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The enhanced subsidies of the Affordable Care Act health insurance plans that are set to expire at the end of the year with Cato Institute Health Policy Studies Director Michael Cannon and Families USA Executive Director Anthony Wright. | |
| And then we'll discuss day 10 of the government shutdown first with Missouri Republican Congressman Mark Alford and with Wisconsin Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning, everyone, and welcome to The Washington Journal. | ||
| On this Friday, October 10th, we'll begin with the news this morning that President Trump was not awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, a recognition he has spoken about many times, pointing to his efforts to end wars and following the Phase 1 ceasefire he brokered between Israel and Hamas this week. | ||
| We want to know from you, should President Trump have won the Nobel Peace Prize? | ||
| Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you don't want to call, you can text at 202-748-8003 or join us on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And you can also post on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| The announcement came at 5 a.m. this morning about the Nobel Peace Prize winner. | ||
| We'll get into the winner in just a minute. | ||
| But the announcement came right before President Trump is slated to travel to the Middle East. | ||
| He could be leaving today for those travels as a ceasefire was announced earlier this week between Israel and Hamas. | ||
| The president, most recently, before military generals who were all called back to Washington had this to say about winning the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| President Trump saved millions and millions of lives. | ||
| That was a bad war. | ||
| And I was very honored. | ||
| I love the way he said it. | ||
| Susie Wiles was there. | ||
| She said that was the most beautiful thing. | ||
| But we saved a lot of them. | ||
| Saved a lot of them. | ||
| Even in Africa, we saved the Congo with Rwanda. | ||
| They've been fighting for 31 years, 10 million people dead. | ||
| I got that one done. | ||
| And I'm very proud of it. | ||
| So if this works out, we'll have eight. | ||
| Eight in eight months. | ||
| That's pretty good. | ||
| Nobody's ever done that. | ||
| Will you get the Nobel Prize? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing. | ||
| They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the wars. | ||
| And he'll get the Nobel Prize will go to a writer. | ||
| But let's see what happens. | ||
| But it'll be a big insult to our country. | ||
| I will tell you that. | ||
| I don't want it. | ||
| I want the country to get it. | ||
| It should get it because there's never been anything like it. | ||
| Think of it. | ||
| So if this happens, I think it will. | ||
| I don't say that lightly because I know more about deals than anybody. | ||
| This is what my whole life was based on. | ||
| And they can change, and this can certainly change. | ||
| But we have just about everybody. | ||
| We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don't sign. | ||
| I hope they sign for their own good and we create something really great. | ||
| But to have done eight of them is just like such an honor. | ||
| President Trump, at the end of September, to military generals talking about winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he was not awarded this year in 2025. | ||
| Yesterday, in the Oval Office, when he met with the President of Finland, he also addressed the award. | ||
| Here's what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
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How do you rate your chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow? | |
| Well, look, I made seven deals, and now it's eight. | ||
| Solved the wars, one going 31 years, one going 34 years, one going 35 years, one going 10 years. | ||
| I made seven deals. | ||
| This would be number eight. | ||
| So I know one thing, I don't know what they're going to do, really, but I know this, that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. | ||
| And I've stopped eight wars. | ||
| So that's never happened before. | ||
| But they'll have to do what they do. | ||
| Whatever they do is fine. | ||
| I know this. | ||
| I didn't do it for that. | ||
| I did it because I saved a lot of lives. | ||
| President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, Fox News with the headline, this morning, Nobel Peace Prize goes to Maria Carina Machado, who is a Venezuelan activist, despite calls for Trump to receive the award. | ||
| Trump could still be eligible for next year's prize. | ||
| We're asking all of you: should the president have won or should he win next year the Nobel Peace Prize? | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| Mark Thiessen writes in his column today, yes, Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| And he writes in the piece that four of his predecessors have won the prize. | ||
| Barack Obama won seven months into his presidency essentially for not being George W. Bush. | ||
| And even he said he didn't deserve it. | ||
| Woodrow Wilson won for creating the League of Nations, which proved to be a feckless disaster that the United States never even joined. | ||
| Theodore Roosevelt won for ending a single conflict, the Russia-Japanese War, which began with Japan's 1904 attack on the Russian fleet. | ||
| And then he goes on to say Jimmy Carter won in 2002 for more than two decades, more than two decades after leaving the White House for a lifetime of work in peacemaking, beginning with the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. | ||
| Contrast this with Trump's record. | ||
| In his first term, Trump brokered not one, not two, not three, but four Arab-Israeli peace accords, the first such agreements in more than a quarter century. | ||
| He did it by rejecting the failed conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, which said that there could be no separate peace without the Palestinians, and that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and confronting Iran's aggression would inflame the region and put peace out of reach. | ||
| Those moves did the opposite. | ||
| The Abraham Accords alone were an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize. | ||
| That's Mark Thiessen writing in today's editorial piece in the Washington Post. | ||
| And he ends by saying this, this much is certain. | ||
| From the Middle East to Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Europe, no president has done more for the cause of peace than Donald Trump. | ||
| If that does not earn him a Nobel Prize, the prize has no meaning. | ||
| We want to get your reaction to this this morning. | ||
| Edwin, in North Carolina Democratic caller. | ||
| Edwin, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm saying that Donald John Trump, unless these things are finalized, doesn't deserve anything. | |
| Because of the fact of the matter is, you have a person who's in line with Mike Johnson that gets on C-SPAN and smiles when a lady who's a dependent of an active duty person has to go on a soup line for food because of this budget scenario. | ||
| And then Mike Johnson has the nerve to say that a female who goes to an emergency room, her bill is going to be paid less than an undocumented or citizen. | ||
| In 1985, Ronald Reagan signed a law stating that if anybody shows up in the emergency room to get Medicare, that bill has to be paid. | ||
| All right, Edwin, let's stick to the Nobel Peace Prize conversation this morning. | ||
| We're going to talk about the government shutdown day 10 coming up on the Washington Journal. | ||
| But when it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
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He doesn't deserve it. | |
| As far as I'm concerned, it's all this chatter, everything else not taking care of our country here in North America. | ||
| That's my view. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Edwin there, a Democratic caller in North Carolina. | ||
| The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was on the Washington Journal yesterday. | ||
| He sat here in the studio and took our viewer phone calls. | ||
| First time a speaker has done that in many years. | ||
| And we'll show you what he had to say to a military mom that called in during yesterday's program. | ||
| That's coming up on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Eric in Texas, Independent. | ||
| Eric, good morning to you. | ||
| What do you say this morning? | ||
| President Trump, not the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, what I would say is people who win the Nobel Peace Prize don't publicize a thousand times that they want it. | |
| They're usually surprised when they get it. | ||
| And another thing, how do you win the Nobel Peace Prize when you're blowing people up in boats outside of the country in international waters without any due process for them? | ||
| And I think we should give him a runner-up prize, though. | ||
| We should give him the Nobel Prick Prize. | ||
| Eric in Texas, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, announced this morning at 5 a.m. | ||
| The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided the award for 2025. | ||
| This is from their post on X. | ||
| The Nobel Peace Prize would go to Maria Carina Machado for the tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. | ||
| That this morning from on X from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. | ||
| Bill in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Well, I don't think you deserve it at all with all stuff going on. | ||
| You got like a third world country having our own Army kids coming in fighting against us. | ||
| You know, and that's terrible. | ||
| And I don't let you know. | ||
| You mean because of sending the military to U.S. cities, you don't think he deserves it because of that? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, that's more to it, but I won't have time to tell you all that. | |
| But how could he do that when our country is all the way down right now? | ||
| We got people hungry, need insurance, all that. | ||
| So how could he get that? | ||
| Didn't he be promoting it for himself? | ||
| And just like that one caller say, that's going to come to you. | ||
| Big surprise. | ||
| You know, I know that's something you want to put on his wish list there. | ||
| But being a Republican, though, I don't like the way he's doing things right now. | ||
| I think that he pushed that, he pushed it and pushed it. | ||
| Then I want to know the wars he stopped. | ||
| You know, let me know them wars that he stopped. | ||
| I don't know the ones he stopped. | ||
| You know, I don't need some war here and they had in Iraq, but he hadn't did anything in Russia against Kahui. | ||
| So he haven't done anything about that yet. | ||
| So that's why I would have seen, you know, but no, he don't deserve it right now. | ||
| And the polls showing it that he don't. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bill in Ohio, a Republican. | ||
| The Nobel Peace Prize from NobelPrize.org. | ||
| How it started. | ||
| When the inventor, entrepreneur, and businessman Alfred Noble died, his will stated that his fortune was to be used to reward, quote, those who during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. | ||
| Nobel's prize would reward outstanding efforts in the fields that he was most involved in during his lifetime: physics, chemistry, physiology, or medicine, literature, and peace. | ||
| Jake in New York, Democratic caller. | ||
| Jake, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| What do you think about this news this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
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First, I want to be very clear that there's reporting from Al Jazeera yesterday that the Israeli army actually strikes Gaza even after the so-called agreement. | |
| So let's just be very clear. | ||
| Israel does not want to have any form of peace at this moment. | ||
| Now, while Hamas are monsters, I completely agree. | ||
| The problem is that this war is not even close to being solved, and there's been no deal or no finalization of how they're going to come to this agreement between now and to the end. | ||
| The first phase has shown that it's been a failure. | ||
| And for Mr. Trump, just keep stating that now he's tacking out another war he has solved. | ||
| We have still seen no documentation about how these other wars have been solved. | ||
| So we can keep talking about this on and on. | ||
| But right now, peace in the Middle East is something that's been going on, or the concept of trying to solve it has been going on for years and years. | ||
| And I have seen nothing for that to change. | ||
| And let's remember, this is not about the hostages, the Benjamin Net Yahoo, anymore. | ||
| This is about raw power, and this will continue as long as possible. | ||
| So thank you very much for your time. | ||
| And let's see how this continues. | ||
| All right, Jake in New York, Democratic caller with his thoughts. | ||
| Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| The national papers noting that Israel has approved the deal for ceasefire in Gaza. | ||
| Accord with Hamas could spur plan for war's end. | ||
| That is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| As that caller noted, Al Jazeera noted this on their front page of their website, Gaza City residents set to return as Israel bombs before ceasefire starts. | ||
| So that's the headline from Al Jazeera that Jake was noting. | ||
| There's also this from the Horetz newspaper out of Israel. | ||
| Gaza's ceasefire takes effect as IDF completes pullback and hostages slated for release within 72 hours. | ||
| Bob in Rhode Island. | ||
|
unidentified
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Bob, good morning. | |
| From the provincial newspaper. | ||
| Bob, you have to listen and talk through your phone. | ||
| Mute that television. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm listening. | |
| I'm listening. | ||
| Then it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go. | |
| Well, yeah, because I'm watching it too. | ||
| I've got to turn that off now. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, Greta. | |
| Morning. | ||
| All right, Bob. | ||
| I'm going to put you on hold, see if we can get this straightened out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Robin in Maryland, Republican caller. | |
| Hi, Robin. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I absolutely think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| He has stopped or been very instrumental in stopping a war. | ||
| Big deal. | ||
| He's bringing our hostages home. | ||
| Huge deal. | ||
| He has all of the Arab nations, all of them, supporting this deal. | ||
| How does an American president get all of the other countries to support Israel and the peace talk? | ||
| He is an amazing person. | ||
| And I just want to say it breaks my heart to hear all of these callers that hate Trump so much. | ||
| They don't want to see the President of the United States get the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| It's just pure hate of Trump that makes people say, no, he doesn't deserve it. | ||
| So thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| All right. | ||
| There is Robin. | ||
| We'll go to Kevin next, who's in Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning, Greta. | |
| I guess there's a couple points. | ||
| I think Donald Trump's, just as a general person, is probably going to go down as the most divisive president in American history. | ||
| I mean, you just look at the country at large and how they faction people against each other, really for their own political gain. | ||
| In my 55 years, I've never seen our country continue that we're back into this chaos. | ||
| It's this unrest everywhere, just in our own country, all this divisiveness. | ||
| And these folks who always say, oh, they just hate Donald Trump. | ||
| It's because everything he does is he divides us. | ||
| He never tries to unite us. | ||
| And I'm talking bipartisan. | ||
| This is the first guy in my lifetime who spends his entire time trying to divide the American people. | ||
| And then the second thing is those who say, oh, he's solved these eight wars. | ||
| Not one person could name two of those wars. | ||
| We don't even know what he's talking about. | ||
| And because he's so dishonest all the time, you don't even know what's true and what's not true. | ||
| And the last point is we sat back for nine months, 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. | ||
| Donald Trump has sat back and let B.B. Netanyahu and the far-right government in Israel just annihilate innocent people. | ||
| Hamas is animals and they're terrible, but we sat back and 65,000 children, women, innocent people have been slaughtered while we sit back and then he kind of swoop in and say, oh, we're going to solve this. | ||
| Let's wait five years and see what out of all these things, which still stands, and then maybe consider something like that. | ||
| Barack Obama, Top. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| No, go ahead. | ||
| Finish your thought, Kevin. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Randy in Wisconsin, Republican. | ||
| Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning, Greta. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, how about the Pakistan-Indian War? | ||
| He solved that one. | ||
| How about what he did with Iran? | ||
| Just to name a couple of wars that he stopped with Iran and Israel. | ||
| I mean, a lot of these Democrats, they're the ones that are these sizes that are causing all this trouble here. | ||
| I mean, get on board, guys. | ||
| Now, as far as the Nobel Peace Prize goes, the Nobel Peace Prize is a democratically run institution. | ||
| Take that Nobel Peace Prize and put it on the shelf and just turn it into a dust collector. | ||
| Because what it should be from now on, and it's something that President Trump could start. | ||
| How about the Trump Peace Award? | ||
| It's a peace award that goes to anybody, just a peace award now. | ||
| I'm not talking about anything with schooling or anything else, what the Nobel Prize does, but it could go to great presidents that were at peace. | ||
| For instance, Roosevelt, Truman. | ||
| How about President Reagan, you know, after the wall came down? | ||
| There's another good one. | ||
| And it'd be a Trump peace award that would be handed out through a committee. | ||
| And it'd be called the Trump. | ||
| President Trump would probably be one of another recipient of it. | ||
| Look what he's done. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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He's for peace. | |
| All right, Randy, take a look at what Axios put together about these eight wars that President Trump references. | ||
| Second term, Gaza deal, Israel versus Iran. | ||
| This was reported previously. | ||
| The peace agreement announced Wednesday arrived two years after Hamas's October 7th attack, with more than 67,000 Palestinians killed, Axios previously reported. | ||
| Negotiations to finalize the deal took place in Egypt. | ||
| The U.S. was represented by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, negotiators from Israel Hamas, as well as mediators from Middle Eastern countries. | ||
| The phase one deal was based on the 20-point peace plan Trump unveiled last week. | ||
| Hamas agreed to release the remaining Israel hostages while Israel is set to withdraw troops from the Gaza and observe a ceasefire. | ||
| Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two countries who have fought a series of conflicts since the late 1980s, signed a peace agreement in early August at the White House. | ||
| Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. | ||
| The conflict in eastern Congo has lasted for decades in various forms, causing a massive humanitarian crisis and displacing millions of people. | ||
| In June, the U.S. brokered a peace agreement that was signed at the White House. | ||
| However, little has changed on the ground since the agreement, seen in reports. | ||
| The Congolese Army and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group have since accused each other of violating the agreements by launching attacks and building up troops. | ||
| Israel and Iran. | ||
| Troop bombed the Iran troop. | ||
| Trump bombed Iran during the 12-day war in June, but later brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran to end the conflict. | ||
| The White House has claimed the strike stalled Iran's nuclear program, delayed any potential conflict. | ||
| Israel has said it may attack Iran again if Tehran starts to rebuild. | ||
| Trump has teased fresh talks with Iran over nuclear weapons, but those have not come to fruition yet. | ||
| India and Pakistan. | ||
| Trump announced a full and immediate ceasefire in May for the two countries after world leaders called for peace following a brief conflict. | ||
| The two countries have been facing rising tensions over the disputed Kashmir region, and in May, the Indian military launched deadly attacks on Pakistani targets. | ||
| Cambodia and Thailand. | ||
| In July, the two countries agreed to an unconditional ceasefire after a five-day cross-border conflict from his first term. | ||
