| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Hope most people will take away from your book. | |
| I think what I want them to take away from the book is that they should be proud of the court. | ||
| And I want them to be able, I want them to understand the way the court grapples with the legal questions that matter to the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| We are back this morning with Congressman Mike Herodopoulos, Republican of Florida, represents the 8th District. | ||
| Thank you for being here during the government shutdown. | ||
| Have you stayed in Washington or are you making the trip back and forth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're doing a lot of back and forth, so we are quite busy. | |
| My wife is actually the chief of staff to the Surgeon General, so we go back and forth with it. | ||
| I'm an empty nester now, and so the kids are at college, they're off at work, and so we're spending a lot of time up here making sure we're handling constituent calls here and in the district. | ||
| I was back in the district yesterday, meeting with a bunch of folks. | ||
| It's really important we keep our doors open as this troubling time is taking place and making sure we're taking their own little questions, but making sure that constituent work continues to get done. | ||
| How many federal workers do you represent? | ||
| What are you hearing from them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're hearing from a bunch of them, of course. | |
| I represent Kennedy Space Center, and you can imagine how important it is to our country. | ||
| We have to win this new space race. | ||
| We're excited about the fact that Artemis II will go around the moon for the first time since 1972. | ||
| These folks are working today without pay. | ||
| We give them a lot of credit for doing so. | ||
| We're optimistic, like myself, who voted for keeping the government open. | ||
| They want to see the government back open and get their back pay. | ||
| And more importantly, make sure that we keep the mission of the government in place. | ||
| As a former history teacher, I think it's essential we do just that. | ||
| For those federal workers in your district at Kennedy Space Center, should your leader, the Speaker Johnson, call back yourself and your colleagues to Washington and vote on legislation to pay them while they are working during this government shutdown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the great news is we did just that. | |
| We voted yes. | ||
| And as you know, I'm a former history teacher. | ||
| And I remember as a kid growing up watching School House rock. | ||
| We in the House did our work. | ||
| We sent it over to the Senate. | ||
| And for those, I was listening to some of the listeners and callers today before I walked on the set. | ||
| And as you know, it takes 60 votes to break the debate in the Senate. | ||
| And so we're waiting. | ||
| We can't negotiate against ourselves. | ||
| We already sent this over. | ||
| They're a clean CR. | ||
| Of course, the Democrats did that 13 times in the Biden years. | ||
| And as a person who's back into politics after being the leader in the Senate back in Florida, it's really frustrating to see this hyper-partisanship in place because I thought a clean CR was just that. | ||
| We thought by offering that clean CR, and the other thing that a lot of people don't know, we also went to the Democrats before this whole mess began and say, let's have a clean CR. | ||
| And what date do you want? | ||
| We want to go to January. | ||
| They said November 21. | ||
| We said, okay, fine, November 21 yet. | ||
| Here we are today, 24 days into the shutdown, and no one's winning because the American public is losing, in my opinion. | ||
| Democrats point to the 60-vote threshold. | ||
| You need that in the Senate in order to advance any legislation. | ||
| They say that's why Republicans need to come to the table with us and they need to compromise. | ||
| We're saying if you want our votes, you need to do something about these ACA tax credits and return money to the Medicaid program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first and foremost, the idea is that you have to have the government open to have a lot of these negotiations. | |
| Let's do it in the open eye. | ||
| And I think beyond that is a sense of we passed these Medicaid changes because there was waste, fraud, and abuse in the system. | ||
| You saw we had this big debate, of course, illegal immigration, but also this case of people did not tell the truth on their application for Medicaid. | ||
| We want to make sure those income checks are put in place. | ||
| And also, if you're able-bodied, you should not be on Medicaid. | ||
| And finally, people are paying $1,500, $2,000 a month for health care, almost $25,000 a year. | ||
| And yet other people are gaming the system. | ||
| So we wanted to make those changes. | ||
| And so also your viewers are clear. | ||
| These changes don't take effect until 2027. | ||
| So these Medicaids have not cuts or changes have not taken place yet because we wanted to reform the system. | ||
| We want to make sure that people have a ramp to understand what's going on, how you qualify to stay on, or if you don't qualify anymore, how to get into new programs. | ||
| When it comes to the ACA tax credits, is there a middle ground? | ||
| Where would you agree with Democrats on lowering, helping to lower the premiums? | ||
