming home the loose, like Malcolm X said. | ||
| So again, just remember what Fred Hans said. | ||
| Remember Martin Luther King Jr.: It's about poor versus rich, not black versus white, but black versus white. | ||
| And this is from the House Agriculture Committee yesterday on SNAP benefits. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| In this measure, we achieve our savings and meet our reconciliation instructions through necessary SNAP reforms, requiring states to have some skin in the game, and encouraging more effective and efficient administration of the program, all while getting folks who can work back to work. | ||
| Since 2019, SNAP costs have skyrocketed from $60 billion to $110 billion annually, an 83% increase, while enrollment has grown from $36 million to $42 million. | ||
| Unlike every other state-administered entitlement program, SNAP benefit is 100% funded by the federal government, resulting in minimal incentives for states to control costs, enhance efficiencies, and improve outcomes for recipients. | ||
| Despite low unemployment and 7 million available jobs across the country, less than one-third of able-bodied adults on SNAP who are supposed to be working to receive the benefit have earned income. | ||
| Unfortunately, the bipartisan work requirement that has been enshrined in the law for decades has been skirted by the executive branch and states, leaving 40% of those subject to the work requirements living under a waiver. | ||
| Unless Congress acts to restore integrity to the work requirement, millions of able-bodied adults will remain on the sidelines, disconnected from work and out of reach of the ladder of opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Folks, the average SNAP benefit is about $6 per day. | |
| Let me say that again: $6 a day. | ||
| You don't build a life on SNAP. | ||
| You build a bridge to the next paycheck, the next opportunity, that next moment of stability. | ||
| I'm sure we will hear about this today, so let's dispel the myth that SNAP discourages work. | ||
| That's simply false. | ||
| Adults on SNAP are already required to work or actively looking for work. | ||
| Many are juggling multiple jobs trying to raise children and make ends meet. | ||
| Others are caregivers, students, or temporarily out of the workforce due to illness or injury. | ||
| SNAP doesn't enable dependence, it enables resilience. | ||
| And here's the deeper truth. | ||
| Access to food is not a privilege. | ||
| In a nation as rich and resourceful as ours, no one, and I mean no one, should go hungry. | ||
| That's exactly what will happen if we gut this program tonight. | ||
| And just so you're aware, President Trump has just landed, Air Force One has just landed in Qatar. | ||
| That's a live look there on your screen. | ||
| There's a welcoming ceremony that will get underway once he gets off the plane, and we will keep an eye on that trip and let you know if anything happens throughout this program. | ||
| Let's take a look at some postings on social media. | ||
| This is Congressman Jared Moskowitz. | ||
| He says, I've signed onto a petition in the House to force a vote that would protect Medicaid and food assistance programs, which are lifelines for millions of Floridians. | ||
| If House Republicans claim their budget doesn't slash these programs, they should have no problem taking this vote. | ||
| Here's Representative Dan Crenshaw. | ||
| Be prepared for a lot of lies and fact checks over the next 24 hours. | ||
| We just started, and I'm already disgusted by the extent of the lies being told by Democrats about Medicaid reform. | ||
| I will be relentless in exposing them for the grandstanding liars they are. | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| And America Inc. sends us this. | ||
| If our tax money can provide billions in financial support overseas across the globe, it can also provide safety nets for our own citizens' health. | ||
| And Randy Weber from Texas says the left is going off the rails on Medicaid. | ||
| They're the ones who've recklessly expanded it, opening the floodgates to waste, fraud, and abuse, hurting the very people Medicaid was supposed to help. | ||
| Let's be clear. | ||
| Republicans are protecting Medicaid. | ||
| Let's hear from Laura, who's calling from Brea, California. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Laura. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I just want to say the politicians that are voting to cut Medicaid don't have to worry about health care because it is paid for by we taxpayers. | ||
| The thing that I worry about is the work requirements that the Republicans are suggesting for Medicaid should not include caregivers. | ||
| You know, they take care of their parents, you know, and they do a truly job that other people, you know, it's very difficult for them. | ||
| And I just wanted to make that comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is KFF.org on Medicaid work requirements. | ||
| It says work in Medicaid have resurfaced as part of a broader legislative package. | ||
| It says that Congressional Republicans, a budget outline includes requiring Medicaid enrollees to work or look for work as a condition for receiving coverage. | ||
| While the details of the current proposal are not yet available, an analysis of an earlier proposal by the CBO shows that Medicaid enrollment would drop and that federal spending on Medicaid would be reduced substantially, but that the policy would not increase employment. | ||
| If you can, you can take a look at that on kff.org. | ||
| Here is another Laura, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So, you know, this whole Make America Great Again really is about taking us back to when people had no health insurance and they had to go to an emergency room because they were so sick because they couldn't afford a doctor. | ||
| And so then the hospital, what happens with the hospital when there's nobody to pay for it? | ||
| Well, then the hospital starts to lose money. | ||
| I mean, this is so absolutely reckless of the Republicans trying to put us back to the stone age of no insurance. | ||
| You know, they want us to all buy into private insurance, for-profit insurance, where you're where you basically get very little and you have to pay a lot out of pocket. | ||
| And this is just absolutely obscene to watch the president drive, you know, going all over the Middle East, flashing, you know, all the gold around the palaces over there while they're trying to go after the poor in this country. | ||
| It is absolutely disgusting. | ||
| And for Republicans to sit there and try to talk about, oh, we're just going to, you know, just make some modifications. | ||
| No, this is about blanket trying to destroy Medicaid. | ||
| And we're, and the Democrats are absolutely right. | ||
| This is about giving money to the wealthiest of the wealthy. | ||
| I mean, somebody like Musk, who has, what, hundreds of billions of dollars? | ||
| Would you be okay with any changes to those programs, either Medicaid or SNAP? | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, well, change what? | |
| You know, what do they want to change? | ||
| They want to get poor people to pay more into insurance. | ||
| How about seniors? | ||
| Medicare has already been gutted. | ||
| Seniors have to pay way more money than they expected they had to pay because of the fact that decades after decades they've been chopping Medicare to pieces by having the for-profit like United Healthcare trying to cut into the Medicare so they can make some profits off of that. | ||
| I mean, this is just all corruption. | ||
| It's all about just taking away from the poor. | ||
| It's Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the wealthy. | ||
| It's so obvious you'd have to be an absolute idiot to not see what's going on. | ||
| Laura, and let's take a look at some of the plans, the Republican plan for Medicaid. | ||
| And you can certainly comment on these. | ||
| So, first, enact new work requirements. | ||
| So, this would be for childless adults who would have to work or volunteer at least 80 hours a month or be enrolled in an educational program in order to qualify for Medicaid. | ||
| It would require states to check a person's eligibility every six months instead of the current rate, which is every year. | ||
| It would reduce federal payments to states that use their own dollars to cover undocumented immigrants. | ||
| It would block federal dollars for beneficiaries with unverified citizenship or immigration status. | ||
| Wonder what you think about that. | ||
| You can certainly comment on those if you agree with some or all of it. | ||
| Al in Waterton, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| What do you think, Al? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, once again, let's talk about the percentage of people who pay income taxes. | |
| Remember, only about 50% pay a penny in income taxes, and that's not by Democrat or Republican. | ||
| So, your categories to call in are ineffective and deceptive. | ||
| Your categories are Democrat, Republican, and Independent, where it really should be net producers or net recipients. | ||
| Because the way you look at the budget, Medicaid payments, or whatever is going to depend on whether you're getting stuff or you're paying into the system. | ||
| Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that people should be taxed to give other people free medicine. | ||
| And that which cannot be sustained will not be sustained. | ||
| There's no possible way that we can have open borders where millions and millions and millions of people flow into this country, and then we pay for their health care. | ||
| It's impossible. | ||
| So, no, there shouldn't be Medicare slash. | ||
| It should be eliminated, like every other program that's not constitutional. | ||
| You said Medicare should be done away with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm saying Medicaid for sure. | |
| Oh, Medicaid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| This is why it's so difficult for a person with a calculator to come to the microphone and say, vote for me, because I've got a calculator and my calculator says that we are bankrupt as a nation and we have to stop spending more than we're taking in. | ||
| Right now, do you realize that we're having to borrow money to pay for the interest on our debt? | ||
| And these people want the largesse to just keep going to people who aren't working and aren't citizens. | ||
| It's unsustainable. | ||
| So, Al, Al, you would end Medicaid completely. | ||
| I heard you say that. | ||
| What would you do about Medicare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not sure about Medicare because I think people pay into the system for Medicare. | |
| The people, you have programs like Medicaid, and there's free stuff for corporations too. | ||
| The lobbyists have gotten involved. | ||
| And in terms of the Medicaid, you have representation without taxation instead of taxation without representation. | ||
| All right, Al. | ||
| And I just want to mention to people that on your screen, you see President Trump there descending the stairs from Air Force One in Qatar. | ||
| So he has just arrived and deplaining. | ||
| And we will, again, we'll watch that. | ||
| But this is the arrival here greeting the Qataris on the ground. | ||
| Mark, NIAC, New York, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| I definitely oppose the changes to the social safety net by this administration. | ||
| And I say that because we all agree that we need to do something about waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| They're just cutting programs they don't like. | ||
| Right-wingers, like the gentleman from Tennessee who just called, they just want to eliminate things like Medicaid because they really don't care about poor people. | ||
| And the fact is, if you eliminated Medicaid and poor people could not get health care, then they would get diseases and would all get sick. | ||
| So it's very short-sighted. | ||
| I mean, any civilized country is going to give some kind of health care to people who can't afford it. | ||
| I mean, are we civilized people or is this like the law of the jungle here? | ||
| And the reason why I say I don't trust this administration to do anything is I grew up in New York. | ||
| I saw all the scams that Trump pulled. | ||
| I saw him file bankruptcy six times, not pay his employees, not pay his contractors, not pay his suppliers. | ||
| This is not the guy to solve our problems. | ||
| This is a guy who's just over in the Middle East. | ||
| He's doing his crypto deals and his billion-dollar deals to make his family richer. | ||
| And I'll tell you what, that is not in the Constitution. | ||
| All right, Mark, and let's take a look at House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries talking to Reporter about the GOP tax plan. | ||
| House Republicans are trying to jam another GOP tax scam down the throats of the American people, where the overwhelming majority of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 1% in the United States of America, and they want to pay for it by sticking us with additional debt, trillions of dollars of additional debt, and by enacting the largest health care cut in American history, | ||
| along with the largest cut to food assistance in American history, literally taking food out of the mouths of children, veterans, and seniors in this country. | ||
| It's shameful. | ||
| The American people do not support this extreme and toxic bill, and we're going to hold every single House Republican who votes for it accountable. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, and this is William in Johnson City, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Hi, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm a lifelong Republican. | |
| I would consider myself a very extreme Republican. | ||
| I believe in a plunder tax for rich people that get rich illegally of 90%. | ||
| I believe that President Trump is not going to go after Medicaid per se. | ||
| I think he's going to go after the fraud of people getting Medicaid in several different states. | ||
| That's what he's going after. | ||
| He's not going after taking food, like Hakeem said, food away from babies. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| We need to go after rich people and get them to pay their taxes. | ||
| And how do you define rich, William? | ||
| What kind of income? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we shouldn't tax anybody under $2 million at all. | |
| Country-class people. | ||
| That would immediately change the whole parameter of everything. | ||
| It would be a game changer. | ||
| Everybody could start a business. | ||
| Everybody could become wealthy. | ||
| And then we need to go after the people that get away with things like Tom Stryker and George Soros and his son. | ||
| All right, William. | ||
| Let's talk to Glenn in Detroit, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Glenn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing, Mimi? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, you know, I listened to the guy a couple calls previous say that we need to get rid of Medicaid altogether. | |
| Well, first thing all is Medicaid is a when you're in a hospital, Medicaid pays for doctors' training. | ||
| Medicaid pays for when you graduate from a medical school, you go to an externship, internship, residency. | ||
| These are teaching institutions that get paid by Medicaid because you're dealing with a lot of poor people. | ||
| And if you really want to get rid of Medicaid, there are going to be a lot of hospitals closing in these rural areas where you got a lot of people on Medicaid. | ||
| So a lot of people need to think and do some homework on Medicaid before they go in the air and talk. | ||
| All right, Glenn. | ||
| And speaking of that, at kff.org has a lot of really good information. | ||
| For instance, it says one in five people have Medicaid nationally, but it varies according to states. | ||
| The percentage of people who report having Medicaid is 21% nationally, but ranges from 11% in Utah to 34% in New Mexico. | ||
| And what this shows is you can go state to state and see the percentage, 34% here in New Mexico. | ||
| But for instance, in North Dakota, it's only 13%. | ||
| So you can see how it varies according to states. | ||
| And that's the time that we've got for this segment. | ||
| But later on the Washington Journal, we'll have Democrat Steve Cohen of Tennessee to talk about his concerns about the Republican budget bill. | ||
| And as a top Democrat on the Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation, we'll also get his take on the Trump administration's plans to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system. | ||
| But up first, Daniel Payne of Staten News joins us to explain President Trump's executive order on prescription drug pricing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 6.30 p.m. Eastern, NPR international correspondent Emily Fang shares her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, where she reports on individuals in China who are pushing back against efforts to control free expression. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Columbia University's John McWhorter talks about the use and evolution of language and argues that the current controversy over pronoun usage in America is largely overblown in his book, Pronoun Trouble. | ||
| At 9.15 p.m. Eastern, Steve Olson, author of Eruption, recalls the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington on May 18, 1980, which resulted in the deaths of 57 people. | ||
| Then, at 10 p.m. Eastern on afterwards, University of Michigan law professor Leah Littman explains why she believes the Supreme Court isn't making rulings based on legal principles in her book, Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. | ||
| She is interviewed by author and Nation magazine justice correspondent Ellie Mistal. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us to talk about President Trump's drug pricing executive order is Daniel Payne, Washington correspondent for Stat News. | ||
| Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| So Daniel, let's start with the executive order. | ||
| It was signed on Monday. | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| What does it actually do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It says a lot. | |
| What it does remains to be seen. | ||
| It says that the administration is going to focus a lot of efforts across agencies, across HHS, and even across other agencies in Washington to lower drug prices, that there's interest in maybe Medicare using its buying power to lower prices based on how much other countries pay, which is usually less than the United States, other developed nations. | ||
| And it also looks to bring pharma companies to the table with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and see if they can make a deal before some of these policy letters are enacted. | ||
| So why is it that we pay so much more for prescription drugs? | ||
| I mean, it is true. | ||
| If you were to go to Canada or you go to Europe, buy the exact same drug, it's cheaper than it is here. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's absolutely true. | |
| I think that depending on who you ask, you get a lot of different answers on why that's the case. | ||
| Some countries have laws that require that the price drops. | ||
