| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
The Court and the Role of Law in American Life. | |
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAM. | ||
| Eric Watson reports on Congress for Bloomberg, joining us now. | ||
| A lot going on in both the House and Senate side. | ||
| Eric Wasson, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having me. | |
| On the House side, let's start there. | ||
| There's a deadline coming up for funding. | ||
| Tell our viewers where that deadline is and what's being done to meet it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Congress needs a bipartisan agreement by October 1st to prevent a government shutdown. | |
| Right now, it looks more likely than not we will see some kind of government shutdown. | ||
| This is due to a deep disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| Republicans are preparing as soon as this morning to unveil a stopgap bill through either November 20th or November 21st, just to keep the government on autopilot for about seven weeks. | ||
| They do not want to attach other big policies to that. | ||
| Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, wants to see major health care legislation attached to this. | ||
| He's asked for a rollback of this big, beautiful bill, Medicaid cuts, cuts to rural hospitals. | ||
| That's unlikely to happen. | ||
| But also on his list of potential demands is extending expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, without which we might see a 75% increase in some people's health care insurance. | ||
| Some Republicans are interested in that, but Senate Majority Leader John Thunen said, no way are we doing this big policy change on a short seven-week bill. | ||
| It's really going to be up to Chuck Schumer whether he sort of backs down. | ||
| In March, he did make a government shutdown threat. | ||
| In the end, he allowed just enough Democrats to vote. | ||
| This is a reminder: you need 60 votes in the Senate to clear. | ||
| Republicans don't have 60 seats. | ||
| They need at least seven Democrats. | ||
| So we could see a shutdown at the end of the month. | ||
| What's the willingness of Chuck Schumer to go ahead and let that happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, he's talking a lot tougher than he did even in March. | |
| You know, the argument then was that Trump with that peak popularity with the tariffs and other concerns, Trump's popularity would be eroded and there would be a chance for Democrats to really take on the president in a potential shutdown fight. | ||
| You know, it's just a hard argument for a congressional minority to make. | ||
| You know, if there is a clean funding bill to go up and make that argument, it's a bit convoluted. | ||
| It's a bit hard to make. | ||
| Bernie Sanders was out there this weekend making the argument that Republicans would be the ones shutting down the government if they don't negotiate with Democrats. | ||
| So really, once a shutdown begins, it's all bets are off. | ||
| But in the past, the ones who were viewed as being the ones who caused the shutdown generally tend to have to back down. | ||
| How does the narrow majority in the House complicate what majority leader, or sorry, the House Speaker Mike Johnson has to accomplish? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so normally he's got to deal with the House Freedom Caucus, but the House Freedom Caucus has really changed in this Congress. | |
| It's become sort of tamed by House Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| Even during the big, beautiful bill, the $4 trillion tax cut and spending cut bill, there were threats of voting against it at the last minute the Freedom Caucus backed down. | ||
| So the Freedom Caucus, interestingly, is kind of pushing for a full-year continuing resolution at sort of current levels. | ||
| The reason here is because the White House budget office, the Office of Management and Budget, has taken on a sort of a novel theory of the case where they're doing pocket rescissions, where they're going in and sort of canceling spending unilaterally without congressional support, something that critics call an illegal impoundment. | ||
| The courts will have to decide that. | ||
| For the Freedom Caucus, the idea is Congress just put everything on autopilot and then OMB can come in and selectively just cut the spending unilaterally. | ||
| What that act set off a lot of Republicans in the House and Senate does it come back to bite them, so to speak, in this process? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, it certainly could. | |
| You know, once Congress cedes power to the executive on spending, it's already ceded power on war powers and foreign policy. | ||
| You know, it would be hard to claw it back. | ||
| So, you know, again, in any, you know, the institutionals will say, no, Congress needs to defend the power of the purse. | ||
| We see Susan Collins, who's the leader of the Appropriations Committee, you know, against impoundment, you know, urging OMB not to take these actions, but she needs at least a few more colleagues to go along with that stance in order to block them. | ||
| Just to give viewers a sense of where the House Speaker is yesterday, he was on the Sunday shows and was asked about this idea of passage and what complicates that. | ||