| Because without these tax credit subsidies, these enhanced tax credit subsidies, you've heard from your colleague, Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying constituents in Georgia that she represents are going to see their premiums go up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, first of all, everyone's premiums are going up because of the failure of Obamacare. | |
| Remember, they promised lower costs. | ||
| They promised you can keep your doctor. | ||
| Those did not prove to be true, unfortunately. | ||
| And the subsidies are in place because the prices are going up. | ||
| I think Speaker Johnson put it correctly, 60% since we began. | ||
| So I'm a person who's intimately involved in healthcare. | ||
| My wife's a medical doctor. | ||
| And also, of course, when I was in the Senate, we dealt with Medicaid a lot. | ||
| It's a federal state program. | ||
| Florida Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| So as Florida leader, we always look to reform the system because we want to help the people most in jeopardy, those who are disabled, pregnant women, kids of low-income parents. | ||
| We want to help those folks out. | ||
| We don't want to make it a waste station or a free health care system when other people have to pay out of their pocket. | ||
| So this is a cohort of, what, 24 million people are on the Medicaid, or excuse me, on the Obamacare subsidies, up from 11 million just a few years ago because of the COVID changes. | ||
| What we want to do is what we did with Medicaid. | ||
| Let's make some reforms in the system and let's make it where we get rid of the waste and fraud. | ||
| We also make it clear that everybody is in this game together. | ||
| There's 24 million people, but there's also 165 million people who pay privately and are paying $1,500 or $2,000, if not more, dollars a month. | ||
| And they have to have a vested interest here, too. | ||
| It's not just that one group they're worried about. | ||
| I think there's a lot of things we can do, including people who are on this system who don't qualify for Medicaid, need to put some money into this system because they're getting a benefit that a lot of people are paying a lot of money for. | ||
| You're saying some people pay $0 for their premium. | ||
|
unidentified
|
About half do. | |
| About half. | ||
| And there's also reports where Republicans have argued that there are people that don't even know they're on it because they pay $0. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, they called it the phantom. | |
| This is the thing that blew my mind as I really got into this issue. | ||
| The one good thing I can say about the break is that I've spent a lot of time studying Obamacare and understanding what we can try to improve. | ||
| And these phantom things are amazing, especially in my state of Florida. | ||
| People get a call, hey, you can get free insurance. | ||
| Did you know that 35% of the people who were on these Obamacare subsidies did not use any of those health care needs, meaning they didn't even go to a script-filled, didn't see their GP, didn't get a COVID shot or any kind of vaccine at all? | ||
| That means the insurance company got paid and there were no services rendered. | ||
| And could you imagine any business operating, I'm going to give you money, but you don't have to do anything for it. | ||
| Remember, these tax credits are not given to the citizens. | ||
| They're given directly to the insurance companies. | ||
| And that's one of the reforms we're obviously looking at. | ||
| You would like to see these tax credits go to the participants on ACA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a big believer in health savings accounts. | |
| As you know, the medical system is very different than when you go shopping at the mall. | ||
| You don't even know what the price is sometimes when you walk into a doctor's office. | ||
| And so we need to have more medical transparency. | ||
| Let's empower the individual to make smart decisions with their health care. | ||
| Because right now, all you're seeing, this big Obamacare system, really comes down to tax credits not going to the individual, going to insurance companies. | ||
| And that's created a perverse system, in my opinion. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| Linda in Corning, New York, Democratic Caller, you were up first for the Congressman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, number one, I believe I heard Mr. Clyburn say the other day that Congress, the Democrats and Republicans should come back and work together because they can't possibly come to any agreements when they're not even in the same room together. | |
| Some of them actually might talk together, some of them might actually negotiate. | ||
| You can't do that if you're not in the same room together. | ||
| Number two, I do know I have heard that many seniors, their senior supplement to Medicare are being canceled or their costs are tripling. | ||
| The other thing is I remember Trump promised in his first term, of course he never liked the ACA because it had Obamacare on it. | ||
| He promised he'd get rid of that and simultaneously slip right in a new health care plan you'd want to get sick. | ||
| They have not done anything on that. | ||
| So complaining about Obamacare, which they worked really hard on and got through, and yes, it may have some bugs here and there, but it has been a blessing to a lot of people. | ||
| All right, Linda, we'll take your three points. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first and foremost, this is a pretty simple equation. | |
| For all these years, we always said that we would have a clean CR. | ||
| I'm amazed that some Democrats say this is not a clean CR. | ||
| I'd like to see them point to anything like that. | ||
