| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
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I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles, we are speaking to the country. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Representative Kim Schreier, a Democrat from Washington, member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and also Congressional Doctors Caucus co-chair. | ||
| Representative Schreier, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| I'm really glad to be here. | ||
| So this week, the Senate is voting on a $9.4 billion rescissions package that passed the House last month. | ||
| All Democrats, including yourself, voted against it. | ||
| Can you talk about why Democrats are opposed to this and what impact you think it'll have? | ||
| Well, first of all, before we even get into the details of what is in the rescission package, I just want to make clear that fundamentally this is problematic because rescissions means cutting. | ||
| And what we're cutting is funding that Congress in a bipartisan fashion, so Democrats and Republicans agreed that we should be spending taxpayer dollars wisely and in certain ways. | ||
| And we came together, think about our states and our districts, and made these decisions. | ||
| This rescission package now comes in and says, well, Congress, you thought it was important to have foreign aid, now we want to cut it. | ||
| Well, Congress, you thought it was important to have public broadcasting so that everybody in the country could hear unbiased news for free without commercials. | ||
| And now, because the president wants to cut it, we're going to cut it. | ||
| I think fundamentally it is wrong because it is taking away Congress's power of the purse. | ||
| And I think that substantially it is wrong because it's cutting things that are really in my constituents' best interest. | ||
| So what impact do you think these cuts, if they go through, will have? | ||
| Well, first of all, look, PBS stations in some areas will do just fine. | ||
| They have funding from their communities. | ||
| But in other areas, I mean in rural areas, sometimes this is the only source of real news. | ||
| And in the case of news and emergencies, it will take that source away. | ||
| So it is damaging to information, to democracy, and to safety. | ||
| And then with regard to foreign aid, I think sometimes people don't understand that foreign aid is a big part of our own national security. | ||
| And so, for example, if they end the PEPFAR program, this is a program that was able to successfully combat AIDS in Africa. | ||
| If we take that away and AIDS comes back in Africa, it will spread to our shores even more so. | ||
| And frankly, the virus could mutate so that current treatments don't even work. | ||
| So I just feel like this is really short-sighted. | ||
| And again, Congress agreed this was an important program. | ||
| And now this president and a very compliant Congress is willing to take it away. | ||
| And Representative Kim Schreier is with us for the next 15 minutes. | ||
| So if you'd like to get in a question with her, please call now. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Congresswoman, as a doctor, I want to ask about the One Big Beautiful bill and your concerns regarding health care in that bill. | ||
| Well, again, fundamentally, when it comes to this, I'll call it the big ugly bill. | ||
| Fundamentally, it is a shift from funding that takes care of the people in this country who are most in need, and it transfers it to a gigantic tax cut for the wealthiest people, the Elon Musks, in this country. | ||
| And the vast majority of those dollars are actually being sucked out of health care. | ||
| It is taking Medicaid health insurance away and in total will take health care away from about 17 million Americans and transfer that to the Elon Musks of this world. | ||
| I think that is morally bankrupt. | ||
| And when I think about what that will do to our health care system, writ large, when you have that many people who now have no health insurance, go to the emergency room for their health care, cause long waits in the emergency room, drive up prices for everybody, and send our insurance rates higher, in addition to closing rural hospitals. | ||
| This is going to be catastrophic. | ||
| And again, the point of this is not fiscal responsibility. | ||
| This explodes the debt and it transfers that money to the wealthiest who don't need it. | ||
| And regarding work requirements in Medicaid, you know, Speaker Johnson has said 20 hours a week is not burdensome for able-bodied people. | ||
| They could work, they could look for work, they could volunteer if they can't find work. | ||
| Are you against that provision in the bill? | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| I mean, it's clever wording. | ||
| I think most of us would agree that if you are able-bodied and you can work, you should be working. | ||
| That is just part of our responsibilities to ourselves and to our communities and to our families. | ||
| The thing is that this is really not about helping people work. | ||
| I mean, the vast majority of able-bodied people who rely on Medicaid already work. | ||
| This is about paperwork. | ||
| This is about making everybody, if they are taking care of a child, if they are taking care of an elderly parent, if they are working, if they are doing gig work, you name it, they have to get paperwork done at least every six months to prove that or they fall off the rolls and it becomes very difficult to get that insurance back. | ||
| And so I just want to be clear that when they've tried this in various states, what has happened is that the vast majority of people who are kicked off of Medicaid are eligible. | ||