| I want to play a little of that exchange and we'll talk about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were in the middle of answering about Obamacare's tax subsidies, possible sanctions against Russia, and a government funding mechanism. | |
| Please continue. | ||
| Yeah, sorry about the interruption there. | ||
| Listen, we're very encouraged that we've been able to restore the regular appropriate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, but are we going to get this done? | |
| Are those two other things going to be added to the process, Mr. Speaker? | ||
| We'll have to see. | ||
| I've got to build consensus around all of it, but I think we'll need a short-term funding measure, a clean CR that will allow more time to figure all this out. | ||
| We certainly hope that Democrats will go along on that, because if not, they really have no excuse. | ||
| If they shut the government down, it would be their unilateral decision to do so. | ||
| So, Eric Watson, two things, I have to build consensus. | ||
| That's what he has to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| And one of the elements that might be attached to this, they say clean CR, they might have more lawmaker security. | ||
| In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there's a lot of nervousness. | ||
| There's some pilot programs out there that have been done, but the speaker was telling us in a gaggle that only 20 lawmakers have opted for this extra $20,000 a year for security. | ||
| They may expand that, extend that. | ||
| But, you know, leaders in Congress have full security details, but rank-and-file members don't. | ||
| And the speaker said that would not be feasible. | ||
| It would be billions of dollars, perhaps having to hire 5,000 more U.S. Capitol police. | ||
| But they want to find some ways to keep lawmakers safe, and there's certainly a lot of nervousness now in the wake of the tragic killing. | ||
| He's also laying it at the feet of Democrats if this does not happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, right. | |
| So, yes. | ||
| So, you know, the interesting thing is the House Democratic minority, if Republicans are united, don't have to contribute a single vote to pass the CR. | ||
| In fact, everyone except for Jared Golden, the moderate Democrat from Maine, voted against the continuing resolution the government's currently running under that passed in March. | ||
| So what really matters is to Senate Democrats. | ||
| Are seven Senate Democrats going to go along? | ||
| Their votes are, in fact, needed, and that's going to be the big question at the end of the month. | ||
| And what's the message currently being delivered then by the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're really messaging on health care. | |
| There's a sense that the Big Beautiful bill, this big tax cut and Medicaid spending bill is not popular. | ||
| It's very hard for Republicans to explain. | ||
| Over August recess, it didn't get more popular despite events and other messaging from the majority. | ||
| So they feel like they can double down on this, make this fight about health care, about the fact that Medicaid is going to see a trillion dollars in cuts, some of it from work requirements, but some of it also from changes to different accounting measures that will hit rural hospitals, despite a $50 billion rural hospital emergency fund. | ||
| The cuts to rural hospitals are probably much in excess of that. | ||
| And make it about health care and make it about this Obamacare premiums. | ||
| And there's a real sense that the president, if the president realizes the political peril Republicans would be in, if middle-class members face massive health care increases, that he will actually come along. | ||
| And he has to overcome resistance by the Freedom Caucus. | ||
| Jody Arrington, the House Budget Committee Chairman, is adamant that we will not extend Obamacare premiums because it's called a bad policy. | ||
| But others are showing a little bit of willingness. | ||
| Jason Smith, the head of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction, said, look, we need income limits. | ||
| Someone making $600,000 shouldn't get this, but maybe someone closer in the middle class. | ||
| For reference, it would be about $120,000 or so for a family of four is the limit if this goes away and people making a higher salary would not get the tax subsidy. | ||
| The end of September is a deadline, but actually, how many working days are left before a deadline hits? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's the thing. | |
| There's a big recess next week for both the House and Senate, the Rosh Hashanah Jewish High Holy Days, week-long recess. | ||
| There is talk of the Senate especially coming in that weekend, the end of that week, working through the weekend. | ||
| I've canceled my plans. | ||
| I'm planning to be here. | ||
| I think that's the most likely scenario. | ||
| Congress does work up against the deadline. | ||
| And the Senate has procedural hoops to go through. | ||
| So the House could pass this Wednesday, get out of town, pass it Thursday, perhaps. | ||
| But then the Senate would have to work through some procedural hurdles. | ||
| And they probably don't want to take it right to the deadline. | ||