| But we think a clean CR, because if not, this is going to be a total hostage situation. | ||
| We want to open the government up, but we've done our job in the House. | ||
| We've paid folks. | ||
| The Senate said no because the Democrat votes at this time. | ||
| As far as Obamacare, it's not Republicans stopping changes to Obamacare. | ||
| It's Democrats. | ||
| They want to keep the system, and they want to continue to subsidize the system that's costing the rest of the health care system a lot more money. | ||
| We think the reforms that can take place would mirror what we did with Medicaid. | ||
| We think those are common sense type reforms. | ||
| We want people to understand they actually have health care as opposed to these phantom situations. | ||
| And let's have a more transparent debate and ask the health care system to do the same. | ||
| Put more transparency so that people understand what it really costs. | ||
| I've had a lot of people come to me and say they go in and their insurance has one price and then the cash pay for another. | ||
| And it just makes for a really discombobulated system that really doesn't help anyone. | ||
| And so I hope the Democrats will come to the table and offer some changes as opposed to the reflexive no, which has been their answer throughout 2025. | ||
| Do you know how many of your constituents access Medicare in your district? | ||
| She also brought up the supplemental insurance that many people have on Medicare. | ||
| They're seeing their premiums rise. | ||
| We heard from a viewer this morning saying that exact thing, that her supplemental was rising to the point where she was stretching out her medication. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, this is the problem we're running into with health care in general, is that you have, because of this pressure point you put on Obamacare, the biggest point I think where Obamacare is making a mistake is that they mandate everything. | |
| And so the insurance company has to take on a lot of risk considering they cover everything. | ||
| And then it has this water balloon effect throughout the health care system. | ||
| And so with Medicare, you're seeing those prices go up. | ||
| This is the challenge we're running into. | ||
| And it's the reason why we were to add that transparency. | ||
| We want to put the money into the consumer's pocket as opposed to the insurance company. | ||
| Because if you look at medical loss ratios, I'm not going to bore you with a lot of technical terms, but they have an incentive to have higher prices because they cap their profits at 15%. | ||
| The bigger the size of that ball or amount of money, the more money that they get to keep in the long run. | ||
| What's the incentive, though, for these insurance companies to lower their prices, doctors and hospitals as well, if you put the money in an HSA? | ||
| If the money is there and they see that the patient is getting subsidized in some way, whether that's through ACA tax credits or an HSA, how does that lower the price of health care? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's two things. | |
| One is that there's not just one medical office in town. | ||
| And in most towns, there are actually different hospitals. | ||
| And in a community like mine, we have four different hospitals those to pick from. | ||
| But it comes down to is consumer choice. | ||
| I mean, it happens in medical procedures that people elect to do right now. | ||
| There's the consumer competition there. | ||
| And also is that you see that a lot of money goes to what they call not-for-profits who have a tax incentive over traditional doctors. | ||
| And so these are the kind of discussions we want to have. | ||
| I think these are the fair questions to have. | ||
| But we all recognize right now that Obamacare made a set of promises, lowering costs by $2,500 per person. | ||
| That does not happen at all. | ||
| They said you get to keep your doctor. | ||
| That did not happen. | ||
| And so we want to change up the system to empower the individual because I think in the end, except in an emergency situation, you're going to go out and shop for what doctor serves your needs best as opposed to saying you have to pick this doctor if you're in Obamacare. | ||
| Is there enough competition in rural areas, though? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know about that answer for this reason. | |
| We put $50 billion into the big bill back in July. | ||
| That is going to help the more rural areas. | ||
| But in other parts of the country, you'll have that competition. | ||
| Danny in South Carolina, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Danny. | |
| Why is it all right to travel the Town in a White House like that? | ||
| Anybody else better do that? | ||
| You being G. | ||
| And why for him to marry immigrants? | ||
| Why y'all sit down in my dad? | ||
| Why don't I ran there? | ||
| Danny's first question, I believe, was about the renovations at the White House. | ||
| Why does he think that he is able to do that when it's not, it's the people's house? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think even the Washington Post shows that over the years, they've always made changes to the White House. | |
| This is the president wants to do. | ||
| I've seen pictures recently where President Obama had to set up a tent at the White House in order to hold some of these dinners. | ||
| This is just a modernization of the White House, and it's happened throughout the years. | ||
| And as a historian myself, I remember they literally gutted the entire White House during the Truman years. | ||
