| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Mike Johnson will hold a press conference on day 28 of the government shutdown with House Republican leaders and the Republican Study Committee. | |
| Watch their remarks live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Buckeye Broadband. | ||
| Buckeye Broadband supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll talk about the government shutdown with Politico congressional reporter Nicholas Wu, then the Economic Security Projects Mike Konzel, and the Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rougy on Trump administration economic policies and their impact on the overall economy. | ||
| And Republican California Congressman Tom McClintock, a member of the Budget and Judiciary Committees, on the government shutdown and Republican strategy. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, October 28th. | ||
| And it is the 28th day of the government shutdown. | ||
| President Trump is out of the country this week in Asia. | ||
| Later today, Vice President Vance will meet with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. | ||
| And 42 million low-income Americans will start to miss snap benefits Saturday if Congress and the White House don't come to an agreement on funding. | ||
| We'll get your thoughts on the ongoing government shutdown this morning. | ||
| Here are the phone numbers to reach us. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Federal employees can call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also use that same number to text us if you do include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| While you're calling in, we're going to speak to a congressional reporter at Politico. | ||
| Nicholas Wu joins us. | ||
| Nicholas, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| So it is day 28. | ||
| Are we any closer to ending the federal government shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unfortunately, we are no closer to ending the shutdown. | |
| Right now, there's still no signs that there's any forward progress on negotiations. | ||
| There's no talks between congressional leadership. | ||
| The president is not part of any negotiations. | ||
| And, you know, despite this now stretching into past day 28, both sides are still dug in on their positions. | ||
| Any, you said there are no discussions among leadership. | ||
| What about among the rank and file? | ||
| Are Democrats and Republicans speaking? | ||
| Are they talking among themselves maybe about a change of strategy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are some informal conversations on the Senate side about how to move forward on the Obamacare tax credits that Democrats have made a big part of their shutdown demands. | |
| There are informal discussions around these kind of one-off bills to pay certain parts of the federal government and furloughed workers throughout the whole process. | ||
| But it's not clear whether this is going to come to anything. | ||
| And as far as the one-off bills go, the argument from Republican leaders is if you're going to fund certain parts of the government, you might as well just fund the whole thing. | ||
| And are they also worried that that's going to take the pressure off of Democrats if certain people start getting paid or certain programs get funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's certainly part of it. | |
| And it's part of the issue that we've seen so far with the shutdown when a big concern among congressional leaders was the paycheck that troops were going to miss recently. | ||
| And when the Trump administration found other money within the Pentagon to pay those troops, and same within with certain ICE agents and folks within DHS, that took that pressure point off. | ||
| So there's not a clear deadline or a particular forcing function that could bring everyone to the table. | ||
| And as my colleagues and I reported over the weekend, even lawmakers that we talked to thought that even the upcoming elections in Virginia and New Jersey might not be the kind of thing that would force an end to this whole crisis. | ||
| Now, we mentioned the expiration of SNAP benefits. | ||
| That happens this Saturday. | ||
| Is there discussions around that? | ||
| Is that going to be a pressure point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's something that's causing some level of concern among members of Congress. | |
| The Trump administration has signaled that that money is going to run out soon. | ||
| Democrats are trying to sue, saying that there is money, that there is a contingency fund that can be tapped to do so. | ||
| But again, it's not necessarily something that has bubbled up to the level where this would be able to end the entire crisis. | ||
| Since Democrats are still very much dug out on their position, Republicans are very much dug in on theirs. | ||
| Well, the House Speaker has said that they are working on a GOP plan to, quote, fix health care. | ||
| What do we know about that plan and where is it and what's in it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That plan seems to very much be in its infancy because the issue with the ACA credits, at least on the Republican side, is that basically there's a good number of members of the House Republican Conference who don't want to extend these credits at all, let alone at the current level they're at. | |
| If they are going to do it, there's a lot of talk of adding income caps, trying to sunset them, or so on. | ||
| But those talks haven't really germinated yet into any viable piece of legislation. | ||
| And so this all brings us back to the same position of there not being any forward progress on an end to the shutdown. | ||
| And finally, the Senate is in session this week. | ||
| What are you going to be watching there today and for the rest of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I'm going to be watching is the discussion in both parties' closed door lunches this week. | |
| Since that is where senators have gone home, they've heard from their constituents, and then this is their first time to go talk to each other. | ||
| There's certainly some chatter among Democrats about whether they should alter their position at all moving forward. | ||
| After yesterday, the government employees union came out and said that it was time not just to end the shutdown, which has been somewhat of a position of the unions from the beginning, but to end the shutdown by passing the Republican continuing resolution, which to some degree represents a fraying of this group that has so far backed Democrats' position through the shutdown crisis. | ||
| And so I'm looking to see whether Democrats are going to emerge from this launch singing a different tune at all on the shutdown. | ||
| But if they're not, then that's a sign that this could continue on for much further. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Nicholas Wu, Congressional Reporter for Politico. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| And we are taking your calls this morning on the government shutdown. | ||