| Eric Wasson here at Bloomberg. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about the actions of Congress, particularly when it comes to spending or other issues, you can ask him questions on the lines. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 2027-8002. | ||
| And Texas Your Questions, too, for Eric Wasson at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's focus on the Senate. | ||
| Senator Thune's in the process of making changes to get more of President Trump's nominations through. | ||
| Tell us, first of all, how we got to this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, it's really been one of the few tools that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have is to delay these nominations. | |
| They force them to go through procedural hurdles that have literally left a backlog of over 100 nominations sitting out of committee. | ||
| So Republicans have basically decided they need to defang the Democrat ability to obstruct these nominations, and they want to do massive on-block, basically allowing one vote up or down for a block of nominees. | ||
| Now, these would be less than the cabinet. | ||
| It wouldn't be for your Secretary of Health and Human Services. | ||
| It wouldn't be Supreme Court nominations. | ||
| It would be lower level folks that we would be able to clear through. | ||
| Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have warned that this will come back to hot Republicans when they're in the minority, but Republicans are upper seat. | ||
| And there was a last-minute attempt at a deal to sort of limit the ability, the numbers here on how many nominations could be included, but that has fallen apart. | ||
| So we expect sort of this nuclear option. | ||
| They call it the nuclear option because Senate is ultimately the constitutional majoritarian body with 50 votes plus the vice president. | ||
| You can change the rules. | ||
| You could get rid of the filibuster, something that Democrats contemplated, but they didn't have the votes to do when they had the majority. | ||
| But now we see Republicans really weakening the filibuster. | ||
| This is the 60-vote requirement in the Senate. | ||
| One major thing that they did was this big, beautiful bill. | ||
| This was reconciliation, which traditionally had been an exception to the filibuster for reducing the deficit. | ||
| Then under George W. Bush, it became an ability to increase the deficit for a short period of time. | ||
| Now they've again changed it by using a different metric, a different way of measuring the deficit to say you can increase the deficit basically in the long term using it. | ||
| We continue to see this being a big hole blown in the filibuster to the point where we're on the cusp of maybe doing regular appropriations through the reconciliation process. | ||
| And all of this leads me to believe that if the Democrats ever do get the majority, again, they will just eliminate the filibuster and try to do the sort of social policy legislation that they've been itching to do, like raise the minimum wage or make D.C. a state. | ||
| The Senator Thune started the process last week. | ||
| What happened last week? | ||
| What are we watching for this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I think it's just going to go forward. | |
| We're basically going to see short of some last-minute deal. | ||
| We're expecting a key for economic nomination, Stephen Murin, to be one of the federal board of governors to be approved today in order to get him able to vote on this key matter before the Fed, the interest rate this week. | ||
| So I think we're going to see really an easing of the ability of the president to put these crucial sub-cabinet nominees in to get his policies going forward. | ||
| And this is crucial, and normally administrations take more than a year to get up and running as far as these Schedule C appointees, and we're going to see a lot more quickly put into place. | ||
| I believe one of the people on that list to be approved, include Kimberly Guilfoyle, to be ambassador of Greece. | ||
| Is that the kind of nominations we're talking at that point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we're talking about ambassador nominations. | |
| We're talking about to government commissions and panels, assistant secretaries, all the people that do need Senate confirmation. | ||
| Now, there's been some talk in the past that maybe they don't all need to be Senate confirmed, that maybe this is too languorous a process, but I think this is where the solution is going to lie. | ||
| Republicans pretty much lockstep on supporting the Senate on this one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It looks that way to me, yeah. | |
| One of the other things that the Senate's doing is something called the NDAA, defense issues and everything else. | ||
| It's a bit technical, but what is it and what's its importance in the Senate right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so the spending process in Congress is a bit convoluted. | |
| There's authorizations and then there's appropriations. | ||
| Appropriations is where the rubber meets the road. | ||
| So you've got, you know, you've got to pass a government spending bill. | ||
| The government shuts down. | ||