| Egypt and Ethiopia, the African neighbors, were in diplomatic standoff over Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam on the Nile River for years as Egypt feared the dam would threaten its water supply. | ||
| It never turned violent. | ||
| No peace agreement was signed. | ||
| However, Trump claims there would have been a war if he hadn't intervened when he tried to broker a deal. | ||
| Serbia and Kosovo, these two nations have had territorial disputes since Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, and Serbia refused to recognize Kosovo's independence. | ||
| In 2020, Trump brokered a limited peace agreement, a short-term economic normalization deal called the Washington Agreement between the two countries. | ||
| Axios is reporting on these eight wars President Trump claims he has ended. | ||
| Let's go to Janice in North Carolina, an independent. | ||
| Janice, your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| There's no reason for that whatsoever. | ||
| What he does deserve is a nice cozy little prison cell. | ||
| He declared that on day one, the war in Ukraine, which has turned out to be a genocidal war, which the Russians invaded Ukraine, he doesn't even real, he declared that that would be over on day one. | ||
| And what's happened? | ||
| Tens of thousands more people have died. | ||
| And what's he doesn't even realize that Russia invaded Ukraine. | ||
| He had it just the opposite. | ||
| He thought that Ukraine invaded Russia. | ||
| I think his mind is gone. | ||
| Okay, we also have genocide happening with Israel attacking Gaza. | ||
| They're not just going after Hamas. | ||
| They're going after all the Palestinians there. | ||
| They have converted all of Gaza, which used to be a beautiful place long before the conflicts. | ||
| It used to be a beautiful place, and now it's all rubble. | ||
| All right, Janice. | ||
| Let me go to CJ, who's in Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
| CJ, what are your thoughts this morning? | ||
| President Trump not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, it would be a joke if he received one. | |
| And it is embarrassing how badly he wants it. | ||
| You know, he's got all his henchmen and people that have been manipulating him for years and years, like Netanyahu, who all he has to do is show up at the White House, hand Trump a piece of paper that says, you know, I officially nominate you for, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize because, you know, nobody has done it better than you. | ||
| Usually peace, from an American point of view, it starts at home. | ||
| And the man has literally said that there's an enemy within that only people that are really smart, like him and Pete Hegset, can ferret out. | ||
| The enemy within. | ||
| So we've got to keep going to these cities, turning them upside down. | ||
| And that's in the name of peace. | ||
| It'd be curious, Greta. | ||
| We've seen all these perp walks of almost exclusively Latinos, with, I think, some Africans, if my eyes are seeing right. | ||
| You can go into any Irish bar in D.C., New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago. | ||
| And chances are, if it's a Friday night and there's three barmen on duty, there's three people right there that you could round up and send to El Salvador or to. | ||
| All right, CJ, we're going to stick to the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. | ||
| It was announced earlier this morning at 5 a.m. | ||
| President Trump not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. | ||
| And the New York Post notes this, that President Trump lost out on earning this year's Nobel Peace Prize despite brokering a historic ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, more than two years of war. | ||
| But it wasn't a snub, more just a case of bad timing, they say. | ||
| The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee made its decision on Monday, two days before the peace deal was struck, to bestow the award to the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. | ||
| We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace. | ||
| Nobel Peace Prize Committee chair said on Friday, this committee sits in a room filled with portraits of all laureates. | ||
| That room is filled with both courage and integrity, and we base only our decision on the work and will of Alfred Noble. | ||
| Let's listen to Marco Rubio, the president's secretary of state, yesterday, or Thursday, yes, Thursday in the cabinet room. | ||
| He had this to say about President Trump's legacy. | ||
| One day, perhaps, the entire story will be told about the events of yesterday, but suffice it to say, it's not an exaggeration that none of it would have been possible without the president of the United States being involved. | ||
| It really began with your trip to the Middle East, where these relationships were forged with partners in the region, personal relationships, close relationships that created the foundation where all this was possible. | ||
| Where I think this really took a turn. | ||
| Remember, a month ago, no one thought this was possible. | ||
| Where it really took a turn about a month ago, less than a couple weeks ago, is when we were at the United Nations and you convened a historic meeting, not simply of Arab countries, but of Muslim-majority countries from around the world, including Indonesia, was there, Pakistan was there, and created this coalition behind this plan. | ||
| Then, on that following Monday, you met with the Prime Minister of Israel here, and that plan was presented. | ||
| And then, of course, our great negotiating teams followed up on it. | ||
| In the interim, again, perhaps the stories will be told, perhaps they will never be told. | ||
| The president had some extraordinary phone calls and meetings that required a high degree of intensity and commitment and made this happen. | ||
| And I think what's important to understand is that yesterday what happened was really a human story. | ||
| There's a geopolitical aspect to it, there's no doubt about it. | ||
| It creates the conditions for Gaza to one day be a normal place again and people to have a better life and Israelis to be safe. | ||
| But yesterday was a human story. | ||
| And because of the work you put it, and honestly, there is no, not only is there no other leader in the world that could have put this together, Mr. President, but frankly, I don't know of any American president in the modern era that could have made this possible because of the actions you have taken unrelated to this and because of who you are and what you've done and how you're viewed. | ||
| And this weekend, because of that, at some point very soon, we are going to see 20 living human beings emerge from the darkness into the light for the first time in two years. | ||
| And that is because not only were you, you used the credibility and the power and the prestige of this office and the relationships you created, and you committed yourself to making it happen, I think it will go down as a historic moment in the history of our country and something our country should be very proud of. | ||
| Margaret Ribio, the Secretary of State, in with the President in the cabinet room during a meeting this week. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts on President Trump and should he have won the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| It was announced this morning at 5 a.m. that he did not. | ||
| And instead, it was a Venezuelan activist who won the award this year in 2025. | ||
| Let's go to John in Virginia, a Republican, and get your thoughts on this. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, as far as this year's prize, no, he shouldn't have gotten it. | |
| The Nobel Peace People have a, they select people who create peaceful conditions internationally or who domestically can help express a point of view or help or stand for a way which would mean peace and progress in a country. | ||
| So it varies. | ||
| Now, next year, if this particular agreement holds and if there's progress on it and the results can be seen as effective, I think the Nobel Committee will have a lot to people can legitimately question the Nobel Committee, Nobel Committee decision not to award him next year, especially if this agreement holds. | ||
| It was too soon for this year, next year, and some of those other conflicts, the Congo's up in the air a little bit. | ||
| He did have something to do with the India-Pakistan and the Cambodian business. | ||
| And there was an Azerbaijan-Armenia agreement that he and Maya had something to do with. | ||
| But I think, like I said, next year, if this agreement holds and things are moving ahead, I think the committee's going to have a lot to answer for if it doesn't give him the prize. | ||
| All right, John and Virginia, John mentioning why the Nobel Peace Prize is given out and what type of person generally receives it. | ||
| Take a look from the NobelPrize.org website about this year's winner, Maria Carina Machado, keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness. | ||
| And they post this on the website. | ||
| She has led the struggle for democracy in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela. | ||
| Ms. Machado studied engineering and finance and had a short career in business. | ||
| In 1992, she established the ENIA Foundation, which works to benefit street children in Caracas. | ||
| 10 years later, she was one of the founders of Sumate, which promotes free and fair elections and has conducted training and election monitoring. | ||
| In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly, winning a record-numb number of votes. | ||
| The regime expelled her from office in 2014. | ||
| Ms. Machado leads the opposition party and in 2017 helped found the Soy Venezuela Alliance, which unites pro-democracy forces in the country across political dividing lines. | ||
| Let's go to Terry in Iowa Independent. | ||
| Terry, we'll hear from you. | ||
| Should President Trump have won the Nobel Peace Prize? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| There's no doubt in my mind he'll win it next year, like the guy just said before me. | ||
| I have one comment to make, though. | ||
| I wish you could contain your giddiness. | ||
| It's unreal what you do every time you get on here with Trump. | ||
| And I'd like to see what you'd act like if he'd had won it, Greta. | ||
| All right, Terry, Terry and Iowa, Independent. | ||
| Jesse in Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Jesse? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to see Ralph to back. | |
| They should never ever give him a war like that. | ||
| Because you guys, excuse me, get a war. | ||
| You got to do something. | ||
| So he's complaining about the work he's doing. | ||
| If his job is too hard for him, let him file another job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| All right, Jesse. | ||
| We'll leave the conversation there for now. | ||
| This morning now, we're going to turn our attention to day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| The House has not been in session since mid-September. | ||
| The Senate has taken numerous votes. | ||
| They took another round of votes yesterday, and then they left for the weekend. | ||
| So we are headed into a third week, third work week of a government shutdown next week. | ||
| We're going to get to your thoughts on the government shutdown day 10 in just a minute. | ||
| But first, tonight, C-SPAN launches Ceasefire, a new weekly series that takes a different approach to political conversation. | ||
| I had a chance to talk with the host, Dasha Burns, about the inaugural program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Come on in. | ||
| Let's check out this. | ||
| This looks a little different. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So this is where the magic happens. | ||
| All right. | ||
| The red, the blue, the arrows, coming to the middle, carpet even color-coded here. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| So yeah, this is the ceasefire. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| 7 p.m. debuts tonight. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Who are the guests? | ||
| All right. | ||
| We have for our inaugural episode former Republican Vice President Mike Pence and Ram Emmanuel, obviously a Democrat, former chief of staff to Obama, former ambassador, and former Chicago mayor. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| They actually both served in Congress together for six years. | ||
| They were neighbors in their offices. | ||
| And they've got, so they've got some history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What should our viewers expect from tonight's episode? | |
| They should expect some hearty debate because obviously they don't agree. | ||
| But what we've gotten our guests to commit to is civil dialogue, to try to see each other's perspectives, and to bring a little charm, a little zest for us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You talked about the set, but is there some symbolism here with these arrows? | |
| What should viewers read into this? | ||
| Well, you know, I considered wearing a purple suit. | ||
| I decided not to. | ||
| But a little too on the nose. | ||
| But red and blue together, pointing towards the middle, trying to find some common ground, trying to see where they might agree, where they might, I don't know, maybe even illuminate a new perspective for each other. | ||
| We're going to talk about news of day. | ||
| We're going to talk about big picture. | ||
| There's, of course, a lot that's happened this week that both is uniting and dividing our country. | ||
| So we'll get our guests on all of that. | ||
| And we've got Sean Spicer and Fez Shakir, Bernie Sanders advisor and former campaign manager on the show as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Well, good luck. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Ceasefire debuts tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| We're back here this morning on the Washington Journal, turning our attention to day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| We want to get your thoughts on this. | ||
| The Senate has left Washington and they will return next week. | ||
| The House has not voted on their opening up the federal government in weeks. | ||
| So we want to get your thoughts on that this morning. | ||
| Before we get to your calls, though, I want to show you a moment from yesterday's Washington Journal. | ||
| The Speaker of the House joined us here in studio to take your calls. | ||
| And a military mom called in during the program. | ||
| Here's that moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mr. Johnson. | |
| So my question or comments are related to what you said yesterday about not being open to pass any legislation to ensure that military gets paid. | ||
| I'm sure you can tell by my voice I'm very shaky. | ||
| Just want you to hear a little bit about my family. | ||
| I have two medically fragile children. | ||
| I have a husband who actively serves this country. | ||
| He suffers from PTSD from his two tours in Afghanistan. | ||
| If we see a lapse in pay come the 15th, my children do not get to get the medication that's needed for them to live their life because we live paycheck to paycheck. | ||
| I heard you earlier say that you side with President Trump on anything that he says. | ||
| Well, I just read an article this morning that said he absolutely wholeheartedly believes that there needs to be legislation put in so that we do not miss a paycheck. | ||
| You have the power to do that. | ||
| And as a Republican, I am very disappointed in my party, and I'm very disappointed in you because you do have the power to call the House back. | ||
| You did that, or you refused to do that just for a show. | ||
| I am begging you to pass this legislation. | ||
| My kids could die. | ||
| We don't have the credit because of the medical bills that I have to pay regularly. | ||
| You could stop this, and you could be the one that could say military is getting paid. | ||
| And I think that it is awful. | ||
| And the audacity of someone who makes six figures a year to do this to military families is insane. | ||
| All right, Samantha. | ||
| Samantha, I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. | ||
| The reason I've been so angry this week, and they've been calling me out on media, Johnson's angry. | ||
| I am angry because of situations just like yours. | ||
| I have a big military district, and my district is the home of the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base and Fort Polk, the Joint Readiness Training Center. | ||
| I have one of the biggest military districts and military families in America. | ||
| I have a lot of airmen and soldiers who are deployed right now, and they have young families at home, and they have children in health situations like yours. | ||
| This is what keeps me up at night. | ||
| I want you to hear something very clearly. | ||
| The Republicans are the ones delivering for you. | ||
| We had a vote to pay the troops. | ||
| It was the continued resolution three weeks ago. | ||
| Every single Republican but two voted to keep the government open so that your paycheck can flow. | ||
| Every Democrat in the House except for one voted to close it. | ||
| The Democrats are the ones that are preventing you from getting a check. | ||
| If we did a vote on the floor to pay troops, it's not a lawmaking exercise because Chuck Schumer is going to hold that up in the Senate. | ||
| He is demonstrating by voting now six times to keep the government closed that he does not want the troops to be paid. | ||
| And you should listen to his comments last night as reported this morning. | ||
| He is enjoying this. | ||
| He said, every day gets better for us, quote unquote. | ||
| Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are preventing your family from getting the care they need, not Republicans. | ||
| And my heart goes out to you. | ||
| Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, on yesterday's Washington Journal. | ||
| If you missed it, you can find it on our website at c-span.org or download our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| You heard the Speaker of the House talking about military pay there, questioned by one of our viewers when she called in. | ||
| This is from the website this morning, Business Insider. | ||
| How many workers are affected in the military? | ||
| Now, they received their October 1st paycheck. | ||
| If the shutdown continues, service members will miss pay on October 15th. | ||
| All active duty members of the military will stay on the job during the shutdown. | ||
| Like other government employees, they are guaranteed retroactive pay once the shutdown ends. | ||
| Both essential employees who are required to keep working and furloughed employees who are barred from working will start to miss paychecks. | ||
| Overall, there are about 2 million civilian workers, 1.3 million active duty members of the military. | ||
| It's day 10 of the government shutdown, and we want to get your reaction this morning. | ||
| Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you're a federal worker, please call in at that line, 202-748-8003. | ||
| We'll get to calls here in just a minute. | ||
| First, let's listen to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, on the Senate floor, placing the blame on Republicans for their failure to take the lead in ending the shutdown. | ||
| In the middle of a shutdown crisis, Speaker Johnson has shut the lights off to the halls of Congress. | ||
| We Democrats have made clear that Republicans need to engage with us in serious negotiation to end this destructive shutdown and fix health care premiums as soon as we can. | ||
| But Speaker Johnson has sent the House on vacation. | ||
| He has sent members home now for three weeks, and it sounds like he'll keep them away for at least another week more. | ||
| The House of Representatives has not held a vote, a single vote, since September 19th, 20 days ago. | ||
| In fact, Mr. President, would you care to guess how many days the House has been in town since the end of July? | ||
| 12 days. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Since the summer, the House of Representatives has held votes for only 12 days. | ||
| If you're someone who works two jobs or works weekends or overtime to make ends meet, what on earth are you supposed to speak, to supposed to think, when House Republicans can't even be bothered to show up to reopen the government? | ||
| The blame game continues here in Washington on day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| You heard the minority leader Chuck Schumer there talking about federal workers. | ||
| Today is the day they missed their first paycheck. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Millions of federal workers and military service members are on track to see their paychecks hit this month, some as early as this Friday. | ||
| A 2009-19 law guarantees automatic back pay for all federal employees once the shutdown concludes. | ||
| The White House's challenge: whether furloughed employees are guaranteed that pay. | ||
| Federal civilian employees will first see the effects in a reduced paycheck on either Friday, October 10th, that's today, or Tuesday, October 14th, depending on which agency employs them. | ||
| This will cover pay for work through October 1st when the shutdown began. | ||
