| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Celebration of our nation's story. | |
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| Thank you. | ||
| Nevada Democrat Dina Titus joins us from Capitol Hill. | ||
| She serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. | ||
| Congresswoman, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for having me. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Joining us on the last day, workday, before the House heads home for the August recess, what is the message you're going to be bringing back to your constituents in Nevada this August recess? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm going to be all over the district. | |
| I'm not going off on any Codells. | ||
| I'm going to be there at home, even though we're anticipating 120-degree temperatures in the desert there in Las Vegas. | ||
| But we're going to be having some town halls, meeting with different groups, just doing a couple of protests in front of Social Security offices, talking about what this big, beautiful BS bill is going to do to the people of my district. | ||
| And it's not going to be pretty. | ||
| What is the bill going to do to the people of your district? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it hurts us in a number of ways. | |
| One, cutting back on health insurance. | ||
| You know, Las Vegas is a big service economy. | ||
| A lot of people work two part-time jobs, don't have health insurance. | ||
| They depend on Medicaid or they depend on Obamacare. | ||
| So that cut back will put people in a situation where they won't be able to afford insurance. | ||
| And if you have it, your rates will go up. | ||
| Number of people in my district rely on food stamps and nourishment assistance. | ||
| That will be gone. | ||
| We have the greatest investment in renewable energy solar in Nevada. | ||
| We're the sunniest state in the country. | ||
| All those provisions have been cut back and that created a lot of jobs. | ||
| So that's going to have an impact both on employment and in cost of electricity. | ||
| Plus all the things that have been going on have impacted our tourism economy. | ||
| Tourism is down and of course that's the big employer. | ||
| How much do the people of your district there in Nevada hear about Jeffrey Epstein? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh well, you know, Nevada loves a scandal and so we hear a lot about that. | |
| We're waiting to see what the Las Vegas connection is going to be because there usually always is one, but those pictures haven't come out yet. | ||
| But also Nevadans are pretty straightforward. | ||
| Regardless of what party you belong to, they just want government to tell them like it is and get out of the way. | ||
| So if they think you're hiding something or covering up something, they're not going to like it. | ||
| How much are you planning to talk about Jeffrey Epstein in the coming six weeks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we'll talk about it, but it's not going to be the number one theme. | |
| I mean, the number one theme is the economic impact of the recent policies that have been put forth by Trump and the Republicans in Congress. | ||
| James Carville in the pages of today's New York Times writes this about Democrats and messaging going into this August recess and ahead of the midterms. | ||
| This is what he writes. | ||
| There's plenty of tantalizing political scandal surrounding the president right now, but issues of moral or ethical concern are almost always more powerful when they're self-inflicted. | ||
| Let President Trump rope a dope with MAGA on the Jeffrey Epstein case and don't get in the way. | ||
| Instead, the midterms will, like all elections, be decided largely based on issues that affect Americans' everyday lives. | ||
| He said, our midterm march starts with the simple phrase, every candidate can blast on every screen and stage. | ||
| We demand a repeal. | ||
| A repeal of Mr. Trump's spending law is the one word that should define the midterms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's right. | |
| And that's what Democrats have been talking about. | ||
| Every way that we can, we want to roll back those provisions. | ||
| Now, some of them don't go into effect until after the election, so people won't feel them immediately, but that gives us a little time to perhaps make some progress either through the appropriations process, through the amendment process, through the regulatory process, some way that we can undo some of the damage that has been done. | ||
| So, I think repeal is fine. | ||
| But I think the Democrats need to stop focusing on messaging. | ||
| We don't need to play the same game that the Republicans are playing. | ||
| We need to get back to what we do best and talk about solutions. | ||
| Congressman Dina Titus with us until the House comes in 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| It's about 22 minutes from now, and we'll, of course, go there live for gabble-gabble coverage when they do come in. | ||
| You can join us with your phone calls on Phone Lines for Democrats, 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, Congresswoman, I know you were listening in to the end of that last conversation on USAID and foreign service abroad. | ||
| What will be the impact of cuts to USAID from your perch on the Foreign Service Committee? | ||