| Part of that is the defense spending bill. | ||
| But guiding that defense spending bill is a separate authorization bill. | ||
| And every year for decades, Congress has passed a defense authorization bill. | ||
| They failed to authorize many other programs like the State Department, but they're pretty good about doing the defense bill. | ||
| And this really lays out important things from what weapons are going to be purchased to what is our security posture on cybersecurity, for example. | ||
| How are we going to handle relations with selling foreign governments our arms like Taiwan, for example? | ||
| So this is an important piece of legislation. | ||
| It typically is done in a bipartisan manner. | ||
| It once again looking to be that way. | ||
| We have a strong alliance among defense hawks on the armed services committees. | ||
| So I'm expecting not too many big bumps here. | ||
| Of course, one of the big tensions between defense hawks in Congress and the administration is Russia. | ||
| And we're really seeing Lindsey Graham being one of the defense hawks, really pushing this idea of expanded Russia sanctions, pushing the president to really take a stronger posture, especially after Russian drones entered Poland's airspace to sort of take it into the sanctions realm. | ||
| But from congressional leaders, especially Jon Thune and others in the Senate, they want to see the president take leadership. | ||
| They're not going to put it on the floor unless the president requests it because they do differ to the president on foreign policy. | ||
| And so far, he's been saying, well, let's do this in coordination with NATO, which is actually, critics would say, a tough stance because NATO and the EU involve Hungary, which is a Putin ally. | ||
| So you need unanimity, sort of putting in Hungary's ball court. | ||
| So this is an interesting thing that could also potentially get onto the CR. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| That's the stopgap bill. | ||
| Graham is calling for that. | ||
| Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Ukraine hawk, calling for that. | ||
| That would be difficult given that the messaging from Republicans leader is a, quote, clean seal. | ||
| The NDAA on the Senate side, does the House have a version and how do the two compare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the House has passed its own version. | |
| You know, there's a myriad differences between the two, but not the sort of thing that would rise to the level of sort of a government shutdown. | ||
| They'll tend to be worked out. | ||
| A lot of times these things end up getting passed at the end of the year. | ||
| They'll go to conference and work out those differences and those will emerge in the coming weeks. | ||
| Let's hear from Andrew. | ||
| Andrew is in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with our guest, Eric Watson of Bloomberg. | ||
| He covers Congress. | ||
| Andrew in New Jersey. | ||
| Hello, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I watch C-SPAN all the time. | ||
| I also go on opensecrets.org. | ||
| But why does Congress do this every year with threatening to shut down the government, scaring people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This doesn't affect them, does it? | |
| If the government shuts down, they go home. | ||
| They go about their lives spending lives. | ||
| But why can't they just come to an agreement, the Democrats and the Republicans? | ||
| We need more than a two-party system in this country because they are not representing us anymore. | ||
| I'd like your comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I appreciate the Jersey accent. | ||
| I'm from Jersey myself. | ||
| It was nice to hear it. | ||
| You know, Congress doesn't, in fact, go home. | ||
| You know, they don't shut down. | ||
| In fact, they're supposed to remain in session and work on avoiding a shutdown. | ||
| So I think it's not necessarily pleasant for them. | ||
| And they do hear a lot, especially in this case, the defense bill has not passed so that the troops would be working without pay. | ||
| That's the interesting thing I should mention that essential workers like the troops continue to work. | ||
| They don't get paid until the shutdown is over. | ||
| Other members of the federal government are furloughed. | ||
| So that's a huge, ends up being a huge waste because they are paid eventually, but they don't work during that time. | ||
| But why is it? | ||
| The shutdown is one of the few points of sort of leverage that a minority has, and we see this happening again and again, where, especially in a highly polarized environment, which we have definitely seen over my close to 20 years covering Congress getting more and more polarized, more and more sort of, I wouldn't say vicious, but like really coming to hard terms with each other, it's becoming more and more likely that we'll see these shutdowns. | ||
| We did see the longest shutdown under President Trump, the first administration, 35 days, which was when the president was demanding funding for his border wall, and that led to a shutdown. | ||
| Eventually, the president tried an end run around Congress to sort of basically transfer money to his border wall. | ||
| That was viewed illegal in the end of the day. | ||