| It's day 28. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We will go to the Capitol Hill. | |
| Let's take a look at the Senate floor yesterday. | ||
| Here's Majority Leader John Thune talking about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives said recently, and I quote, I got it right here, Mr. President. | |
| Of course, there will be families that are going to suffer, but it is one of the few leverage times we have. | ||
| But it is one of the few leverage times we have. | ||
| I guess the Americans currently lining up at food banks can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they're being sacrificed to advance Democrats' political goals. | ||
| Mr. President, if you ask Democrats the reason for the 180-degree flip in their views on shutdowns, if you challenge them to explain their hypocrisy, I suspect you wouldn't get much of an answer. | ||
| I suspect that at best Democrats would bleat something about how this shutdown is a special case, right? | ||
| A special case. | ||
| It's always a special case with Democrats. | ||
| A historic blockade of presidential nominees. | ||
| Well, that was a special case. | ||
| Ignore anything that you've ever said about shutdowns right here on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| This is a special case. | ||
| I'll tell you what's actually special about this case, Mr. President. | ||
| Special about this case is the Democrats' far-left base demanded a showdown with President Trump. | ||
| And Democrats have abandoned every principle that they possessed relating to shutdowns to give it to their base. | ||
| Majority Leader John Thune and President Trump, as I mentioned, is in Asia. | ||
| He's actually speaking right now in Japan. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| So there were 14 years, I think it's 16 years, and they were just about, they gave up, essentially. | ||
| And I got one done in one day, and the other one it took me, I didn't do as well. | ||
| It took me three days to get it done. | ||
| And they were under construction in less than a week. | ||
| And they're up now and they're doing phenomenally well. | ||
| You know, in Louisiana, actually, two of them right over the coast. | ||
| And people said, how do you do that? | ||
| I said, I have no idea, but I get things done. | ||
| There's no better place on earth to invest and grow your business than the United States and a lot of the environmental nonsense. | ||
| And I'm a big environmentalist in a sense. | ||
| I want clean air, I want clean water. | ||
| But we're going to make it great for our workers and our economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're not going to take, honestly, when I say five years, much longer than five years to do things. | |
| I actually said to some of our people, I said, look, you have on big plants, you have two weeks on oil and gas to get the approvals. | ||
| And if you go nuclear, three weeks for nuclear. | ||
| You know, nuclear with Westinghouse is here today. | ||
| They've done great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They've really, I mean, they had a difficult problem a few years ago. | |
| They have become very hot, Westinghouse. | ||
| And they're doing a lot of work in the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're doing a lot of nuclear now. | |
| Nuclear now is safe and it's inexpensive. | ||
| Really, it's great energy now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was with nuclear, but I didn't love certain aspects of it. | |
| Today is so different, and it really is a safe. | ||
| Great way to go. | ||
| A lot of people are going that way. | ||
| But one year ago, the United States was really, you'd never get your permits. | ||
| You'd wait years and years and years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And honestly, if you had another, like Kamala, I don't know where the hell she came from, but if you had Kamala, I was watching. | |
| I'm against Biden. | ||
| I went up by 29 points. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All of a sudden, they take him out. | |
| It's like a fighter. | ||
| He's losing the fight. | ||
| They replace him in the middle of the fight. | ||
| They gave me a new one. | ||
| They gave me Kamala. | ||
| I went from Joe to Kamala. | ||
| But if she got in, I don't think there'd be nobody in this room. | ||
| You wouldn't be doing anything. | ||
| You'd be elsewhere doing things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it wouldn't be the same. | |
| But you have a great partner now in the United States getting you started. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you will have everything done very, very quickly. | |
| Record time. | ||
| As fast as I think much faster than maybe any other country other than China. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because in China, you have a good system also. | |
| You have a system where President Xi can approve it immediately. | ||
| So that's even faster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He doesn't have to wait two weeks. | |
| I have to wait two weeks. | ||
| But you do go quickly there, but we have a lot of advantages, as you know, since the election. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've secured all of that money coming in, and we have a lot more money coming in. | |
| And again, I mentioned SoftBank, but JIRA, JCB, Toyota, Mitsubushi, Hitachi, Honda, they're all coming into the United States. | ||
| We have a lot of car plants opening up because of tariffs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They don't want to pay tariffs. | |
| That's happening live in Japan right now. | ||
| If you'd like to continue watching the president's remarks, you can do that over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| We've got coverage of that. | ||
| By the way, we are continuing our coverage of the president in Asia. | ||
| Tonight at 10.30, he is set to arrive in South Korea and meet with the president of South Korea on that final stop in Asia. | ||
| He's going to be at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, and you can watch our live coverage of that bilateral meeting here on C-SPAN at 10.30 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| It's also on our app and online, c-span.org. | ||
| Now, to your calls on the government shutdown, we'll start with Andrew in Sterling, Virginia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Andrew. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Amy. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Well, we're at start. | ||
| Here's this so-called dictator-in-chief, this wannabe authoritarian, Donald Trump. | ||
| Here he is in Asia having a good old time dancing with a lot of our so-called friends. | ||
| The only thing he's good at is destroying this country. | ||
| He started out by basically blowing up the White House at the tune of $350 million. | ||
| He's depriving people in this country of decent health care. | ||
| He doesn't care if SNAF benefits are cut to the most deserving Americans. | ||
| All he cares about is enriching himself and his fellow trillionaires. | ||