| Japan, for instance, has a law that requires that the prices drop every year. | ||
| And other countries can negotiate prices as a block and say if a pharmaceutical company doesn't meet our price, our nation will just not buy. | ||
| And that's a very strong lever. | ||
| In the United States, we have a more federated system, so different people are negotiating different prices, and that maybe lowers bargaining power, some people would say. | ||
| Let's take a look at what the president said on Monday when he was talking about the impact of that executive order. | ||
| My administration will secure what we're calling most favored nations drug pricing. | ||
| The principle is simple. | ||
| Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay. | ||
| And we're using the term other developed countries because there are some countries that need some additional help, and that's fine. | ||
| I think that's very good. | ||
| Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90 percent. | ||
| Big pharma will either abide by this principle voluntarily or will use the power of the federal government to ensure that we are paying the same price as other countries. | ||
| He mentioned big pharma. | ||
| What has been the reaction so far of the pharmaceutical industry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been mixed. | |
| Lobbyists that work for these industries in Washington have told me that they're very concerned that this could have a huge impact on their business. | ||
| Previous administrations, the last Trump administration, tried to implement a similar policy, and it was just for the Medicare program. | ||
| This is much broader. | ||
| This is a more aggressive approach. | ||
| So some pharmaceutical companies are very concerned about that. | ||
| On the other hand, the markets rose. | ||
| The markets did not see this as a huge concern. | ||
| Some market analysts said. | ||
| The markets as a whole or for the pharmaceutical companies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Both. | |
| Both. | ||
| For pharmaceutical companies as well. | ||
| Analysts said they didn't think it was likely that this policy would really, at the end of the day, be enacted in a way that really impacted the bottom line. | ||
| They just thought it was talk and would not actually happen, like the prices would not actually come down on those drugs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Or that they thought that it wouldn't come down in a way that would impact pharmaceutical companies' bottom line. | ||
| They see legal challenges on the horizon, and certainly pharmaceutical companies are considering how they might challenge this policy. | ||
| And they see that this is just a very complex policy in general. | ||
| It's hard to take the calculations of what other developed countries pay and make sense of what we should pay. | ||
| There's a lot of complexity here. | ||
| If you have a question about President Trump's drug pricing executive order that was signed on Monday, you can give us a call. | ||
| Daniel Payne will be with us until 8 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| The numbers are Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| You mentioned the previous administration and Medicare. | ||
| Obviously, the government has a lot of control over Medicare. | ||
| That's a government program. | ||
| So how is that going? | ||
| Is that continuing? | ||
| I think that there were only like the top 10 most common drugs that were on the list. | ||
| What's going on with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a great question. | |
| It's something that the administration said when they announced this policy that they weren't going to say exactly what they were going to do in Medicare to accomplish this goal. | ||
| Some very smart analysis, also on staff from my colleagues says there's sort of an implicit, maybe you, the administration, is essentially saying you should come to the table and deal with us, or else the government has all of these actions that they can take to bring the drug price down, to force it down, but essentially that they would rather negotiate on behalf of all Americans, | ||
| not for direct-to-consumer pricing and not just for Medicare. | ||
| They said that Medicare announcements may be forthcoming, that they may come in the coming days, but I think that's a big unknown right now. | ||
| How will they do that? | ||
| Will they do it like they did last time through a pilot program at CMMI or will they do that through the IRA, which was Biden's sort of flagship legislation that allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices of drugs? | ||
| He mentioned most favored nation status. | ||
| What does he mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He means that we would look at, the United States would look at other countries and see what they pay, and that the United States would pay something more comparable to what they're paying, comparable to that lower price. | |
| Exactly how it would compare is sort of up in the air. | ||
| When he posted saying that he would sign this announcement, he said lowest price. | ||
| But exactly the details of that calculation are still unknown. | ||
| The executive order, I think it's important to say, just doesn't have a lot of detail right now. | ||
| And that means there's still a lot of open questions about how exactly this would be implemented. | ||
| So this is supposed to impact people with private health insurance as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Potentially, yes, that is part of the plan, that the Secretary of Health and Human Services might be able to negotiate for direct-to-consumer pricing. | |
| And is the administration expecting to negotiate with each pharmaceutical company separately? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's hard to say. | |
| Like, is it drug by drug, or is it company by company, or is it kind of overall? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It seems that they're focused on particular drugs, drugs that are very high cost for the United States and drugs that the United States pays a much higher price for than our peers. | |
| Let's talk to callers and go to Madeline and Manassas, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Madeline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to make a statement and then I want to ask a question about my Medicare. | ||
| My statement is I tried to get on the last time about Medicaid. | ||
| I know people on Medicaid that's raised their children on Medicaid. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Yes, keep going, Madeline. | ||
| We can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have raised their children on Medicaid or senior citizens. | |
| They're still on Medicaid and the man goes out to work every day. | ||
| I know two families like that that are on Medicaid. | ||
| These are what Donald Trump is looking for. | ||
| We need to clean it out. | ||
| Now, my problem is I've worked since I was 18, paid into Medicare, still paying into Medicare, $179 a month. | ||
| And as of January 1st, I never dreamed that I would not be able to buy my medication. | ||
| I'm now diabetic at 80 years old and can't afford to buy the pills because when they changed it on January 1st, my Medicare, the pills for my diabetic diabetes, I can't afford to buy. | ||
| They're from $435 to $400. | ||
| They cut the price of insulin, but destroyed those of us who are not, I'm not on the insulin. | ||
| I'm on a pill, but no longer can afford it as of January 1st. | ||
| What are they going to do for us old people that can't afford to buy our medicine that's paid into Medicare all of our life and they're still paying into Medicare? | ||
| All right, Madeline. | ||
| What happened January 1st with the price of medications? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The prices for, like Madeline said, the price for insulin has dropped and Medicare is beginning to negotiate some of these prices for the years ahead. | |
| I think that that concern is exactly why President Trump announced this, this executive order, and signed it. | ||
| Even though it's not clear exactly how it's going to work, it's clear that this is a pain point for a lot of Americans. | ||
| And it's a priority for the Trump administration. | ||
| It was a priority for the Biden administration. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans both see that this is a major policy goal that they need to tackle, no matter how difficult it is to figure out exactly how to accomplish that goal. | ||
| We've got a text from Dave in Dalton, Georgia. | ||
| Drug pricing is simple. | ||
| Companies give money to politicians who allow them to charge what they want. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| Check the contributions just to senators. | ||
| Have you looked at that contributions by big pharma to congressmen and women? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| And there certainly is a lot of contributions in a big lobby, a lot of lobbyists out there. | ||
| But those lobbyists would say this is how new drugs are developed. | ||
| This is how we get breakthrough technology and innovation. | ||
| We need a lot of money to do that. | ||
| I think pharmaceutical executives are starting to say maybe we should look at how much the United States is having to pay for that innovation compared to other countries. | ||
| And I think that in a way that's sort of a new line that you used to hear a lot of pharmaceutical executives say we need this money to innovate in a strong way, that a lot of trials don't work or a lot of medications don't end up on the market and it's very expensive to run those trials. | ||
| And yet now I think there is an acknowledgement that maybe we should share the price a little more evenly, which is what the president said yesterday. | ||
| He is making this argument that drug companies will not end up with less money. | ||
| I think some drug companies are not so sure that that's true. | ||
| He's saying that the other countries are just going to pay more for the same drugs than they were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Does tariffs play into this at all? | ||
| Because a lot of our prescription drugs do come from overseas. | ||
| Are they going to be tariffs under the new administration or what's happening with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tariffs are being investigated right now by the government in terms of the national security risk for pharmaceutical makers to not be based in the United States for some of that supply chain to be overseas. | |
| The administration says that these are separate issues, that the tariff issue is a separate policy initiative for national security. | ||
| And this is an initiative to bring down prices for American patients. | ||
| But they are connected. | ||
| If you're a pharmaceutical executive or a company trying to develop these breakthrough innovations, these are both threats potentially to your bottom line. | ||
| And there's been a lot of talk about how that will impact some of these companies. | ||
| Here's Susan in Clarksville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to say I am a never-Trumper. | ||
| But I would like to say that a medication that I take was $6,000 a month before Biden. | ||
| President Biden got it down to $4,000 a month. | ||
| And now it's back up to $7,000 a month. | ||
| That's just insane. | ||
| And I do feel like big pharma and the politicians, they're hand in hand like the NRA. | ||
| And so I don't know. | ||
| It'd be nice if he could lower that price, but I don't see it happening. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Comment, Daniel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's an interesting point that's being made. | |
| I think that that idea is breaking through a little bit in both parties, this idea that the health establishment has been sort of captured by big industries and that the government is doing exactly what these huge industries want. | ||
| And you hear now both Democrats saying that, and you also hear the likes of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying that the industry has too much power. | ||
| Now, their approaches, their policy approaches to handle that may be very different and seem to be thus far. | ||
| But again, that concern is sort of scrambling the normal partisan lines in this country. | ||
| Let's talk to Doug in Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Doug. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm just trying to find out. | ||
| I mean, people that are on diabetes have the monitors to monitor your glucose so that you don't go over, you don't go too low. | ||
| But the government won't pay for them. | ||
| I'm a retired veteran. | ||
| I'm under TRICARE and Social Security, I mean Medicare, because I don't take a shot of insulin because I choose to fight it with pills, which keeps the cost down to the government, but they won't pay for it. | ||
| And you get a blind ear when you talk to anybody in the government about it. | ||
| They just, they don't want to talk about it. | ||
| TRICARE says, because Medicare won't approve that equipment, like the monitoring systems that you can use, change them out every 14 days. | ||
| But that's why they won't pay for it because they won't. | ||
| And it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Our veterans should get the best that's out there. | ||
| It's a great point that this gets back to the idea that our country has a federated health system. | ||
| There are a lot of players. | ||
| It's very complex. | ||
| How coverage works is very complex between the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, much less all the private insurers. | ||
| And those rules change sometimes depending on how they negotiate with drug companies, with providers. | ||
| So it's very difficult to make sense of it, as I think many patients have first-hand experiences of. | ||
| You wrote an article called Our Biggest Burning Questions on Trump's Order to Bring Down Drug Prices. | ||
| One of those questions is, is it legal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This will be a key question going forward. | |
| There are a lot of pharmaceutical companies, legal teams that are thinking about this right now. | ||
| Is this something that we can challenge in court? | ||
| And some attorneys I talked to said yes. | ||
| After seeing the order, we believe that we have strong challenges against this, and they feel effectively that they must go to court. | ||
| We have a question on X asking which countries use the most medications, percentage or volume? | ||
| Do you happen to know that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do not happen to know that, unfortunately. | |
| I would guess some with a large population. | ||
| Here's Ed in Delaray Beach, Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Two of the ten drugs that were negotiated in the first round were blood thinners, Eloquis and Zarelto. | ||
| And they were on that list because they were some of the most paid for, expensive, and widely used drugs. | ||
| With Part D insurance, my and deductible and copay, my first prescription of the year would run for Zarelto about $600. | ||
| I buy it from Canada in a generic form for $90. | ||
| And the reason I can't do that here is because Congress extended the patent protection when the patents were up on these drugs and continued to keep them at the usurious rates while the rest of the world, not just Canada, the rest of the world has generics available. | ||
| I don't hear, I hear too much talk about not extending patents on these drugs that are so highly priced. | ||
| Do you see any movement on that front? | ||
| I think certainly that is also a concern that's talked about increasingly. | ||
| Part of the issue that I think not only the administration, the current administration, the past administrations, but also patient advocates and many other folks are seeing. | ||
| It's very difficult to get legislation passed in this town. | ||
| Even legislation that has widespread appeal support across parties, it can sit on the shelf for months and months, if not years. | ||
| So even when there is perhaps an issue that a lot of people agree on, it can be hard for the system to change here. | ||
| Jica asks on X, does Trump's EO effectively cancel our current pharma deals, or does current pricing stand until a new agreement is reached? | ||
| I believe current pharma deals may be being what the last administration negotiated? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe so. | |
| For the moment, it seems that current deals remain in place, but the administration may seek to renegotiate those deals under these terms that they've laid out. | ||
| Here's James in Indianapolis, Indiana, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was in the biopharmaceutical industry for 26 years, and I believe that we should pay the same as European countries do for medications. | |
| I don't think it's right that we have to pay two and three times higher than European countries. | ||
| James, what did you do in the industry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sales. | |
| So you were selling to doctors, to pharmacies, to who? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hospitals, pharmacies, physicians. | |
| And you noticed a difference in the price? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We would talk to our Canadian counterparts and the prices were significantly different. | |
| And do you have any insight as to why that was, specifically between the U.S. and Canada? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The insight was the lobbying effort by the biopharmaceutical companies to maintain the higher prices. | |
| The lobbying effort was extensive. | ||
| And also to extend patents whenever there was patent possibility of losing a patent on a product. | ||
| The lobbying effort would be intensified. | ||
| Any comment, Daniel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think so. | |
| Here's Summer, a Democrat, Jonesboro, Tennessee. | ||
| Hi, Summer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| I lost my insurance this past week. | ||
| One of my medications costs $1,200 a month. | ||
| It's not altering medication. | ||
| It just keeps my mental health in check. | ||
| Is this new legislation going to help me any until I get insurance again? | ||
| Is there any way I can get my medication cheaper or something? | ||
| This order is going to take time to get implemented. | ||
| Once we even see the specific policies, it will take time. | ||
| And then it likely is going to get caught up in court challenges. | ||
| So I think that this order at least is probably not going to have an immediate impact. | ||
| As you mentioned, President Trump did sign a similar executive order months before leaving office in his first term. | ||
| Nothing happened with that. | ||
| Can you tell us about what the difference between that one and this one? | ||
| Is there a different approach or is it the same idea? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Certainly a different approach here. | |
| In the first term, Trump was targeting one specific part of Medicare for those drugs for American patients. | ||
| In this order, he's looking to target all drugs, potentially, in the United States with direct-to-consumer pricing. | ||