| Should the shutdown continue, federal workers will then miss their full paychecks on October 24th or October 28th. | ||
| Workers across the federal government agencies all receive their salaries according to slightly different pay calendars. | ||
| Day 10 of the government shutdown, and if you're a federal worker, we want to hear from you this morning, along with all others. | ||
| Bobby in Oklahoma, Democratic caller, what's your message to Washington, Bobby? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My message to Washington is that Donald Trump controls, he controls the House, the Senate, and he's got the presidency. | |
| So don't blame a Democrat for the shutdown. | ||
| And also, Trump doesn't have enough sense to run this country. | ||
| Look to soybean farmers in Arkansas. | ||
| Ask him what they think about Mr. Trump while they voted for him now. | ||
| Ask Kevin Steet what he thinks about sending National Guard from Oklahoma in the cities to take out all right, Bobby. | ||
| We're going to stick to the shutdown story today. | ||
| Donald in New Jersey, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I really think that this shutdown is going to possibly be over by next Friday. | ||
| Why do you say that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because the election for New Jersey is on the 4th of November. | |
| If they don't want New Jersey to actually turn red, they're in a lot of trouble because if we only got five or six Democrats to vote with us, the clean bill would be passed and everybody would be back at business, you know? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Donald mentioning the vote dynamic in the Senate, in the upper chamber, there, where you need 60 votes to advance to the legislation that would allow the lawmakers to open up the federal government. | ||
| Republicans have been unable to get enough Democrats to cross the aisle to get them to 60. | ||
| They have had two Democrats and one Independent do so, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Senator Cortez Mastow of Nevada. | ||
| And you've also had Angus King, who's an independent from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, voting with Republicans on their clean, continuing resolution. | ||
| It has no policy riders on it. | ||
| Democrats have offered their own proposal as well, and that includes extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits permanently. | ||
| And Republicans have not crossed the aisle to vote for that either. | ||
| Let's go to Eric in California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Eric. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Wake up, America. | ||
| The government shut down both sides, Republican and Democrat. | ||
| Military has to suffer. | ||
| And I'm a military retiree and police officer retired state of California. | ||
| And I'm to the point where I'm not even going to vote anymore because do the politicians deserve it? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| They're getting their paycheck, aren't they? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ruben in Pennsylvania, or excuse me, go to Christopher in Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Your turn, Christopher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just want to say President Biden was the one who caused the government shutdown. | ||
| If we didn't have 20 million invaders into this country, there wouldn't be an issue of funding their medical care. | ||
| So Biden is responsible by allowing all these illegals to invade the country. | ||
| You're talking about the emergency Medicaid program that hospitals use when they have uninsured folks show up in their emergency rooms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just say they shouldn't be here to begin with. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If Biden hadn't allowed all these illegals to cross the border and invade our country, then we wouldn't be looking at funding anything about these people from emergency rooms to anything. | |
| Okay. | ||
| The Democrats' proposal to open up the government not only includes extending the ACA tax credits, but it also looks to restore funding to Medicaid program. | ||
| Republicans have been accusing Democrats during this shutdown stalemate of wanting to use money for illegal immigrants. | ||
| They use the Medicaid emergency Medicaid program along with other Americans who are uninsured when they show up at emergency rooms. | ||
| That's at the heart of this debate and the demand by Democrats in order to open up the federal government. | ||
| They were given voice to their demands by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene this week during an appearance on CNN. | ||
| This is what she had to say about her party and the government shutdown. | ||
| I don't think the shutdown is popular for either side. | ||
| And so I see the shutdown completely different from maybe my party leadership. | ||
| And I'm not putting the blame on the president. | ||
| I'm actually putting the blame on the speaker and leader soon in the Senate. | ||
| This should not be happening. | ||
| And I don't think, look, as a member of Congress, we already have a low enough job approval rating. | ||
| This shutdown is just going to drive everybody's approval rating that much lower. | ||
| So you're putting the blame on the leadership of your party. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We control the House. | ||
| We control the Senate. | ||
| We have the White House. | ||
| I've been vocal saying, you know, you can use the nuclear option in the Senate. | ||
| This doesn't have to be a shutdown. | ||
| But what we have to do is we have to work for the American people. | ||
| And our country is so divided right now. | ||
| We see it all the time in every single way. | ||
| It's divided in what I would say very dangerous ways. | ||
| And we saw that with the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, which has upset so many people across the board. | ||
| And I look, when it comes to hearing from senior citizens or my own friends and neighbors and my own family members and people that voted for me, and they're just saying, Marjorie, we just really want somebody to do something about health insurance premiums. | ||
| We really want our government and our leaders to actually focus on our country for a change and fix our problems. | ||
| That is the message I constantly hear from my district. | ||
| And I'm a representative. | ||
| I don't have to be a cheerleader for my party. | ||
| I have to represent my district because those are the people that hired me and sent me here. | ||
| And I myself, I agree with them. | ||
| And I'm pretty much over the, it's just drama constantly on TV. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Green on CNN, and this week she called on her party to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. | ||
| From CNN's reporting, the issue is front and center in the feud over the government shutdown with Democrats demanding an extension of Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that were bolstered during the COVID-19 pandemic to help families pay for health insurance. | ||
| The loss of those subsidies set to expire at year's end are expected to drive up health care premiums. | ||
| And Democrats say they must be dealt with immediately as a condition for their vote to reopen the government. | ||
| Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she doesn't like the Affordable Care Act, but without an extension of these subsidies, she said folks in her district and in her state will be hit by higher premiums. | ||
| Ruben in Pennsylvania, Democratic caller, day 10 of government shutdown. | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| I was just going to could you go more into detail about Intoler, the bill that Ronald Reagan enacted in 1986, giving emergency care towards undocumented immigrants, that this wasn't just something that the Democrats pushed on. | ||
| And could you also speak on the $20 billion given to Argentina after denying New York $10 billion for the infrastructure bill? | ||
| And could you hit on whether there was $803 billion that Donald Trump cut out towards policing inside of different cities, and now they want to give that towards ICE agents and even also giving them student loan forgiveness after criticizing Biden for his student loan forgiveness program. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Ruben, I wish I was that fast. | ||
| Glenn in Texas, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Glenn. | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Doing well, Glenn. | ||
| Your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, okay. | |
| Schumer has been barking up the wrong tree because he's so scared he's going to lose his job 40 years in the Senate. | ||
| He is trying to scare the American people by all the Secure Act. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with what's going on right now with the Care Act. | ||
| Schumer wants $1.5 trillion, which the government is trying to cut down the money that has been spent. | ||
| Schumer wants to use $1.5 trillion to get his Democrat candidates money to campaign on coming up here in November 26. | ||
| And Chuck Newmer's number days in Washington is coming to an end. | ||
| Where the Congress back comes back to recess, Trump needs to go and address the Senate and tell all the Democrats if they don't vote for the reopening of the government, that he is going to cut down all of their federal aid to their states. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Glenn, we'll get to that moment here in a minute. | ||
| We're going to continue taking your calls here to the top of the hour on day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| In other news, though, in case you missed it, late yesterday, here's the New York Times headline: New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted after Trump's pressure campaign. | ||
| Her indictment on mortgage-related charges follows a case brought against the former FBI director James Comey. | ||
| New York Attorney General Letitia James released a video statement about the charges brought against her late yesterday. | ||
| This is nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system. | ||
| He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as a New York State Attorney General. | ||
| These charges are baseless, and the President's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. | ||
| The president's actions are a grave violation of our constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties. | ||
| His decision to fire a United States attorney who refused to bring charges against me and replace them with someone who is blindly loyal not to the law, but to the president is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country. | ||
| This is the time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice. | ||
| I stand strongly behind my office's litigation against the Trump organization. | ||
| We conducted a two-year investigation based on the facts and evidence, not politics. | ||
| Judges have upheld the trial court's finding that Donald Trump, his company, and his two sons are liable for fraud. | ||
| I'm a proud woman of faith, and I know that faith and fear cannot share the same space. | ||
| And so today I'm not fearful. | ||
| I'm fearless. | ||
| And as my faith teaches me, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. | ||
| We will fight these baseless charges aggressively. | ||
| And my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights. | ||
| And I will continue to do my job. | ||
| New York Attorney Letitia James, there, Attorney General Letitia James, there in a statement following those charges by the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll go to Jeannie in Texas, Independent. | ||
| Jeannie, we are talking about government shutdown. | ||
| The stalemate continues here in Washington. | ||
| What's your message to lawmakers and the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Yep, Jeannie, we're listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I'm a musician in Austin, Texas. | |
| I have an appointment November the 7th to renew my insurance. | ||
| I need those subsidies. | ||
| I don't understand why the Democrats put an expiration date on it. | ||
| You know, Obamacare is what? | ||
| $1,000? | ||
| You get the subsidies? | ||
| Because I'm a musician. | ||
| I'm in an organization called HAM H-A-A-N. | ||
| They give us $200 if you're a full-time musician for insurance. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Then it comes down to maybe $300,000, $400, $500. | ||
| We are not going to have insurance if we don't get these subsidies because Democrats are going to have to hold out. | ||
| They have to. | ||
| I don't understand any of this. | ||
| And I feel bad. | ||
| You know, I think that we have lost our humanity. | ||
| To not give medical care, if someone walks in the emergency room, and I don't care what color skin they are, and Mike Johnson, shame on you for not opening up to give money for the military. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Kenneth in New York, Democratic caller. | ||
| What do you say, Kenneth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'll call in in reference to the shutdown and Letitia James, but the shutdown, I would tell Chuck Schumer, you stay strong. | |
| Now, y'all kept saying that he may run up against AOC. | ||
| So what? | ||
| If AOC beat him, she becomes the senator of New York. | ||
| But she'd be at the bottom. | ||
| She won't be up there taking his place. | ||
| She'll be at the bottom. | ||
| And the next senator will probably take Schumann's place. | ||
| Now, everybody who calls about health care always, you notice, always calls from Texas. | ||
| Texas, y'all didn't take Obamacare when it came out. | ||
| New York did. | ||
| I'd rather live in New York with Obamacare than in Texas without. | ||
| And the lady who called yesterday from Virginia, she hit it spot on when she went after Mike Johnson. | ||
| I wish I would have called for Mike Johnson and said that big, beautiful bill really would have failed. | ||
| You should be kissing Greg Abbott's behind because he's the one that denied those three seats, which would have killed the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| And it would have been gone. | ||
| Now, Letitia James, if I said you stayed strong, she's about five to ten steps ahead of the president. | ||
| She knew it was coming. | ||
| All right, Kennedy. | ||
| On your point about participants in the Affordable Care Act, take a look at this AI search on Google, the highest enrollment states. | ||
| Florida had the most marketplace signups for 2023 with over 3.2 million enrollees. | ||
| Texas consistently ranked second in total enrollment with more than 2.4 million enrollees in 2023, followed by California had the third highest enrollment in 2023 with over 1.7. | ||
| And Georgia has a large number of participants and is seeing significant enrollment growth. | ||
| Reminder, it was Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia who broke with her party to demand that the party do something, that Congress act on these Affordable Care Act tax subsidies. | ||
| Prince in South Carolina Independent, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question. | |
| I tried all day yesterday to speak to the Speaker of the House, but I couldn't get through. | ||
| I guess it was so busy. | ||
| But my thing is this. | ||
| I really wanted to say it's the Republicans that holds the House. | ||
| They hold everything. | ||
| They're the ones that's holding us back. | ||
| Yes, the Democrats have their part in it too. | ||
| But right now, it's on the Republicans. | ||
| And as far as, and I would like to hear a gentleman here spoke about how Trump held back the money in New York, but yet bailed somebody else out. | ||
| Can you please explain that part to me? | ||
| Because I noticed that when he finished talking, you never explained nothing. | ||
| And I would like to hear the answer to that part. | ||
| If we're not partisan, then explain it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Prince, we're not, the hosts that sit in this chair, we're not walking encyclopedias and able to give you facts every second. | ||
| Maybe AI will help with that. | ||
| Jonathan in Texas, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hey, Jonathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| Good morning, Greta, and thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Certainly appreciate it. | ||
| I don't think that the Republicans are being fair and honest to the American people. | ||
| I live in Texas. | ||
| This is a state for ground zero for crazy. | ||
| And to your point, 2.4 million people are enrolled in the Affordable Health Care Act. | ||
| A lot of folks didn't even realize that they were on Obamacare. | ||
| The fact of the matter is the Democratic Party is trying to protect those who would ordinarily not have insurance coverage. | ||
| The Affordable Health Care Act covers, what, 24 million people that would not have insurance. | ||
| My wife and I have done quite well in our careers. | ||
| We've traveled the world. | ||
| We've seen a lot of different governments, talked to a lot of different people. | ||
| What I can tell you is that the president has made this country so polarized that people can't even see really what's right and what's wrong. | ||
| And it's unfortunate. | ||
| I think that the Democrats should hold out. | ||
| I do. | ||
| My wife is a former government employee, retired, and she doesn't want to see the government shut down, obviously, because people are needing their jobs. | ||
| However, once again, they should hold out. | ||
| I do believe that at the end of the day, history will show that we were on the right side of history in terms of our opposition against the Trump administration. | ||
| It's been terrible for this country. | ||
| And I hope that going forward, we have better leaders. | ||
| Thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| You have a great day. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Larry in Iowa, Republican. | ||
| Morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I used to work for the government in San Diego, and it was the Department of Social Services. | ||
| And I just wanted to say, you know, both sides need to get together to get this thing resolved. | ||
| The money is there. | ||
| They need to cut from programs such as the military programs. | ||
| They don't need all that money for weapons. | ||
| The servicemen do need to be paid during this shutdown. | ||
| And if not, the Congress needs to not get paid during the shutdown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They need to quit grandstanding and quit finger pointing and get to work for the people. | |
| They work for the people. | ||
| They don't not work to enrich themselves. | ||
| And that goes all the way to the top to the Trump administration. | ||
| I'm a military veteran on top of that. | ||
| And I have to use the VA for my medical care. | ||
| I'm suffering from cancer, and I'm kind of worried about the cuts there. | ||
| You know, they need to do better for our veterans. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They need to get rid of these illegals and deport them because we don't need to be paying for their medical care. | |
| Larry in Iowa, Republican. | ||
| Thank you for your service, Larry. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| Later on the Washington Journal, we'll talk with two members of Congress, Representative Mark Alford, Republican of Missouri, and Representative Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat, about day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| But next, after this break, Cato Institute Health Policy Studies Director Michael Cannon and Families USA Executive Director Anthony Wright joins us to discuss the Enhanced Subsidies for Affordable Care Act, health insurance plans that are set to expire at the end of the year. | ||
| We will be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This holiday weekend, join C-SPAN for the most comprehensive America 250 coverage of the U.S. Navy's 250th anniversary celebration. | |
| The Navy 250 Gala at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. | ||
| A star-studded Victory at Sea concert on Independence Mall, including actor and retired Marine Rob Riggle as MC, Patty LaBelle, the elite Marine Corps band, and others. | ||
| A commemoration of the Navy's founding, including a Blue Angels flyover, the U.S. Navy's 250th anniversary celebration this holiday weekend, only on C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250. | ||
| Premiering today at 7 p.m. on C-SPAN, Obama White House Chief of Staff Rob Emmanuel and Vice President Mike Pence, once colleagues in Congress, sit down together for this episode of Ceasefire, hosted by Politico's White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns, Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Two leaders, one goal, to find common ground only on C-SPAN. | ||
| So you interviewed the other night. | ||
| I watched it about two o'clock in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching. | |
| Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little re-run. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on. | ||
| We can all watch that on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN. | |
| That was a major C-SPAN moment. | ||