| They're working, they're taking care of their families, and they just messed up on the paperwork. | ||
| And so, you know, they're using those words, and we all agree that people ought to be working, but this is draconian and hurts people who already are. | ||
| And you're the first pediatrician elected to Congress, so I want to ask you about the measles cases hitting a three-decade high in this country, your reaction to that. | ||
| Well, it's outrageous. | ||
| And frankly, I lay the responsibility for this at RFK Jr.'s feet because, well, even before becoming our Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is absurd because he is the least qualified, he works against our public health. | ||
| He's been for decades sowing misinformation and distrust about vaccines. | ||
| He's been making parents wonder about whether they should protect their children against really serious illnesses like measles, but let's not forget things like polio that will also come to our shores if we do not fully vaccinate children. | ||
| And now we have people getting terrible illness. | ||
| I mean, people suffer with measles. | ||
| This is not just like a little rash. | ||
| These are high fevers, suffering kids crying. | ||
| The rash is just a part of it. | ||
| And they're suffering and some have died completely unnecessarily because of misinformation from our Secretary of Health and Human Services. | ||
| Just think about that for a moment. | ||
| You said, quote, that he should be held responsible for, quote, every death from a vaccine-preventable illness. | ||
| Yeah, I do believe that. | ||
| Again, this is not just his time as Secretary of HHS when he's brought the fringe into the government. | ||
| I mean, he's bringing these conspiracy theories and outrageous, disproven thoughts about damage caused by vaccines, which have been proven untrue. | ||
| They are safe and effective. | ||
| He's brought that here in the last six months. | ||
| But the thing is, again, for decades, he has been spreading misinformation. | ||
| So that has led to decreased immunization rates and the ability for these diseases. | ||
| Measles was eradicated in the year 2000. | ||
| It has gotten a foothold again in this country because of his misinformation. | ||
| Congresswoman, he has replaced his vaccine board, as you know. | ||
| What do you know about the new vaccine panel and would you trust their recommendations? | ||
| Oh, well, this is outrageous. | ||
| So the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices sits down in a deliberative way. | ||
| They look at the evidence of vaccines that have been approved by the FDA, so then we know they are safe and effective. | ||
| And they have deep discussions about the science and decide which vaccines to recommend on what schedule for which people. | ||
| And this is a very thoughtful process. | ||
| Their decisions then influence whether Medicaid, Medicare, your insurance company, whether they pay for those vaccines, and also whether schools require children to get those vaccines. | ||
| So the impacts are important. | ||
| Traditionally, the people on this committee have been vetted for 18 months on average to make sure they have the expertise, the experience, the credentials to really evaluate the science. | ||
| And he summarily fired all 17 of them and quickly replaced them with seven people, most of whom have very clear, long-standing ties with the anti-vaccine community. | ||
| Again, bringing the fringe into the government, getting rid of the scientists, and creating a situation where even physicians cannot trust what is coming out of this new ACIP. | ||
| And so we're going to be turning to other places like the American Academy of Pediatrics or the family practitioners or internal medicine docs in order to get the real truth and going to have to work hard to make sure that we can give real truth to our patients and get them vaccinated. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| Jeff is in Bayville, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Dr. Schreier, I couldn't agree with you more about Kennedy's effect on public health and especially firing the entire board of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. | ||
| I think you said it very well. | ||
| However, there is also an additional issue that RFK Jr. brought upon the nation, which I would like you to comment on, and that is that he basically defunded a Moderna H5N1 vaccine that had already gone through phase one and two trials with results that indicated it was effective and safe. | ||
| And the third phase is now not going to be funded by the government, and Moderna is now looking for private funding to do so. | ||
| And the problem with that is, of course, is that if it's privately funded, the access to the vaccine will not have the same types of restraints on it as if it were publicly funded and would have much more, much broader access to the country and the world. | ||
| We're going to leave it to profit-making companies like pharmaceutical companies to get the best, the most dollar that they can for the vaccine, regardless of who it leaves out of having access to that vaccine. | ||
| And the other point I'd like to make is that the necessity for an H5N1 vaccine couldn't be greater. | ||
| The threat to the nation and the world is actually greater than COVID. | ||
| There's actually been a 50% mortality rate from the last thousand people over the last 20 years that have contracted H5N1, although it hasn't had human-to-human transmission yet, but that chances are increasing. | ||