| That's far more aggressive, not only in scope, but it's also more aggressive in the potential impacts of what the administration is willing to do for if the pharmaceutical companies don't come to the table. | ||
| They're threatening perhaps action from the DOJ, from the FTC, from agencies that are not usually involved in these sorts of matters, or haven't been, at least the first time that this policy was introduced. | ||
| So this is a, you know, the president put a time limit of 30 days. | ||
| What happens after 30 days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Secretary of HHS is going to produce some price targets for some of these drugs. | |
| And from there, they will try to negotiate a deal to bring prices down to those targets for the drugs. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That is Daniel Payne, Washington correspondent for STAT. | ||
| You can find his work at statnews.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| In about half an hour, we will have a conversation with Democrat Steve Cohen of Tennessee. | ||
| He's a top Democrat on the Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation. | ||
| We'll get his take on the Trump administration's plans to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system. | ||
| That's at about 8.30 a.m. this morning Eastern Time. | ||
| But first, we are going to open forum. | ||
| After the break, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The numbers are 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, call us on 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us at 202-748-8003 or reach us on social media. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a City Hall lawyer and a brain trust aide to President Franklin Roosevelt. | ||
| While on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell, Cuneo mingled with the famous and powerful. | ||
| But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. | ||
| All of this is the way Hanover Square Press introduces readers to Thomas Mayer's book, The Invisible Spy. | ||
| Mayer, a graduate of Fordham and Columbia, is an author and a television producer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Thomas Mayer with his book The Invisible Spy, Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring, and America's First Secret Agent of World War II. | |
| On this episode of BookNotes Plus, with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org/slash radio on Sirius XM Radio on channel 455, the Tune In app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day. | ||
| And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day. | ||
| Catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We are in open forum. | ||
| Looking forward to taking your calls this morning on anything public policy or politics related. | ||
| If you'd like to talk about the reconciliation markups that are going on right now in Congress, you can certainly do so. | ||
| The president is overseas in the Middle East, his first major trip of his second term. | ||
| And yesterday he was in Riyadh and he spoke at the Saudi Investment Forum. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| After discussing the situation in Syria with the Crown Prince, your Crown Prince, and also with President Erdogan of Turkey, who called me the other day and asked for a very similar thing. | ||
| Among others and friends of mine, people that I have a lot of respect for in the Middle East, I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You owe | |
| what I do for the crown prince. | ||
| The sanctions were brutal and crippling and served as an important really an important function, nevertheless, at the time. | ||
| But now it's their time to shine. | ||
| It's their time to shine. | ||
| We're taking them all off, and they're going to have, I think they're going to have based on the people and the spirit and everything else that I'm hearing about. | ||
| So I say, good luck, Syria. | ||
| Show us something very special like they've done, frankly, in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Okay, they're going to show us something special. | ||
| Very good people. | ||
| That was the president yesterday making news that the U.S. would be lifting sanctions on Syria and that he would meet with the new leader of Syria. | ||
| And this is the New York Times with that picture. | ||
| Trump meets with Militant, who now leads Syria. | ||
| It says President Trump's meeting with President Ahmed al-Shara capped a remarkable turnabout for the leader of the rebel uprising that ousted Bashar al-Assad. | ||
| Mr. Trump has said he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria. | ||
| There is that picture here, the meeting between the two leaders taking place in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| That is the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, they are looking on. | ||
| Let's go to your calls now to Evelyn in Baltimore, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Evelyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I was thinking about Donald Trump. | ||
| Every time he talks, he talks about Biden. | ||
| You know, he always telling everybody that everything is the way it is because of Biden. | ||
| Okay, Biden is gone. | ||
| If we're going to do things to make things better, this should do it. | ||
| I have never heard a president talk so bad about a previous president. | ||
| All the time, I've been watching politics. | ||
| And as far as Medicaid, I don't understand why the United States don't have money for Medicaid when they can send money to Israel. | ||
| They can send money to Ukraine. | ||
| I mean, they send money all around the world, but when they need to fix our budget, it seemed like they always mess with the people at the bottom. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And just a quick update, the Ways and Means Committee that overseas tax policy has just now finished. | ||
| They were going all night, and they have wrapped up their work, just to let you know. | ||
| And this is Mike, Cleveland, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing today? | |
| Good. | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All well. | |
| Go ahead, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A couple things. | |
| First of all, on the prescriptions and the costs, I tried to get on earlier, but when we buy some ourselves as consumers, we shop for the best price. | ||
| There's nothing to prevent our hospitals and our medical systems from buying our stuff from Canada. | ||
| Let Canada order it at one-eighth or one-tenth the price. | ||
| Let them mark it up to us at 50%. | ||
| We'll get it for two-tenths of the price. | ||
| And the pharmaceutical companies will have a problem trying to figure out how to deal with that scam that they're going on with right now. | ||
| So when you look at us, hospitals or doctors should all be buying their meds from other countries instead of paying the price here. | ||
| That's just common sense. | ||
| Second thing is, is on the earlier shows when you were talking about Medicaid being chopped, nobody's given us specifics on what people are being eliminated from the Medicaid or the Medicare, either one. | ||
| I think what we're trying to do is clean up the fraud, clean up the excess, clean up all the illegals getting medical coverage here, okay, that we obviously had ballooned in 20 million people in the last four years. | ||
| And for your last caller who said she didn't understand why Trump's always talking about Biden, Biden gave us the highest inflation in history, the worst employment rate in history. | ||
| He caused everything to go up in price, okay, beyond our capacity to adjust with our incomes. | ||
| In regards to that, secondly, I want to say that I'm on Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| And last year in August, the Biden administration cut my food stamps by 25%, which is devastating to me. | ||
| So you guys always report these things and let it go as they go. | ||
| But the bottom line is no one's getting down to the truth and the facts before they're all commenting and being misled. | ||
| All right, Democrats closing. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Onwire, Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would just like, yes, good morning. | |
| I would just like to say that the United States is the greatest terrorist organization on the planet. | ||
| They've murdered and killed more government officials and overthrown more governments with their 700 and some odd bases around the world. | ||
| Right now, they are trying to assassinate the president of Burkini Faso, Ibrahim Torre, because they are trying to take care of their people without sending their raw materials to the rest of the world. | ||
| And Unwar, how do you know that the United States is trying to assassinate the leader there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because it's on the news. | |
| And if you look at USA Today, or if you look at CNN, or if you look at BBC, which I don't know if you do or not, you will see that this is their plan. | ||
| They are talking about how he is using their materials for the people. | ||
| And I know you understand. | ||
| No, no, no, but it's on the BBC that the United States is trying to assassinate him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| We will look that up, and we will definitely share that if we can find that. | ||
| Mark, Silver Spring, Maryland, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for the opportunity. | ||
| I'd like to make three quick basic points. | ||
| One, if the Republicans want to look to a role model, it would be John McCain who gave the thumbs down to the attempted destruction of the American of the ACA way back during the Trump administration. | ||
| Because if you do follow the continuing resolution, it would destroy the marketplace. | ||
| And my second quick point is it would be great if the American public could see on a positive vein, the other day was NIH Poster Day, where you could have seen 900 posters of young scientists making medical breakthroughs. | ||
| So you could see where your money goes, unlike the slashing of medical research being conducted now, and unlike the slashing of public service that is being conducted, public health service being conducted now. | ||
| Last point quickly is that there's a supposed DEI hunt at the Library of Congress. | ||
| The head librarian, an expert in library science, was fired because of some books supposedly carrying DEI. | ||
| Well, guess what, American public? | ||
| The Library of Congress also has Mein Kampf. | ||
| It also has protocols of Zion, blatant anti-Semitic works. | ||
| Why are they there? | ||
| Because it's a library. | ||
| It's a citadel of knowledge. | ||
| And the librarian expert has been replaced by a Justice Department official who's acting as if he's Joseph Goebbels, who's going to be the propagandist cleaning up anything that doesn't fit the administration's definition of worthiness. | ||
| All right, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for your. | |
| And we are in open forum. | ||
| If you'd like to give us a call, the numbers are Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll go to Ed, Clarksburg, West Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Ed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hey, we got this all this trouble with the airports. | ||
| It's very simple, my God. | ||
| We, the government, picks it up, picks it, and you put a surcharge on everybody that flies. | ||
| Why should all of us people who don't fly have to pay for them that do fly? | ||
| Just put a surcharge on the flight. | ||
| Smarter people than me can figure that one out until it's paid back. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, and here is Kirsten in Annapolis, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to first of all thank C-SPAN for affording all of us the opportunity to call in and voice our opinion, such an important service that you perform for the entire nation. | ||
| Mark, the previous caller, covered my point that I wanted to make about the Library of Congress, so I'll move on from that one. | ||
| I was really once again disturbed and disappointed to hear this morning my husband tell me that the Trump administration was either trying to or had passed a law to reduce the federal minimum wage to $13. | ||
| I think that, you know, the war against the poor on this country is just mind-boggling. | ||
| My second point is something that I read about yesterday, which is the thrust by the right-wing to have an Article 5 convention. | ||
| They're looking at July 4th, 2026, or around July area of timeframe of 2026. | ||
| They have 19 states who have signed up to join this discussion to revise Article 5. | ||
| They just need six more states. | ||
| And of all of the frightening and terrifying things that this administration has done and is in the process of doing, I find probably this the most troubling. | ||
| Kirsten, before you go, regarding the minimum wage, this is what I found about that from Axios. | ||
| It says, why Trump cut the minimum wage for federal contract workers? | ||
| That was about a month ago. | ||
| Is that what you're talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think so. | |
| And I have to say that I'm just bouncing off of what my husband told me this morning. | ||
| So perhaps I should have vetted that before I got on the open forum. | ||
| Yeah, so it's not the federal minimum wage nationally. | ||
| This is for federal contract workers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Chuck Schumer, who was on the floor yesterday talking about how he would slow down consideration of all Justice Department nominees as he seeks answers over President Trump's acceptance of a luxury jet from Qatar. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| The American people deserve to know the facts. | ||
| President Trump has told the American people this is, quote, a free jet. | ||
| Does that mean the Qataris are delivering a ready on day one plane with all the security measures already built in? | ||
| If so, who installed those security measures? | ||
| And how do we know they were properly installed? | ||
| Why would we take the risk of trusting any foreign country to do this sensitive work? | ||
| If not, what security modifications would be needed to ensure a foreign-sourced Air Force One is safe to use? | ||
| If this is, as President Trump promised, a free jet, will the Qataris pay for those highly sensitive installations? | ||
| Or will American taxpayers cover the cost? | ||
| How much will those modifications cost American taxpayers? | ||
| Hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars? | ||
| How much will they cost? | ||
| If the American taxpayers are forced to pay for this temporary plane, does it mean the U.S. government will cancel the contract for the future Boeing plane? | ||
| If so, how much will that cancellation cost? | ||
| And if not, why are American taxpayers being asked to spend hundreds of millions of dollars or more on a plane that will only be used for a year or two? | ||
| Additionally, who in the Trump administration was responsible for this crooked deal? | ||
| What are the parameters of this deal? | ||
| And which country brought it up first, us or them? | ||
| What is gutter being offered in return? | ||
| Considering past security disasters, such as the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, what are the security risks of this arrangement? | ||
| And finally, how is this gift not naked corruption? | ||
| The Attorney General must testify before both the House and Senate to explain why gifting Donald Trump a private jet does not violate the Emoluments Clause, which requires congressional approval or any ethics law. | ||
| So, until the Attorney General explains her blatantly inept decision and we get complete and comprehensive to these and other questions, I will place a hold on all political nominees to the Department of Justice. | ||
| That was Senator Chuck Schumer. | ||
| He asked a lot of questions there, and this is politico with this article. | ||
| Trump's free plane is not so free. | ||
| The Boeing aircraft that Qatar may give the president would require a pricey and complicated overhaul to serve as Air Force One. | ||
| It quotes here that the here's Kevin Buckley, a former Air Force official who oversaw the Air Force One replacement program. | ||
| He says this, it's what's inside the aircraft that matters. | ||
| The presidential mission equipment is unique, it's hardened, it's secure, it's survivable. | ||
| It says that the aircraft would need to be torn down and rebuilt from the inside out, including overhauling electrical wiring, avionics, and power systems to install secure presidential communications, self-defense technology, and electromagnetic shielding. | ||
| Here's former Air Force Acquisitions Chief Andrew Hunter, quote, the cost of a retrofit like this would likely be on the order of a heavy maintenance cycle for a VC-25A, which is in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. | ||
| Here's Dan calling from Palm Bay, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah, a couple, three things I just wanted to talk about. | ||
| Please don't cut me off. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| So wouldn't the hundreds of or wouldn't it still be cheaper to overhaul that plane than to buy a brand new one? | ||
| I guess that. | ||
| So the Air Force has already paid for the new ones to Boeing. | ||
| It's just been delayed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they should have been delivered. | |
| Well, Boeing's having problems building planes because they're having manufacturer issues because of their own issues. | ||
| That's what the problem is. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| But yeah, so I did want to say, okay, so here's a scenario. | ||
| You ask your mother to do your laundry. | ||
| She does your laundry. | ||
| She finds $100 in your laundry. | ||
| She then asks you, what do you want me to do with this $100? | ||
| The Democrats turn around, cuss the mother out, and spray paint her car. | ||
| How does that make sense? | ||
| Another thing, do me a favor, ask PBS when flag day is. | ||
| If you did, it would be on June 14th, which is Donald Trump's birthday. | ||
| It happens to be the same day. | ||
| So I wish Democrats could be free thinkers and actually find out that, yes, Flag Day is Donald Trump's birthday. | ||
| That just so happens to be the same day. | ||
| On Flag Day, what happens? | ||
| Parades, military things, things like that. | ||
| So when you guys read the PBS article that said that Donald Trump's birthday is going to have all these big parades, it has nothing to do with his birthday. | ||
| It's Flag Day. | ||
| The other thing I wanted to talk about is the Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| I wish that there would be more attention paid to them. | ||
| They seem to be trying to take over everywhere, Germany, UK, places like that, Texas, Colorado. | ||
| Like, why is nobody talking about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over everywhere? | ||
| So, Dan, what do you think of the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, which is where President Trump is right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't want anything to do with any of that stuff. | |
| I don't think Trump should be accepting the plane. | ||
| I don't think he should be even over there dealing with them at all because they are, they support terrorism. | ||