| If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground. | ||
| And welcome forward to everybody watching at home. | ||
| We know C-SPAN covers this live as well. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell. | |
| This is being carried live by C-SPAN. | ||
| It's being watched not only in this country, but it's being watched around the world right now. | ||
| Mike said before I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| Weekends bring you Book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| The Mississippi Book Festival, held at the state capitol in Jackson, features authors discussing Hurricane Katrina's 20th anniversary, the Iranian Revolution, Native American identity, and more. | ||
| Then, Tom Johnson recalls his life story from serving as Lyndon Johnson's White House assistant to his news career with the Los Angeles Times and CNN. | ||
| Historian Jordan Taylor looks at how foreign news impacted politics in colonial America, plaguing the revolution with misunderstandings. | ||
| Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we are back this morning. | ||
| Joining us for a roundtable discussion on healthcare is Michael Cannon. | ||
| He's the Health Policy Studies Director with Cato Institute and Anthony Wright, who's the executive director of Families USA. | ||
| Thank you both for being here. | ||
| The subsidies for the Affordable Care Act are at the heart of the stalemate here in Washington as we enter day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| Take a look at the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies. | ||
| Some tidbits for our audience. | ||
| Established by Democrats during the COVID-19 pandemic, originally set to expire at the end of 2022, but then extended to the end of 2025. | ||
| Their expiration could cause average premium increases of 75% and Would cost $350 billion to extend the subsidies for 10 years. | ||
| Democrats' key requests. | ||
| They want to permanently extend the pandemic or expansions of the Obamacare premium subsidies set to expire at the end of this year and guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from ignoring congressional spending directives, clawing back funds through impoundments and rescissions. | ||
| And part of that is Medicaid funding. | ||
| Let's stick to the Affordable Care Act this morning. | ||
| Anthony Wright, why were these subsidies put in place in the first place in the Affordable Care Act, and how do they work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So for people who buy coverage as individuals or families who don't get coverage either from an employer, which is about how half people get coverage, or through a public program like Medicare or Medicare, then they're left to have to buy coverage as individuals. | |
| And it's very expensive. | ||
| And so these tax credits help people afford that coverage by basically saying you don't have to pay more than 8.5% of your income for coverage and less for lower incomes on a sliding scale. | ||
| And so it really helps people afford that coverage. | ||
| And that's what the Affordable Care Act did. | ||
| And then the enhanced premium subsidies made that broader across income spectrums and also reduced the percentages so that it actually introduced more affordability, which meant millions more people were able to get coverage as a result. | ||
| And we are now at historic coverage highs as a result. | ||
| The uninsured rate in America has never been lower because of these tax credits that are now in place. | ||
| What is the uninsured rate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's less than 8%. | |
| And how many people are on ACA? | ||
|
unidentified
|
For those that are in the marketplaces, there's about 24 million that are in there. | |
| Obviously, the Affordable Care Act has other provisions like the expansion of Medicaid. | ||
| But when folks say that, they usually are talking about the folks in the marketplaces who are getting some help and also able to get coverage without regard to preexisting conditions. | ||
| What percentage of people use these tax credits? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Virtually all of the people who are in the marketplaces get these tax credits, and it helps them, again, prevent them from having to pay more than 8% and in many cases less of their income for coverage. | |
| Michael Cannon, are they subsidies? | ||
| Are they tax credits? | ||
| Or does it matter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It does matter. | |
| They're not tax credits. | ||
| They are checks that the government writes to private health insurance companies. | ||
| And they reach all the way up to people making $600,000 per year. | ||
| There are people who are making $500,000 per year who get a tax credit, I did it myself, a subsidy of $7,000. | ||
| And that's an indication of how expensive the Obamacare coverage has become that its advocates think they have to subsidize people making half a million dollars per year. | ||
| The original Obamacare subsidies reached from the poverty line up to people making, you know, families of four making $128,000 per year. | ||
| And beyond that, you would have to pay the entire premium yourself. | ||
| But the party that offered this law, the Democratic Party, said, you know what, it's still too expensive. | ||
| So we're going to offer subsidies to people making from $129,000 per year up to $600,000 per year. | ||
| And that's why they're shutting down the government because they want to preserve those subsidies for the wealthy. | ||
| And the problem that those subsidies are trying to solve is a problem entirely of the Democrats' making and Obamacare's making. | ||
| What the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said is that without all of the hidden taxes in Obamacare, most people in the exchanges could get comprehensive coverage, maybe with lower deductibles and broader provider networks, so higher quality coverage than they get in Obamacare at a premium that is 60% below the lowest cost Obamacare plans. | ||
| These people don't need subsidies to get health insurance. | ||
| They need the government to get out of the way so that they can buy affordable plans, which Barack Obama let people in U.S. territories do, and Donald Trump let people in the short-term market do. | ||
| And so there's room here for some sort of bipartisan compromise where people, where Congress can give people an option to go outside of Obamacare if it's not meeting their needs. | ||
| Because come on, I mean, subsidizing people making $500,000 per year, this is insane. | ||
| This is not affordable coverage. | ||
| Well, before we get a response, hidden taxes, what do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What Obamacare does in order to try to make health insurance affordable for people who have expensive medical conditions is say to insurance companies that for a certain, when you have people applying for a certain health plan of the same age, you have to charge them the same premium regardless of health status. | |
| That means that the premiums for the sick come down, but for the healthy, they go up. | ||
| Well, this is the vast majority of people in the insurance market. | ||
| And those are the people who are seeing their premiums double or more as a result of those hidden taxes. | ||
| And this gets to the heart of what Democrats really fear about Obamacare and why they really need these subsidies. | ||
| One of the architects of Obamacare Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT said that Congress had to hide the taxes in those higher premiums because if they tried to make those taxes explicit, the public would have rejected it. | ||
| It would have been unpopular. | ||
| But because he said infamously, because of the stupidity of the American voter, it worked. | ||
| And what Democrats fear is that if they can't subsidize health insurance for people making $129,000 to $600,000 per year, people are going to see that this is overpriced junk coverage. | ||
| They're going to drop their Obamacare. | ||
| And the people, the original subsidies will still be there. | ||
| The premiums might go up as a result of healthy people opting out. | ||
| The subsidies will still be there for the people with high income or with high disease burden. | ||
| And so they'll still be able to get coverage. | ||
| But they were worried that the political support for that law will be less than it is right now, and Congress may reopen it. | ||
| That's what this entire debate about premium subsidies is about. | ||
| Andre, right? | ||
| You were shaking your head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so first of all, a couple of facts here. | |
| 85% of the folks who would get enhanced tax credits are under $50,000 for an individual, $100,000 for a family of four. | ||
| Actually, 50% are under $25,000 a year for an individual, $50,000 for a family of four. | ||
| To the extent that these tax credits do go up the income scale, because let's stipulate, healthcare is too darn expensive. | ||
| And it is in employer-based coverage, for individual coverage, in any part of the system. | ||
| Healthcare is too expensive, and people need relief. | ||
| These tax credits provide that relief, and they do so up the income scale. | ||
| Because if you're trying to say nobody has to spend more than 8% of their income on coverage, then that means that the vast majority of help is in the lower income realm. | ||
| But there are some people, and people who are above $100,000, most people can get coverage under 8.5% of their income. | ||
| But there's two categories that don't. | ||
| People who are in very high-cost areas, high health care office areas, those tend to be rural areas because of the economics of rural areas. | ||
| Prices are much higher. | ||
| Supply is low, demand is high. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And then number two is older folks, because as you get older, your health coverage costs go up. | ||
| So for the folks who are in the 50s, especially in their 60s, they're the ones who have health care costs that are in tens of thousands of dollars. | ||
| And so I'm not going to tell rural folks and older folks that they shouldn't have the same protection, the same affordability protections, everybody else, that they shouldn't have to pay more than 8% of their income on coverage. | ||
| All right, Michael Hannon. | ||
| You heard the argument. | ||
| It's only 85% is largely these folks who make less than $100,000. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's the people. | |
| But a couple things about that. | ||
| I think Anthony just agreed with me that what we're talking about are subsidies for people making $130,000 per year, $200,000 per year, $300,405, up to $6,000. | ||
| That's about a third of the spending. | ||
| He said it was about 15%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, he said 15% of the people, but a third of the spending. | |
| And so this is so, and that's the Congressional Budget Office saying that. | ||
| It would be one thing if you had enhanced subsidies for people earning from the poverty line up to 400% of poverty or 100% or $128,000 per year and cut it off there. | ||
| That's not why Democrats are shutting down the government. | ||
| They're shutting down the government to get the subsidies for the wealthy as well. | ||
| Now, what about those people from poverty to $128,000 per year? | ||
| Obamacare included subsidies for them. | ||
| They will still be there in January when these enhanced subsidies disappear. | ||
| But a couple things. | ||
| First, if that's not enough, if the original Obamacare subsidies are not enough, then please stop calling it the Affordable Care Act because you're admitting that it wasn't affordable, that those hidden taxes did double premiums for most people and they still can't afford it. | ||
| And that the first trillion dollars on these subsidies was not enough. | ||
| And now you're asking for another half trillion dollars. | ||
| There will never be enough money to fund Obamacare and all of its hidden taxes. | ||
| And one more thing about these subsidies, the CBO says that about a third of people will pay absolutely nothing toward their plans. | ||
| That was not the case before these enhanced subsidies. | ||
| And when nobody pays anything toward their plans is when Obamacare becomes the bonanza for fraud that it is right now, where you have brokers signing people up for plans without their knowledge. | ||
| They often find that they're due, they owe a tax liability at the end of the year. | ||
| They find that they can't see their doctor anymore because unscrupulous brokers sign them up. | ||
| And then lots of people sign up for these plans not even knowing that they're in health insurance precisely because they don't pay anything toward the premium themselves and therefore they don't care if some broker moves them around a lot and people have been making millions of or billions of dollars off of taxpayers through fraud as a result. | ||
| Michael Cannon, why then is Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, saying she agrees with Democrats? | ||
| She doesn't like the Affordable Care Act, but she's saying we do need to extend these premiums because it's going to hit her constituents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Health care has never really been Republican strong suits. | |
| And I think if Marjorie Taylor Greene looked at the facts of what is happening with Obamacare, looked at whose subsidies she's trying to protect, I think she would realize that this law is failing. | ||
| It is not making the affordability crisis better. | ||
| It is making the affordability crisis worse. | ||
| I mean, we're talking about subsidies for people making up to $600,000 per year. | ||
| And we wonder why the United States has the most expensive health sector in the world. | ||
| This is why every time Congress confronts a health care problem, the answer is always throw more money at it, throw more money at it, throw more money at it. | ||
| And that's what we're doing here. | ||
| Anthony Wright, respond to the argument that this is increasing the cost of health care. | ||
| When you subsidize any program, do you see this happening? | ||
| Take on that argument in and of itself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, health care is a necessity for a variety of people. | |
| People don't have really the option of saying no, otherwise they go uninsured and as a result live sicker, die younger, or one emergency away from financial ruin. | ||
| They need help to afford that coverage. | ||
| And they have lots of options in the marketplaces to get coverage. | ||
| They could get a platinum plan or a bronze plan. | ||
| They have a range of different private plans and providers. | ||
| But the point is people need help and to provide some basic help for people so that their premiums don't double, which is what is going to happen if these tax credits are not extended. | ||
| But are subsidies the way to do it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think we need to do both, right? | |
| We need to. | ||
| Families USA, a consumer advocacy group, has a range of proposals and affordability agenda to try to deal with the base cost of health care. | ||
| But it's also the case that health care is expensive enough, $10,000 for an individual, $20,000 for a family, and more if you're older or in other categories, that people need some help to be able to afford it. | ||
| And then we should also deal with the cost of why are drugs so much, why are hospitals so much. | ||
| And I think there are reforms, and maybe even some that I might agree with, Mr. Cannon on, but people need help now. | ||
| We need to do both. | ||
| And right now, the house is shut down. | ||
| They're not discussing any of this. | ||
| They're not discussing it on the back end or the front end. | ||
| Yeah, well, let's get to where you two may agree here in just a minute. | ||
| But let's get to calls. | ||
| Trina's waiting in New York. | ||
| Trina? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| One of the things that I've noted, I have not heard anybody mention is that when the Affordable Care Act came into play in our community, I live in a rural upstate New York community. | ||
| That's when the hospitals closed. | ||
| Because such a large proportion of our folks that live here are on Medicaid. | ||
| I've worked for the poor for over 35 years. | ||
| I know that they're getting everything. | ||
| I'm getting nothing. | ||
| I've paid thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in health care coverage. | ||
| And I had to wait almost two years to get a new doctor when one left because they all leave because it's such a poverty-stricken area. | ||
| So I don't want children to go without health care coverage, of course. | ||
| I just want it to be equitable. | ||
| I've paid in all this money. | ||
| I go to the doctor a couple times a year because I try to stay healthy. | ||
| I'm getting older now. | ||
| I'm probably going to be getting Medicare soon. | ||
| And I have not heard anybody talk about how the Suffordable Care Act has stripped our communities of health care. | ||
| Providers. | ||
| Yeah, Trina, we'll take that question. | ||
| Michael Cannon, why don't you go first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm not sure how the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare would have contributed to hospitals closing because what it did was it flooded the market with even more subsidies than were there before. | |
| And so when hospitals close in rural areas, you have to understand that these are hospitals that can't even survive with massive government subsidies through the Medicare program, the Medicaid program, Obamacare, et cetera. | ||
| And so some of them, if they can't survive under those circumstances, they probably should close. | ||
| And we should see more hospital closures and more health care enterprises going out of business, if only because ours is the most expensive health sector in the world. | ||
| And many people believe the most inefficient health sector in the world with the highest prices in the world. | ||
| And what that means is we are not letting, we are not putting enough downward pressure on prices so that we can find out what are the most efficient ways to provide medical care to people, to provide primary care, urgent care, emergency care, hospitalizations, and so forth. | ||
| And as a result, we don't see as many hospital closures as we should. | ||
| There are lots of hospitals in this country that would not survive in a competitive market because they are too efficient, because they overcharge people, because they waste lots of money. | ||
| But we have programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare that are keeping them in business, keeping their prices too high and making health care unaffordable for people. | ||
| And as consumers as well as taxpayers. | ||
| So if what we want is a more equitable and universal health system, what we need to do is let consumers control the five, six trillion dollars that we're spending on health care. | ||
| They will be much more price sensitive when they are choosing their health plan, their doctors, their hospitals. | ||
| That will trigger the sort of price competition that we need to drive down prices and bring health care within the reach of people who can't afford it today. | ||
| What we're doing instead is we're just throwing good money after bad. | ||
| We are subsidizing high prices and low quality care. | ||
| And this entire debate over the government shutdown in Obamacare is that problem in a nutshell. | ||
| Rather than solve, rather than undo the problem the government created by doubling people's premiums, we're just throwing more money at those premiums and not doing anything about the underlying cause. | ||
| Anthony, right, you answer the same. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, to the caller, I'm very mindful of the issue of rural hospitals closing and people need access to care. | |
| And if the market's not going to do it, we need to find a way to make sure that people, regardless of where they live, have some basic access to the care that they need. | ||
| And so actually, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid and these programs help. | ||
| I think we might agree with Mr. Cannon on keeping these hospitals alive. | ||
| The fact that we made $990 billion of cuts to the Medicaid program is going to be a real danger, especially to rural hospitals and a variety of other providers where Medicaid may be a primary payer. | ||
| In fact, there's a robust literature that those states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act versus those that didn't, those that didn't have much higher rates of rural hospital closures as a result. | ||
| And so we want this to be equitable. | ||
| And this policy that is being debated right now is very equitable up and down the income spectrum. | ||
| It says everybody deserves access to health care, to coverage, and we want to provide some ceiling of how much you pay based on a percentage of your income. | ||
| And that's fair, and that's not whether it's up the income scale or not. | ||
| And again, just to be very clear on his earlier point, the vast majority of these dollars and the people benefited are in the lower income ranges because that's where the health is most needed. | ||
| But there are some people that are in higher income ranges because of their family size, that they're in a high-cost area, or they're in their 50s and 60s. | ||
