| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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| Joining us now is Representative Tom McClintock. | ||
| He's a Republican of California and a member of the Budget Committee. | ||
| Congressman, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thanks for having me. | |
| Politico is reporting that House Republicans are going to be meeting today or having a conference call, I should say, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| What will you be discussing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we'll be discussing what we've discussed over the past 27 days, and that is the shutdown. | |
| And unfortunately, there's not an awful lot the House can do until the Senate acts. | ||
| We passed the bill to keep the government open back on September 19th. | ||
| And everybody remembers their schoolhouse rock. | ||
| The House sends an appropriation to the Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
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We did that. | |
| Then the Senate either changes the bill and sends it back to us or passes the bill on to the president. | ||
| Schumer won't do either. | ||
| So the government remains in shutdown. | ||
| It's not clear to me what more the House can do at this point that it hasn't already done. | ||
| 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? | ||
| I mean, the big concern right now is that the continuing resolution, which by the way, had no Republican priorities in it, it made no changes in law. | ||
|
unidentified
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It simply continued spending at current levels to keep the government open. | |
| But it runs out on November the 21st. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And the public's very clear. | ||
| They don't want to shut down. | ||
| They don't want increased federal spending. | ||
| And yet the Senate Democrats have delivered a shutdown trying to get $1.5 trillion of increased federal spending. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's very frustrating. | |
| And I'm hoping that they will soon come to their senses. | ||
| So let's talk about the ACA tax subsidies that the Democrats are asking for, that those be extended. | ||
| Those run out December 31st, as you know. | ||
| Are you completely against those subsidies, tax subsidies being extended? | ||
| And would you want those to expire given what we know about where premiums are going and how much they would increase for people on the ACA? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am very much opposed to extending the premiums. | |
| And by the way, when those subsidies expire, the premiums will simply revert to the original Obamacare premium levels. | ||
| The premium subsidies that they're talking about extending were radically increased during COVID to extend to families earning six figures of income. | ||
| That was a temporary measure because lockdowns were throwing people out of work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Democrats are demanding to make these temporary subsidies permanent. | |
| This at a time when the federal government is running an historic debt, the interest on which now exceeds our entire defense budget. | ||
| Now, about 2 million people in your state and California do purchase health insurance through the ACA. | ||
| What do you tell them about their concerns about premiums? | ||
| Doubling, we've heard increases of up to 500% of these premiums, enough so that a lot of people would not be able to afford health care anymore. | ||
| What do you say to them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Obamacare premiums have already skyrocketed. | |
| 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. | ||
| And for those who can't afford a basic plan, the government can provide enough support to bring it within their financial reach. | ||
| And pre-existing conditions can be covered by an assigned risk pool, as we do for auto insurance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We proposed that at the time Obamacare was being adopted. | |
| If we had done that, I think our health care costs would be far lower than they are today, and patient satisfaction would be far higher. | ||
| 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. | ||
| So, Congressman, would you be in favor of just a temporary extension of just SNAP benefits? | ||
| Given if the government does not reopen by Saturday, would you vote for that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I certainly would be leaning toward it. | |
| Obviously, it depends upon the details, but the direct answer is yes. | ||
| 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
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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? | ||
| Well, first of all, the government data has not always proven to be accurate. | ||
| So there are a lot of discussions right now on how far we need to reform the process to assure that we're getting more consistent economic data. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But the bottom line is everybody knows in their own lives how the economy is doing. | |
| You can't spin that. | ||
| And that's ultimately what the election, I think, is going to be determined by. | ||
| And it's not going to be on political spins because it's going to be to the answer that every American gives to this question. | ||
| You're better off today than you were two years ago. | ||
| I think because of the big, beautiful bill and the enormous regulatory and tax relief that it delivers, the answer is going to be yes. | ||
| But again, that's not my question to answer. | ||
| That is the answer the American people have got to make for themselves based upon their own experience. | ||
| All right. | ||
| 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. | ||
| But that inflation is because of Obamacare, which is what we warned at the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, you know, listen, I understand that if the government subsidizes something, it increases the price. | |
| That's why originally Obamacare was RomneyCare. | ||
| It was a Heritage Foundation idea. | ||
| Before Heritage Foundation was promoting, I mean, after they were promoting health mandates, then they were arguing it's unconstitutional. | ||
| So basically, we have a tweedle-dung, tweedle-dee, power corrupts. | ||
| Money is concentrating in more and more hands. | ||
| As Thomas Jefferson said, an aristocracy of wealth is more harm and danger than benefit to society. | ||
| Well, I mean, here's where we can agree. | ||
| Use of subsidies increase the price of whatever it is that you're subsidizing. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And that has to be addressed. | ||
| Here's Maria in New Jersey, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Maria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Oh, all this baloney about the shutdown. |