| So, yeah, no, I don't agree with any of that. | ||
| I got your three points. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Jeffrey, Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Jeffrey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, coming to call. | |
| Look, I see where I knew they called the Palestinians that Israel keeps boxed up. | ||
| They called them prisoners. | ||
| But they call the Israelis, the homestead, hostages. | ||
| Now, the racism of America is so blatant. | ||
| We're supporting the genocide of a whole nation. | ||
| And then the guys talk about airplanes when women are killing. | ||
| That is like that's an important issue. | ||
| We have lost all our moral fabric. | ||
| You had three police officers who stood by and watched a man be killed, and our jury found them guilty of nothing. | ||
| The morality of America is true, Miss Baldy, and that's why we're in the situation that we're in. | ||
| And they talk about bad has something to do with inflation. | ||
| No, it was COVID. | ||
| It was COVID, COVID, and our greedy billionaires. | ||
| And why should poor people pay for rich folks? | ||
| Texas is unbelievable what this country has become. | ||
| Alan in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| So I heard that last caller is from Kentucky. | ||
| I want to talk about student loans today. | ||
| People don't realize how catastrophically failed the federal student loan program is. | ||
| You know, two-thirds of all borrowers are unable to make payments today, and that's probably going to go up. | ||
| So this is a big government issue. | ||
| The Department of Education makes a profit of around $110 billion a year on their loans. | ||
| The people of Kentucky, for example, so all the Kentucky exports, soybean, corn, and tobacco combined, are $1.3 billion. | ||
| Well, the Department of Education takes $1.3 billion out of Kentucky every year in interest for federal student loans. | ||
| Now, Rand Paul yesterday was saying how people need to pay their loans and pay your student loans. | ||
| And I just have to ask, why is a libertarian like Rand Paul fighting so hard for this predatory big government loan scam? | ||
| If anything, Senator Paul should be calling for the immediate return of bankruptcy rights to all student loans. | ||
| You know, founding fathers called for uniform bankruptcy rights in the Constitution ahead of every right enumerated in the Bill of Rights. | ||
| These bankruptcy rights have been taken away uniquely from student loans. | ||
| And this was a fatal mistake, and now we see the consequences. | ||
| Bankruptcy rights have got to be returned. | ||
| And every Republican in Congress knows that full well. | ||
| All right, Alan. | ||
| And to New York, Thuron is a Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm like one of the last callers about Biden. | ||
| I mean, Biden has been one of the best presidents we've had in years. | ||
| Like the caller previously just said, that the inflation came from COVID. | ||
| And I mean, we all live together in this world, and we all see it changing. | ||
| And we used to be, when are we going to get together as one family under guard, as they say we are, and we never do it. | ||
| The Republican, you look at the Republican Trump's household, they're all white. | ||
| This country is not that. | ||
| These are things that make a big difference in everybody's neighborhood. | ||
| I mean, I worked with white guys all my life. | ||
| I never had a problem with them. | ||
| They never had a problem with me. | ||
| But once Trump got into this house, now we are not friends no more. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| We should lead for our own. | ||
| We go to school to learn. | ||
| We all know we are men. | ||
| We live together, women and men. | ||
| We live together. | ||
| We got to look out for each other. | ||
| Trump is only looking out for those rich people and not us. | ||
| And why don't we see it? | ||
| These white middle-class people, especially around the country, they don't have no money, and they backing him for what reason? | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| That's all I have to say this morning. | ||
| Mary in Milton, Georgia, Independent. | ||
| You're next, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm actually a first-time caller, so thank you for being here. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I just have a, I wanted to make a comment about Trump's trip to the Middle East yesterday. | ||
| It was very disturbing, to say the least, to see him cozy up to the Saudi crown prince. | ||
| And let us never forget, and these are facts, that it was proven that Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Solomon was the person that ordered the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which was terrible. | ||
| And that should never be forgotten or forgiven. | ||
| And let's also never forget that 15 of the 19 hijackers that attacked the United States on 9-11 were Saudi agents. | ||
| These are the facts and should never be forgiven or forgotten. | ||
| And just lastly, I have a comment. | ||
| Thank you for allowing me. | ||
| Trump is a stain on America and is a stain on history. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| And this is the front page of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| In Mideast, Trump remakes U.S. foreign policy. | ||
| That's him meeting with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. | ||
| It also says, visit overlaps the interests of the family business, many potential conflicts, as president sons chase real estate deals in the region. | ||
| That's the front page of the Washington Post. | ||
| And this is Gene, Tennessee, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Gene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I don't think Trump should have gone over there to Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And then that as far as that airplane is concerned, that's more than meets the eye. | ||
| And he needs to be thinking about the Americans here, us here, not his personal desires. | ||
| And his personal desires is over there negotiating with those foreign leaders when he should be over here trying to straighten our country out, you know. | ||
| And he has all these charges against him, and then he's throwing people in jail and sending them out of the country and saying they're criminals when they're not. | ||
| He needs to attend to his business over here in this country, I think. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And about that, Gene, this is Politico. | ||
| Judge backs Trump's invocation of Alien Enemies Act for deportation. | ||
| But the ruling also emphasizes the need for more due process in advance of the deportations. | ||
| It says a federal judge for the first time has backed President Donald Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a war power Trump has used to deport Venezuelans. | ||
| He claims are part of a criminal gang. | ||
| It's a U.S. District Judge, a Trump appointee to the bench in Pennsylvania, upheld Trump's March 14th proclamation declaring that Trenda Aragua, a violent gang based in Venezuela, is mounting an incursion into the United States. | ||
| That's at Politico if you'd like to read the rest of that article. | ||
| This is Judith, Fort Worth, Texas, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Judith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they were talking about Medicare, Medicaid yesterday. | |
| You know, I wish for all the seniors of the United States of America, I wish they would approve it. | ||
| A year and a half ago, because I'm a citizen of the United States of America, I ended up paying a debt to human services. | ||
| And to me, that doesn't sound right because you've got the foreigners coming over here and getting a lot of things for free. | ||
| And it is true. | ||
| All right, Judith. | ||
| This is Larry, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd just like to reply to the lady that started this segment off, wondering why Donald Trump's always claiming President Biden. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everybody has to remember, President Biden thumped Trump by about seven or eight million votes, and he will never get over that. | |
| Just like your crazy uncle that can only remember one thing, and that's to come back on the person that beat him. | ||
| The Democrats made a bad move in thinking that anybody could have beaten Trump in 2024. | ||
| Pelosi and Schumer, the Obamas, Clooney, they should be prosecuted for the political mistake they made. | ||
| And I'm sure that now everybody that has any brains is wishing that President Biden was our president again. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Woodrow in Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how you doing? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just wanted to make a quick reply to that guy and all the rest of the Democrats who are so losers. | |
| I mean, nobody's been prosecuted more than President Trump. | ||
| Nobody kids went through more here than President Trump. | ||
| Nobody's got their ears shot off and almost got murdered once or twice but him. | ||
| And they don't want to give him a fast shot at what he's supposed to be doing. | ||
| Give the man a chance. | ||
| You gave everybody else a chance. | ||
| And they always be hollering about taking foreign gifts. | ||
| But unlike Barack Obama and Joe Biden, nobody ever saw none of that money. | ||
| They were supposed to be sending them billions of dollars to Ukraine. | ||
| They should have had weapons and airplanes already. | ||
| I was in the military 25 years, and I don't hear nothing about a bunch of fluff and a bunch of whiners. | ||
| There's a lot of people here. | ||
| They don't pay no taxes. | ||
| And everybody that came across the border that don't have a job, who's taking care of the welfare system as we are. | ||
| And so it should be that we can take some of these people and send them back. | ||
| They can't go into these other countries without passports and proper documentation. | ||
| So why everybody feel they can come here? | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Francis in Lexington Park, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is Francis. | |
| Yes, go right ahead, Francis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just wanted to say that we are all God-fearing children of God. | |
| And as far as Trump is concerned, he is only care about no one but himself. | ||
| I mean, himself, only himself. | ||
| He is there to line his pockets with our tax dollars and any money he can scratch up around the world. | ||
| He doesn't care about nobody but himself. | ||
| And like that lady said, she doesn't understand why people have voted for him. | ||
| It's because they are all like Trump. | ||
| They just care about themselves. | ||
| Everybody's voting for Trump. | ||
| They're always thinking about themselves. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Randy in Hager City, Wisconsin, Republican line. | ||
| Randy, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'll tell you what, I wish we sure could quit talking about this white and this black and lining our pockets. | ||
| It's quit it. | ||
| We're all God's children. | ||
| We all got to get together. | ||
| And they're talking about Saudi Arabia. | ||
| You know, they're involved with 911 and other things. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Look what the Japanese did to us in 1941. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now they're one of our best allies. | |
| Trump right now is overseas. | ||
| We don't know what he's talking about with these other leaders. | ||
| I hope he's over there trying to make friends so this whole world will come together and quit the terrorism and all this bad stuff that's going on. | ||
| And now Syria is wanting to talk, which is great. | ||
| Now, if the United States has had the bomb for forever, and if we were going to bomb somebody, we'd have done it a long time ago, but it's for our protection. | ||
| Every country could probably have the bomb. | ||
| But if they say they're going to wipe out another country with the bomb, then you can't let that country have that bomb like Iran. | ||
| You know, and I'm sure that once Trump gets done here and Iran sees that maybe everybody's coming together and maybe against them, maybe they'll come around. | ||
| But at least Trump is trying to bring the world together in a way where we all respect everybody's sovereignty and have a good life. | ||
| Got it, Randy. | ||
| Later on, the Washington Journal, we'll talk to Democrat Steve Cohen of Tennessee. | ||
| Actually, that is coming up next. | ||
| Steve Cohen, a Democrat of Tennessee, to talk about his concerns with the Republican budget bill. | ||
| And since he sits on the Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation, we'll talk about his take on the administration's plans to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system. | ||
| And after the top of the hour at 9 a.m. Eastern this morning, author and columnist and former Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore discusses the Republican budget and the president's economic agenda. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 6:30 p.m. Eastern, NPR international correspondent Emily Fang shares her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, where she reports on individuals in China who are pushing back against efforts to control free expression. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Columbia University's John McWhorter talks about the use and evolution of language and argues that the current controversy over pronoun usage in America is largely overblown in his book, Pronoun Trouble. | ||
| At 9:15 p.m. Eastern, Steve Olson, author of Eruption, recalls the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington on May 18, 1980, which resulted in the deaths of 57 people. | ||
| Then, at 10 p.m. Eastern on afterwards, University of Michigan law professor Leah Littman explains why she believes the Supreme Court isn't making rulings based on legal principles in her book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. | ||
| She is interviewed by author and Nation magazine justice correspondent Ellie Mistal. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Representative Steve Cohen. | ||
| He's a Democrat of Tennessee. | ||
| He's a ranking member on the Subcommittee for Transportation, Infrastructure, and Aviation. | ||
| Also a member of the Judiciary Committee. | ||
| Congressman Cohen, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's good to see SPAN still funded by the government. | ||
| It is not funded by the government. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Well, I thought you didn't get any money from the government at all. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| And we never have. | ||
| What a disappointment to Elon Musk. | ||
| I'm sure he'd like to dodge you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's get to the reconciliation bill, because there were three key House committees that were holding markups. | ||
| That was Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Agriculture on that reconciliation bill. | ||
| What's your sense of where that's going? | ||
| Well, the Republicans might have some trouble in that some of their members want larger relief for their property taxpayers and state and local taxes. | ||
| It's called SALT, and others don't want as large. | ||
| So that's a schism within the Republican caucus in the House. | ||
| And there's some others that don't want to see as much cuts. | ||
| They want to see more cuts, I guess. | ||
| Chip Roy wants to see more cuts. | ||
| And this adds to the what they're doing adds to the deficit. | ||
| And they claim to be wanting to limit the deficit, but they don't. | ||
| It's not about limiting the deficit. | ||
| It's about getting more and more money to people who have more and more money, who don't need any more money. | ||
| But that's the Republican Party's mantra. | ||
| And Trump's only accomplishment, major accomplishment in his first term, was these tax cuts, which economists, by and large, just about every one of them that's credentialed and credible, say did not stimulate the economy and was not successful in creating any kind of a boom to the economy. | ||
| Never do. | ||
| They've done these things before, and they've always said, oh, it's good for the economy. | ||
| They'll spend the money. | ||
| It'll stimulate. | ||
| Never does. | ||
| So he's trying to do this again because he did it once. | ||
| He doesn't want to lose the fact that he did it. | ||
| But he also wants to take care of himself. | ||
| Mind you, he's one of the people, and every member of his family, every adult member of his family, I think except maybe Tiffany, makes enough money to where they will get tremendous tax advantages. | ||
| It's beneficial to people over $400,000 income, but really it's the millionaires and the billionaires who get the big tax breaks. | ||
| And everybody in Trump's family is a millionaire, and they make a million dollars a year. | ||
| A millionaire is not what it used to be, an accumulation of a million. | ||
| It's making a million in a year, and these people make millions and millions and millions. | ||
| And they're all over the sons, they're all over the Middle East trying to get golf courses and resorts and senior care homes and whatever. | ||
| And he's going to try to facilitate that on this trip, secondarily to getting an airplane, a $400 million airplane. | ||
| But I think the Republicans have some problems. | ||
| I think Rand Paul's against the bill because it increases the deficit. | ||
| They're not all together, but they'll probably get it together. | ||
| They'll sit down and they basically, at the bottom line, they'll probably listen to Trump. | ||
| Trump wants to get the big, beautiful bill, BBB. | ||
| Well, Representative Cohen, you mentioned a lot of things there, and one of them was the deficit. | ||
| And most would agree that the deficit is, the national debt is a big problem. | ||
| Are there cuts that the Democrats would be willing to accept to the Medicaid program? | ||
| Are there changes that could save money that the Democrats would be willing to accept? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| You know, Medicaid is you ought to start at the bottom. | ||
| And you ought to provide, like Franklin Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, and other great Democratic leaders of the past talked about. | ||
| Provide what you're judged by is if you provide enough to people who have too little and not more to people who already have an abundance. | ||
| And that's what these people are doing. | ||
| They're giving to the abundance and not caring about the people at the bottom who need a little more. | ||
| Medicaid is one of the things that keeps people alive. | ||
| It keeps rural hospitals going, which keeps people alive. | ||
| And to cut people out of Medicaid, to cut people out of SNAP payments, which is sustenance, besides helping the farmers who grow the products that go into the SNAP program, but to the people who need that to stay alive. | ||
| They're living at the bottom level economically in our country, to make them the cuts, that's wrong. | ||
| It's just not where you should be. | ||
| A moral society would not be that. | ||