| He had to live in the Blair House for a little while. | ||
| And so this is just a modernization of the White House. | ||
| The president is a master builder. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| It's how he made his billions of dollars. | ||
| And he wants to leave a legacy, and he's willing to put his own money in. | ||
| The good news is this is not paid by taxpayers, but by people who believe in the White House and this, of course, historic traditions. | ||
| Coming up on the Washington Journal, by the way, for our viewers, we're going to talk with author and White House historian Kate Anderson Brower about these renovations. | ||
| Greg in Maryland, go ahead, Greg, you're on with the Congressman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, and thank you, Congressman, for coming on this morning. | |
| Just to kick it off, I've been furloughed for the past three weeks, and today's the first day, and I and a lot of other federal employees don't get a paycheck. | ||
| As far as I understand, Congress still does get a paycheck during this period, and I frankly don't understand why you're not in Washington. | ||
| And again, regardless of the Senate not passing the bill, but there's still bills and other things that you as Congress can be working on at the same time. | ||
| Because to me, it doesn't seem like time stops when Congress is not in session. | ||
| And also, again, fully understanding that there's recessed periods to meet with constituents. | ||
| But during this particular time, these three weeks, Congress is typically in session. | ||
| How come you're not? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| First of all, I feel for Greg. | ||
| He wants to go back to work. | ||
| And of course, we'll get that back pay once we get the government back open. | ||
| Yes, Congress still gets paid. | ||
| I am not taking my paycheck during this time period. | ||
| I'm withholding that, just like folks like Greg are in a tough situation. | ||
| And it's the very reason what Greg brought up that I voted to keep the government open. | ||
| A clean CR is common sense. | ||
| Again, we'd actually negotiate, as I mentioned before, Greta, that we asked the Democrats before this began, what do you want? | ||
| They said a clean CR November 21, and we agreed to their terms. | ||
| And then, of course, they make this left-hand turn the other way. | ||
| And their ransom, though, just to be clear with Greg, they asked for all $1.5 trillion in spending back. | ||
| And if you do the full Obamacare subsidies, that's another $450 billion. | ||
| So you're talking about $2 trillion just to open the government back up. | ||
| We don't think that's a good deal for the taxpayer. | ||
| And what we are doing is not just, of course, going back and forth, working with constituents, handling that casework. | ||
| This year alone, we've handled 1,776 cases, returned over $6.5 million to taxpayers who are shortchanged by the government. | ||
| And what we're doing behind the scenes, of course, is having discussions about how we reform the health care system. | ||
| Brett Guthrie, our energy and commerce chair, is leading that push along with Jason Smith, the Ways and Means Chair. | ||
| They have the ideas. | ||
| And for those who don't know, we actually pushed a lot of these health care reforms in the big bill, passed it out of the House. | ||
| CBO scored it at a 12% reduction in health care costs. | ||
| But the Senate Democrats fought that and said we're going to use the bird rule to knock that provision out. | ||
| So it's not like we don't have a plan here. | ||
| It was pushed forward in the big bill. | ||
| And even the CBO, which I'm not a big fan of, by the way, even they scored it at a 12% reduction in health care costs if we implement those positive changes. | ||
| The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office here in Washington, we are talking this morning with Congressman Mike Haradopoulos, a Republican of Florida. | ||
| He is a freshman member of the House and serving his first term elected in 2024 represents Florida's eighth congressional district. | ||
| Brittany in Florida, independent caller. | ||
| Hi, Brittany. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| You're going, Congressman. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Question/slash comment. | |
| It's a question. | ||
| Yes, hi, Congressman. | ||
| I know we're talking about the shutdown, but I was calling because I think that there's something that you can do while the government is shut down for a win for Florida. | ||
| And so currently, according to the Times of Israel, a Palm Bay family is pressing for the release of their teenage son that's been held in Israeli prison for eight months. | ||
| His name is Mohamed Ibrahim. | ||
| He was taken into custody this February when he was 15 years old by the Israeli military. | ||
| He was accused for throwing rocks at settlers, and his home was raided at 5 a.m. and he was taken from his family while blindfolded. | ||
| None of his family has seen him since. | ||
| Since then, in July, his cousin, 20-year-old Saifullah Mosalet, was beaten to death after being denied access to an ambulance for three hours by the Israeli military. | ||
| And his cousin had just opened an ice cream shop. | ||
| He was from Tampa. | ||
| And, you know, this family is praying that they don't lose another son. | ||
| And so currently right now, Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, also our former senator from Florida, is in Israel. | ||