| And the Joint Committee on Taxation said there's nobody over $500,000 that gets this tax credit. | ||
| We are talking about the Affordable Care Act subsidies this morning. | ||
| We're getting your comments on it. | ||
| We've divided the lines this morning. | ||
| If you're on the Affordable Care Act insurance, call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you have private insurance, 202-748-8001 and all others, you can call us at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Petra's in Alabama, and you are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everybody. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is something that's very personal to me because the ACA has saved my life twice. | |
| I've been septic, and if it wasn't for the ACA, I would be six feet under honesty right now. | ||
| I live in Mississippi and Alabama. | ||
| And I just wanted to say, you know, if it wasn't for the ACA, most of us in Alabama and Mississippi would have zero insurance. | ||
| Why is that, Petra? | ||
| Explain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's because of the fact that before the ACA, my private insurance that I was paying for out of my own pocket, I was struggling, was paying $800 a month. | |
| And then it wasn't only, the ACA came, and I was able to actually start to afford to live and be able to survive. | ||
| Most of us in Alabama or Mississippi are making approximately $9 an hour, to be honest, if you do an average across the board. | ||
| I've worked for the city of Hattiesburg. | ||
| I mean, and it's really sad down here, and I understand most of the world don't get it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Petra, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| Michael Cannon, you were shaking your head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Alabama is a really difficult case where the private insurance market has cartelized so much, or government regulation has allowed it to cartelize so much. | |
| I believe Blue Cross, Blue Field of Alabama, has 90% of the market or something like that, which allows them to charge higher premiums because the government is blocking competition. | ||
| And among the ways that the government blocks competition, one is the state insurance regulations say you can't buy insurance from other states, including U.S. territories, where you could buy Obamacare or coverage that's exempt from Obamacare, and your premiums would be half what they are under Obamacare. | ||
| But also, a lot of Obamacare regulations encourage that sort of consolidation and make it harder for insurance companies to enter the market and compete on price and get those prices down. | ||
| And so this sort of suffering that we're seeing from consumers like the caller, where they're having to pay these exorbitant premiums for health insurance, is a result of government taking away their right to make these decisions for themselves and saying, no, we're going to decide where you buy your insurance. | ||
| We're going to decide what you buy. | ||
| We're going to decide what the prices are. | ||
| We'll go to Bob in Ohio next on the ACA. | ||
| Bob, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call this morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Bob. | ||
| What is it like for you to have the Affordable Care Act insurance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have it, but my wife and most of my relatives have it. | |
| I'm a retired federal government worker. | ||
| I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. | ||
| I'm a graduate of Ohio State University with a major in math. | ||
| It is very important to help most of my relatives. | ||
| What my suggestion is that would require a compromise on both the Democrats and Republicans would be to extend ACA, the Affordable Care Act, for three more years exactly the way it is right now. | ||
| That would require a compromise on both the Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| It would really help my in-laws and even my outlaws. | ||
| It would help them if they could continue to have ACA. | ||
| And to make the deal a little more sweeter, I would like to see the federal government step in at the high school level and in every high school in America, give both the valedictorian and give also the student athlete of each high school, give them $1,000 when they graduate from high school. | ||
| This would be out of federal money. | ||
| The student athlete would be chosen the same way they were chosen last year, so it couldn't get into a whole lot of politics how he was chosen. | ||
| All right, Bob, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| I'm not sure how that relates to healthcare at the end. | ||
| So I'll turn to Anthony Wright. | ||
| What he was talking about, extending it for three years. | ||
| Now, there was a proposal debated this week. | ||
| Let's extend it for one year. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic leader, turned that down. | ||
| They're looking for a permanent extension. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| At the end of the day, health care is expensive. | ||
| It was expensive before. | ||
| It will be expensive next year and the year after that. | ||
| We need to deal with the fundamental causes of why health care, I might actually agree with Mr. Cannon on things like consolidation that is a major driver for why health care costs are so much. | ||
| So much of our health care system has wrong financial incentives where the incentive is not to get better. | ||
| It's to get bigger. | ||
| But people need help now. | ||
| People need help now and into the future. | ||
| And again, providing some basic guarantee that you don't have to spend more than a percent of your income is, I think, a reasonable place that we should is a reasonable policy that has been wildly successful and should continue. | ||
| If you make subsidies permanent, though, what's the incentive then to deal with the root cause of cost? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The incentive is that there's a bunch of people who are underneath that 8.5% that that don't get this tax credit and so are still very price sensitive. | |
| And frankly, most of us are in employer-based coverage anyway. | ||
| The incentive to drive down costs in our current kind of market-based system is that the insurers, the employers, the other ones are the ones who are supposed to be negotiating on your behalf for the best possible price. | ||
| And frankly, if the folks that have all the analysts in the big buildings, whether they be CalPERS or whether they be an insurance company, if they're trying to figure out this system and they're having a tough time negotiating the best possible price, how is the individual supposed to do that as well? | ||
| I think that's where, I think there's some real market failures in our healthcare system, but an individual who has no ability to say no is not the person who's going to stand up to the big insurance company or the big hospital system. | ||
| All right, Michael Cannon, let's talk about market failures, where you two might agree. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So where we agree is, you know, Anthony's very honest, and he's saying, so he's saying the quiet part, but he's saying it quietly. | |
| I'll say it loudly, which is we are 15 years into the Affordable Care Act, right? | ||
| And the affordable, and we're still saying that health care is not affordable. | ||
| So I think we can agree that the Affordable Care Act has not worked. | ||
| It has not made health care affordable. | ||
| There are ways that we can make it affordable. | ||
| There are alternatives to throwing, we also agree that these subsidies would go to people making $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 per year. | ||
| We can agree that there are alternatives to doing that, to just throwing more subsidies at the wealthy. | ||
| And one of them is building on what I think was Donald Trump's greatest health care victory from his first term, which was giving people an alternative to these hidden taxes in Obamacare. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office said that in the so-called short-term market where Donald Trump added consumer protections to that market through regulation, the coverage was comprehensive. | ||
| It offered lower deductibles and broader provider networks in many cases, and the premiums were 60% less. | ||
| What is that coverage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What is that called? | |
| In law, the term is short-term limited duration insurance. | ||
| But as the Trump administration pointed out, there's nothing in federal law that prevents insurance companies from offering consecutive short-term plans to people and even a guaranteed bridge that says that if you get healthy, when you enroll, or if you're healthy and then you get sick, when you enroll in the next plan, you can still pay healthy person premiums. | ||
| So codify that. | ||
| Let people get affordable coverage without a government subsidy. | ||
| You could even build on what Barack Obama did in U.S. territories when he recognized that Obamacare's hidden taxes would destroy the markets there. | ||
| He said Obamacare's hidden taxes won't apply there. | ||
| People in U.S. territories have had more freedom to choose their health insurance than people in the 50 states have. | ||
| Give everyone in the 50 states that freedom. | ||
| Let them buy a health insurance plan from U.S. territories. | ||
| Could be from the same insurance company they have right now. | ||
| But again, could have broader networks, lower deductibles, and lower premiums. | ||
| And then we won't be having these fights over should we be subsidizing the wealthy. | ||
| Anthony Wright, your response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think the ACA has been a huge success in driving down the rate of uninsurance to the highest coverage levels we've ever had in this country. | |
| I think the Affordable Care Act took some modest steps on cost control, but a lot more has to be done. | ||
| What Mr. Cannon is talking about is providing coverage that doesn't have key consumer protections, key benefits, no out-of-pocket limits, and people can be denied for pre-existing conditions or discriminated against for those conditions. | ||
| I want people. | ||
| So yes, maybe those are cheaper premiums, but for less coverage. | ||
| I think that what we need is to keep people with the coverage and the consumer protections that they have, but to try to deal with the base costs. | ||
| The places where I would agree with Mr. Cannon is things like dealing with hospital pricing issues and reforms so that hospitals can't charge you different prices based on where the service is provided. | ||
| Same service, same price. | ||
| Medicare advantage overpayment, things like that. | ||
| I think we were even talking about prescription drug negotiation, allowing Medicare to negotiate for the best possible price for Medicare negotiation, something that was whittled away at with the big beautiful bill, H.R.1. | ||
| So there's things that we can do to deal with prescription drug costs, hospital costs, but people still need help now in order to prevent a premium increase that is a spiking of premium doubling or more that's going to happen in open enrollment literally in a few weeks on November 1. | ||
| Let's go to, let me hear from Linda, who's in Missouri, who gets her insurance through a private company. | ||
| Go ahead, Linda. | ||
| Yes, I am 70 years old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am still working. | |
| I am afraid to stop working because I don't know what this industry is going to come to for his insurance. | ||
| My brother has Obamacare, and he raves about it all the time. | ||
| I think what we have now, all they got to do is to put in and work on it. | ||
| You can't just drop people and think people can't afford to get health insurance. | ||
| A lot of people don't have anything, and we all need health care. | ||
| Health care should be universal throughout. | ||
| I don't know why is it that our health care is so expensive other than from other countries. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Yeah, Linda, let's take that point. | ||
| Michael Cannon, why is U.S. health care so expensive compared to other countries? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Linda said we shouldn't drop people. | |
| And I want to make clear that when I'm talking about letting people purchase insurance outside of Obamacare, Obamacare would still be there if you did that. | ||
| And so the people who like all the things that Anthony is talking about would still have that. | ||
| Why is healthcare so much more expensive here than in other countries? | ||
| A lot of reasons. | ||
| One of them is we're a wealthier country. | ||
| Healthcare is what we call normal good. | ||
| We consume more of it as our wealth increases. | ||
| And because we're a high-income country, the prices for everything are higher. | ||
| But that can't explain it all. | ||
| In the United States, the government has more control over healthcare financing than in the average OECD country. | ||
| In fact, we're closer to Cuba than we are to the average OECD country. | ||
| And what government does with all of that power, and those are OECD data, what government does in the United States with all of that power is just hits the accelerator. | ||
| More consumption, more mandates, higher prices over and over and over again. | ||
| And that's true in the Medicaid program, in the Medicare program, in Obamacare, and employer-sponsored health insurance. | ||
| What the government is doing is encouraging higher prices across the board, not rationing or anything like that. | ||
| And as a result, that's the main reason that we have the most expensive health sector in the world. | ||
| And it's so difficult to get rid of it. | ||
| It's so difficult to constrain prices and make healthcare more affordable and more universal because every time you do that, any way we try to pull the government back and say the government should not be doing the purchasing here and the government should not be requiring people to buy things they don't want and so forth, the people who show up in Congress on that day are the people whose revenue streams depend on those government subsidies, depend on that regulation blocking competition. | ||
| They're the healthcare industry and they push back against the reforms that would make health care more universal because it represents a threat to their revenue streams. | ||
| And let me ask you this. | ||
| Between Anthony and me, who do you think the insurance companies agree with here? | ||
| They agree with Anthony's position. | ||
| They want what Anthony wants because it means a half a trillion dollars of subsidies for them over the next 10 years. | ||
| They are the inefficient ones that we need to disrupt. | ||
| And instead of doing that, Anthony wants to throw another half trillion dollars at them. | ||
| Anthony, right? | ||
| You get to respond and final thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, Families USA is a proud consumer advocacy group, and we disagree with the insurers on tons of things, but on this, we do agree, and so does the entire health sector, doctors, hospitals, because they recognize that there's a real impact if people fall off of coverage. | |
| If these tax credits are not extended, not only will 24 million people see a rise in premiums doubling or tripling or more, hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and we haven't even gotten into like how big these numbers are, thousands of dollars, but 4 million people are projected to lose coverage. | ||
| And that means that providers end up with more uninsured people, fewer paying patients, and more uncompensated care. | ||
| And that's not good for anybody in the healthcare system. | ||
| So yes, the health sector is in large agreement that we need to extend these health credits. | ||
| We're happy to align with them if it's on behalf of patients, and we're happy to fight them when it's about delays or denials under health coverage. | ||
| And that's what we'll continue to fight for. | ||
| Anthony Wright is the Executive Director of Families USA. | ||
| Michael Cannon is the Health Policy Studies Director at Cato Institute. | ||
| Thank you both for the conversation this morning and the insight. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back later on in the Washington Journal, we'll talk with two members of Congress, Representative Mark Alford, Republican of Missouri, and Representative Gwen Moore, a Democrat from Wisconsin, about day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| But next, more of your calls. | ||
| We will get back to government shutdown. | ||
| We'll continue the conversation. | ||
| When we come back after this break, there are the lines on your screen, including a line for federal workers. | ||
| We want to hear from you this morning. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weekends bring you Book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| It's day 10 of the government shutdown here in Washington, and the Senate and the House are not in session today. | ||
| The Senate took another round of votes yesterday, and both proposals to open up the government failed once again. | ||
| The Republicans version is the GOP passed bill in the House. | ||
| It's a so-called clean, continuing resolution with no policy riders on it, and it would fund the government until November 21st. | ||
| They also took a vote on the Democrats proposal, which would fund the government until the end of October and includes extending permanently the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies. | ||
| This morning, your thoughts and your message to Washington as the government shutdown continues into a third work week. | ||
| We'll get your thoughts here in just a minute, but let's begin with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the floor of the Senate yesterday accusing Democrats of playing games with the shutdown. | ||
| The Democrat leader said, every day gets better for us. | ||
| Every day gets better for us. | ||
| Mr. President, this isn't a political game. | ||
| Democrats might feel that way, but I don't know of anybody else that does. | ||
| Mr. President, the longer this goes on, the more the American people realize the Democrats own this shutdown. | ||
| A morning consult poll finds that, and I quote, voters increasingly blame Democrats for the government shutdown, end quote. | ||
| In the latest Harvard-Harris poll, 65% of voters think Democrats should reopen the government instead of holding out for their partisan demands. | ||
| But Democrats are apparently being told to hold the line by their far-left base, and so this shutdown drags on. | ||
| Mr. President, we can solve the issue of true pay and every other problem we're seeing today, today, by passing this clean, nonpartisan CR and sending it to the president. | ||
| South Dakota Republican John Thune, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate on the floor yesterday, quoting an interview that the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gave to one of the news outlets here in Washington where he said every day gets better for the Democrats. | ||
| House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, responded to a question about those comments from Senator Schumer on the steps of the Capitol yesterday. | ||
| House and Senate Democrats have been completely aligned, and we've taken a principled position in defense of the health care of the American people. | ||
| Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats have courageously taken vote after vote against the partisan Republican spending agreement and bill because that bill continues to gut the health care of the American people. | ||
| This is an extraordinary health care crisis that even Marjorie Taylor Greene recognizes is a very real thing for everyday Americans all across the country. | ||
| The largest cut to Medicaid in American history that Republicans have visited upon the American people. | ||
| That's a real thing. | ||
| The possibility of a $536 billion cut to Medicare that will take effect at the end of this year if Congress doesn't act because of the one big ugly bill. | ||
| That's a real thing. | ||
| The fact that unless we extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, tens of millions of Americans are about to experience dramatically increased premiums, co-pays, and deductibles by thousands of dollars per year. | ||
| That's a real thing. | ||
| The fact that hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health clinics are closing all across the country, including in rural America, that's a real thing. | ||
| The Republican health care crisis is real. | ||
| It's upon us. | ||
| It's devastating the country. | ||
| And House Democrats, partnering with Senate Democrats, are standing up on principle in defense of the American people. | ||
| Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, on the Capitol steps yesterday. | ||
| We have seen dueling news conferences from the Democratic leaders and the Republican leaders all week here in Washington during this second work week of a government shutdown. | ||
| Today we enter day 10. | ||
| There have not been talks, and so the shutdown showdown continues. | ||
| Sarah in Virginia, Democratic caller, what's your message to Washington on this? | ||