| And I don't think the Democrats will go along with any of those. | ||
| Now, you want to cut out the tax breaks for the rich. | ||
| That would help to cut out the deficit. | ||
| The Republicans say they're concerned about the deficit. | ||
| Well, the biggest place to help with the deficit is to get more revenue to the government that you can then put into deficit reduction, and they could take out all those tax breaks to the wealthy. | ||
| And that's a big chunk of money that could take care of it. | ||
| But that's their prime consideration, is tax cuts to the wealthy. | ||
| It's not the deficit. | ||
| That's secondary. | ||
| That's red herring. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And if you'd like to join our conversation with Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat of Tennessee, he'll be with us for about 20 minutes. | ||
| You can call us on our lines by party. | ||
| Democrats, 202748-8000. | ||
| It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans and 202748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| Congressman, you mentioned taking out tax breaks for the rich. | ||
| Republicans are saying that if those Trump tax cuts are not extended, it would be the largest tax increase in history. | ||
| I don't know that that's necessarily the case. | ||
| I think the largest tax cuts in history are the tariffs. | ||
| Tariffs are taxes. | ||
| And Trump just put the largest tax cuts in history on the American people. | ||
| It calls them tariffs, took away power from the Congress that has jurisdiction over tariffs. | ||
| So it's really illegal what he did, but it's more of his usurpation of powers in his unitary executive and grab all you can style of politics. | ||
| But that was the biggest tax increase. | ||
| This may be the second biggest tax increase, but it's really not these were temporary, these were temporary taxes passed for Trump. | ||
| And also, remember, it took out almost all of the inheritance tax. | ||
| That's where the super, super, super rich get to pass the money on to their children with no taxes to the government. | ||
| That's been going on for years. | ||
| We used to have an exemption of like $3 million or something. | ||
| They raised it to $10 million. | ||
| They keep raising it. | ||
| And they basically get away with giving the kids all this money and just inherited wealth that doesn't help others. | ||
| And at some point or another, look, here's Gates wanting to give away all of his money. | ||
| Now, it's a voluntary thing, but he's showing character. | ||
| Warren Buffett's giving away a lot of his money. | ||
| He does a lot. | ||
| The rich people like that, they're giving money to people because they understand everybody needs help and they need to give it away to 501c3 to eliminate polio and eliminate PEPFAR and help people that may get AIDS from HIV and all. | ||
| And they're trying to do that. | ||
| You got the other people like Musk and Trump. | ||
| It's like, give me more, more, more. | ||
| I want more, more, more. | ||
| They're at the trough. | ||
| The trough needs to stop. | ||
| We don't need a trough in America. | ||
| And, Congressman Cohen, you are the top Democrat on the subcommittee overseeing aviation. | ||
| I want to ask you about Newark Airport. | ||
| As you know, there have been radar and equipment outages there. | ||
| There have been reports of staffing shortages, poor working conditions for the air traffic controllers. | ||
| Where do you think this is coming from? | ||
| Is it from Doge cuts or is it simply aging infrastructure? | ||
| Does the whole system need to be overhauled? | ||
| Well, we're going to have a hearing tomorrow with three experts, not from the administration. | ||
| The administration wouldn't supply us witnesses. | ||
| We're having a hearing on where the bill we passed last year, the FAA reauthorization, that has money in there for more and more air traffic controllers and more money for the school in Oklahoma City to get more air traffic controllers and sort monies into the system. | ||
| We had a good bill, and it's going to be helpful, but it's got to be implemented. | ||
| But we'll get some answers. | ||
| I don't know what the real answer is. | ||
| I can tell you this, I was in Newark, I guess it was a week ago Friday, and my plane was supposed to leave at 7. | ||
| And when I got there, about 4, they told me it was delayed till 9, and that I stayed around and hung around the Newark airport. | ||
| And then there was never anybody at the gate from United. | ||
| United didn't put anybody at the gate to tell you what was going on. | ||
| And then about 8:30, I got a notice that it had been moved to a 10 o'clock flight. | ||
| Still nobody at the gate. | ||
| This was on my cell phone. | ||
| And then just two or three minutes later, they said, you're going to leave tomorrow morning. | ||
| And I thought, I'm not going to spend the night in some hotel out here and get up and early in the morning, get on a plane and come in. | ||
| So I saw on my own without help from United there was a flight to Dulles and I went to two different gates and nobody at the United wanted to help me. | ||
| The gate where the plane was supposed to leave, there was nobody there. | ||
| The next gate, there were two ladies. | ||
| They came up and they said, oh, we're off at 9. | ||
| This was 8.35. | ||
| I thought, fine, adios. | ||
| So I finally got somebody to help me. | ||
| It was difficult. | ||
| And the guy was not friendly and nice particularly, but he begrudgingly helped me. | ||
| Got me on the Dulles flight and I got on a bus and went to another terminal, sat on the tarmac for an hour and 15 minutes because we were 33rd in line to take off and finally got to Dulles. | ||
| So Congressman. | ||
| This was before all this stuff. | ||
| Newark's a mess. | ||
| I don't know what the cause is. | ||
| I plan to ask questions on Thursday of the experts that we have there. | ||
| Was this all from previous times? | ||
| Was the system outdated before the administration's changed? | ||
| And I guess it was, but there were not problems like these 90-second hiatuses where you were just out there in space. | ||
| Well, let's hear from the administration. | ||
| Here's Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy from last week talking about wanting to completely modernize the air traffic control system. | ||
| And so what we're going to do, so we're going to rebuild some towers, we're going to rebuild some tracons, we're going to rebuild some centers. | ||
| Not all of them, but we're going to rebuild a few of them that need to be rebuilt. | ||
| So there'll be some bricks and mortar to this plant. | ||
| However, everything else, this is really easy. | ||
| Everything else that controls the airspace is going to be brand new. | ||
| So we're going to have new telecom, new fiber throughout the system. | ||
| We're going to have brand new radios in our towers to communicate between air traffic controllers and with airplanes. | ||
| We are going to have a ground radar sensor, a radar, a radar, new radar for the ground and new sensors on our tarmacs and at our airports. | ||
| So our air traffic controllers who are in the tower are looking out with binoculars to see airplanes. | ||
| If it's cloudy or rainy, the weather's bad, it becomes very challenging. | ||
| We want to have all the tools so they can see where aircraft are at the airport on their screens, on their terminals. | ||
| We hear a lot of these bumps, these scrapes that are happening at airports. | ||
| We want to make sure air traffic controllers have the tools to keep airplanes separated and we want to allow them to see that through their panels and screens. | ||
| We're going to have a new flight management system that's going to bring efficiency to the airspace. | ||
| So more people are flying. | ||
| More planes are in the air now than ever. | ||
| Congressman Cohen, your reaction to that. | ||
| And are you in support of that? | ||
| And why hasn't that happened yet? | ||
| Why did the nation's air traffic control system get to this point in the first place? | ||
| Well, that's what I'm going to ask on Thursday. | ||
| I'm not quite sure why it did. | ||
| I certainly will listen to Secretary Duffy, and it sounds wonderful and good to get all these new tech programs going to improve the system. | ||
| And that's the flying public's at risk. | ||
| Now, I sat on this C-SPAN. | ||
| I don't mean me, I don't know if you were our host that day or not, but about four, three or four months ago when I was on, and I got a little brushback from some folks up here that all want us to be copacetic and go, oh, we're going to wait and listen to what the NTSAB tells us. | ||
| But I said on this show that it was the Department of Defense that was at fault for the accident at Reagan because they should not have been having pilots do test runs at DCA when there were flights taking off and landing. | ||
| And that's what caused the problem. | ||
| No matter what you say with the helicopter pilot, it was too high or whatever. | ||
| If they were not there in the path doing test flights, there wouldn't have been the accident. | ||
| And they've since banned all those type of flights from That corridor, and that's good they banned them now, but the Department of Defense never should have had them in the first place. | ||
| Now, Duffy banned them, and then Heggs didn't respond to him, and they had a flight about a week or two weeks ago. | ||
| The helicopter that came through there, apparently, what they said with nobody on it, but who knows, go into the Pentagon and came right through there, and they had to send a few flights that say, Don't land, leave, circle, and come back. | ||
| Defense Department needs to get its act together and stay out of civilian airspace where it's dangerous, like at DCA. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers, and we'll start on the Republican line. | ||
| Daniel in Great Falls, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'd like to ask the congressman: why should we, in the you know, the tax base in the United States, be required to subsidize his and his party's ideology, whether it's Planned Parenthood, where they want to have tax money taken to carry out abortions across the country and even around the world. | ||
| There's, you know, there was more than a million this past year in the U.S. alone. | ||
| Whether it's PBS and NPR and these other stations that he insists on being subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, which push left-wing ideology, whether it's our U.S. Department of Defense, which subsidizes Europe in their defense, it has for decades, so that they can run a social welfare state in their countries in Europe. | ||
| Why should we be required to subsidize all of his ideologies? | ||
| And also, what does he define as rich? | ||
| He always throws these slogans out: we're going to tax the rich. | ||
| And how do you define the rich? | ||
| And do you truly believe you can tax your way into prosperity? | ||
| All right, Daniel, we'll get a response. | ||
| Well, that's a lot. | ||
| He obviously has a different worldview than I do. | ||
| I don't think PBS and NPR are the communist state and lunatics and wackos like the Republicans say. | ||
| And I think NPR and PBS have been great for the public, and particularly in rural areas. | ||
| In urban areas, mostly they're funded. | ||
| They get some federal funding, but not that much. | ||
| They get a lot of contributions, and they're going to go on and continue. | ||
| It's in rural areas where they don't have the money to contribute to PBS state, and they don't have their own stations, et cetera. | ||
| But if they do, they've got some NPR on the radio, and they might have PBS as well. | ||
| But they'll get less information, and they kind of need it. | ||
| Big Bird is not a communist conspiracy. | ||
| So I don't get that one routine. | ||
| Defending Europe, yeah, I mean, we're part of NATO. | ||
| We're defending ourselves, too. | ||
| You know, the President Trump wants to take in Greenland to defend and Canada so we can defend ourselves from Russia and China coming over the pole and attacking us. | ||
| Well, if you stop them in Europe from going after taking Ukraine and coming after the Balkans and the Baltic and Poland and Moldova and all those countries, you might not have to take them in the other situation. | ||
| But they're our enemy. | ||
| Trump wants to declare a national holiday on November, excuse me, May 11, which he said was the end of the war in World War II, and on November 11, which is, of course, Veterans Day now, named by Congress and signed by President Dwight De Eisenhower, a guy who had some credibility on World War II, and call that victory in World War I Day. | ||
| Well, first of all, that shows where Trump's head is. | ||
| World War II did not end on May 11th. | ||
| That ended in Europe on May 11th. | ||
| It didn't end until September the 2nd in Japan when the Japanese surrendered. | ||
| Trump is not looking at the American troops who are fighting and dying in Asia and our war effort in Asia. | ||
| He's looking at Moscow and Putin gets to sit up in a big chair and watch a big parade on May 11th, and he wants a big parade. | ||
| It's about his parade, not about World War II. | ||
| He doesn't even know our history. | ||
| And as far as he said that nobody is, we said we need to claim our credit. | ||
| We haven't claimed our credit for winning those two wars. | ||
| What did we win in those two wars? | ||
| We beat a German nation that was out for expanding their borders in World War I. | ||
| And in World War II, we'd beat a fascist Nazi state that kills over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, people with disabilities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and took European countries and raped their women, killed people, destroyed their cities, Paris, et cetera, Battle of Britain, bombing London, all that stuff. | ||
| We did good. | ||
| A lot of our soldiers gave their lives and were injured and did a great job and were wonderful. | ||
| But so were the European armies. | ||
| And the Europeans suffered greatly. | ||
| But here we are in 2025, and the awful power that is threatening the world is Russia and Putin, who's a genocider in Ukraine, kidnapping children, raping women, destroying cities, killing civilians. | ||
| He's the Hitler of this era. | ||
| And what does he do? | ||
| He gets in bed with the Hitler. | ||
| He wants to have a holiday for the people that won the wars in World War I and World War II fighting against the Germans. | ||
| But for the country that's now like the Hitler and the Germany, which is Putin, he wants to get in bed with them. | ||
| For some reason, he's got this fetish about Russia. | ||
| And Congressman Daniel also asked about your, when you said tax the rich and how you would define rich. | ||
| You know, it's hard to say richest. | ||
| It depends where you're at. | ||
| But I think over $400,000 of your income is pretty wealthy, especially, you know, I know I'm talking about Memphis and our price of living is not like it is in San Francisco or New York, and it's a different situation. | ||
| But $400,000 is a lot of money. | ||
| I've never made $400,000 myself in a year. | ||
| I've lived pretty well and I've saved. | ||
| I don't spend a lot of money. | ||
| I'm fairly conservative in my spending and I don't have a lot of needs. | ||
| I don't buy new cars. | ||
| My newest car is a 2015. | ||
| And before that, just by a garage fire, and I lost my 2010 car, which was my newest car. | ||
| You know, I don't waste my money on stuff. | ||
| But anyway, neither here nor there, I'm not going to tell you to have just three dolls and five pencils or tell you to have just one egg and one piece of bacon in the morning. | ||
| That's your choice. | ||
| But I think $400,000, but a millionaire, somebody under a million dollars or more is definitely rich. | ||
| And if you've got a million dollars or more in Great Falls, I think you're doing pretty damn good. | ||
| All right, here's Steve in Freeland, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The legislative branch is a disgrace. | |
| This year, you're only going to be in the House 135 days in session. | ||
| Now, explain to me how we get the nation's business done when the House is only in session for 135 days. | ||
| In addition, let me tell you how that's going to work, as it always does in the legislative branch. | ||
| Big Dog and Pony Show come December. | ||
| We're going to go ahead and we're going to print $10 trillion. | ||
| Wouldn't have mattered if it was Donald Trump or Bugs Bunny in there. | ||
| It doesn't matter who it is. | ||
| We're going to print $10 trillion. | ||
| And that's because the legislative branch sold this country out in the 1980s when we outsourced and we offshored all our jobs. | ||
| And we have to thank one group from party for that. | ||
| That would be the legislative branch. | ||
| That's not a party. | ||
| That's a branch. | ||
| It might be the Republican Party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's bringing back manufacturing. | |
| And it's going to take every bit of 50 years to bring back manufacturing into this country. | ||
| The legislative branch made money when they sold out America. | ||
| They're going to make money when they go ahead and they bring it back and they're going to sell America out again. | ||
| All right, Steve. | ||
| Go ahead, Congressman Cohen. | ||
| That's a pretty weird approach. | ||
| He came on the Democratic line. | ||
| I think he needed a fourth line. | ||
| Any comment, though, on what he said about bringing back manufacturing to the United States? | ||
| It's going to be hard to ever do it, and the tariffs aren't going to do it. | ||
| And we've basically been a country that's dependent on defense industry spending and motion pictures and entertainment for a long time. | ||
| That's the main things we've got to export to the world because of labor costs. | ||
| And we've gone along with it. | ||
| It's not just apart from the legislative branch. | ||
| Treaties are made by the executive branch. | ||
| I don't know why he blames the legislative branch, but that's neither here nor there. | ||
| We're going to be here X amount of days. | ||
| Well, when you surrender your power, which you have, to the president, some days, in fact, when I was driving up to the airport this week, I thought, why do we even need a Congress? | ||
| Surrendering all of our power to Trump. | ||
| And that's what Johnson and Thun are doing. | ||
| We'll see how it plays out. | ||
| But tariffs are supposed to be the province of the Congress, and Congress is giving it up. | ||
| And USAID should be the province of Congress, and the Department of Education should be the province of Congress, and the Department of Energy, and all these different departments that Trump and Doge have gotten rid of. | ||
| They're really congressional creations. | ||
| And then the agencies where he's firing people and going into the Institute of Peace. | ||
| He's bringing Washington, D.C. police in there with them, Doge, to at gunpoint get the people out of the Institute of Peace and take it over. | ||
| I mean, this is like the mild cultural revolution going on in our country. | ||
| Firing the library into Congress and putting some lawyer in who probably don't even have a library card to run it. | ||
| I mean, it's just crazy. | ||
| And then this blondie that they've got at the Justice Department. | ||