| It's disgusting what he's been able to get away with with the help of Republicans in Congress. | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| We're standing on the edge of a precipice, and nobody seems to care or want to do anything about it. | ||
| I'm so sad over what's happened to this country because they've allowed this wannabe dictator to do basically anything he wants to do. | ||
| He's trying to extort $230 million from the Justice Department for himself. | ||
| Since 2016, he and his family have enriched themselves at the cost of American taxpayers at the tune of $4 billion. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| And they used to call Joe Biden's family the Biden crime family. | ||
| This is America's version of basically a mafia boss at the head of our country. | ||
| All right, Andrew. | ||
| Yep, let's go to Rob in Port Crane, New York, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My God, that was just the most ridiculous call I've heard in forever. | |
| Just kick Trump every day. | ||
| Is that what you guys are here for? | ||
| You know, come on, Mimi. | ||
| You know, and by the way, having Politico as your top, you know, they're a foreign propaganda outlet, bringing them on for anything. | ||
| Foreign propaganda in what way? | ||
| Shut up, Mimi. | ||
| Jesus Christ, you cut me off. | ||
| You let him go on forever and you cut me off. | ||
| I'm asking you, you called Politico a foreign propaganda. | ||
| I mean, wouldn't you want to find out what what you mean by that? | ||
| Like, are they funded by your Charlene Bloomington, Indiana? | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| The Republicans are screaming and yelling because SNAP funds are going to be cut and it's the Democrats' fault. | ||
| Well, could you please remind us or pull it up? | ||
| Maybe I'm misremembering. | ||
| Aren't there major snap cuts in the bill, the big bullcrap bill that they're trying to pass? | ||
| So why are they so concerned about SNAP benefits ending now when it's in their bill? | ||
| And maybe I'm misremembering. | ||
| If you could help me with that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Julian in Connecticut, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Julian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| How are you this morning? | ||
| Good. | ||
| It amazes me what you let these people say without ever saying anything, without ever asking them anything. | ||
| That guy from Virginia. | ||
| Julian, you still there? | ||
| Looks like we lost him. | ||
| Well, here is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor yesterday. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| Americans have never seen a health care like this, the one that's about to begin Saturday. | ||
| And Donald Trump is nowhere to be found. | ||
| Americans are going to sit at their kitchen tables Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and say, how the heck can we pay these bills? | ||
| What are we going to do without health insurance? | ||
| What if our kids get sick? | ||
| What if we get sick? | ||
| And there is Donald Trump overseas, not even paying attention to this crisis. | ||
| Instead of sitting down with Leader Jeffries and me, Trump skipped town for his second foreign trip in less than a month. | ||
| Open enrollment is just days away, and Trump's message to the American people facing financial disaster is: greetings from Malaysia. | ||
| Here's what the president needs to do: he should negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government and end the ACA crisis right away. | ||
| The president should stop focusing on foreign escapades, on ballrooms, on bailouts for Argentina, and start focusing on negotiating with Democrats to lower people's health care costs. | ||
| But Donald Trump isn't taking this crisis seriously still, As millions of Americans are just frightened, tens of millions, about what will happen. | ||
| Trump continues to use the American people as pawns. | ||
| This weekend, we learned that Trump, the Trump administration, for instance, ordered the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, not to tap into emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits, food benefits flowing to the states. | ||
| The very same administration that sent $40 million to Argentina at the drop of a hat to help Trump's MAGA ally is now telling hungry families in America they can't have nutrition funding. | ||
| What gall the administration's decision to let SNAP freeze is callous, is cynical, and entirely unnecessary. | ||
| This is Aaron in Alexandria, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd first like to say that C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get. | ||
| So unfortunately for the callers who feel like fomenting their rage that you don't cut other people off or question them, that is not true. | ||
| You've questioned me many times. | ||
| Regarding the shutdown, I feel bad for those. | ||
| I know lots of people who are not receiving a paycheck, regardless of what side of the line they're on and they voted. | ||
| It's unfortunate. | ||
| In times previous, I've opened up my home and kitchen to those who were struggling because, you know, just had extra food and trying to help out. | ||
| So I think that's what we should be looking forward and doing. | ||
| But at the same time, I do not want Democrats to yield not one inch in this because if they want to blame the shutdown on Democrats, it's because we won't yield because we've done that before when it came to DACA recipients. | ||
| And Mitch McConnell lied about, hey, we'll address this later and we'll address this later. | ||
| Clean CR. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| The Republican Party has been lying and baiting and switching us for years, and that's why we lose. | ||
| They had their revenge tour. | ||
| I can't wait until we get back in control of the office because we have plans too. | ||
| So, unfortunately, for the shutdown, I hope everybody's holding on to the business. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| When you say you have plans and you talk about a revenge tour, what are you talking about, Aaron? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm talking, oh, thank you for asking me. | |
| Well, I'm talking about politically voting and getting returning power back into the people who are moderate and left-leaning instead of this MAGA movement, which has been ridiculous. | ||
| As they said, $40 million went to Argentina. | ||
| We need to start looking after the people, all people, regardless of whether they're documented, undocumented, what have you. | ||
| You do have due process when you come into this country. | ||
| So politically, we are mobilizing. | ||
| We saw the No Kings rally. | ||
| There are a lot of people who want to bring things back. | ||
| And I don't want to use the word revenge because revenge means you've already lost. | ||
| We're mobilizing and moving things forward in a way that brings us more back to democracy. | ||
| Got it, Aaron. | ||
| Let's talk to Rick, West Hope, North Dakota, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, first of all, I'd like to give you a command. | ||