| How do you see this impacting America's position abroad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's the most short-sighted thing that we could do because everywhere we pull back, China is ready to go in there in a second. | |
| And this is such a small investment. | ||
| Less than 1% of the budget goes into foreign aid, despite people thinking it's larger than that. | ||
| And we buy so much with so little in terms of goodwill, whether it's health programs in Africa, nutrition programs. | ||
| And you know, those nutrition programs help the people not only there with little children who are malnourished, but back here at home because it's our farmers that grow the peanuts that go into making that high-protein substance that we are able to give to children. | ||
| And so, if we're not there to have some goodwill to be the leader of the world like we have been in the past, China will be only too ready to step in. | ||
| And we need some friends around the world, and we're losing them pretty fast. | ||
| Here's another foreign affairs news story. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press today. | ||
| The Trump administration announced yesterday that it will once again withdraw from the UN Cultural Agency, UNESCO, and move that the U.S. shows the U.S. further retreating from the international organization. | ||
| The State Department spokeswoman said in a statement that the withdrawal was linked to UNESCO's perceived agenda to advance diverse social and cultural causes. | ||
| She says she goes on to say that UNESCO's decision in 2011 to admit the state of Palestine as a member state is highly problematic and contrary to U.S. policy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, this is so in keeping with Trump's agenda on many fronts. | |
| He did this when he was in office before, and then we got back in under President Biden's administration. | ||
| Preserving the historic sites around the world should just be a no-brainer. | ||
| Why would that become politicized? | ||
| And, you know, he's so anti-diversity that it fits. | ||
| He's so anti-culture. | ||
| He's erasing museums. | ||
| He's going after Smithsonian, going after the Kennedy Center, even going after the zoo because he thinks something about that. | ||
| Maybe the pandas, I don't know, don't fit with his agenda. | ||
| And Palestine is already an observer in the UN, so are you just going to pull out of the UN altogether? | ||
| Once again, it's just this kind of isolationist America first, but it's really America alone. | ||
| And it's not surprising, but I think it's a big mistake. | ||
| Let me let you chat with a few callers here. | ||
| Aleana is in Michigan, line for Democrats up first. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was listening to you earlier speak about in terms of pushing back on Trump's new policies that have been entering the House. | ||
| And a big issue that we've been seeing, especially for Democrats, is the fact that there's been a lot of messaging going on rather than, like you mentioned. | ||
| And I was wondering, like, what kind of solutions or like ideas do you have in mind to push back? | ||
| Well, we're doing everything that we can. | ||
| You know, we're in the minority in both houses. | ||
| He has the presidency and the administration, controls the courts, and many state legislatures are also falling in line with his agenda. | ||
| Universities are caving to his pressure. | ||
| Big churches, big corporations are pulling back from some of their longtime diversity policies. | ||
| So we're facing it on all fronts. | ||
| But we have introduced bills, we've introduced resolutions, we've signed on to amicus briefs, we've tried to get things brought to the floor for discharge petitions. | ||
| We have attended rallies. | ||
| We are holding town hall meetings in our own districts and in red districts where those Republicans won't face their voters because they know what they're going to hear. | ||
| And we're encouraging our constituents to write in, call in, keep the message going. | ||
| And I think that's being pretty successful. | ||
| But in the meantime, what we need to do in getting ready towards the next election, but we got a year and a half to work on this, is that we need an agenda. | ||
| You know, you had the old contract on America under Newt Gingrich. | ||
| Let's have a contract with America. | ||
| Let's come up with, say, five things that we'll do when we take back the keys of the House, whether it's insurance or whether it's renewable energy or whether it's better education. | ||
| Housing is a big problem. | ||
| Let's be real specific. | ||
| Lay those out there so people will know we got a plan. | ||
| We're not just anti-Trump. | ||
| This is Joseph in Laurel, Maryland Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Dina Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Representative Titus. | |
| A question for you. | ||
| We have been supporting, or USAAID has been supporting sub-Saharan Africa for about seven years now. | ||
| I met a gentleman and a lady, one from Sierra Leone and one from Ghana, and they said that, yeah, when we were British colonies, things were good. | ||
| We had good roads, we had sanitation, we had drinking water that was pure. | ||
| Once they left and we now had dictators take over, all the money being funneled down to these countries have been staying in the coffers of the leaders, not getting to the people. | ||