| And so as a Republican, is there something that you can do to speak to someone in the administration about the release of this boy, you know, just as a Floridian and just not to allow Israel to detain and allow Floridians to be killed in the West Bank and the Palestine in general? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate the call, Erin. | ||
| I'm very familiar with this case. | ||
| It's something we've been handling for the last few months. | ||
| Immediately we got this information. | ||
| We brought it over to Marco Rubio. | ||
| The State Department is working on it. | ||
| I can't get into the details because it is a legal case, but we have immediately taken charge of that issue. | ||
| I believe this young boy has been arrested two times over in Israel for different acts, but we let Marco know Rubio about that right away. | ||
| I've gotten a lot of calls on this issue, and that's why my power as a congressman put it in immediate hands of our diplomats overseas to see what the true facts of the situation are. | ||
| And as we've seen, Mark Ruby has done an amazing job, in my opinion, bringing peace to the Middle East, let alone other parts of the world. | ||
| I have full confidence that he'll find out all the facts on this thing. | ||
| But we did everything we can as a congressman to make sure that the diplomats on the front lines can hopefully handle this situation and get justice. | ||
| Christine's next in Massachusetts. | ||
| Christine, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, I just want to say it never seems like the Republicans ever have a health insurance plan in mind, that they just want to not have one and just let people fall wayside to whatever comes their way. | ||
| And when you suggest that they put extra money into a health fund, I don't think you realize how bad people are starving and prices have gone up. | ||
| They don't have any extra money to put more money in a health fund for insurance that's already through the roof. | ||
| And there's a lot more Americans on this health plan than what I think. | ||
| It's going to be a problem for the Republicans. | ||
| Okay, Christy. | ||
| We'll take those points. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Christine, fair question. | |
| Remember, a health savings count is what you're able to save tax-free. | ||
| And again, it would be instead of sending money to the insurance company, it would go to the individual. | ||
| So the person would actually have money in their pocket. | ||
| We also know the last four years that one of the reasons I think we have the majority is because the last four years, inflation has gone up so radically. | ||
| We saw, of course, with gasoline prices, rent prices, food prices. | ||
| Fortunately, now in this year, the inflation rate is pretty stable. | ||
| And of course, we're seeing a record stock market. | ||
| We see interest rates come down. | ||
| So hopefully there's more money in people's like Christine's pocket. | ||
| But what we're trying to do with this program is look at the whole picture. | ||
| We can't look at the health care system. | ||
| It's just as the Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| That's 24 million people out of 350 million people. | ||
| A lot of people are in Medicare or Medicaid like we talked about earlier, Greta. | ||
| We want to look at the entire system. | ||
| And as I mentioned before, and I hope that Christine will look at the proposal we put forth in the big bill. | ||
| We passed it out of the house, which would reduce all health insurance costs, not just one segment of the health care program. | ||
| That's the important thing we need to look at. | ||
| This is a global issue. | ||
| It's not just a small cohort of people or a smaller cohort of people, 24 million. | ||
| And remember, because of the Obamacare subsidies, the COVID subsidies, as they're called, you saw the number of people on Obamacare go from 11 million to 24 million. | ||
| We need to look at all those aspects together and can't just look at one part of our budget. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government politics and public policy from Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up this morning, we'll talk about the impact Trump administration policies and the government shutdown are having on the U.S. agriculture industry with Reuters reporter PJ Hufstutter, then ProPublica investigative journalist Andy Kroll on his reporting on White House Budget Director Russell Vogt and his role in advancing the Trump agenda, and Elise Powell, the National Infertility Association Government Affairs Director, | ||
| on the recent Trump administration announcement aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization and fertility care. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| The book is called breakneck China's quest to engineer the future Author Dan Wong was born in China in 1992. | ||
| His parents moved to Canada when he was seven. | ||
| In 2014, he graduated from the University of Rochester in New York. | ||
| Then in 2018, Dan Wong went to live in China until he returned to the U.S. in 2023. | ||
| He then went to the offices of the Yale Law School and wrote about his comparison of China and the United States. | ||
| He writes in his intro, quote, a strain of materialism, often crass, runs through both countries, sometimes producing variations of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness, and overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Dan Wong with his book Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Next, former National Institutes of Health Director Monica Bertanoli delivers remarks at a meeting hosted by the National Foundation for Cancer Research. |