| I would like to commend you. | ||
| About a month and a half ago, Mimi, you told people to look in the C-SPAN archives and get the truth about what Donald Trump said about drinking bleach. | ||
| He obviously never said that. | ||
| And you pointed it out that he did not say that and where to look it up. | ||
| So good for you. | ||
| And the second thing is I thought, and you may be able to correct me on this, but I thought the ACA extension was voted in by the Democrats during COVID, I believe, and they passed those laws. | ||
| They had control of the Senate and the House. | ||
| They passed that, and it was set to expire at the end of this year. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It does expire at the end of this year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the Democrats actually put that in place. | |
| So I believe that was a concession that they made in order to get the votes of, I believe, Senator Manchin. | ||
| I might be wrong about that. | ||
| But yeah, that there was a couple of votes that they needed to pass it, and they made the concession of, let's make it expire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it was the Democrats that that in place. | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When they had control of both bodies. | |
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It should be emphasized. | |
| That's about all I got, Mimi. | ||
| Good luck, and thank you. | ||
| All right, Rick. | ||
| Let's talk to Bruce, Republican, South Carolina. | ||
| Hi, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you today? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| Well, I was calling. | ||
| I am an old Ohio Democrat. | ||
| And I'm Republican now, but I'm in South Carolina. | ||
| And I'm going to see a resurgence, I believe, of the old Democrat Party, the Nixon-era Democrats. | ||
| And I don't think that they could be beaten. | ||
| I think everyone is really finally done with the communist manifesto being purported these days. | ||
| And I believe that the Democrats are coming back with the swell and the swarm for the 2028 POTUS and even now during these discussions. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Here is Michael in Michigan on the line for independence. | ||
| Michael, you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I want independents, Republicans. | |
| Everybody is handing up. | ||
| You know, this is Democrats crying. | ||
| Take a look at the Hill. | ||
| This is a headline. | ||
| Speaker Johnson says, GOP is working on Republican health care plan amid shutdown. | ||
| And he spoke about that yesterday. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| Oh, we don't have that, but we will get that. | ||
| Let's talk to Angela in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| He's not going to hear me cry this morning. | ||
| I am a Pennsylvania Democrat, and I would like to tell my party and those that the American people voted for to be sitting in those chairs that they need to vote yes. | ||
| This, and I don't know if everybody gets their news from social media, but I have watched for the past couple of days the YouTube and the people that are receiving the benefits stating what their plans are. | ||
| And I don't want to be in the grocery store when this goes down. | ||
| I have a problem with my party, and I'm not going to change my party. | ||
| I just won't vote for a Democrat. | ||
| My party is so far left that they're willing to sacrifice the American people to take care of a bill that should have never been issued in 2023, for one. | ||
| But people that are here without paperwork. | ||
| The bill, Angela, in 2023, which one are you talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Aren't they ending the Biden, the Biden emergency food, the food? | |
| I can't think. | ||
| I just woke up out of bed. | ||
| I thought I was going to miss you this morning. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, it's okay. | ||
| Don't worry about it. | ||
| Here is James in New York Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'm calling today, right, because I'm very concerned about the fact that here you have a Democratic Party, you have a Republican Party, you have an Independent Party. | |
| And it seemed like one of the parties is tainted. | ||
| You have a president that's consumed the Republican Party. | ||
| It's no longer the Republican Party anymore than changing to, it's called the Republican Party. | ||
| Now it's not working like it's supposed to be working under this president. | ||
| And I should use his name, but I'm pulling back on his name because we all know who it is. | ||
| But you have an independent party just waiting to step in and take his place. | ||
| But in order to remove the Republican Party, I believe every facet of it needs to be removed along with this president because this party is so tainted. | ||
| You wouldn't even believe that this is a Republican Party any longer. | ||
| So if there's no longer a Republican Party, it's under the banner of one individual who's leading the so-called party. | ||
| And my question to you is, will the Independent Party ever wake up and step in and take its place in terms of being that two-party system along with the Democrats and independents? | ||
| And it's time for the Republicans to go into the back. | ||
| You think that would ever happen? | ||
| All right, James. | ||
| Well, let's take a look at Speaker Johnson. | ||
| Here he is talking about the GOP health plan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So when I say that the Republicans have been working on a fix for health care, we've been doing this for years. | |
| And many of you who've been on this beat for a while know this is two publications. | ||
| When I was chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of Republicans in Congress, we published volumes of ideas on healthcare. | ||
| This was our volume one, a framework for personalized affordable care. | ||
| We had an entire body of the smartest minds in Congress, the smartest Republican minds who worked around the clock. | ||
| The doctors caucus, they talked to stakeholders from around the country and in all the areas related to health care, and they came up with a formula on how to reduce the cost of health care dramatically, how to make Obamacare affordable and workable in some way for the American people, to increase the access to care and the quality of care. | ||
| And these ideas have been on paper for a long time. | ||
| There's volumes of this stuff, volumes of it. | ||
| What we're doing right now, what we have been doing, what we were already doing, because we knew we were coming up to the end of the year, and we know that health care is a major burden for the American people. | ||
| We've been working on it since day one of this Congress. | ||
| We worked on it in the years prior. | ||
| And we've already demonstrated, this is not talking points for us. | ||
| When we say the Republican Party is the only party that has any chance at fixing health care for the American people, we've demonstrated it. | ||