| That's not the issue this time because using that reconciliation bill, that partisan tax bill, they were able to fund a border wall and another massive increase in immigration enforcement. | ||
| So that's not going to be the issue this time, but here we are with health care cuts and Democrats certainly tempted to touch that hot stove of a shutdown. | ||
| Eric Watson, almost every leader in Congress, I think, has said at one time, we want to return to regular order. | ||
| We want to pass appropriations bills. | ||
| What's the status of those bills this time around? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's worth mentioning. | |
| I mean, the real issue why we have to need a stopgap is you have to pass 12 appropriations bills. | ||
| Often they're packaged into an omnibus, which is one big giant 2,000-bage bill, or mini-buses, which are like three or four combos. | ||
| But they're the ones with the detailed instructions and also the earmarks that tell agencies how they're supposed to use the money. | ||
| Now, with the new posture of the White House budget office, those are being ignored more and more. | ||
| But nonetheless, that's the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| The Senate actually has made some progress. | ||
| Susan Collins and others will be happy to point out. | ||
| It's actually gone ahead and passed three bills. | ||
| That's for Veterans Affairs, for the Department of Agriculture, and also the legislative branch itself. | ||
| And that wasn't done under the Democratic majority that was sort of put by the wayside. | ||
| The House has made some progress as well. | ||
| They've gotten their bills through committee, which is key. | ||
| The House Appropriations Committee holds these full, very public markups with dozens and dozens of amendments, and they've taken some of them to the floor. | ||
| Those are difficult, though. | ||
| The Senate has not been able to produce two of the key bills at all, the Homeland Security bill and the State Department bill. | ||
| The State Department bill is held up because if you remember, the administration took a very aggressive posture getting rid of the USAAD, Basically, dissolving the U.S. Agency for Global Media. | ||
| A lot of elements of that State Department bill are very contentious. | ||
| I think members on the Democrats would like to use that bill to reassert or maybe reinvent USAID to find some way to do foreign aid, to find food aid and global health aid. | ||
| And there are some Republicans who feel the same way, but then they want to take a careful posture toward the administration. | ||
| We heard the viewer calling in about what happens and why this happens. | ||
| There's another viewer off of X saying there's no excuse for a shutdown after they took early recess period. | ||
| How would you characterize the justification for taking the recess if they knew this deadline was coming up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, it's interesting. | |
| I mean, Congress took a very long, especially the House recess the end of July in August. | ||
| You know, they were gone for weeks and weeks coming back. | ||
| This happens every year. | ||
| But the thing is, it's not really a time element because they're so, I would say, quite frankly, addicted to working on deadline. | ||
| They're almost almost like college students. | ||
| They want to write that essay right up against the deadline or even go over it. | ||
| Even if they spent those weeks, they won't come to terms until there's actually this shutdown deadline. | ||
| So in some ways, it's kind of leaders saying, well, we might as well take time off. | ||
| To be fair, it's not all vacation time or Codel time. | ||
| It is time in the district. | ||
| I went out in August to Iowa and saw the members working hard talking to their constituents. | ||
| They do meet with constituents, which is part of their job to actually listen to the voters and other members in their district. | ||
| But at the end of the day, the leaders are kind of resigned to the fact that they won't come to a deal toward the end, so they might as well take August off as the feeling. | ||
| Eric Walsen, to another topic, what's your sense of where the House and the Senate are after the death of Charlie Kirk? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, there's a lot. | |
| My view on all this is that people need to get offline and talk to each other. | ||
| One of the great privileges of covering Congress, I talk to Republicans, Democrats all the time, in person people, 99% of the people are really nice. | ||
| I think that people, you know, have gotten really hyped up on social media, throwing bombs at each other rhetorically, and now this horrible killing. | ||
| I hope everyone just takes a step back, tries to meet their neighbor, talk to each other. | ||
| Watching this program is a good place to debate ideas. | ||
| Certainly, you may feel that people of the other party are misled, misinformed, or irrational, but violence is never the answer. | ||
| I think there's a real tragic sense. | ||
| I saw AIDS, Republican AIDS in tears this time, and we've seen it from the other side as well. | ||
| And I really respect people like Don Bacon, a good Republican centrist who was out there saying, look, this is the time, not the time to whip up anger. | ||