| All right, Jeff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, let me just say, I think you bring up some really important points. | ||
| And even without getting into specifics about who funds the research, it has been tradition, science, and completely reasonable that when we know a flu vaccine is safe and effective, | ||
| every year the only thing that changes is the exact, what we call the antigen, the thing that is in the vaccine that triggers the correct part of your immune system so you're ready for the new strain of virus. | ||
| And he wants to go back and have to do the double-blind testing that takes years in order to approve the flu vaccine every single year, which means basically we won't have a flu vaccine. | ||
| So this is just another way that he is trying to undermine science. | ||
| And I also want to thank you for bringing up H5N1. | ||
| Like this is the bird flu. | ||
| And you'll notice that we haven't heard anything. | ||
| I mean, it's cricket about the bird flu for months. | ||
| It's still out there. | ||
| The egg farmers in my district know it's still out there. | ||
| And how will we know, when will we know, when there is human-to-human transmission, which would make it incredibly dangerous, and we need to have that vaccine at the ready? | ||
| Thank you for that call. | ||
| Bill in Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I'd just like to tell the Congressman Doctor that I'm a fellow pediatrician. | ||
| And the point I'd like to bring up, and as I discussed on this program with Dr. Macri, is that the COVID vaccine, in fact, did not work for children. | ||
| Children did not die of COVID. | ||
| There was no great epidemic of COVID amongst children. | ||
| So why, I'm going to ask the doctor, why should we give a vaccine that may be dangerous to children, to children, and also, secondly, why should we spend money? | ||
| We already have a $1.9 trillion deficit for a problem that doesn't exist. | ||
| All right, Bill, let's get a response. | ||
| Well, so thank you, doctor, for your question. | ||
| And I think this is one of the problems out there with the spread of information and misinformation is that people don't know just how many children did die from COVID, how many children have gotten long COVID, how many children have gotten the multi-system inflammatory condition that can land children in the hospital or kill them. | ||
| And because people are not aware of this, and then you hear people like RFK Jr. or Dr. McCary talk about this, you would think that nothing happened to children. | ||
| And that is wrong and it is untrue. | ||
| And we know the vaccine is safe and effective. | ||
| And we know that while most children do okay with this, boy, if we can prevent a child from getting long COVID that will plague them for years or maybe even for the rest of their lives, I vaccinate my child. | ||
| So why don't we just say, I believe the science. | ||
| I listened to the ACIP staffed by the people who I trusted, epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, pediatricians, who reviewed the evidence and said, you know what, overwhelmingly, safety and efficacy and utility outweigh the slight risk of side effects. | ||
| So I would encourage you to look at the evidence again. | ||
| On the line for Democrats in Maryland, Cheryl, you're next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would also like to ask, I wanted to ask a question about the Department of Education, but speaking to the effects of the vaccinations, I'm not understanding why people don't understand that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. | ||
| It's better to be proactive than to be reactive when it comes to illnesses that could wipe out populations. | ||
| But aside from that, I wanted to know: if they are planning on going ahead with dismantling the Department of Education, why then Will McMahon continue to have a job? | ||
| If there's a Department of Education and they're cutting the funds that will be detrimental to, I believe, mostly rural statesmen's Democratic states, why should she still be collecting family? | ||
| Yeah, well, I think this administration basically wants to put her out of a job and they're doing everything they can to abolish the Department of Education. | ||
| And while they cannot do that entirely, they can certainly undermine it so much that it fails to function. | ||
| And again, I want to just, in a broader sense, say that in the United States of America, we have made a promise to parents, to families, that their child, no matter where they live, will have access to a free quality education. | ||
| And that is one of the things that the Department of Education ensures. | ||
| Most of the funding comes from the states, but very important funding, funding for students with disabilities, funding to make sure that civil rights are enforced, to make sure that there is no interference of religion in our public education. | ||
| These things come from the Department of Education in addition to the student loans that help students go on either to a career in technical education or to a university in order to get even more training and education that will give them their best path to success in life. | ||
| And I just cannot overstate: you know, taking away funding from the Department of Education, kneecap. | ||
|
unidentified
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We are leaving this here to take you live to the U.S. House, where members are reconsidering a procedural motion to start working on cryptocurrency and defense spending legislation. | |
| Live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| The prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben. | ||
| Would you pray with me? |