| We put it into the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Working Families Tax Cut. | ||
| As you know, we strengthened the Medicaid program. | ||
| We started there because it was the lowest hanging fruit. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the fraud is so glaring. | ||
| And we cut out, we eliminated the fraud. | ||
| We got ineligible recipients off of Medicaid. | ||
| We preserved it for the people who rely upon it and need it the most. | ||
| Young pregnant women, the elderly, disabled, for example. | ||
| We got able-bodied young men without dependents off the program. | ||
| And what we did was we strengthened it. | ||
| Don't take our word for it. | ||
| The CBO, who normally is not on my team, okay, they're the ones that came out and said, yeah, it's going to save $185 billion. | ||
| And they got 2.3 million ineligible recipients off of it already. | ||
| That's an important first start. | ||
| And so the next thing is to fix all the other components of health care. | ||
| That's what we have plans to do. | ||
| That's what we're working on. | ||
| Speaker Johnson, yesterday he will be continuing his press conferences. | ||
| That is going to happen right after this program at 10 a.m. | ||
| So we'll take you straight there after the program to hear from him today. | ||
| This from NBC News, largest federal workers' union calls for an end to the shutdown, putting pressure on Democrats, it says in a statement shared first with NBC News, the American Federation of Government Employees President calls on Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution. | ||
| Now, here is a portion of that statement from the AFGE. | ||
| They said this: It is time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike. | ||
| Because when the folks who serve the country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of the shutdown, they aren't looking for partisan spin. | ||
| They're looking for the wages they earned. | ||
| The fact that they're being cheated out of it is a national disgrace. | ||
| That's the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. | ||
| And here is Scott, Rochester, Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I fail to see how anybody can blame the Republicans for this shutdown. | ||
| It is a clean CR. | ||
| The same funding that was in place on September 30th would be the same funding that is in place on October 1st through the 21st. | ||
| They can negotiate then. | ||
| What the Democrats have done has demanded additional spending, holding the American people hostage. | ||
| People aren't getting paychecks. | ||
| They have their issue now. | ||
| That's all they wanted to do was an issue to try and stand up to Trump. | ||
| And this shutdown is 100% on the Democrats. | ||
| They need 60 votes in the Senate, and Schumer is holding them. | ||
| And also, probably for his political purposes, because he's afraid of a primary. | ||
| He really is from the left flank. | ||
| It's pretty amazing how anybody could blame a Republican for this shutdown. | ||
| And here is Jerry, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just want to ask: what do the Republicans have in place of Obamacare? | ||
| Obamacare has been in, we've been having that for a long time, and they've done nothing. | ||
| But they want to cut it out. | ||
| Put something in place instead of trying to cut this out. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And here is Volcker in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| Yeah, I'm wondering, this is the second longest shutdown in our history. | ||
| And the longest was 30 days. | ||
| I think it was four years. | ||
| 35. | ||
| So same commander-in-chief. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| That's an issue. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it's just the power politics. | ||
| I do think the Democrats would be willing to negotiate. | ||
| But for some reason, I don't know how did the is there any? | ||
| Any documentation? | ||
| How that longest shut down the thir? | ||
| Uh 35 days, how that ended if the Republican stuck to the compromise that was made, so that one? | ||
| Uh, that was over. | ||
| Uh 2018 2019, that was about funding for the border wall. | ||
| Uh, that uh Republicans wanted funding. | ||
| The Democrats did not want to fund that and eventually they um decided not to fund it and uh, the president uh, president Trump at the time found other funding for the wall from the uh the Defense Department, so he did take some funding from the Defense Department to fund the wall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay okay okay, Defense Department okay, all right Bolker, that's dr George, A Republican in Orchard Park, New York. | |
| Good morning uh hi, good morning um. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Uh, I just want to say first, uh, Donald Trump is not a dictator. | ||
| He's in Asia because he has a job to do. | ||
| Um, despite what the Democrats are saying, he's moving our country forward. | ||
| Second, as far as the way I feel is, which party do you trust more? | ||
| Um, I know it goes more than that, but let's, I think a the one of the biggest reasons why Donald Trump won reelection for the second time was because what the Democrats did with our border under the Biden administration immigration was a big reason why, in my opinion, Donald Trump won for the second time. | ||
| And are you really really going to trust what a? | ||
| The party that just turned turned their backs and allowed millions and millions of people into your country without really knowing who they were? | ||
| I think trust is a big thing and I know the Democrats don't want to see it that way, but that's the way I see it. | ||
| And finally, what I want to say, as far as the government shutdown, whatever was supposed to expire doesn't and you can correct me if i'm wrong doesn't expire until the end of the year. | ||
| So there should be no reason why you need to shut the government down now because you should be negotiating and, like like um Thun pointed out, the one Democrat leader said they're using using this as leverage and I think that's terrible to shut the government down just for your own political gain. | ||
| So that's all I have to say. | ||
| Here's Jennifer, Democrat in St. Paul, Minnesota. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi Jennifer, Hi Mimi. | |
| First, thank you. | ||
| This is such an honor to be selected to speak today. | ||
| First, in one quick comment back to the caller that you just let go. | ||
| I would like to first ask, does President Trump even know what nations are in the ASEAN coalition? | ||
| I'd like to see if he could name all of those, considering he's president of the United States. | ||
| But what I really wanted to reference to was Earlier, you played the snippet from Speaker Johnson and how they have volumes and volumes of health care that has been written for years, but yet they never or rarely roll it out. | ||
| They don't talk about it. | ||
| They don't tell us what their alternatives are. | ||
| So they've had 15 years, 15 years they have been fighting against the ACA, which is settled law now. | ||
