| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Very unfriendly and that won't be pleasant. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| On the Gatori plane, Mr. Plano. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| Thanks, Dan. | ||
| And today, President Trump's Middle East trip continues in Connor with a state dinner. | ||
| The president expected to give remarks. | ||
| We'll have that live at 1245 p.m. Eastern on our companion network, C-SPAN3. | ||
| You can also watch on the free C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Live picture this afternoon from the House Radio TV gallery. | ||
| Actually, it's still morning, but shortly. | ||
| Members of the House Democratic Leadership will hold a news conference as committees continue to consider GOP tax and spending legislation in support of President Trump's agenda. | ||
| Live coverage when that gets underway in just a couple of minutes here on C-SPAN. | ||
| I don't know exactly where, like in between D.C. and Richmond, they're opening up their first bucket. | ||
| And I'm going to become the assistant manager. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| It's good C-SPAN still funded by the government. | ||
| It is not funded by the government. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I thought you didn't get any money from the government at all. | |
| No, not at all, and we never have. | ||
|
unidentified
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What a disappointment to Elon Musk. | |
| I'm sure he'd like to doge to 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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 incredible, say did not stimulate the economy and was not successful in creating any kind of a boom to the economy and 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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 suns, 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? | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I don't think the Democrats will go along with any of those cuts. | |
| Now, you want to cut out the tax breaks for the rich. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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 202-748-8002 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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, they 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 501c3s and 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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The administration wouldn't supply us witnesses. | |
| We're having a hearing on where the bill we passed last year, the FA 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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. | ||
|
unidentified
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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 even 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 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 over the. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Pleased to be joined. | ||
| Still morning. |