Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Appearances
m
mimi geerges
cspan02:52
t
tom mcclintock
rep/r03:24
?
Voice
Speaker
Time
Text
Government Shutdown Debate00:13:47
unidentified
P.M. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
You can also watch on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
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.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including Charter Communications.
Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers.
And we're just getting started.
Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most.
Charter Communications supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Is there any discussions going on at all about a change of tactics or about any kind of point of negotiation to move this towards an opening of the government?
So we've run out about half the clock on this already, and it's probably going to have to be extended again.
unidentified
So that's where a lot of the discussion is going.
But also just the utter frustration with Senate Democrats holding the government hostage on their demands for a trillion and a half dollars of new spending.
That's, by the way, that'll cost an average household about $12,000.
As many of us, by the way, warned at the time it was being put in, the only question is who's going to pay for the increases, the policyholders or the taxpayers?
And if it's the taxpayers, explain to me where they're going to get the money, considering the fact that every dollar of the discretionary federal budget is now being borrowed.
unidentified
And as I said, interest on the debt now exceeds our entire defense budget.
At some points, you have to stop the cost spiral, and that means restoring a competitive, open insurance market.
And that's ultimately what has to be done, and that's where the discussion should be going.
unidentified
I mean, let's get down to basics here.
Our health care costs have grown three times as fast as inflation and population combined, while patient satisfaction continues to decline.
And the fundamental problem is we've severed the connection between the consumer and the payer.
If somebody else is paying the bill, the consumer doesn't care about costs, and the payer doesn't care about quality.
That connection needs to be restored.
And the best way to do that is to restore a competitive health insurance market where patients can shop among hundreds of plans competing for their business, select the one that best meets their needs and budget.
Republican Tom McClintock of California will take your calls.
You can give us a call now up until the end of the show.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can start calling in now.
Congressman, I want to ask you about SNAP.
42 million Americans use SNAP for food aid.
That's 12% of the total American population.
It's roughly 5.5 million just in your state of California.
That runs out on Saturday.
What do you think should be done about that?
unidentified
Well, we should reopen the government.
I mean, it's not complicated.
And the Democratic leaders have already acknowledged that they know the shutdown is causing immense harm to those, particularly who are dependent on government services.
But they view this suffering, as Catherine Clark, the Democratic witch, said, they view it as leverage, leverage in their demands for $1.5 trillion in new spending.
And again, that in turn comes out of the earnings of American families.
Every trillion dollars we talk about, think of that as about $8,000 that your family is going to have to repay, either through current taxes, borrowing and future taxes, or higher prices as businesses pass their taxes on to you as a consumer.
But don't forget, Senator Johnson last week introduced a bill on the Senate floor to assure that the essential government workers, the air traffic controllers, the TSA officers, law enforcement that are required to show up for work anyway are going to be paid on time.
unidentified
And the Democrats shot that down because it reduced their leverage.
Well, at some point, people are going to have to make a judgment on a party that would put that kind of suffering as a priority to maintain their political leverage in this process.
I want to ask you about a headline in Axios about, it says the economy is an unchartered territory that data went dark this month.
The government shutdown is halting the collection and release of statistics tracking the job market, public health and crop production, as well as other economic indicators.
Congressman, you serve on the budget committee.
What kind of impact are you fearing from this lack of government data and what can be done about it?
Let's talk to Frank, who's in San Francisco, Independent Line.
Hi, Frank.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi.
You're calling in an independent this time because Democrats running Newcomb or Bama LaHares is not enthusing me about 2028, if we get an election at all.
But Mr. McClintock, it seems like you've misstated a few points.
And returning, we're not going to return to premiums of Obamacare.
We're going to return to a higher premium because of the inflation we've been having in the health industry.
That's why we've got to get back to a competitive market system where individual plans, hundreds and hundreds of them, are competing for people's business based upon what they're offering and the value that they're delivering.
unidentified
And Obamacare is exactly the opposite.
Obamacare is basically a one-size-fits-all process, heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
And by the way, if the subsidies expire, a single individual earning $40,000 a year is still only going to pay about 7% of his income for his health care.
That's about $2,700.
Taxpayers will pick up the other $5,400 a year of the price of that policy.
If a single individual at the poverty level, $15,000, if the premiums expire, or if the premium subsidies expire, will only pay $3.45 a week with the taxpayers picking up the other 98% of the policy.