| People are relying on this. | ||
| Now, we can extend the tax cuts of 2017 and make them permanent because otherwise everybody's going to get the biggest tax cut of their whole or the biggest tax increase of their whole life, right? | ||
| That's what they said, the rhetoric, over and over and over. | ||
| But you can say the same thing about the subsidies that are being allowed to expire. | ||
| It's just another way of a tax cut. | ||
| A subsidy is a tax, which is a tariff, which is a tax. | ||
| It's all the same thing. | ||
| I am a Democrat or a progressive because I believe in fundamentally when we have a healthy nation, we have a working nation. | ||
| We have a strong coalition nation together when we work together and keep our country healthy and safe. | ||
| And that includes the newborn babies that are born all the way up until the 99-year-old person in their nursing home. | ||
| We don't give up on our people. | ||
| We take care of them. | ||
| That is what America is always supposed to be. | ||
| I am 55 years old. | ||
| I was raised to believe in the scripture of the words that are written on the Statue of Liberty. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That is what America is. | ||
| We open our arms and we put people to work and we take care of them and they give back to us tenfold. | ||
| I'm a property manager. | ||
| I'm in multi-housing. | ||
| I work with people from all ranges, all places around the world. | ||
| And every single person works. | ||
| Nobody's out there taking handouts. | ||
| That includes the Muslims that they want to disparage, the Hispanics that are lazy. | ||
| I'll tell you what I saw when I go to the emergency room. | ||
| And we have our private health care. | ||
| We always have. | ||
| I've been working since I was 14. | ||
| I have an LGBTQ son. | ||
| I have an autistic son. | ||
| And I have used WIC one time in my life when they were between two and five years old. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| You take advantage when you need it. | ||
| All right, Jennifer. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| And staying in Minnesota, Governor Waltz, here's the headline from the Minnesota farmer. | ||
| It says, sorry, Minnesota. | ||
| Anyway, it says, Governor Waltz, reformer, Governor Waltz directs $4 million to food shelves as SNAP cutoff approaches. | ||
| He was volunteering at a food bank in Egan, Minnesota, and he announced that $4 million in emergency food funding. | ||
| And he responds to a question here about what capacity the state has to continue that assistance should the shutdown drag on indefinitely. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| Yeah, it becomes harder. | ||
| The ability of the state, the question to be able to backfill in a shutdown becomes harder and harder because we don't get our reimbursements. | ||
| And then the decision that you heard Commissioner Brown say is we go ahead and give it. | ||
| We have to be very cautious about once we spend it, there's no reimbursement coming back from the federal government because our responsibility to balance the budget and be accountable for that. | ||
| The states can do, and Minnesota, as I think we all know, probably the most generous of the states, we've got some ability to protect our people, but I think some of you saw it today. | ||
| The LIHEAP, the heating assistance, doesn't apply to propane users, doesn't apply for some of our heating oil users. | ||
| So those folks are going to be left out there with no heating assistance coming, and they're not protected by the no-shutoff rule. | ||
| So we're concerned about that, trying to figure it out. | ||
| But I think the biggest thing is we have a federal system that we're all in it together, that we help other states when they need it. | ||
| But we have a situation where they are trying to divide us amongst ourselves. | ||
| They're trying to provide specific aid to states that they like at the moment, which is absolutely unconscionable. | ||
| We would, and the state of Minnesota would do whatever we could to help folks, whether they're in Texas or whether they're in Iowa or whether they're in Massachusetts. | ||
| States being left on their own is an untenable situation. | ||
| Either that or give us our money back. | ||
| Back to the phones on the independent line, Charles Englewood, Colorado. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
| Looks like we lost Charles. | ||
| John in Annapolis, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am actually headed over to help out to distribute food this morning at a food bank to our federal employees. | ||
| As a former federal employee, I am really quite just floored by everything that's going on. | ||
| I actually was in stay in school, stay-in-school program for the Department of Justice back in the mid-90s when I experienced my first and only shutdown as a government employee when Newt Gambridge decided to, I guess, do the same thing to Clinton. | ||
| What I don't get, and I'm interested in any Republican to educate me or rather illuminate me as to what is the end strategy here. | ||
| If the continuing resolution was to go through November 21st and the health care subsidies or what have you were not dealt with in that continuing resolution, | ||
| assumably they would have sent the exact same continuing resolution from November 22nd through whatever time they would deem necessary because apparently funding our government at three or four months at a time is how Republicans choose to govern. | ||
| I don't understand why is it if the speaker says we have all these plans and we've been working on them since the beginning of the year and so forth, why is Congress not in session? | ||
| You don't have to be, you don't have to set a vote if you don't want to set a vote on the so the House Speaker says it's because they've done their job. | ||
| They passed the CR they have nothing else to do. | ||
| What do you think of that, John? | ||
| Still there? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Tina, Portsmouth, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Tina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this government shutdown is all uncalled for. | |
| It's not Trump's fault. | ||
| And all the billions of people today, it has no food stamps, little children's doom without. | ||
| Totally uncalled for. | ||
| It is not Trump's fault. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here is Cliff in Lady Lake, Florida, a federal employee. | ||
| Good morning, Cliff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I'm a retired DOD employee. | ||
| And I just want to say I really despise knowing that our military may not be paid for. | ||
| And what I would like to propose is something like Convention of States, in which every time there's a government shutdown, the first people not to be paid are our congressmen and people in the House of Representatives. | ||
| Let them go without any income from their banks, from any outside sources. | ||
| Let them first be the ones that aren't paid. | ||
| And I think we would resolve this problem. | ||