| As a result, the people are living in stark poverty. | ||
| Roads are terrible. | ||
| It's not sanitary, etc. | ||
| There's a saying that says, if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. | ||
| If you teach a man how to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. | ||
| That money, 1%, is small. | ||
| Why not give it to Americans who are in need and use it wisely? | ||
| I wait your response. | ||
| Well, I think your evidence is anecdotal. | ||
| Talking to two people who wish back for the old colonial days probably is not a reflection of what most of the population in those countries feel. | ||
| I don't think they want to go back to colonial powers. | ||
| Second, you know, we have to be careful how we spend that money. | ||
| There's no question about it. | ||
| We need for it to be bottom-up. | ||
| We need to use NGOs. | ||
| We need to use leaders, have free press in these countries. | ||
| So it doesn't just go to dictators. | ||
| And we need to encourage those legislatures through democracy building to hold those dictators accountable, whether it's through elections or through more transparency. | ||
| But taking that 1% to help Americans, I think, is a false equivalency. | ||
| There are lots of programs that do help Americans. | ||
| And by helping people around the world, you are helping Americans because it protects our national security. | ||
| And as I pointed out earlier, a lot of the medicine that we use is from the U.S. | ||
| A lot of the food products that go to these hungry children come from the U.S. | ||
| That money is spent in the U.S. for those products to go abroad. | ||
| So I think there's much more to that story than those two people you talked to. | ||
| Rogers, Minnesota, this is Terry Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| See, the problem is this. | ||
| They've been funded for 70 years. | ||
| They spent $68 billion last year. | ||
| And I'm just looking at the results. | ||
| They say, oh, this is effective. | ||
| I look at Africa. | ||
| I look at the world. | ||
| I look at terrorism. | ||
| I don't see that it's worked at all. | ||
| I mean, let's face it, you say, well, it helped their education system. | ||
| Our education system is a complete disaster right now. | ||
| I don't understand the theory of giving away that much money with no results. | ||
| I mean, you say, oh, it's wonderful to do this. | ||
| Well, yeah, but it hasn't resulted in anything. | ||
| The outcome is not zero. | ||
| Dina Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't really see how you can say the outcome is zero if you look at some progress with democracy, you look at some economic progress, you look at some of our trade agreements where we have benefited here at home from their development that we have fostered. | |
| So it's not zero. | ||
| Now, if you want to take that money and invest it here, you tell me where you want to invest it because the same people who are against spending the money on foreign aid don't want to invest it in schools at the federal level. | ||
| They say leave it to the states or they don't want to invest it in health care. | ||
| You know, leave it to the individual to tough it out on their own. | ||
| So you got to make up your mind. | ||
| Do you want to invest it here? | ||
| Do you not want to invest it there? | ||
| Do you not want to invest it, period, and have anarchy? | ||
| You know, maybe that's the new Republican agenda, but it's not one that my constituents think is going to work. | ||
| About 10 minutes left with Dina Titus. | ||
| The House coming in at 10 a.m. Eastern and the Senate also in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 respectively. | ||
| Dina Titus, back to your constituents and the Las Vegas area. | ||
| What is the Fair Bet Act? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, this is a provision that I have introduced to return to the way it was for the past 50 years. | |
| You know, when the big, beautiful BS bill came out of the House, this provision wasn't in there, but it was put in in the Senate. | ||
| Now, here's how it works. | ||
| If you bet $1,000 and you win $1,000, but you also keep on playing and you lose $1,000, right now it's a wash. | ||
| You got no income, so you don't have to pay any income tax. | ||
| The way the Senate changed it is if you win $1,000 and you lose $1,000, then you've got to pay income tax on $100 because you can only deduct 90%. | ||
| So you're going to pay income tax on money that you don't have because now you can only deduct 90%. | ||
| Well, that's not fair. | ||
| I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, taxing money that you don't have is just not fair. | ||
| And so what I want to do is go back to the way it was so it's a wash and you don't get taxed on this phantom income that you don't get. | ||
| If the legislation in the Big Beautiful Bill continues, what is it going to do to Las Vegas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that will have an impact because it's not just your high-end professional poker players who are concerned about that deduction. | |
| Think of how many people around the country bet on their phones now. | ||
| They bet on football games or they take one weekend and go to a casino and play slot machines. | ||