| Sarah in Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My message goes directly to Mike Johnson, his shameful response yesterday. | |
| That while people are losing their jobs or not getting their pay, including the veterans and the military, Mike Johnson and the rest of them are getting their paycheck every single day, and the House is not even working. | ||
| They're not even in town. | ||
| And when they do come to town, they're getting paid a subsidy to fly into Washington, D.C. | ||
| And on top of that, 79% are paid. | ||
| Their health care is paid for by the government. | ||
| So Mike Johnson is a hypocrite. | ||
| And Marjorie Taylor Green wants them to do something. | ||
| Let Mike Johnson stand up there and speak for himself instead of being a toady for the President of the United States. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Sarah. | ||
| And Sarah is referring to yesterday's Washington Journal, where the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, joined us here in studio and took your phone calls. | ||
| He took a call from a military mom who had this to say to him during yesterday's program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mr. Johnson. | |
| So my question or comments are related to what you said yesterday about not being open to pass any legislation to ensure that military gets paid. | ||
| I'm sure you can tell by my voice I'm very shaky. | ||
| Just want you to hear a little bit about my family. | ||
| I have two medically fragile children. | ||
| I have a husband who actively serves this country. | ||
| He suffers from PTSD from his two tours in Afghanistan. | ||
| If we see a lapse in pay come the 15th, my children do not get to get the medication that's needed for them to live their life because we live paycheck to paycheck. | ||
| I heard you earlier say that you side with President Trump on anything that he says. | ||
| Well, I just read an article this morning that said he absolutely wholeheartedly believes that there needs to be legislation put in so that we do not miss a paycheck. | ||
| You have the power to do that. | ||
| And as a Republican, I am very disappointed in my party, and I'm very disappointed in you because you do have the power to call the House back. | ||
| You did that, or you refused to do that just for a show. | ||
| I am begging you to pass this legislation. | ||
| My kids could die. | ||
| We don't have the credit because of the medical bills that I have to pay regularly. | ||
| You could stop this, and you could be the one that could say military is getting paid. | ||
| And I think that it is awful. | ||
| And the audacity of someone who makes six figures a year to do this to military families is insane. | ||
| All right, Samantha. | ||
| Samantha, I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. | ||
| The reason I've been so angry this week, and they've been calling me out on media, Johnson's angry. | ||
| I am angry because of situations just like yours. | ||
| I have a big military district, and my district is the home of the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base and Fort Polk, the Joint Readiness Training Center. | ||
| I have one of the biggest military districts and military families in America. | ||
| I have a lot of airmen and soldiers who are deployed right now, and they have young families at home, and they have children in health situations like yours. | ||
| This is what keeps me up at night. | ||
| I want you to hear something very clearly. | ||
| The Republicans are the ones delivering for you. | ||
| We had a vote to pay the troops. | ||
| It was the continuum resolution three weeks ago. | ||
| Every single Republican but two voted to keep the government open so that your paycheck can flow. | ||
| Every Democrat in the House, except for one, voted to close it. | ||
| The Democrats are the ones that are preventing you from getting a check. | ||
| If we did a vote on the floor to pay troops, it's not a lawmaking exercise because Chuck Schumer is going to hold that up in the Senate. | ||
| He is demonstrating by voting now six times to keep the government closed that he does not want the troops to be paid. | ||
| And you should listen to his comments last night as reported this morning. | ||
| He is enjoying this. | ||
| He said, every day gets better for us, quote unquote. | ||
| Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are preventing your family from getting the care they need, not Republicans. | ||
| And my heart goes out to you. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, on the Washington Journal yesterday, if you missed it, you can find it online on demand at c-span.org or download our free video mobile app. | ||
| Brent in West Virginia, Republican, day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| Brent, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I think the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about is the fact that these health care supposedly subsidies that the Democrats claim they are defending were never meant to be permanent. | ||
| They were only temporary. | ||
| They were passed during the COVID shutdown. | ||
| And when Congress was considering passing them, many of us on the right said, don't do this because they will only become permanent, as most government fixes do. | ||
| And so now they apparently have, and now people expect them to be permanent. | ||
| So ladies and gentlemen, we have a national debt of $37 trillion. | ||
| That's larger than what we spend on health and human resources and defense combined. | ||
| And we cannot afford to continue. | ||
| We are lost in the woods, and the Democrats are asking us to continue on the path we're on and just go deeper into the woods. | ||
| All right, Brent, let's share with our viewers from the Congressional Budget Office and KFF the Affordable Care Act Enhanced subsidies established by Democrats during the COVID-19 pandemic, originally set to expire at the end of 2022, but then were extended to the end of 2025. | ||
| The expiration would cause average premium increase of 75%, and it would cost $350 billion to extend subsidies for 10 years. | ||
| Brent, quick response from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, we need to scrap the entire ACA. | |
| That needs to be repealed in its entirety, and we need to move toward a free market solution in the health insurance industry. | ||
| That's what this is about, not care. | ||
| This is about insurance. | ||
| So the federal government providing some phony propped-up market at taxpayer expense for health insurance, that's not going to work. | ||
| And it's clear, the Washington Post even said the other day in a board editorial, the ACA does not work. | ||
| It never has. | ||
| And when 2009, 2010, those of us on the right said, don't pass this. | ||
| It's not going to work. | ||
| And we were told it would fix all of our health care problems. | ||
| And yet it hasn't. | ||
| Okay, Brent there in West Virginia, Republican caller. | ||
| Barb is next in Iowa. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Barb, we'll turn to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| First of all, I'd like to, the previous gentleman, I'd like to know what he thinks about the billions, probably trillions at this point of dollars we give in subsidies to fossil fuel, Elon Musk, pharmaceuticals. | ||
| I mean, you know, farmers, because of Trump's tariffs, who are now bailing out farmers as well as Argentina. | ||
| Anyways, my actual comment was going to be that I'm very proud of the Democratic leaders for fighting this fight for the American people, not just the Democrats, for independents, for non-voters, and for Republicans to keep health care costs affordable. | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| If we don't fix our medical system, you know, it's just so broken. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everything about it. | |
| Barb, let me just get in George, who's an Ohio and independent caller. | ||
| George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning to you. | |
| I'm looking at health care two ways. | ||
| One is like an immediate cost to take care of those that are absolutely sick and in need of health care. | ||
| I'm also looking at the long term and what is Congress doing about the long-term thing? | ||
| I.e., could Congress unite themselves, both Democrats and Republicans, and start something where they have more physical activity, get America healthier. | ||
| And that would defray your health care costs in the long run. | ||
| The short-term run, yes, we need to take care of those that are sick, but the long-term run is let's take care of those before they get sick. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And I just like to think that, like with Donald Trump, and I'm not trying to crump him up, but he showed that nations must add to like, let's say, their defense, and people that need to get good health have to take care of themselves, i.e., don't smoke, don't drink to excesses and such, and be physically fit. | ||
| That will defray our long-term health care costs in the long run. | ||
| All right. | ||
| George in Ohio, independent there. | ||
| We'll leave it at that. | ||
| Later on, coming up on the Washington Journal, we're going to talk with Representative Gwen Moore, a member of the Ways and Means Committee and Progressive Caucus, about day 10 of the government shutdown and Democrat strategy here. | ||
| But next after the break, we'll discuss the shutdown and Republican strategy with Representative Mark Alvert, Republican of Missouri. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | |
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, 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. | ||
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| America's Book Club, premiering this fall. | ||
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| This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for its new series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story. | ||
| This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, a recital featuring new songs based on classical writings on virtues that influenced America's founders hosted by the National Constitution Center. | ||
| Then at 2 p.m. Eastern on The Civil War, Calvin Shermerhorn talks about the struggles of one black family to build wealth in the Reconstruction era North. | ||
| Then a discussion on the rise and fall of the Freedmen's Bank used by emancipated slaves during Reconstruction with Justine Hill Edwards. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Stetson University professor David Morton on the 1876 Great Sioux War in the South Dakota Black Hills, exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we are back joining us this morning as Congressman Mark Alford. | ||
| He is on the Armed Services and the Small Business Committees of Republican in Missouri here to talk about day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| Congressman, Democrats assert that the president could end this shutdown right now if he wanted to. | ||
| Your response. | ||
| Hey, first off, Greta, thank you for having me. | ||
| I look forward to talking with you today and also the listeners. | ||
| And I have had a little bit of promotion. | ||
| I'm now on the Appropriations Committee off Armed Services, but that affords me the opportunity to work on this appropriation process, which is being held hostage right now by Chuck Schumer and the Democrats as we enter day 10 of the Schumer shutdown. | ||
| Look, the Democrats hold the key to this. | ||
| Chuck Schumer has the key in his hand to unlock the government, turn the lights back on, pay the military, pay our federal workers, and get back to the business of operating America. | ||
| And yet he does not want to do that out of fear. | ||
| Whatever reason he has for not doing it is not good enough for us. | ||
| We passed the clean continuing resolution and a simple extension. | ||
| We got all 12 appropriation bills out of committee. | ||
| We worked very, very hard to do that, some 15-hour days on these bills. | ||
| We got them three on the House floor and passed. | ||
| And we were simply asking for another seven weeks until November 21st to finish our job, an extension of the appropriations process. | ||
| That's why we passed a clean CR, an extension with no conservative writers or anything else that the Democrats could oppose. | ||
| And yet they have come back because they do not like the fact that in the reconciliation process, we were able, under the one big beautiful bill, the working family tax cuts, we were able to save Medicaid and make the reforms necessary so that program can continue for those who should be rightfully on it. | ||
| And so now they're holding America hostage and trying to change what we've already voted on. | ||
| The answer is simple. | ||
| If we want the military to be paid next week on the 15th, which they should be, Chuck Schumer needs to open the government. | ||
| Congressman, let's have you respond to your Republican colleague, Marjorie Taylor Green, on CNN yesterday saying this about her party, your party. | ||
| I don't think the shutdown is popular for either side. | ||
| And so I see the shutdown completely different from maybe my party leadership. | ||
| And I'm not putting the blame on the president. | ||
| I'm actually putting the blame on the speaker and leader soon and the senate. | ||
| This should not be happening. | ||
| And I don't think, look, as a member of Congress, we already have a low enough job approval rating. | ||
| This shutdown is just going to drive everybody's approval rating that much lower. | ||
| So you're putting the blame on the leadership of your party. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| We control the House. | ||
| We control the Senate. | ||
| We have the White House. | ||
| I've been vocal saying, you know, you can use the nuclear option in the Senate. | ||
| This doesn't have to be a shutdown. | ||
| But what we have to do is we have to work for the American people. | ||
| And our country is so divided right now. | ||
| We see it all the time in every single way. | ||
| It's divided in what I would say very dangerous ways. | ||
| And we saw that with the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, which has upset so many people across the board. | ||
| And I look, when it comes to hearing from senior citizens or my own friends and neighbors and my own family members and people that voted for me, and they're just saying, Marjorie, we just really want somebody to do something about health insurance premiums. | ||
| We really want our government and our leaders to actually focus on our country for a change and fix our problems. | ||
| That is the message I constantly hear from my district. | ||
| And I'm a representative. | ||
| I don't have to be a cheerleader for my party. | ||
| I have to represent my district because those are the people that hired me and sent me here. | ||
| And I myself, I agree with them. | ||
| And I'm pretty much over the, it's just drama constantly on TV. | ||
| Congressman Mark Alford, she blames the Republican leadership. | ||
| Speaker, Mike Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune. | ||
| Well, look, I have a lot of respect for Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| We agree on a lot of things. | ||
| I do not agree necessarily on this. | ||
| I'm not worried about approval ratings. | ||
| I'm not worried about how popular we are right now. | ||
| I'm worried about doing the right thing for the American people. | ||
| Making cuts is tough. | ||
| But the Harper Harris poll that came out on Monday, if you want to look at polls, it says that two-thirds of Americans agree with the Republican Party. | ||
| Over 60% of Americans agree that this government shutdown is a Schumer shutdown and the Republicans have done the right thing by passing a clean CR. | ||
| Do we need to have a conversation about the premium tax credits? | ||
| Perhaps, but after the government reopens. | ||
| Chuck Schumer holds the key to all this. | ||
| He can unlock it today. | ||
| I think they've left town already and won't vote again until Tuesday, which means our military certainly will not get paid on the 15th, which is very troubling. | ||
| But Marjorie Taylor Greene is right about some things. | ||
| She is not right, I think, about blaming our leadership. | ||
| Our leadership has taken us in a position of integrity for the American people. | ||
| And I stand behind them, not because I'm some sort of sycophant for the leadership. | ||
| I'm not in leadership. | ||
| I vote my conscience and I vote my district. | ||
| But I do know that Mike Johnson, Steve Scalese, Lisa McClain, Tom Emmer, they are all working hard to make sure that our government gets reopened under a clean extension so that we can get back to regular order, which we have been missing for decades in the U.S. House of Representatives. | ||
| And for those, you have very intelligent viewers and listeners out there, and I know that they know what it means to get back to regular order. | ||
| We have not been operating under regular order, and that has led to our $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| If we want to truly help the American people, I would love to work with Marjorie Taylor Greene and all of our Republicans and as many Democrats as humanly possible to get us out of this debt. | ||
| And that's going to mean making cuts in the discretionary part of our budget, which is only 24% now. | ||
| 75% of our budget is Social Security and Medicare. | ||
| And so we are making that. | ||
| We've made the cuts in all, well, we've made cuts in nine appropriation bills this year, significant cuts. | ||
| On one of them, State and Foreign Operations, which oversees our embassies, I'm on this subcommittee under Mario DSBART. | ||
| We've cut more than 23% of that budget. | ||
| So we are looking at things very seriously. | ||
| It's time to get serious. | ||
| It's time for Chuck Schumer to quit holding us hostage, quit bringing up these red herrings, open the government so we can do our business. | ||
| You cited numbers from the Harvard Harris poll. | ||
| This is from the Hill newspapers reporting. | ||
| The poll found 70% of respondents opposed the shutdown, while 30% said they supported it. | ||
| More respondents, 53% blame Republicans for the shutdown than over those who blamed Democrats, which was 47%. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| Debbie, who's in Branson, Missouri, Democratic Caller, you're up first here for the Congressman. | ||
| Hi, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I am. | ||
| I love Branson, by the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, a lot of people do. | |
| Keep coming, folks. | ||
| I'm just really curious how you can sit there and say, we need to get back to regular order. | ||
| Yes, we do, sir. | ||
| We need to get back to the Congress making bills and legislating the Senate to pass those that are fair and in the oath that they took to protect the American people and to think of them. | ||
| We're going overseas doing God knows what, giving a lot of money to defense, laying off people. | ||
| Let's get back to regular order because that's what the people of the United States need right now. | ||
| We don't need executive orders for every little whim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hope you, sir, as an elected official, will think of the people that are in nursing homes. | |
| Their parents are in nursing homes. | ||
| Their Medicaid is going to be cut. | ||
| What is going to happen to Missouri and to all the other states that their hospitals are going to close? | ||
| This is not regular order, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's get a response from the congressman. | ||
| All right. | ||
| A lot there. | ||
| Let me talk about the nursing homes and hospitals first, because we were in a nursing home this week, almost all the way down to Branson, the southern part of our district. | ||
| We were in several rural hospitals this week. | ||
| We have 54 rural hospitals in the state of Missouri, 18 in my district. | ||
| And that's why we put a $50 billion rural transformation health fund in the one big beautiful bill, the reconciliation package, so that we can assist these rural hospitals. | ||
| We know that when we're making reforms to Medicaid and we're kicking people off who are living in their parents' basement, who are able-bodied workers, who have no dependents, and they should be out working or having job training or at least looking for a job 20 hours a week, they're getting off Medicaid. | ||
| I'm sorry, they should not be on Medicaid. | ||
| Neither should illegal aliens. | ||
| And so we are reforming the system. | ||
| We know that that's going to have an impact on our rural hospitals. | ||
| And so that's why we put this $50 billion fund in there to help offset some of those losses. | ||
| When it comes to nursing homes, I was just in a beautiful Baptist nursing home down in Bates County, which is halfway between Kansas City, where I am right now, and Branson. | ||
| And I want to assure people, if you're on Medicaid and you're a nursing home, you're not an able-bodied adult. | ||
| And chances are you are above the window there for not having coverage for Medicaid. | ||
| And so you will not be affected. | ||
| This is a scare tactic by the Democrats saying that all these people who should be on Medicaid are going to kick off. | ||
| We're not kicking children off. | ||