| And Convention of States, if you look at that, uses Article 5 of the Constitution to go up through your state legislators to do things that Congress they'll never do to themselves. | ||
| They won't term limit themselves and they won't put themselves on some sort of budget. | ||
| We all have to stay within a budget. | ||
| I believe they should as well. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good day. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And as the government shutdown continues, C-SPAN went out to Alexander, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C., to talk to people on the street about how the shutdown is affecting them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In retirement, I work at a local church just down the street that helps people with mortgages, rents, you know, whatever, when they get in trouble. | |
| And we're getting a lot of federal workers now. | ||
| These aren't the guys at the top. | ||
| They're people like clerks, secretaries, everything else that can't meet the rental payments. | ||
| You know, they got to pay for their health insurance. | ||
| They can't make the rent. | ||
| They've got to pay for utility bills. | ||
| You know, either the utility bills get paid or the rent gets paid. | ||
| And they have to come to us. | ||
| And there are two churches here that do that in Alexandria. | ||
| St. Paul's over here, Christchurch over here. | ||
| And they help people with that. | ||
| And we're getting a lot of people that we never saw before. | ||
| These aren't people at low income levels. | ||
| They were people who made a decent living and now they just can't get through because there's no money. | ||
| So we help a lot of them, an awful lot of them. | ||
| Same thing happened the last shutdown. | ||
| Same thing happened in COVID. | ||
| But it's going on again. | ||
| And it's worse this time because it's longer now. | ||
| The shutdown. | ||
| I think it's a little bit different for us in Old Town Alexandria in that I think more people obviously are staying at home and are closer to Old Town. | ||
| So, I feel kind of bad because I know it is negatively impacting the DC restaurants and the DC hospitality industry. | ||
| But I think being across the river, we've actually maybe slightly benefited from it. | ||
| The government shutdown mainly affected me, well, affected my grandmother more than anything. | ||
| She's a government worker for DGCPS, and pretty much she's a building manager. | ||
| So it mainly affected her as far as like her hours, how much she works, and primarily just stuff like that. | ||
| That kind of helped degrade her job a little bit more, which made her actually contemplating retirement currently. | ||
| It's not affecting me personally, but I mean, I'm in favor of it because it's the first time the Democrats have done anything at all that I've seen to force the hand of the bad guys, so to speak. | ||
| And I'm in favor of it. | ||
| I mean, we already have enough of a health insurance problem in this country. | ||
| And if we're going to try, if their goal is to try to extend the subsidies so we can actually sort of afford health insurance, then I'm in favor of it. | ||
| I mean, you know, it sucks for the federal workers, but I mean, we have to, if we're going to fight the bad guys, we have to make some sacrifices. | ||
| Well, it affects two other people who are closer to me because they work at the government and they are not gaining any money. | ||
| And the time goes, and people need money to do their groceries and pay the bills, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| So I just got actually a phone call from one of my relatives that is asking me for lending some money to pay some bills. | ||
| So is that a relative of a government worker? | ||
| Government worker, yes. | ||
| So and it's sad to see that situation. | ||
| And I think it's stupid, stupid. | ||
| And I think the responsible is particularly Mr. Trump. | ||
| He should actually get together with the other side of the aisle and make a deal and stop this childless situation. | ||
| Back to the calls now to Amy, a Democrat in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| Hi, Amy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One reason I called in, when you showed the video of Mike Johnson talking about the health care plan that they supposedly have been working on for years, as soon as he said that we've had this health care plan we've been working on for years, I had to turn the sound off. | |
| I couldn't listen because all I thought of was when Trump was president the first time and they wanted to get rid of the ACA. | ||
| He was walking down the hall, Trump was, of somewhere, and he said, oh, I'm going to have a health care plan. | ||
| You'll see it within two weeks. | ||
| Well, that's been a really long two weeks because we still haven't seen it. | ||
| And we haven't seen anything from the Republicans regarding health care. | ||
| And the man who is just gone, he's right. | ||
| Trump should come back to this country and try to make a deal with the Democrats, the Republicans, instead of Calivanting all over the world, making all these supposed deals with all these foreign leaders. | ||
| He's just forgetting about the United States and just as if we're not even here. | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| William, Independent, Burlington, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| If you'll give me just a second, there's so much that happens in a month, Mimi. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
| But one, to answer your question, no, they did not do their job because if they did their job, there would be a budget, not a continuing resolution. | ||
| Two, Mike Johnson, who I believe is the biggest worm on the planet, always says, oh, we don't have anything to negotiate. | ||
| Well, he just flipped the script and said now we have something to negotiate with, and yet he still won't open up the Congress to sit down and do negotiations. | ||
| Before this, it was all about putting illegal immigrants on health care. | ||
| Now it's, oh, we have a plan. | ||
| They just don't want to listen to our plan. | ||
| Well, that's a whole different story today. | ||
| Secondly, I apologize for those two callers at the beginning. | ||
| The MAWA, Make America Whine Again movement is really ridiculous that they come at you like that, all because someone says something negative about Trump. | ||
| He's destroying one of our national monuments and didn't even ask. | ||
| So I think the other thing people need to look at, again, I know it's been talked about a little bit, but Project 2025, one of their goals, get rid of the ACA. | ||
| It's in there. | ||
| And Russell Vaught, we all know now, Trump knows about Project 2025 because that's how he introduced Russell Vaught on the Twitter feed or whatever social media or whatever he does. | ||
| So, yes, this is a Republican shutdown because Trump has already told the Republicans don't negotiate with Democrats. | ||
| So, if you have the president saying that, then the president has to take the blame of that. | ||