| She was appointed a lobbyist for Cutter for over $100,000 a year, and she gives him an opinion. | ||
| Yeah, you can take the airplane. | ||
| They're all on the take. | ||
| And, Congressman Cohen, I just wanted to follow up on what you said about the Library of Congress and the firing of the librarian of Congress by the President. | ||
| Do you think that that's legal? | ||
| Does that violate separation of powers since the Library of Congress would fall under the legislative branch? | ||
| It's an issue that I've looked at, and I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, President Obama hired her, so maybe this has gone on for years. | ||
| It could be a problem of separation of powers. | ||
| But I'll tell you, Ms. Hayden did a great job. | ||
| She's a career librarian out of Baltimore, Maryland. | ||
| She did a phenomenal job. | ||
| She's got a lot of grace, a lot of poise, and a lot of knowledge, and she cared about that position, and she did a great job, and everybody loved her. | ||
| And to put some lawyer in who defended Trump up there for dealing with some stripper and make him the head of Library of Congress is a joke. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| Here's Derek in Lakeland, Minnesota, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Derek. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you just call her Attorney General Blondie? | |
| Oh, is that her name? | ||
| I thought it was Blondie, though. | ||
| It's Bondie. | ||
| Oh, Bondie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bondie. | |
| I get her confused with those Fox News people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you're being funny. | |
| I think so. | ||
| You need to laugh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Did you bring your bucket of chicken this morning? | ||
| No, happy you brought that up because that says you're a mindless Republican who just thinks that was a funny thing. | ||
| Barr didn't show up. | ||
| He's supposed to. | ||
| He was chicken. | ||
| So I got a bucket of chicken to come as a symbol that he was chicken. | ||
| That was kind of funny, I think. | ||
| I ate one bite of chicken. | ||
| A lot of people of your type, when they go on the X or whatever to comment on my posts, will say, oh, he ate a whole bucket of chicken in a committee room. | ||
| We didn't have the committee because Barr didn't show. | ||
| Or he took it on the floor of the House and he ate it. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Y'all get over that. | ||
| And chicken's good. | ||
| I like chicken. | ||
| You know, have it all likes beer. | ||
| I like chicken. | ||
| Congressman, tomorrow the Supreme Court is going to be taking up the question of birthright citizenship. | ||
| Your comments on that. | ||
| That's been in the Constitution since after the Civil War. | ||
| And I think it's a slam dunk that what Trump is doing is just appealing to nativists that don't want to have people that are maybe from born here that their parents have not been here that long, whatever. | ||
| The Supreme Court's going to rule that that's part of the Constitution, and the whole idea of what he's doing is wrong. | ||
| I think it's a lay down slam dunk. | ||
| We have a question for you by text. | ||
| Jimbo, who says, Can Congressman Cohen explain how the debt ceiling is going to be raised by Speaker Johnson? | ||
| I don't see how he does it with just House Republicans and no support from House Democrats. | ||
| Your thoughts on raising the debt ceiling? | ||
| We've always raised the debt ceiling for years. | ||
| There probably shouldn't be a debt ceiling. | ||
| There needs to be some control and spending and some concern because the deficit is a problem. | ||
| But Democrats have always come to the aid of Republicans to pass the debt ceiling. | ||
| And if we have to do it again, I suspect we'll do it again. | ||
| Here's Donald, Raleigh, North Carolina, Independent Lion. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Congressman, I just wanted to say thank you for doing a great job. | |
| And thank you for the way you've handled the negative callers that have called in you this morning. | ||
| When you express a sense to those who are silly, stupid, and negative in such a confident way as you did, it makes me proud. | ||
| And I want you to know there are hundreds of thousands of us out here who applaud you and the Democrats and what you're doing. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're welcome, sir. | ||
| You're very welcome. | ||
| And if you get the guard from Memphis that's thinking about transferring NC State, P.J. Haggerty, you got a great one. | ||
| You'll have a great year to watch him play. | ||
| All right, that is Congressman Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, a ranking member on the Transportation Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee, and a member of the Judiciary Committee. | ||
| Congressman, thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| You're welcome. | ||
| I'm going to run out to Popeyes and eat some chicken. | ||
| All right, enjoy that. | ||
| Up next, we've got author and columnist and former Trump Economic Advisor Stephen Moore to discuss the Republican budget and the president's economic agenda that's coming up after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPANSHOP.org is C-SPAN's online store. | |
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. | ||
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined by Stephen Moore, founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| Steve, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Love C-SPAN. | ||
| Appreciate the opportunity to come on. | ||
| All eyes are on Congress this week as markups go on through several of the committees on the reconciliation bill. | ||
| What are your initial thoughts on that GOP bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, I just want to remind your viewers, because poll show only half of Americans are even aware of this, that there's no room for failure here. | |
| We have to pass this bill. | ||
| It is, if we don't pass this bill by December 31st, on January 1st, the American people are going to get hit with the biggest tax increase probably in American history. | ||
| So virtually all of the Trump tax cuts from 2017, that very successful tax cut that really re-energized the economy, that will mostly expire. | ||
| There are a few provisions that don't, but almost all of them dealing with average Americans and small businesses would expire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we estimate, Mimi, that the average family in America will see about a $2,500 increase in their tax burden and their tax payments to the IRS next year. | |
| So we got to get that done. | ||
| By the way, almost every small business in America got a tax cut from that bill. | ||
| We know that small businesses are really the spinal cord of the American economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did a lot of other things in that bill that I think I'm very proud of. | |
| I helped write the very first version of that bill with Donald Trump back in early 2016. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we don't want, I think all Americans agree we don't want that bill to expire. | |
| We want to keep the rates low. | ||
| We want to keep America competitive. | ||
| And so it has to get done. | ||
| This week, as you know, Mimi, as we speak, the House members are trying to put together a bill that they can send over to the Senate, get this thing passed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't understand, quite frankly, Mimi, why it's taking so long. | |
| We should have gotten this done a month ago because virtually all Americans are in favor of making that tax cut permanent and some of the other things like no tax on tips and other smaller versions of the bill. | ||
| One of the committees, the Energy and Commerce Committee, is actually still meeting as we speak. | ||
| They've been going all night and they're continuing. | ||
| The big fight, of course, is over Medicaid in that committee. | ||
| They need to find about $880 billion in savings. | ||
| What are your thoughts on how that's going to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, so the number one thing people have to understand is no one who is eligible for the program will see any of their benefits reduced. | |
| So this idea that eligible women are going to lose their prenatal care if they're pregnant, or I've seen some ads saying that rural hospitals will shut down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all just a lie. | |
| The truth is that if you look at Medicaid today, and by the way, this isn't me speaking, Mimi. | ||
| This is both Doge and also the government's own auditors have found that there's about $150 billion. | ||
| Let me say that again, $150 billion of fraudsters who are getting Medicaid coverage, free health care coverage, but they're not eligible for the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that includes illegal immigrants. | |
| That includes a lot of employable adults who are just going on the program so they don't have to pay health care. | ||
| I mean, how is that fair to Mimi and people like you and me and most of the people watching the show who actually do pay for their health care? | ||
| And then we have to pay for the health care of people who are not even eligible for the program. | ||
| So we could, you know, you talked, I think I forget that number that you mentioned, 700 billion or something or 880 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
880. | |
| So if we were to take out the 150 billion, that would leave us with 730 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| So that's 150 billion per year. | ||
| So if we can just get rid of the fraud, we will save $1.5 trillion over 10 years. | ||
| So that would be an enormous savings. | ||
| But also, how about this one? | ||
| And I wonder what people think about it. | ||
| You know, if you don't have kids and you're an employable adult and you're not working, this bill would basically say, hey, if you're going to get free health care from the taxpayer, just like if you're going to get free food from food stamps, you're going to have to either have a job or you're going to have to be looking for a job. | ||
| I think Americans are tired of people sitting on their couch watching TV and getting free health care and free food. | ||
| So I think most people would agree that we should have work requirements for all these programs. | ||
| We want to help people, Mimi, who want to help themselves. | ||
| And regarding work requirements, the critics of that say that the state of Georgia did try that and ended up just eligible people not being on the rolls and it didn't really improve employment. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| And do you know the details of that program in Georgia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, I'm not familiar with that. | |
| That's the first time I've heard of this. | ||
| I'll have to look into that. | ||
| But I do know this. | ||
| I've been in Washington and doing policy work for a long time. | ||
| So I was there in the mid-1990s when Bill Clinton was president, a Democrat, and Newt Gingrich, a Republican, was running the House of Representatives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We passed one of the best welfare reform bills in the history of the country, where we basically had work requirements for welfare benefits, and they were very strict requirements. | |
| And what we found was that so many people who had been on welfare went into the workforce, they got a job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know that the amount of money we had to spend on these programs was radically reduced. | |
| But also what we found was work requirements actually were beneficial to the people who had been on these programs. | ||
| We gave them training, we got them into jobs. | ||
| Look, you can't get rich. | ||
| You can't have a nice lifestyle in this country if you're on welfare. | ||
| You got to get a job. | ||
| You got to climb that ladder. | ||
| That's what we need to do with people on Medicaid, food stamps is we, look, we don't want people to go hungry in this country and we don't want people to go without health care, but we do want people working. | ||
| And the idea that, you know, those of us who are working 40, 50 hours a week should have to pay taxes for people who won't even help themselves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, look, I'm talking about, by the way, I want to be clear on this. | |
| If you're disabled or you have some reason why you can't work, that wouldn't apply to them. | ||
| But if you're talking about single women or single males with no kids in the home and they're not working, I think everybody would agree they should have to get a job. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Stephen Moore, you can do so. | ||
| He'll be with us for about 20 minutes. | ||
| You can call us on our lines by party. | ||
| So Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 2022-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Steve, I want to ask you about the cap on salt. | ||
| So this is a contentious issue that stands for state and local tax deductions. | ||
| First, explain the issue and the disagreement and where you stand on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a good question, Mimi. | |
| And I have to say that, you know, when I helped write the original tax bill that we passed in 2017, I was the loudest voice for getting rid of the state and local tax deduction. | ||
| I want to make sure everybody knows I was listening to your conversation with the congressman earlier about raising tax on the rich. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one good way of doing that is to get rid of all these loopholes in the tax system. | |
| And so let me put it very simply. | ||
| There's no reason why somebody living in a high-tax state like California or New York or New Jersey or my home state of Illinois should get a bigger tax cut than somebody who lives in Florida and Texas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, if you want to live in New York, it's a free country. | |
| You can live wherever you want. | ||
| But if you vote for policies that have very high state and local taxes, why should people in other states have to bear the burden of that? | ||
| And so what we're doing in this, what we did in this bill was we said we're going to give you a $10,000, you can deduct up to $10,000 of your state and local taxes. | ||
| For people in most states, that's no burden at all because state and local taxes are pretty reasonable. | ||
| If you live in those really high-tax blue states, your taxes are probably a lot higher. | ||
| If you have a problem with that, take it up in Albany, New York, or Springfield, Illinois, or Sacramento, and get those politicians lower your taxes. | ||
| But here's the thing: the most important thing I want people to understand. | ||
| If we bring back the salt deduction, Mimi, that would be the biggest tax cut for millionaires and billionaires in American history. | ||
| Because today, because of our tax cut in 2017, 91% of Americans don't itemize their deductions. | ||
| They don't take the salt deduction because they just check the box and they take the standard deduction. | ||
| The people who do itemize their deductions today, there's some exceptions, but overall, most of the people who are taking itemized deductions are millionaires and billionaires. | ||
| And so my point would say, hey, let's just get rid of it. | ||
| You want to make the tax system fairer? | ||
| Let's get rid of all the deductions. | ||
| That's not going to affect the middle class much at all, but it will force higher income people to pay their fair share of taxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then we could actually lower the rates some more. | |
| But there's no reason for the salt deduction to be raised. | ||
| But the reality is that because you've got about five or six Republicans who want the salt deduction raised, they're probably going to have to make some accommodation. | ||
| I think they probably will double the salt deduction from $10,000 to $20,000. | ||
| And Steve, you co-authored a book last year called The Trump Economic Miracle. | ||
| Briefly, can you explain what you consider to be President Trump's economic quote miracle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so in the first term, the Trump economic plan was a spectacular success. | |
| People forget that if it had not been for COVID, Trump probably won a 40-state reelection landslide in 2020. | ||
| Of course, COVID came and that changed everything. | ||
| We made the greatest mistake in American history when we shut down our economy, shut down our businesses, our schools, our churches. | ||
| And God forbid that we ever, hopefully, we've learned the lesson that we should never, never do that again. | ||
| That was one of the greatest abuses of power in American history. | ||
| But from 2017 through the beginning of COVID, the U.S. economy was absolutely booming on every statistic. | ||
| We had a booming stock market. | ||
| We had a huge reduction in poverty rates in the United States. | ||
| The average American family had gained $6,000 in income thanks to the Trump policies. | ||
| That was just short of a miracle. | ||
| I think Trump can do it again. | ||
| It's been some rough waters for sure, Mimi, in the last few months with these tariff turbulence. | ||
| I'm not a big fan of the terrorists, but I have to say things look a lot better today in the economy than they did a month ago. | ||
| And if Trump can pull this off and get better deals for America, I think you're going to see another Trump boom like we saw in his first term. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers and go to Sean first in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
| Sean, you're on with Steve Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Steve, I just want to point out to everybody that I feel like you're kind of lying a little bit. | ||
| The tax cuts that you're mentioning that are going to be implemented in December if they do come to pass, if this bill doesn't pass, are actually sunsets from the previous bill that Trump passed in 2017, which you were a part of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it feels as though you're misleading people by saying, oh, no, well, for some reason, taxes are going to go are going to go up, but you guys said that. | |
| And it's mainly for the middle and lower class that those tax increases or cuts are going to be on the lower and middle class. | ||
| Secondly, if you're worried about government health care and overabuse on government health care, why don't you talk about Walmart and McDonald's that are the biggest users of government health care because they do not pay for their employees to get health care? | ||
| Well, look, I can't. | ||
| I don't know about McDonald's and Walmart. | ||
| Those are mostly kind of starter jobs for people. | ||
| And I guess they don't provide health care. | ||
| But I will say this. | ||
| This is a really important point, Mimi. | ||
| The Trump tax cut is set to expire. | ||
| This gentleman is right at the end of this year. | ||
| And nobody wants that to happen. | ||
| I mean, polls show overwhelmingly about 70% of Americans don't want that tax cut to expire. | ||