| People all across the country, all walks of life, like to play a little of some game of their choice. | ||
| So this has a big impact. | ||
| And it not only impacts the player, but it's going to impact the industry because if you go somewhere to bet and gamble and go to big football weekend or poker championship, you're going to spend a little money on a hotel room or a meal or go shopping. | ||
| And so that impacts the industry. | ||
| And it impacts the community because people aren't going to itemize and pay the tax. | ||
| They're just not going to declare it because why would they if they're going to be penalized? | ||
| So you're not going to get the tax revenue that they anticipate. | ||
| Plus, people will go to the black market or go gamble overseas. | ||
| They won't be playing with our companies or investing in our tax structure or our bricks and mortar. | ||
| And that means jobs. | ||
| Out of curiosity, do you gamble? | ||
| Do you have a game of choice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I like to shoot craps every now and then when a company comes to town and we go out on the strip. | |
| Sean is next out of California. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How's everyone doing? | ||
| And Miss Titus, I love you. | ||
| Vegas is my second home. | ||
| I'm only 165 miles from you and I've been coming to Vegas pretty much about 40 years now. | ||
| However, I didn't get it at the time with the USAID. | ||
| Americans, please listen up and listen up really well. | ||
| We have to help other countries because we're going to need that help one day. | ||
| Also, when there are diseases and things that are occurring in other countries, we are needing to make sure that we draw attention to that to suppress that before it starts getting over to opposite countries. | ||
| Now, I have a niece in Africa, and she's now getting ready to take her nurse practitioners, but she's done all of the groundwork, lived there, and helped her people. | ||
| So let's stop being selfish Americans and only thinking about ourselves. | ||
| Because I work two jobs. | ||
| I'm 60 years old. | ||
| I'm not probably planning on retiring for another probably 12 years. | ||
| And I know I paid money from California to help with a lot of our other states. | ||
| Also, USAID helps us for like in Texas, when we were looking for all of those people, we should have had people down there on the ground to helping USAID need to always exist because America would need help just as well as other countries. | ||
| Finally, Mrs. Titus, I know that there was a fire recently in the Grand Canyon. | ||
| I know Harry Reed was a biggie on this. | ||
| He was born in Nevada. | ||
| So I'm really curious that there's not anything out there that can start fires besides humans or people that are trying to come and steal that land. | ||
| Please talk a little bit more about how we can help as people with USAID if our government won't help. | ||
| And also, how can we protect our Grand Canyon because we need that Colorado River? | ||
| Got your questions. | ||
| Congresswoman Titus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a lot to unwrap. | |
| But first, let me say I'm glad you come to my district and you're welcome anytime. | ||
| If you ever get in trouble there, call me and I'll try to come bail you out. | ||
| But you make such a good point about USAID and people needing help when you mentioned about diseases and we're going to need help too. | ||
| You know, diseases don't stop at the border. | ||
| They don't know borders. | ||
| They travel the worldwide. | ||
| We've seen that with COVID. | ||
| Weather doesn't stop at the border. | ||
| It doesn't know where the border is. | ||
| It travels worldwide. | ||
| We need coordination there. | ||
| Energy and pollution, another thing that we need to work with the rest of the world. | ||
| And you are so right. | ||
| We need friends. | ||
| And we have been alienating our allies even across Europe, our oldest allies going back to the French in the Revolutionary War. | ||
| So we're going to need those friends and we're going to need them now, not just in developing countries, but to stand up against the march of Putin across Europe from Ukraine. | ||
| So I completely agree with you on that. | ||
| Now, as far as the forest fires and the public lands, I'm very strongly in support of protecting our public lands for future generations, for the good of the planet, for the old petroglyphs and cultural aspects of Native American tribes that were there long before we were. | ||
| Now, there's been a big push by the Republicans to sell off public lands, sell them off to developers and let them come in, do logging, do suburbs, do any oil and gas drilling. | ||
| And so that's something that we're having to fight. | ||
| I know that some of the Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee are on my side on this, and they're looking into what happened with that fire and about our readiness. | ||
| But you know, if we strip back FEMA and we strip back the weather service and we strip back fire response EMTs, who's going to fight those fires? | ||
| And now that goes back to the Republican question of taking care of our own. | ||
| Who's going to be there when your house starts to catch on fire and you need to call somebody for help? | ||
| So we're on the same page on that. | ||
| So I'll see you in Las Vegas. | ||