| We are not kicking parents with dependents that are unable to work. | ||
| It's just not true. | ||
| Let's talk about the overseas issues in regular order. | ||
| I'm in complete agreement with you. | ||
| We have spent way too much of our money on foreign programs that have come back to bite us in the rear end. | ||
| That's why we reformed the U.S. AID programs. | ||
| And under my suggestion, Secretary Marco Rubio and the chair of our subcommittee, Mario Diaspillard on state and foreign operations, we have changed the name of these to state and related programs that have to do with our national security, national security and related programs. | ||
| If it doesn't have to do with our national security, we should not be spending money on these programs. | ||
| We are reeling in. | ||
| We are saving the money. | ||
| We're getting back to regular order. | ||
| But I do want to tell everyone this. | ||
| This is not going to happen overnight. | ||
| It's very difficult to change Washington because we've been living under a process where in past, the leadership, mainly Democrats, have bundled everything together in an omnibus bill. | ||
| And we have not been able to go through all the spending measures and try to debate these and do it the right way. | ||
| And then they give us an omnibus bill right before Christmas break and you're expected to vote on it and then read what's in it. | ||
| We're not doing that anymore. | ||
| And so we're getting back to regular order. | ||
| I'm sorry, that's a long-winded answer, but I'm very passionate about this because I really think the Democrats, look, we're all in this together. | ||
| And I don't necessarily see the Democrats as enemies, but they've got to get on board and realize that we are in trouble as a nation. | ||
| We cannot sustain $37 trillion in debt and a trillion dollars each year now in simple interest payments on that debt. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| We do have folks waiting for you, Congressman Max in Silver Spring, Maryland, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So first of all, I want to address one thing that you just said, sir. | ||
| You're taking credit for $50 billion that you just gave to the hospital industry. | ||
| That's after you took away $150 billion. | ||
| You don't take credit for just giving back a little bit of money after taking away so much. | ||
| So quit a lion. | ||
| It just makes you look horrible. | ||
| The real reason why I called, though, was because you keep blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown. | ||
| Now, you know what? | ||
| They're in fault, but you're also in fault. | ||
| You can also turn it around. | ||
| You can turn it around. | ||
| We did our job, Max. | ||
| We voted for a clean, continuing resolution. | ||
| Okay, Congressman. | ||
| All they had to do was to keep it going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can I talk? | |
| Let's have a talk, please. | ||
| Okay, Max, hold on. | ||
| I'm going to ask you multiple questions. | ||
| I'm going to answer your question. | ||
| Okay, let Max finish this thought, then we'll go to you, Congressman. | ||
| Go ahead, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| The Speaker of the House could turn things around, and you guys, the government would be working tomorrow if you guys chose to do so. | ||
| But instead, you went on vacation. | ||
| No, you could. | ||
| You have a lot of people. | ||
| No, that's bull, Max. | ||
| I'm not on vacation. | ||
| Go to my social media pages at rep Mark Alford. | ||
| I'm out each and every day. | ||
| I talked to a veteran yesterday in our district who's not going to get the mental health care he needs because of the shutdown, Schumer shutdown in Washington, D.C. | ||
| He has a traumatic brain injury. | ||
| He is suffering from PTSD. | ||
| Our caseworkers are in our offices every day, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, without pay, trying to help these people. | ||
| But Chuck Schumer is standing in the way. | ||
| And so, sir, I will not take that. | ||
| I will not take the blame for this. | ||
| We'll go to Robert next. | ||
| Cincinnati Republican caller. | ||
| Robert, your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing, Congressman? | |
| I'm fine. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| I'm a true, I'm doing good. | ||
| I'm a true Republican. | ||
| And when they started out with the Obamacare, and, you know, y'all shut down the government to stop it, and then y'all gave in. | ||
| You know, you lost a lot of respect from us because you gave in. | ||
| Because we knew back in 2010 that this Obamacare was never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to work. | ||
| It was never going to work. | ||
| We knew that then, but y'all gave in. | ||
| So don't give in now. | ||
| Don't worry about these listeners that are calling in. | ||
| Most of these are Democrats acting like the Republicans. | ||
| These ain't the same people that we do not want to subsidize Obamacare, not for illegals, not for none of it. | ||
| It's real simple. | ||
| I got to pay for my insurance and other people's insurance because of my taxes. | ||
| I don't want that to happen. | ||
| It's time for people to start doing their own thing. | ||
| We all are in this. | ||
| But you say, they keep saying 26 million or 20 million is going to lose their health care. | ||
| Well, there is 320, 20 plus more million people in this country rather than them people on ACA. | ||
| The Democrats shouldn't have let them to that cliff. | ||
| They shouldn't have walked them off that cliff. | ||
| They've been walking them off that cliff for 10 years. | ||
| It's time for the Democrats to understand that that is a failed project. | ||
| Okay, Congressman. | ||
| Robert, thank you for that wise insight. | ||
| I was not in Congress back in 2010. | ||
| I was doing the news here in Kansas City, but I was just as frustrated as you. | ||
| I think the Affordable Care Act was never affordable. | ||
| I think it was an intent by the Democrats to usher in universal health care because they see health care as a right. | ||
| Bernie Sanders had said such. | ||
| I don't agree with that. | ||
| I do think there needs to be reforms made. | ||
| I think that, you know, the health care costs need to come down. | ||
| A lot of that I can pin on litigation and plaintiff's attorneys who have driven up the cost and driven doctors out of Kansas City, Missouri, and over to Kansas City, Kansas, where the max you can get over there for a jury for medical malpractice, I think, is one quarter of a million dollars. | ||
| The point being is, yes, it needs to be fixed. | ||
| This is not affordable care. | ||
| There were many lies told to the American people, gaslighting. | ||
| You get to keep your doctor? | ||
| No, you didn't. | ||
| Everyone's insurance premiums have gone up and they will continue to go up unless we fix it. | ||
| But it has nothing to do with the COVID-era subsidies that the Democrats voted in years ago for them to expire at the end of this year. | ||
| Let me make that very clear. | ||
| The Republicans did not put an expiration date on this can, okay? | ||
| It was the Democrats that did it. | ||
| If they want to negotiate, open the freaking government so we can come in and talk about how do we help people. | ||
| Sir, we'll go to Deanna next, who's in Union, Kentucky, an independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is Deanna. | |
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| I just want to say that this is total craziness. | ||
| As an independent, I'm looking at both sides. | ||
| And you did make a valid point. | ||
| All of this has been caused by the Democrats from starting the Affordable Care Act to sunsetting it, which no Republican voted for. | ||
| I did do my homework. | ||
| But what I want to say is we cannot continue to subsidize health care because as a small business owner and as an individual, my costs continue to rise every time the federal government subsidizes health care. | ||
| I think your previous caller that said this needs to be scrapped is 100% on. | ||
| And I would say keep up the good fight. | ||
| The Democrats need to open the government and come to the table and find a resolution for all Americans and make things affordable. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Congressman Alford. | ||
| Well, Deanne, thank you so much. | ||
| I think you're absolutely spot on, and it's good to hear even independents realizing that subsidies for health care are not the way to go. | ||
| Trying to find solutions in the health care system through insurance and the private marketplace is the way to go and to bring down costs overall. | ||
| There was a previous caller who brought up farm subsidies, and I want to address that a little bit because I was on the Ag Committee. | ||
| I am an advocate for safety net programs for our farmers and producers. | ||
| We have 87,000 farms in the state of Missouri, and many of them are in my rural district. | ||
| The farmers have had high input costs because of Joe Biden's war on fossil fuels that have driven up the price of fertilizer and fuel to do business. | ||
| We are having record yields this year, which is good, but the prices are extremely low. | ||
| And so we are going to subsidize the farmers in this emergency situation. | ||
| Much of that money President Trump has organized to come out of the Commodity Credit Corporation from the U.S. Department of Ag. | ||
| And I believe he's going to take tariff money, some $30 to $50 billion out of that. | ||
| That we've gotten over $350 billion in tariffs so far and help our farmers through this difficult time. | ||
| Subsidies are not meant to be permanent. | ||
| They are for crises and temporary positions that Americans are going through. | ||
| A way that we can help others in a time of crisis and a time of need on a temporary basis. | ||
| Michelle, in Birmingham, Alabama, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Michelle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Reference Alfred. | |
| I had a quick question. | ||
| They just said a few minutes ago that the subsidies were $330 billion, but the Democrats are asking for $1.5 trillion. | ||
| So where is the rest of that money going? | ||
| Is it going for things like prostitute dancing in Nigeria and the crazy stuff that we used to have on USID, USAID? | ||
| Or where is that money going? | ||
| Congressman? | ||
| Well, you know, I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me. | ||
| I know what they're, when I let off this discussion, it's about the one big beautiful bill. | ||
| And I try not to use that term now because it triggers a lot of Democrats. | ||
| I was out on a town hall tour. | ||
| I'm one of the few Republicans that still does them. | ||
| We were out, did 15 stops in four days and took 256 questions and comments. | ||
| And I just call it reconciliation now because I want people to listen to what I'm saying. | ||
| And let me tell you this: under reconciliation, we made reforms and saved some $800 billion, I think $900 billion actually, in the Medicaid reform that is going to get people back to work, help them get back to work, and kick people off who don't belong. | ||
| And that's some of the things that the Democrats want back. | ||
| They do not want to give up these savings that we are making, and they wanted to add on $1.5 trillion over 10 years. | ||
| Keep in mind, when we talk about big numbers in Washington, D.C., it's a lot of money, even when it's broken down to one singular year. | ||
| But we're talking about a 10-year spread. | ||
| That's how we kind of budget things and look at things. | ||
| So, this number, $1.5 trillion over 10 years, is a lot of money, and it's just going to add to our debt. | ||
| I think on the promising note, to everyone listening right now, our economy is about to boom. | ||
| I don't know if you realize it right now, but this is a slingshot that's being pulled back. | ||
| And it's going to go fast next year. | ||
| I think in the second, third quarter, you're going to see tremendous growth. | ||
| If we get these interest rates down, home ownership participation, which I'm working feverishly on as the chair of the real estate task force in Congress to make sure we have affordable housing and good housing stock, we're going to see a big resurgence in our economy. | ||
| Melvin is watching in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a caller, Democrat, a caller, and you are not going to be able to do this. | ||
| Hey, Melvin, for the Congressman. | ||
| Hey, Melvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, I want to ask one question. | ||
| Well, let me ask this question first. | ||
| How many Democrats participated in passing the clean resolution you keep talking about? | ||
| One. | ||
| And I forgot his name. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| It was one person voted for it in the House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, I didn't talk about voters for it. | |
| I said how many set in on it. | ||
| You know, this whole thing about the government means that everybody's supposed to get involved in and coming up and trying to come up with something that is agreed with everybody. | ||
| You actually, the last resolution was signed by Schumer was messed up. | ||
| Y'all did not hold up to the agreement that was made in that one. | ||
| So therefore, in this time, Trump said, don't have any Democrats involved in anything, which you did. | ||
| So because you're elected to a majority party, it doesn't mean that you make all the decisions. | ||
| Then they just come in and vote on what you all decided to. | ||
| That's basically what you were doing. | ||
| Let's get a response, Melvin. | ||
| Congressman, you're following, right? | ||
| Melvin, I understand you're very passionate about this. | ||
| And look, I appreciate your love for our country and your passion on this topic. | ||
| So I want to try to recapsulate what I think I heard you saying, if that's okay. | ||
| You feel like it's incumbent on the Republicans who have a majority in the House and in the Senate to work with Democrats. | ||
| And you feel like President Trump has pretty much said you don't need Democrat help. | ||
| Is that what you're saying? | ||
| Yeah, that's the gist of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So here's my take on that. | ||
| We have the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. | ||
| We need 218 votes. | ||
| We can get things done if we stick together, which we've had a tough time doing in the past on a lot of things. | ||
| We didn't on this because even those who have not voted for continuing resolutions in the past realized that we need to stick together and keep the government open because they saw us doing the hard work on the Appropriations Committee. | ||
| They saw us working 15 hours, days under the leadership of Tom Cole, our chair, and our sub-chairs to get this done for the American people. | ||
| They see the ship turning around. | ||
| This is an aircraft carrier we're trying to turn around when it gets back to regular order. | ||
| It's not a ski boat in the middle of a lake. | ||
| We can't just flip it around like that. | ||
| But they saw it. | ||
| They voted for it. | ||
| We sent it over to the Senate. | ||
| One of the biggest misconceptions that I've heard throughout this whole thing is that, well, you have control of the Senate. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| You can open it back up. | ||
| No, we need 60 votes in the Senate to avoid the filibuster. | ||
| And we're not going to use the nuclear option, which some have suggested, even our own party, that we do this, to blow things up and go to just a regular, simple majority on this. | ||
| Because when that happens, and we set the precedent for that, when the Democrats regain control, they can use the same procedure to try to pack the Supreme Court and all these other wacky, liberal, progressive things that the Democrats want to do to fundamentally change how we operate in America. | ||
| We are going to protect the system. | ||
| Leader Thune is going to protect the Senate. | ||
| Mike Johnson's going to protect the House. | ||
| And when we can come together, as we have on some things, we are going to work with Democrats in the best interest of America. | ||
| And Congressman, the one Democrat who voted on September 19th for that clean, continuing resolution was Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine from a swing district, and someone who breaks with his party. | ||
| And now he's being threatened by primary by guess who? | ||
| The leadership and those in the Democrat Party who, for some reason, found it disgusting to keep the government open by voting for a clean extension. | ||
| So there you go. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Congressman Mark Alford, who is a Republican in Missouri, member of the Appropriations Committee, Small Business Committee. | ||
| Thank you so much for talking to our viewers this morning. | ||
| We always appreciate your time. | ||
| Anytime, I love listening to people. | ||
| That's one of my things. | ||
| I've been trained as a journalist over 35 years. | ||
| I love listening to people. | ||
| We may not always agree, but I still believe the best days are ahead of us. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| We'll look forward to having you on again. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back next on the Washington Journal, we'll continue our conversation about day 10 of the government shutdown with Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This holiday weekend, join C-SPAN for the most comprehensive America 250 coverage of the U.S. Navy's 250th anniversary celebration. | |
| The Navy 250 Gala at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. | ||
| A star-studded Victory at Sea concert on Independence Mall, including actor and retired Marine Rob Riggle as MC, Patty LaBelle, the elite Marine Corps band, and others. | ||
| A commemoration of the Navy's founding, including a Blue Angels flyover, the U.S. Navy's 250th anniversary celebration this holiday weekend, only on C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250. | ||
| Premiering today at 7 p.m. on C-SPAN, Obama White House Chief of Staff Rah Emmanuel and Vice President Mike Pence, once colleagues in Congress, sit down together for this episode of Ceasefire, hosted by Politico's White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns, Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Two leaders, one goal, to find common ground only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Philip Taubman and his brother William have written what the publisher Norton is calling McNamara at War, a new history. | ||
| The introduction to this full-life biography of former Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara says the following, quote, in McNamara at War, Philip and William Taubman examine McNamara's life of personal contradiction, unquote. | ||
| It's a portrait of a man at war with himself, according to the authors. | ||
| It's riven with melancholy, guilt, zealous loyalty, and profound inability to admit his flawed thinking about Vietnam before it was too late. | ||
| And that's according to the authors. | ||
| William Taubman, seven years older than his brother at 83, is an emeritus political science professor from Amherst College. | ||
| Brother Phil spent 30 years with the New York Times and is an author of several books. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Authors Philip and William Taubman with their book, McNamara at War, a new history, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| Book Notes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back and joining us this morning is Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, member of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of the Progressive Caucus joining us from Capitol Hill this morning on day 10 of the government shutdown. | ||
| Congresswoman, federal workers will miss a paycheck, some of them starting today or partial paycheck. | ||
| Republicans say it's because Democrats refuse to just go along with a continuing resolution. | ||
| These federal workers and military workers who are slated to miss a paycheck next week could get paid if Democrats passed a continuing resolution. | ||
| Well, you know, Republicans are relying on having Democrats in the Senate over a barrel. | ||
| And the choices that they have to make is whether or not federal employees will miss a paycheck or have to rely on reimbursement, or whether or not we're going to kick 15 million people off their health care, or whether or not we're going to have the average person who is relying on the Affordable Care Act premiums to have them on average double. | ||
| So those are like Sophie's choices that the Republicans have given us. | ||
| And what we have said is that, you know, this is, you know, that we understand that President Trump won the election and they have control of the House and the Senate and apparently even the Supreme Court. | ||
| But we are not going to minimize our responsibility to Americans to not only prevent individuals losing their health care, but ultimately dismantling the health care system as we know it in America. | ||
| According to a Harris Harvard poll that was conducted this week, while the poll found the shutdown hurt Republicans over Democrats, that didn't mean respondents wanted Democrats to continue withholding their support to strike a deal with Republicans. | ||