| Let's try to find a way to unite. | ||
| I will say that this House Speaker has been out there talking about this, trying to be more civil. | ||
| I do note that in his general demeanor, he doesn't do personal attacks. | ||
| But there are members, rank-and-file members, who right away were yelling, screaming, blaming the media, calling for investigations of the other party. | ||
| And we could certainly see us going down that road. | ||
| One of the key things is where they created a select committee to investigate Democrats. | ||
| We'll see if we go down that road. | ||
| You alluded to it, I think, but one of the questions I think that members of Congress was asking, and perhaps even the president himself, is money when it comes to security for Congress, judicial members, and the like. | ||
| Can you elaborate what the ideas are at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so the White House has requested $58 million to help boost the security for members of the executive branch. | |
| I think that could be worked into the CR. | ||
| And then there's the stopgap bill. | ||
| And then there's talk of sort of adding money for lawmakers. | ||
| My general sense is that that real discussion will happen in the context of the regular legislative branch bill, which is going to be, there's some hope of attaching this to this stopgap bill, but that's kind of faded. | ||
| There's going to be a conference committee, a very rare sort of meeting in House and Senate appropriators to work that out. | ||
| And that's where they can have a real discussion about what's needed. | ||
| You know, how do we thread that needle? | ||
| We can't provide full security, Secret Service type details to every member of Congress, although you might see that on the Senate side where there's fewer. | ||
| But can we boost people's home security? | ||
| Can we give them money to hire a bodyguard? | ||
| That's going to be part of the conversation for sure. | ||
| But one more question before we let you go. | ||
| It was announced yesterday. | ||
| He said it during his appearance. | ||
| It's the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCall saying he's planning on leaving Congress. | ||
| Another member deciding to leave. | ||
| How is that shaping up the various members who are deciding to retire and how the future of Congress looks like about who holds power come midterms? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mike McCall is one of the wisest people out there. | |
| I always enjoy talking to him. | ||
| I think he's sort of an old school Republican, you know, very sort of anti-Russia, pro-foreign policy intervention. | ||
| And he's sort of like seeing himself kind of pushed aside here. | ||
| You know, he tried to, he had the gavel of foreign affairs, lost that, tried to get Homeland Security. | ||
| I wouldn't say he was pushed out, but sort of his moment perhaps has passed. | ||
| But certainly, I think he'll be missed by many, you know, a wise person, an old hand, and we're seeing a lot of those retiring this year. | ||
| Aside from everything we've talked about, what else should our viewers watch for from Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I think this Obamacare premium thing is very interesting. | |
| I would like to see how the president weighs in on this. | ||
| This is going to be the biggest. | ||
| November 1st, a lot of people are going to get a premium letter from their health insurance provider, and they might see their monthly premium almost double. | ||
| And that's going to be a big political earthquake in this country. | ||
| I think we'll quickly come to terms on it, but I'm looking to see some kind of deal. | ||
| And then if the bill passes, what could be added to that? | ||
| You know, where there's problems with the existing tax bill, there are things that weren't passed there that Republicans would like to see added. | ||
| There are potential other reforms. | ||
| You know, one of the things is Medicare upcoding, the way in which hospitals try to bill more to Medicare. | ||
| Is there a potential for a bipartisan health care-centered bill this fall? | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| Eric Wasson, reports for Bloomberg. | ||
| You can see his work at Bloomberg.com. | ||
| Mr. Wasson, thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Well, later today, House Speaker Mike Johnson is holding a prayer vigil at the U.S. Capitol to honor the life of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Other lawmakers are also expected to attend. | ||
| We'll have that for you live starting at 6.15 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Also on C-SPAN now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| North Carolina Governor Josh Stein called for an additional $13.5 billion in federal recovery assistance nearly a year after Hurricane Helene hit his state. | ||
| He was joined by local elected officials at this 20-minute event. | ||
| Next week, as we all know, we'll mark the one-year milestone since Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina. | ||
| One year since hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians had their lives turned upside down. | ||
| The people of Western North Carolina are incredibly strong and resilient. |