| How much of the state of Nevada is federal government land, be it National Park or BLM? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, outside of Alaska, we have the most federal land. | |
| It's about 86% of the state. | ||
| And that includes military bases, the Nevada test site, a national park, BLM, and Forest Service land. | ||
| So it's a big swath of land that's in trust by the federal government for future generations. | ||
| Does the government need to own 86% of the state of Nevada? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I support giving some of it up, and I have supported some lands bills, but you need to match the land that you free up for development with land you put in conservation, and that's often not the case. | |
| Also, the land that you give up needs to be around already settled areas, so you're not creating urban sprawl, stringing out infrastructure that somebody's going to have to pay for. | ||
| And remember, it's a desert. | ||
| So if you give up that public land and create more development for more people, you're going to need more water. | ||
| And we already know the Colorado River is down. | ||
| Lake Mead is way down. | ||
| Where is that water going to come from? | ||
| Just a few minutes left before the House comes in. | ||
| Time for maybe one or two more phone calls. | ||
| This is Mike in North Carolina, Republican Line. | ||
| Mike, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My thing is illegal immigration. | ||
| You remember when Biden famously walked across the thing and he says, I can't do nothing with the border. | ||
| Give me legislation. | ||
| Well, Trump came in here. | ||
| He didn't need legislation. | ||
| He cut the border, shut it down. | ||
| Biden administration in New York has let over 11 million people, unvetted people, come in. | ||
| And they are doing crimes. | ||
| Look at what happened in New York in the two, from Dominican Republican. | ||
| Look at the one in Chicago beheaded a woman and stuck her in a dang tote in the backyard. | ||
| And the Biden administration is open borders. | ||
| And in my opinion, the census needs to be for American citizens because Democrats. | ||
| Got your point, Mike. | ||
| Tina Titus, I want to give you a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yes, I don't think anybody disagrees that we need an immigration policy. | |
| We need to redo immigration, whether it's about at the border with more resources there, whether it's dealing with a revision of the visa process, whether it's helping people to become citizens who want to do the right thing and come here to escape economic or injustice or political violence for a better life for their families. | ||
| We're all immigrants at one point in our families' lives. | ||
| There is currently a bipartisan bill that's just been recently introduced to kind of address all those things. | ||
| And I support that. | ||
| I think we do need to move forward. | ||
| You know, Biden was, I mean, not Biden. | ||
| Trump was going to fix everything on day one. | ||
| He was going to end the war in Gaza, going to end the war in Ukraine, going to fix immigration in day one. | ||
| Well, that's not possible. | ||
| And of course, he hasn't done that. | ||
| Now, the numbers about immigration fly around. | ||
| All sides have different numbers and a lot of focus on the more extreme cases, which you could find in any criminal class. | ||
| But, you know, what we need to do is fix it so people who want to be citizens can do the right thing. | ||
| People who are criminals are put in the criminal process, whether it's here or where they came from. | ||
| And look at it from the big picture where you don't separate families. | ||
| Everybody's got a shot at the American dream. | ||
| And we do the right thing for the people who are already here and the people who may want to come here. | ||
| As we wait for the House to come in, it should be about a minute or so here. | ||
| Congresswoman, yesterday on this program, we asked a question to Democratic viewers only. | ||
| Sometimes we split up our questions that way. | ||
| And we asked Democrats, are you satisfied with the direction of the party right now? | ||
| How would you answer that question in this final 60 seconds or so? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the party needs to do some soul searching, but we can't spend all our time navel gazing, as I have said. | |
| We got to start thinking about the future. | ||
| The Biden administration is over. | ||
| A lot of people want to be the leader of this party. | ||
| We need to settle on someone to be our national spokesperson. | ||
| And we need to talk about what we're going to do. | ||
| The divisions between the far left and the moderates, we've got to work that out. | ||
| The divisions between generations, we need to work that out. | ||
| But the strength of the Democratic Party has always been that we're a big tent. | ||
| We welcome people into this party, and when you do that, you're going to have dissent. | ||
| But we just need to get that dissent focused into energy for moving forward with this country and with the party at the same time. | ||
| Congresswoman Dina Titus, Democrat from Nevada. | ||
| We'll let you get to your day on Capitol Hill. | ||
| We appreciate your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| This is the headline from the lead story on the front page of today's Washington Times. |