| The poll found 65% said Democrats should accept a continuing Resolution at current spending levels. | ||
| That's the clean CR. | ||
| While 35% said that they should hold out until they get additional funding for Obamacare. | ||
| How do you respond? | ||
| Well, you know, there's nothing clean about this continuing resolution. | ||
| I think people, you know, people think, oh, we'll just continue appropriations from last time and it'll be all good as it has been in the past. | ||
| But what we have seen as we have tracked the amount of monies that the president has either subjected to rescissions or just plain old withholding money and impounding money, | ||
| it has come to a half trillion dollars on top of the trillion dollars they took out of Medicaid, on top of the half trillion dollars losses they've triggered with regard to Medicare and doubling people's premiums under the ACA. | ||
| So, you know, it's a hard pill to swallow to say that we're not continuing a clean CR. | ||
| There's nothing clean about dismantling our health care system in the United States. | ||
| Let's listen to President Trump. | ||
| In the cabinet meeting yesterday, here's what he had to say about the shutdown as we enter day 10 today. | ||
| Despite all of the damage that it's caused, the shutdown has been, you know, pretty damaging. | ||
| I mean, not yet because it's early, but it gets a little bit worse as it goes along. | ||
| And we'll be making cuts that will be permanent. | ||
| And we're only going to cut Democrat programs. | ||
| I hate to tell you. | ||
| I guess that makes sense. | ||
| But we're only cutting Democrat programs. | ||
| But we're going to start that. | ||
| And we have Russell can talk to you about it if he wants to, but we'll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren't popular with Republicans, frankly, because that's the way it works. | ||
| They wanted to do this, so we'll give them a little taste of their own medicine. | ||
| Congresswoman, your response? | ||
| It's pathetic, actually. | ||
| You know, I mean, he just straight up says that he's being partisan and he wants to hurt just Democrats. | ||
| Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans depend on Medicaid. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans depend on Medicare. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans depend on the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| And so there, you know, he has already doged, you know, millions of programs, the NIH funding, the National Institute of Health funding that discovers new cures and creates cancer research. | ||
| Democrats are not the only people who get cancer. | ||
| So it is really fairly pathetic and it's pretty obvious that his dictatorial style just intends to hurt Democrats. | ||
| But unfortunately, Republicans, you know, cancer doesn't know any party. | ||
| We're going to go to calls. | ||
| Vicki in St. Louis, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm Ms. Moore. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I have a lot going on. | ||
| I have family that lives in and around Chicago, so it's a nightmare there right now. | ||
| Also, I saw that Trump gave $20 billion to bail out Argentina, but he doesn't have enough money to help people in the United States to continue to have their health care. | ||
| He's also put tariffs that he says he's gotten trillions of dollars worth. | ||
| Why can't he use that for health care? | ||
| And the last thing I want to say is there is a Constitution of the United States, and Congress is supposed to be the one to say who and where this money is going. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I'll take my phone call off the air. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| Well, I did not plant Dickie's call, but she is just spot on. | ||
| You know, to talk about the priorities, that $20 billion really saved the president of Argentina, but it would have gone a long way toward resolving the health care crisis that we're having here. | ||
| That food insecurity, as people, you know, maybe okay, who rely on SNAP for October, but come November, that's going to be a problem. | ||
| Our farmers are losing their markets. | ||
| The president is talking about providing welfare to farmers who won't be able to send their products out to market. | ||
| And of course, farmers don't want that. | ||
| They want their markets. | ||
| $20 billion would go a long way. | ||
| And the Republicans, as the president has indicated, he's very partisan. | ||
| His priorities are to fund the priorities of the billionaire class. | ||
| The one big beautiful bill that we passed, you know, disproportionately funds benefits for billionaires and millionaires while leaving all the rest of us behind. | ||
| Congressman, on the Argentina bailout, the New York Times, with this headline for you and our viewers, big investors await windfall from Trump's Argentina bailout. | ||
| The United States finalized a $20 billion lifeline for Argentina that will benefit Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's allies. | ||
| That's what the New York Times reports this morning. | ||
| Let's go to John, who's in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, an independent. | ||
| You're next, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I would just like to say, I watched the president, and we're living in the golden age, and everything is wonderful. | ||
| Everything is just terrific. | ||
| All this money's coming in. | ||
| They saved all this money. | ||
| I'd like to know what the problem is that we can't get this thing done. | ||
| There's plenty of everything. | ||
| Everything's golden. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, John, your rhetoric is rhetoric. | ||
| And that, you know, you heard that speech. | ||
| I've heard several of the president's speech. | ||
| I couldn't believe what he was saying at the United Nations talking about inflation is gone. | ||
| And I know Milwaukee, where I represent, we're one of the top 10 cities that are experiencing hardships because of the price of groceries. | ||
| And, you know, this is because inflation is raging in this country. | ||
| So, you know, he's just unbelievable. | ||
| Lorraine in New Jersey, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Good morning, Ms. Moore. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| It's Lorraine Russell on New Jersey. | ||
| I just want to just comment on something you said at the beginning when you came on, minimizing your, that the Democrats, as long with yourself, will not minimize your responsibility to Americans with regard to health care. | ||
| So my question to you is this. | ||
| And the shutdown right now is what we're talking about. | ||
| It's our main concern, is about health care. | ||
| But these cuts that I'm hearing about are funding illegal immigrants. | ||
| I'm very concerned about that. | ||
| I want to thank you for all that you've shared. | ||
| I am a Republican, but I love listening to your point of view. | ||
| It keeps me centered. | ||
| But I am very, very concerned about the safety. | ||
| I'm a nurse in this country. | ||
| We have nurses in North New Jersey getting stabbed walking to their cars. | ||
| I won't get into that, but how do we handle the illegal immigration and health care spending? | ||
| It's taking a big chunk out of our monies in this country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I am so, I want to thank you for being a nurse. | ||
| That's really a very hard job. | ||
| CNN, we need to do a whole program on just that. | ||
| But having said that, it is an absolute lie that Democrats are trying to save money for illegal aliens or illegal undocumented people. | ||
| You know, in this country, we have a policy that the hospital has to take anybody, no matter what their immigration status is, under emergency care. | ||
| If an undocumented person is in a car wreck, nobody's going to say, pull your papers out before we can treat you. | ||
| It is true that that person would be treated in an emergency room, and there is a small amount of money that might be, might be reimbursed from state and federal programs to take care of that person. | ||
| But that is it. | ||
| That person is not eligible for ACA premium credits, not eligible for Medicaid, not eligible for Medicare. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| Emergency. | ||
| Now, what the Republicans did take eliminate in the One Big Beautiful bill is the ability for people who are here legally, legal immigrants, health care. | ||
| People who are here because they've had visas, because they were fleeing from trafficking. | ||
| People who had asylum. | ||
| These were people who were legally, had legal status, green cards, to be here. | ||
| That is the health care that Republicans have taken away from people. | ||
| No, no illegal person is eligible for health care per se unless they find themselves in a motorcycle accident. | ||
| They're going to treat them right on the spot without even knowing their immigration status. | ||
| I'm glad you asked the question though. | ||
| We'll go to Silver Spring, Maryland, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead, caller, question or comment for the Congresswoman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I have comments. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Yeah, so I was recently sworn in as a new citizen of this beautiful country, which I'm very grateful of. | ||
| And I spent 15 years as an immigrant, as a legal immigrant. | ||
| And I never, during that time, I never, I lived in four states and I never qualified for any kind of federal or state assistance regarding health care, which I didn't need to, which is, you know, I'm very grateful to. | ||
| But, you know, I think this Republican talking point about the boogeyman, illegal immigrants is just a way to hide how a lot of their constituents' premiums are going to double or triple if the subsidies expire. | ||
| So that's very much my comment. | ||
| And I have another comment. | ||
| I was listening to the Republican congressman earlier. | ||
| Whenever he got called on a lie, he would get very passionate. | ||
| He would say passionate. | ||
| I would say angry. | ||
| And if these are the people that you have to negotiate with, Congresswoman, I'm really sorry. | ||
| Congresswoman, we'll get your response. | ||
| It's just well said. | ||
| It's a Republican talking point. | ||
| Here's somebody who was a legal immigrant for 15 years that didn't qualify for any health care. | ||
| And congratulations on becoming a citizen. | ||
| We need you to now vote. | ||
| Franklin, in DC, independent caller, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks. | |
| Yeah, I'm an independent, but I can't remember the last time I actually voted for a Republican. | ||
| I tend to side do Democrats for no other reason than Republicans, associates. | ||
| But I am often bemused and frustrated by Democrats' sort of inability to win what should be, I mean, just basic logical argument. | ||
| And I just want to offer some constructive criticism in this debate you guys are having. | ||
| You don't have anyone to negotiate with. | ||
| You don't have an honest broker on the other side. | ||
| You guys should be winning this public debate, and you aren't. | ||
| And I do say, I know it gets old. | ||
| You've heard this before, but the message is just... | ||
| Hey, Franklin, Franklin, you're breaking up a bit. | ||
| You said Democrats should be winning this public debate, but they aren't. | ||
| Explain why, real quick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Real quick, because they're trying to have a logical debate with an illogical audience. | |
| The one point I just wanted out there is the Argentina thing. | ||
| You guys should be hammering that. | ||
| If Democrats tried to get away with what Trump is doing in Argentina while they're taking health care from Americans, you'd be crucified. | ||
| Okay, we'll take your points, Franklin. | ||
| Well, amen belongs right there. | ||
| But we do have some leverage. | ||
| We have the leverage in the Senate, the filibuster, you know, and Senate Democrats are holding out. | ||
| You know, what they want us to do is just to cave and say, okay, you know, we're going to cede all power to not just Republicans, but to Donald Trump, to Donald Trump. | ||
| Cede all power. | ||
| Already, Republican members of the House and the Senate have ceded their congressional power to this president. | ||
| And, you know, just to the caller's point, you know, we do well. | ||
| I appreciate CNN, but I'll tell you, you know, Republicans own most of the media that they control, Fox News and X or Meta, whatever you call it. | ||
| You know, right now the president has purchased or allowed his allies to purchase TikTok. | ||
| We are hard-pressed to get our message out. | ||
| So we appreciate when people go out of their way, like the previous caller, to educate themselves and to realize that these are just bullying tactics. | ||
| You know, Republicans have the power, and they just want to squash all debate, and they want to squash democracy. | ||
| Small D. Mary in Wisconsin, a Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just have 25, they say probably about 25 million people walked through this border during the Biden administration, and there has been a low quantities of chemotherapeutic drugs, especially for women with breast cancer. | |
| And all these, a lot of these illegal women can come into the emergency room, and if they are having pain or a lump, they're going to be treated. | ||
| And so there's kinetic. | ||
| We cannot titrate chemotherapeutic drugs. | ||
| We can titrate medicine for other diseases, but not for cancer. | ||
| And the other thing was, we only have so much food for the world. | ||
| We only have so many farmers producing food. | ||
| We can maybe, as an adult, live off of one meal, but children need three meals a day. | ||
| And right now, our children aren't getting enough food. | ||
| Well, the children aren't going to have to. | ||
| They're going to get enough food because in this one big beautiful bill, they are cutting food for children in school. | ||
| And we burned up food, just tons and tons of food when we destroyed the State Department. | ||
| We burned it up. | ||
| United Nations and other non-governmental agents begged us not to do that. | ||
| We burned and destroyed medicine and vaccines. | ||
| And I guess I don't have a response to your point when people come to the emergency room in agony and in pain that they should not be treated. | ||
| I don't have a response to that, except it's not the American way. | ||
| Catherine is in Burlington, New Jersey, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| This is Catherine again. | ||
| Ms. Moore, it is my pleasure to speak with you. | ||
| And I stand behind you and the Democrats for holding out for the TR for the Obamacare. | ||
| We've been fighting this fight for 15 years now, so it's about time that we took a stand. | ||
| So continue the good work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And you remember the 60th time they tried to shut down the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| We had Republican Senator the late, great John McCain do the thumbs down. | ||
| And so this time, Democrats are doing the thumbs down. | ||
| Because exactly your point. | ||
| This is yet another chance the Republicans see this trying to force the Senate Democrats into a corner to finally destroy Obamacare because people's premiums will go up. | ||
| I just have my little cheat sheet here. | ||
| You know, for example, you know, a couple who's 60 years old, not eligible for Medicare at this point, say they make $82,800 a year. | ||
| If they have health care through the Affordable Care Act, in addition to what they're already paying, their premium would go up by $1,368 a month. | ||
| That's a 238% increase. | ||
| Who can afford that? | ||
| They make $82,000 a year. | ||
| That sounds like a lot of money to you, but not if they've got to pay, you know, $2,000, $3,000 a month for health care. | ||
| You know, it just is insane. | ||
| Health care ought to be a human right. | ||
| Congressman, is there a compromise here between Republicans and Democrats on capping the how, capping who can get these subsidies at a certain income level? | ||
| Because we learned earlier, these subsidies can be for people who make $500,000, $300,000, $400,000, up to $600,000. | ||
| So would Democrats agree with Republicans to cap it at a certain income? | ||
| And if so, what would that income level be? | ||
| Well, just let me just say this, Greta. | ||
| You can't compromise if you don't even meet. | ||
| President Trump has refused to meet with our leadership, the four corners, both the senators and the House and the House of Representatives to really even discuss that. | ||
| Because right now, the proposal that's on the table is to get rid of the subsidies, period, to allow them to lapse for everybody. | ||
| And I just think that it's yet another, you know, let's go chase this fool's goal, you know, and to characterize everybody who's going to benefit from the Affordable Care Act as having $600,000 a year. | ||
| 90 percent of the ACA credits, you know, went to people who were making like $35,000 a year. | ||
| So it's a specious, crazy argument to just to try to destroy Obamacare. | ||
| We'll go to Joyce in Georgia, Republican caller. | ||
| Good morning to you, Joyce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lady, you sound like you have TDS. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Everything Trump does, the Democrats are opposed to. | ||
| It doesn't matter what he does. | ||
| You're opposed to it. | ||
| How many people are on the Affordable Care Act? | ||
| Well, you know, that's not true that we oppose everything that Trump does. | ||
| I mean, I am absolutely cautiously optimistic about the deal that he's making in Gaza right now. | ||
| I am not, it's not everything that he's done, but taking abortion care away from women, I'm opposed to that. | ||
| Taking the Affordable Care Act and having people's premiums go up and double, I'm against that. | ||
| I'm against him cutting a trillion dollars out of Medicaid. | ||
| And by the way, 46% of Medicaid is spent on our grandmothers who are in nursing homes. | ||
| I'm against him taking away quality care from elderly people. | ||
| I'm against him cutting a half trillion dollars out of Medicare. | ||
| I'm against that. | ||
| I'm against him creating an environment where we have less safety on airplanes because of what I'm against him cutting food for children. | ||
| I'm against him cutting programs like WIC, the Women, Infant, and Children Program. | ||
| So I'm against a lot of stuff that he does. | ||
| You're absolutely right about that. | ||
| To her question about how many people are on the Affordable Care Act, NPR reports 24 million people. | ||
| That is about 7% of the U.S. population. | ||
| But the people who rely on these plans are an influential group. | ||
| That includes small business owners, farmers, and ranchers. | ||
| We'll go to Ron and Michigan Independent. | ||
| Hi, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is, I really liked the way you're talking about the democracy and compromise. | |
| When you're doing a good job of explaining a lot, I taught school for 32 years and found that I told my kids, I said, you must always compromise in a democracy. | ||
| The Constitution stands for all of us. | ||
| But setting that all aside, I'm hoping that number one, that at the middle ground when we come up to vote here very shortly, that we rebalance the government so we have compromise on both sides, the Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| And number two, I'm going to give you a scenario here. | ||
| I'm talking to an individual here where I live who is in a nursing home, and he makes about $28,000 a year. | ||
| That's with Social Security and that. | ||
| But you know what they're charging him is $7,700 a month to live in that nursing home. | ||
| And I told him, I says, how can you afford that? | ||
| He says, I won't. | ||
| He says, I have 100 days to stay here. | ||
| And after that, he says, what are they going to do? | ||
| Throw me in the garbage can? | ||
| I said, well, I have no idea. | ||
| I said, I don't know nothing about that program. | ||
| But boy, if you can explain that, how can people pay $7,700 a month for living in a nursing home? | ||
| All right, Ron. | ||
| Congresswoman. | ||
| Good question. | ||
| Let me just take the first one first. | ||
| Compromise. | ||
| We're willing to compromise. | ||
| We're not willing to capitulate. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| Medicare pays for, If he's there in therapy or rehab for 90 days, you know, I have a friend who just broke her hip, so she'll be eligible for rehab for 90 days. | ||
| Beyond that, Medicaid picks up the cost. | ||
| And as I indicated earlier, 46% of our Medicaid program is, the spending is for mandatory spending for nursing homes. | ||
| Now, it costs money to have 24-hour care. | ||
| When you're in a nursing home, you have 24-hour care. | ||
| And that is the nurses, the doctors, the CNAs, the certified nursing assistants who help you get dressed, help you bathe, help you eat. | ||
| And there are, you know, staffing is already short because $7,000 a day might seem like a lot of money. | ||
| And I don't know whether that, I don't know what nursing home he's in. |