| Just like he said in the beginning in his first term about the wall, I'll take the blame on me. | ||
| I want the government to shut down. | ||
| They always skip over when Trump shut the wall down for 35 days when they talk in public. | ||
| And the last thing is, it's just one word, Epstein. | ||
| So, Mimi, I appreciate you letting me speak, and I hope you have a great day. | ||
| All right, William, this is Todd, a Republican in Dayton, Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Todd, you're on the air. | |
| I'd just like to say to all the Democrats, they're completely wrong. | ||
| Trump's the best president where he fascists, Richard Nixon. | ||
| He's making deals. | ||
| I just got, I deal with Virginia, so I'm voting in a Republican governor. | ||
| I just got a $400 tax rebate from Yunkin. | ||
| Trump's the best president ever since Nixon. | ||
| Biden is worse, and Carter and Kennedy was worse. | ||
| And so thank God he's gone. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| And here's Steve in Long Island, New York, line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| That guy was a sweetheart. | ||
| I just want to point out first that during the debate, you can bring it up with Camela Harris. | ||
| Donald Trump said he saved the ACA. | ||
| Those are the words out of his mouth during the debate, that he saved the ACA. | ||
| And I know back in 2016 when he was debating Hillary Clinton, he said he had the greatest health care plan ever, but he wasn't going to show it to anybody unless he had won the election. | ||
| I mean, he can go around the world. | ||
| He just gave $40 billion to Argentina, I think it was. | ||
| He's in Saudi Arabia cutting Bitcoin deals and all sorts of deals for his kids and the kids of his cabinet. | ||
| You know, Mike Johnson has a duty to swear in that the new congresswoman from Arizona, but like the guy before me said, it's all about Epstein. | ||
| I mean, he's got work to do. | ||
| The Democrats are there. | ||
| They want to negotiate. | ||
| Trump's talking about negotiating, you know, being a great negotiator. | ||
| I've known Donald Trump since he was 16. | ||
| I won't tell you how, but I mean, they have a lot of work to do. | ||
| This is all about them trying to kill the ACA. | ||
| I mean, they could improve it. | ||
| They could add things. | ||
| They could do a lot of things, but they haven't done anything with it except try to kill it since 2009 because a black president put it in. | ||
| So, Steve, let me show you this. | ||
| This is PolitiFact, and this is talking not about the debate, but this is more recent. | ||
| This is September 15th, 2024. | ||
| So, this would have been before the election. | ||
| JD Vance that it says former President Donald Trump could have destroyed the Affordable Care Act, but, quote, he chose to build upon it. | ||
| That's in a Meet the Press interview with now Vice President JD Vance. | ||
| PolitiFact is rating that as false. | ||
| If you want to take a look at more information about that, you can find it there. | ||
| Here is Mary Greensboro, North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Amy. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I love Sucean, and you are so fair. | ||
| I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | ||
| Anyway, I wanted to say, again, other people have talked about the snippet with Speaker Johnson, and that immediately made me think I have to call. | ||
| He's saying, first of all, about their plans for so many years, they had concepts for so many years. | ||
| But they finally put something out, and it scares me a lot. | ||
| It's they call the Wiser, the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Act, or whatever it's called. | ||
| And they want private companies to use AI to determine whether or not Medicare recipients should get the tests and the procedures that their doctors recommend. | ||
| And then when these private companies say, no, we don't authorize that, they get to keep half of the cost of what that would have been. | ||
| So you're incentivizing these companies to say no to everything for our seniors. | ||
| I mean, that is their wonderful plan. | ||
| Anyway, that's supposed to go into effect in January. | ||
| So Mary, I'll let you continue, but let me just show people. | ||
| This is congress.gov, what you're talking about, the WISER Act of 2025. | ||
| It's H.R. 660. | ||
| And it says the bill requires the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to establish and implement certain programs to address the involuntary separation of women veterans who served during the period of 1951 to 76. | ||
| Such order provided involuntary separation from women from service for being a parent via birth or adoption, gaining custody of a child or being a step parent who lived with the child more than 30 days a year, being pregnant or giving birth to a child while serving. | ||
| Is that what you're talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It sounds like it, but I read it from a couple of different news sources from Causes and from Newsweek and from, oh shoot, and somewhere else. | |
| I'm sorry, I don't remember the third one. | ||
| And they didn't say it was just veterans. | ||
| They said it was for Medicare. | ||
| It was going to be a project that was starting in January and it was going to, pardon me, it was going to be, if it works well, it would be expanded to everywhere. | ||
| And they were going to start the project with New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington. | ||
| And I was thinking, you know. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So here, Mary, this is CMS.gov. | ||
| So this is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. | ||
| And it says this, that this model will help protect American taxpayers by leveraging enhanced technologies such as AI and machine learning along with human clinical review to ensure timely and appropriate Medicare payment for select items and services. | ||
| The voluntary model will encourage care navigation, encouraging safe and evidence-supported best practices for treating people with Medicare. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it will run for six years from January 1st, 2026 until the end of 2031. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And may I just say that I think that a lot of people who, my family included, were thinking that traditional Medicare is a better way to go because Advantage plans change and they cover this and they don't cover that and so on, whereas the traditional doesn't do that. | |
| But now people are thinking, oh, I better go to Advantage plans, the private plan. | ||
| Just like we have private prisons and we're trying with private schools with all the vouchers, we're privatizing everything in the country. | ||
| And that means it's all going to rich people's, you know, going to enrich rich people further. | ||
| And there's nothing that we can count on. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| This is Dennis, Tunnell Hill, Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Dennis. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. |