| I don't know, sir, if you do, but most Americans can't afford to pay $2,500 or $3,000 more in taxes, especially after the big inflation that we had under Biden. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we've got to do this, in my opinion. | |
| I think it would just wreck the economy if we didn't get this extended. | ||
| And I think most Americans are behind me on that. | ||
| Let's go to John in Massillian, Ohio, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, I'm just asking how to report somebody that does collect all of them benefits and shutting. | |
| John? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think we lost you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I couldn't hear him. | |
| You're trying to report somebody that's collecting benefits? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how do you do that? | |
| And they're capable of work and they're healthy and they should be working. | ||
| If the question is, you know, how do we find the fraudsters that are just ripping off Americans to the tune of half a trillion dollars a year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have to have people monitoring these programs. | |
| We have to have people who are stealing the money from these programs should be put in jail, in my opinion. | ||
| I mean, we have rampant fraud. | ||
| Nobody in Washington, and I blame Republicans and Democrats, Mimi, for this, to allow this to happen. | ||
| A half a trillion dollars a year. | ||
| Some of these people, by the way, don't even live in the United States, for goodness sakes. | ||
| They're getting Social Security checks. | ||
| They're getting Medicare payments. | ||
| They're getting food stamps. | ||
| And many of them aren't even in the country. | ||
| So we need to make it a top priority for the country to make sure that only the people who are eligible for the programs are getting the money. | ||
| This was true of the PPP program under COVID. | ||
| This is true of food stamps. | ||
| It's true of unemployment benefits. | ||
| Nobody is minding the store and making sure that only the people who are eligible for it get it. | ||
| And look, if somebody is stealing money through these programs, it would be like if I walked down the street and put a gun to somebody's head and said, give me $100 and stole it from their wallet. | ||
| That's what's happening day after day after day. | ||
| And Trump is saying no more. | ||
| We're going to do something about this and hunt these people down and get the money back. | ||
| Steve, your thoughts on President Trump's tariffs plan so far, you called it tariff turbulence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Maybe it should be turmoil. | ||
| Listen, I'm a much more of a free trade guy than Donald Trump. | ||
| And he and I, he knows how I feel about that. | ||
| But I also believe that because we all, everyone benefits from trade. | ||
| By the way, trade is the essence of what economics is about. | ||
| If I trade with you, Mimi, and you have something I want, and I have something that you want, and we freely trade, by definition, we're both better off. | ||
| And that's what makes economics important. | ||
| It's what raises the living standards of all Americans. | ||
| And so we have benefited from trade. | ||
| The fact that we can get low-priced things from Vietnam and we can sell them things. | ||
| Or my favorite example is: you know, we import a lot of coffee beans from Colombia and Brazil because they make great coffee beans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then we sell them, you know, our computers because we make great computers. | |
| So this is called the law of comparative advantage. | ||
| It goes back to Adam Smith, and it is so important for our economy. | ||
| We can compete in the world economy. | ||
| But Trump is right that the United States, we have the lowest tariffs in the world, virtually, of all the major trading partners. | ||
| And what Trump is saying, just so people understand, is if we're our tariff is at, say, 10%, and Canada or Korea or Japan at 30 or 40%, in some cases, in China, that's over 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not fair. | |
| And we're going to force those countries to bring their tariffs down, Mimi. | ||
| And this is what's working so far. | ||
| We've got two big deals in the works with the UK and with China. | ||
| We're saying to China, either you reduce your tariffs on us or we're going to impose high tariffs on you. | ||
| And so far, at least, it looks like Trump is prevailing on that because China, if China can't trade with the United States, they're going to go into a Great Depression. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have to trade with us. | |
| And that's one of the reasons I think they blinked here and why we're going to get a pretty good trade deal with China. | ||
| On the line for Democrats in Lake Worth, Florida, Elizabeth, you're on with Stephen Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Stephen. | |
| I don't believe a single word you say. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| And you are saying some very nasty things about me. | ||
| And I'm taking it personally. | ||
| I'm 61 years old. | ||
| I lost my job in September. | ||
| It wasn't my fault. | ||
| I'm looking for jobs. | ||
| I've applied for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs. | ||
| I have a master's degree and I don't have a job. | ||
| I am not sitting home getting insurance for free. | ||
| So for you to say something like that, and there's many people out there like me, nobody wants to sit home in that work. | ||
| I can't imagine a single person that wants to sit home in that work and not be able to pay bills. | ||
| It's stressful not having a job. | ||
| So I hope that you change your tone about people like me who ought to work and can't find a job. | ||
| Steve, go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll just say, first of all, I'm sorry for your plight. | |
| Nobody, I've been unemployed before, and it's a scary situation. | ||
| And so I hope you do find a job as soon as possible and a good paying one at that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the most important thing we can do for someone like you is to improve the economy. | |
| Look, the Biden years were a tough period. | ||
| We had very high raising prices. | ||
| The American people spoke out and said this didn't work. | ||
| And so we're going to try to bring those jobs back so that everybody has the opportunities because we want every American who wants a job to have one. | ||
| But, you know, if you're unemployed for a long time and you have the kind of skills, there are jobs out there. | ||
| I mean, there are 7 million job openings in America today. | ||
| We've got to make sure that the people who are unemployed are filling those jobs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It might not be exactly the job that you want, but we want to make sure that we get people back into the workforce. | |
| And I hope you find a job as quickly as possible. | ||
| I guarantee you, with Trump's economics, those jobs are going to come back. | ||
| Peter is a Republican in New York. | ||
| Good morning, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, Steve. | ||
| I agree with you that they need to eliminate these tax loopholes. | ||
| For years, we've heard that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. | ||
| But there is a loophole in the law where he only took a million dollar salary and the rest of it was stock options, which he only paid capital gains tax on. | ||
| And also that carried interest provision that Trump originally wanted to get rid of, but even Republicans in Congress blocked him from doing that. | ||
| Also, corporations that own subsidiaries, if their subsidiaries lose money, they get to deduct those losses on their tax bill. | ||
| And that's the reason why they pay no taxes. | ||
| But even small businesses take advantage of that. | ||
| One of the things with this new tax bill, unfortunately, from what I heard, is that the provisions for the work provision don't kick in until 2029. | ||
| And Senator Ron Johnson has been also complaining that they're not really making any cuts. | ||
| What I believe President Trump is trying to do is he is trying to increase business in the United States with these agreements, bring more revenue in so that we could pay for these things because he understands that even Republicans are reluctant to make cuts. | ||
| And that seems to be the plan. | ||
| And I hope he succeeds in doing that. | ||
| Thank you, Steve. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, let me just respond to that very quickly because I was listening to your show earlier, Mimi, and we've had a couple of calls on this already. | ||
| There's this mythology that's been going around. | ||
| And it's not surprising that people are falling for this because the media keeps saying it over and over again that the Trump tax cut was a tax cut for the rich and that the rich are not paying their fair share. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I just want, because these numbers just came out a couple of months ago, Mimi, these are the official government statistics from the IRS, which collects the taxes. | |
| Today in America, the top 1% of Americans, those at the very top of the income scale, pay a higher share of the income tax than any other time in the history of the United States. | ||
| So the top 1% pay about 44% of all income taxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One out of 100 people pay almost half of the income tax. | |
| And that went up after the Trump tax cut. | ||
| So it was at 40%. | ||
| In other words, the top 1% were paying 40% of the income tax before the Trump tax cuts. | ||
| Now they pay 44%. | ||
| The top 10% pay 90% of the income tax. | ||
| So the idea that the rich are not paying their fair share. | ||
| Now, look, there are some people who scamming the system for sure. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons I'd love to see a flat tax where you get rid of all the deductions, all the loopholes, all the special interest lobbyist provisions that helped some people avoid taxes. | ||
| But my God, I mean, Warren Buffett has paid billions and billions and billions of dollars of taxes through the companies he owns and through his individual tax. | ||
| The idea that his secretary pays lower taxes than him is ridiculous. | ||
| It is simply not true, especially when you take into account all of the taxes paid by the businesses that you own. | ||
| I just want everybody to pay their fair share. | ||
| I want their taxes to be as low and reasonable as possible so we can grow this economy, be the number one economy in the world. | ||
| And I think if we can make this Trump tax cut permanent, I think it'll be good for everybody, every income group, including the small businesses. | ||
| We have a text for you from Constance in Las Vegas, Nevada, who says, so far, Mr. Moore has not mentioned the waste, fraud, and abuse with Trump pillaging the Treasury with his golf trips and planned ego-stroking parade. | ||
| Why is that okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear quite the end of that. | |
| The golf trips? | ||
| The golf trips. | ||
| And she says the planned ego-stroking parade. | ||
| And why is that okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The planned parade? | |
| Yes, the military parade. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, listen. | |
| I mean, I think these, I don't know how much that's going to cost and so on. | ||
| I think Trump is a, he loves patriotic gestures like that. | ||
| I'd love to, by the way, you know, when they do that kind of thing, why not get corporate sponsorship for that so that it's paid for by companies? | ||
| I don't know how much that parade is going to cost, but that's like saying, well, let's cancel the 4th of July parade so that we can, you know, we can reduce costs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think that's something Americans would want to see. | |
| But I will say this about the waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| One of the problems I have, and now I'm going to sound more like a Democrat than a Republican meeting, but there is, you know, the biggest agency of our budget is, of course, the Pentagon, our national security and our national defense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you have to spend whatever you need to to keep your country safe. | |
| But my gosh, we're spending a trillion dollars a year on our military. | ||
| And everyone knows that there's massive fraud and waste in the Pentagon. | ||
| I wish that if I have one complaint about what Elon Musk did when he was running Doge, and he, I think he did a great job of exposing all the incredible waste in our budget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they should have started at the Pentagon. | |
| I mean, the Republicans want to spend another $150 billion a year on the Pentagon. | ||
| Why not take that out of the waste in front? | ||
| You have agency, you have people in the Pentagon. | ||
| Nobody even knows what they do anymore. | ||
| It's the biggest bureaucracy in the world. | ||
| So I would like to see Republicans be very fair-minded about this. | ||
| Let's get rid of the waste in every single government agency so that people aren't being ripped off. | ||
| Let's talk to Brett in Jacksonville, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Brett. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to make a comment, picking up on something Steve had said a couple calls ago about the sheriff taxes being paid at the upper end. | ||
| You know, everyone is saying that the reversion to the 2017 levels is going to benefit the rich. | ||
| And they're the same people who said that the cuts in 2017 benefited the rich. | ||
| If all we're doing is reverting to the past, the rich couldn't benefit on the way down and the way up, nor could the poor. | ||
| You could only have it one way or the other. | ||
| I think that it's pretty well acknowledged that a reversion to where we were before is mostly going to hit lower income folks. | ||
| And that was all I had to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, if I could just make a comment on that, Mimi. | ||
| I think this gentleman makes a great point. | ||
| And I just looked at the, we got the first look at the new Census Bureau data. | ||
| This is the gold standard of, you know, what happens with people's incomes. | ||
| And it's really remarkable. | ||
| So in Trump's first term, he was president for four years from 2017 through 2020, and even including the COVID years where we saw a big dip in people's incomes because we foolishly shut down our economy. | ||
| Even during that period, the average family in America, the media, people are in the media in that's the exact middle, saw about a $5,000 increase in their incomes, family income. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's after adjusting for inflation. | |
| That's a pretty good gain in four years. | ||
| Under Biden, what's really interesting is that the average family gained almost nothing in income because inflation was so high. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what's so interesting about this is that in the Biden years, even though everybody was talking about how we're going to make a fair economy or the rich are going to, we're going to help the people at the bottom. | |
| So what happened under Biden because of the high inflation is the people who got clobbered under Biden's policies were the people at the bottom. | ||
| And the people who benefited the most were people who were at the top. | ||
| That's not what it's exactly the opposite result that Biden had wanted, but his policies were so damaging to people in the middle class and the bottom that those are the people who fell the most. | ||
| So we want to repeal those policies and get back to policies. | ||
| You know, as John F. Kennedy said and Ronald Reagan said, we want an economy where a rising tide of prosperity lifts every boat. | ||
| People at the bottom, people in the middle, people. | ||
| I'm all in favor of people getting rich. | ||
| That's what makes America great. | ||
| It's called the American Dream. | ||
| And we want everyone to have that opportunity. | ||
| Stephen Moore, Senior Visiting Fellow in Economics at the Heritage Foundation, founder of Committee to Unleash Prosperity. | ||
| You can find them online at committee to unleashprosperity.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Mimi, and I love C-SPAN. | |
| And thanks for the opportunity to come on the show. | ||
| And coming up after the break, more of your phone calls in Open Forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now the numbers: Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 6:30 p.m. Eastern, NPR international correspondent Emily Fang shares her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, where she reports on individuals in China who are pushing back against efforts to control free expression. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, Columbia University's John McWhorter talks about the use and evolution of language and argues that the current controversy over pronoun usage in America is largely overblown in his book, Pronoun Trouble. | ||
| At 9:15 p.m. Eastern, Steve Olson, author of Eruption, recalls the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington on May 18, 1980, which resulted in the deaths of 57 people. | ||
| Then, at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, University of Michigan law professor Leah Littman explains why she believes the Supreme Court isn't making rulings based on legal principles in her book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. | ||
| She is interviewed by author and Nation magazine justice correspondent Ellie Mistal. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-span.org/slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day. | ||
| And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day. | ||
| Catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're in an open forum. | ||
| We'll get to your calls shortly. | ||
| A few things for your schedule, though. | ||
| Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in three cases concerning whether judges can block President Trump's executive order that limits birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented parents. | ||
| That's tomorrow, live at 10 a.m. here over on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Also, some things for today on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| So at 9:45, so in about less than 10 minutes, the FAA officials will testify on air safety and air traffic control technology before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. | ||
| That's on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Also, there's a state dinner in Qatar. | ||
| That's where President Trump is on his Middle East trip. | ||
| He is expected to give remarks and will have live coverage of that starting at 12:45 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| And also later today at 1:30, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. will testify on President Trump's 2026 budget request for HHS and other priorities for that department. | ||
| And that's happening before the Senate Health Committee live at 1:30 p.m. Eastern today. | ||
| That's on C-SPAN 3 as well. | ||
| All of those you can see on our free app, which is C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| We'll go to the calls now and hear from Lynn in Mount Vernon, New York. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Lynn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I just wanted to comment. | ||
| Mr. Moore, that was just on, as well as a lot of other people, always say how much the wealthy pay in relationship to, in contrast to the other people in this country. | ||
| Well, they failed to mention that they have between 67 and 71 percent of all the wealth as well. | ||
| And the bottom half of this country only has 2 to 3 percent of this kind of wealth. | ||
| So they're getting a good deal when they pay 50 percent. | ||
| They should pay more. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| Have a wonderful day. | ||
| You too, Lynn. | ||
| And this is Gordon in Kansas City, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boy, that lady's nuts. | |
| Anyway, I wanted Steve Moore to ask you to punch up how much the Treasury took in in 2017 and then compare it to the Treasury and took in in 2018. | ||
| And you'll see that the Trump tax cuts made like a trillion dollars more money come into the Treasury. | ||
| And I went to pick up my taxes. | ||
| I always overpay. | ||
| And I went to pick up my taxes right after the 2018 tax cut took effect. | ||
| And I paid $3,000 less a year. | ||
| And that's up to $25,000 that I've saved. | ||
| So the congressman from Tennessee is a complete embarrassment to the country. | ||
| Thank you, Bob. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Philip in Jackson, Mississippi, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Good morning, Miss Mimi. | ||
| Just on the last caller's comments, you know, it just seems that the Republicans have some sort of way of not looking at what most people see as reality. | ||
| And that is, you know, taking money in the government that you shouldn't be taking, you know, corruption, lying, and calling people names. | ||
| That's their favorite. | ||
| They just seem to love calling people names and then blaming the people that they're calling as the name callers. | ||
| It's an incredible situation when I listen to it in terms of mental illness. | ||
| I think it's what it must be or something. | ||
| But I just hope that Americans start to look at the long run of where we're going with climate change. | ||
| It's very, very important. | ||
| And this summer, I think it's going to disrupt a lot of our normal activities because of the immense level of heat that will be generated. | ||
| So I just hope that reality and people being open-minded to learning rather than being shut off by their own belief systems, which sometimes are very, very negative, but they have power. | ||
| I just hope that we can clean all that up going into the future, months coming. | ||
| All right, Philip. | ||
| And Politico is reporting that Alexander Elcasio-Cortez at 3 a.m. made comments over miscarriages that sparks a fiery exchange with GOP male counterparts. | ||
| That's the headline from Politico. | ||
| We have that exchange and we'll show it to you right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In terms of some of the exemptions, pregnancy is covered, correct? | |
| May I interrupt? | ||
| I'm glad you're addressing us instead of speaking to the camera. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| Pregnancy is covered, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| As an exemption? | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| Given the Dobbs decision and the fact that many women in many states are forced to be carrying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to have to stop. | |
| I'm going to reclaim my time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| What about miscarriage? | ||
| I'm reclaiming my time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I just want to make the point that we'd like for you to address the Republicans and let's have a dialogue this way and not to a camera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I yield back. | |
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I'm asking the question, what about a miscarriage? | |
| The gentleman's back. | ||
| I'm trying to engage in the way that the gentleman. | ||
| The lady is out of order. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, so we don't want to women having miscarriage. | |
| Speaking of where we are addressing and who we are addressing, there are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| I'm talking to you because I work for you. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| And they deserve to see what is happening here because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25% of your constituents are on Medicaid. | ||
| 40% of your constituents are on Medicaid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And yes, I am talking to them. | |
| Will the gentlelady yield? | ||
| I am talking to them, and I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I will not yield to disrespectful men. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Yield back. | ||
| We'll yield back to the gentlelady. | ||
| Yes, I would yield to the doctor from California. | ||
| That was at 3 a.m. this morning. | ||
| And that Energy and Commerce Subcommittee that is doing the markups for the reconciliation bill, they are still in session. | ||
| So they have been going all night. | ||
| They continue. | ||
| That's on your screen right now. | ||
| If you'd like to follow that, you can check our website, cspan.org. | ||
| And Matt, Cleveland, Ohio Democrat, you're on Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| Thanks for taking a call. | ||
| A couple things I want to address with Stephen Miller. | ||
| First off, Steve, Moore, you mean? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| People always say who you look like. | ||
| I think you look like Ava Gardner. | ||
| And I would think that you might want to look her up if you don't know who she is. | ||
| Also, with Stephen, he wants to say that America shut down during COVID, and that was a terrible thing to do. | ||
| I would just like to say that he should look at a couple rallies that Donald Trump held in 2020. | ||
| One was in Oklahoma, and they tried to make it seem like COVID was gone. | ||
| Look at how many people died who went to that rally. | ||
| Also, when Amy Comey Barrett was installed in the Supreme Court, I believe he held a Rose Garden event there. | ||
| How many people got COVID from that event? | ||
| So, shutting down the United States, and not only the United States, I believe the whole world shut down because of COVID. | ||
| It didn't make any sense to try to open it up and let more people die. | ||
| That's my comment. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Jesse Laurel, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, not a Republican, Independent, but yeah, I really dislike Trump. | |
| They're always blaming Biden and the last guy you had on. | ||
| They're always saying Biden, Biden, Biden, one. | ||
| I felt more comfortable during Biden's term with COVID and everything than I do now. | ||
| And everyone around me as well. | ||
| Yeah, Trump just takes credit for the economy that he hasn't even done anything for yet. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| People really need to start cutting all these Republicans off and telling them the facts. | ||
| Stop letting them over talk. | ||
| And show the facts. | ||
| And, Jesse, it looks like you did call on the Republican line. | ||
| So I'm going to ask you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| I did. | ||
| That was an accident. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Be more careful next time. | ||
| Ernst in Gonzales, Louisiana, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, can you hear me? | ||
| Yeah, go ahead, Ernest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yeah, I've been following this for a long time, and I've been a Democrat all my life. | ||
| Louisiana originally was a heavy Democrat, but I don't understand why we should even be talking about Democrat or Republican. | ||
| We need to take control of our country. | ||
| We need to remove the illegal aliens in our country. | ||
| We need to do more to equalize taxes. | ||
| And we're just running into problems with this. | ||
| Why are we fighting Donald Trump for President Trump all the time? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| It doesn't make sense. | ||
| He's trying to do what is best for this country. | ||
| And I think C-SPAN needs to get on the bandwagon and understand that our country can only be saved if we can reduce our debt. | ||
| If we cannot reduce our debt, we're doomed. | ||
| Just like our household would be. | ||
| We would be doomed if we overspent our budget each month. | ||
| And being in a lower income, I very well understand that. | ||
| So if you could help us in some way on C-SPAN, we'd appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Patricia, Brooklyn, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Patricia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
New York. | |
| Hey, how are you doing there? | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to speak on the Office of Management and Budget, Health, Education, and Welfare, the Federal Reserve Banks, assets plus liabilities equals owners' equity. | |
| So we must deal with the economy and know that the Bitcoins in the cryptocurrency is a part of money. | ||
| One, two, three, four, and five. | ||
| So, you know, New York, you know, we're going to have to get our mayor together. | ||
| I'm going with that woman mayor. | ||
| We haven't had a woman mayor since 1818, 1616, and 1887. | ||
| So let my Brooklyn folk know. | ||
| Patty Patricia Ann Robinson is going with the woman mayor for voting. | ||
| When is the election for New York mayor? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In June. | |
| And who are the candidates? | ||
| You mentioned the one that you're supporting. | ||
| Who are the other ones? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The other ones are Cuomo, Eric Adams, Brad Landers. | |
| I'm going to Adrian Adams. | ||
| Yeah, she's a woman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right, Patricia. | ||
| And here's Roger, Knoxville, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Good. | ||
| Good. | ||
| So I just wanted to mention real quick: you know, that when we hear, when I hear about raising taxes on the rich and this, that, and the other, my problem is, is no matter what we raise taxes to or who we tax, how much we tax, that unless they're going to spend it right, unless we're going to get a handle on this, it doesn't matter. | ||
| It's not going to matter. | ||
| I mean, our government, I always feel our government has grown so big that it's just out of hand. | ||
| And the normal person, a normal person, we're not able to get a grip on it. | ||
| We're not able to grasp what it's doing. | ||
| If we can't do that, how are, you know, there's no way they're going to do anything with this to make it right. | ||
| So, you know, when I wrote my check, when I did my taxes this year, you know, it was just $452 is what I owed, but I had a hard time writing that check for $452 and sending it to the IRS. | ||
| I'm just going to tell you. | ||
| So that's what I wanted to say. | ||
| I appreciate you taking my call. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Roger. | ||
| And inflation numbers that come out yesterday. | ||
| This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Mild April inflation captures early hint of tariffs. | ||
| Prices ticked up after cooling in March as fears mount that increases lie ahead. | ||
| It says inflation was relatively mild in April, but economists said tariffs will end a recent lull and push up more prices in the coming months. | ||
| Consumer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in April. | ||
| The Labor Department said yesterday an analyst interpreted the report as good news, primarily because it didn't reveal bad news, including meaningful effects of higher tariffs that could show up later this summer. | ||
| That month over month reading matched the forecasts of economists polled by the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| That is from the Wall Street Journal if you'd like to take a look at that. | ||
| And here is Craig, Phillips, South Dakota, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Craig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentleman a couple gentlemen ago, he talked about funding for PBS. | |
| And in South Dakota, we have less than 1 million people, but we have three PBS TV stations. | ||
| I believe you could look at cutting two of those stations out to start saving money. | ||
| That's my comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's James, Philadelphia, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| So I did want to speak to that Stephen Moore from the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| And the complaint I keep hearing about, you know, how they're going to catch fraud in the system, the Medicaid system or, you know, any lot of systems similar to that, is that you have somebody sleeping on the bed watching TV. | ||
| And I just wanted to ask him if he had watched on Sunday, 60 Minutes, a woman there, Linda Miller, who had been working with the government accountability office. | ||
| She discovered or was talking about the amount of fraud that goes on comes from these state actors. | ||
| And she's talking like trillions of dollars. | ||
| I mean, she was happy that someone's actually talking about fraud, but she was putting the blame not on individuals. | ||
| You have criminal elements stealing personal ID and taking she was using numbers like $500 million to $750 million. | ||
| I don't know, Mimi, if you were aware of the 60-minute program. | ||
| It was just this past Sunday, and it was eye-opening. | ||
| And so when you hear somebody blaming individuals doing something like that, I mean, it really comes down to being able to do more ID on people, you know, because there is a lot of PI being stalled, personal identification being stolen. | ||
| And it's just a fact, and it's so easy now. | ||
| You know, you worry about, I don't know, I used to worry about taking envelopes that had my name on it or something like that, you know, and putting them in the trash. | ||
| Really, people go online and find your name, find your social security number for $2. | ||
| And this is not individuals that are doing this, I mean, at home and taking the money. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Got it, James. | ||
| And on the Republican line in Logan, Utah, Lena, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I would just like to let people know that some people are the poorest of the poor, and I'm one of them. | |
| And when I was working, I never made more than $29,000. | ||
| And I believe if everyone would pay 10%, people and businesses, the businesses and people wouldn't make deductions that they shouldn't have. | ||
| And also, I have a neighbor woman who keeps having kids, and she's had six kids and several miscarriages. | ||
| And the taxpayers are paying for all of them. | ||
| She asked me to sign one time so that she could get this paid when she first moved in. | ||
| And to me, that's not fair. | ||
| And then she works a little bit and has deductions for all of these children. | ||
| And Lena, are you on Medicaid? | ||
| No. | ||
| Or Medicare. | ||
| You're on Medicare. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're retired. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm retired. | |
| But I learn to get by because I work hard and I'm careful what I spend. | ||
| I don't go on vacations. | ||
| I don't go out and eat. | ||
| But I survive. | ||
| And if everybody did 10%, that would be fair. | ||
| I mean, I don't think businesses and rich people should pay 50%. | ||
| That's not fair. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Joanne in Texas, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Joanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Mimi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I know it's open form, so I just wanted to put my two cents in. | ||
| First, on Medicaid. | ||
| And getting really frustrated hearing people calling in and focusing on the lazy people. | ||
| I want to remind people that Medicaid isn't just for people who are impoverished. | ||
| It's also used to take care of children who are in foster care or who have been adopted through the foster care system. | ||
| And I hope there are plans in place to take care of the children and make sure that they don't lose their services or that some of the services get cut under Medicaid that take care of our foster children. | ||
| So it's not just about people sitting and being lazy and collecting a check. | ||
| And the other thing I wanted to bring up was the fact that there actually are elderly people who take advantage of the system as well. | ||
| They have assets. | ||
| They have homes. | ||
| They have heavy bank accounts. | ||
| But they will often put those bank accounts and homes under family members' names so they can get into assisted living homes or so that they can get Medicaid or Medicare benefits. | ||
| So it's not just the lazy. | ||
| I mean, everybody is trying to find a way just to live, period. | ||
| And so it's not just the lazy. | ||
| There are some people out there who have assets, but they can't claim them because then they risk not being able to get into homes. | ||
| And thank you so much. | ||
| Louie is a Republican, Boynton Beach, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Louie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good afternoon, and good morning, rather. | |
| Thank you for giving everybody your voice here. | ||
| I just want to say that in observation of the political climate in this country and as well in the worldwide context, we are in a cultural revolution in this country as never before seen. | ||
| Norms of standards and political diversities have come to a point of unprecedented hatred, unprecedented division, the lawfare, | ||
| the unveiling of what Doge has discovered, the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Democrats had been shelling out behind the closed doors of the budgets to these left-wing corporations off what just Elon Musk has discovered. | ||
| And then to punctuate that, a gentleman who has done nothing but good for this country, Elon Musk, he's attacked, and it is so full of hatred that the Democrats actually would go to burn people's cars, key people's cars. | ||
| Donald Trump, the hatred for him, as Dr. Drew said, he's a doctor on television, everyone knows. | ||
| It's a form of mental illness. | ||
| They have induced this and brainwashed the public with mainstream media, big tech, all the three liberal networks that report 97% negative, negative to our president. | ||
| The Democrat Party is abhorrent. | ||
| They are everything that our president is doing, they are trying to sabotage 24 hours a day, seven days a week. | ||
| It is disgusting. | ||
| And what they're for is absolutely unbelievable. | ||
| They brought in the 20 million people to replace the American electorate. | ||
| That's what their whole scheme was. | ||
| I want to move on to Mike Stockton, California, Independent. | ||
| Mike, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. |