Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
a
adam jentleson
14:13
a
avik roy
21:30
m
mimi geerges
cspan28:50
r
reese gorman
16:30
s
sam liccardo
rep/d11:05
Appearances
a
adelita grijalva
rep/d00:41
a
austin scott
rep/r00:44
chip roy
rep/r00:35
hakeem jeffries
rep/d01:22
mike johnson
rep/r01:47
sean duffy
admin01:53
tim kaine
sen/d01:18
Clips
david rubenstein
00:10
glenn ivey
rep/d00:06
w
walter isaacson
00:24
?
Voice
Speaker
Time
Text
Continued Resolution Debate00:15:02
unidentified
A Senate vote in December to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expire at the end of the year.
House Republican leaders have no plans to vote on that issue.
Most Senate Democrats voted against the funding bill as they wanted a one-year extension of the health care subsidies included in the measure.
Also in the House at 4 p.m. Eastern, Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Atalita Grajalva will be sworn in.
She won a special election two months ago to replace her late father.
Watch live coverage of the House beginning at noon Eastern on C-SPAN.
Also on our free video app, C-SPAN Now, and online at c-span.org.
Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, notice politics reporter Reese Gorman discusses the U.S. House gaveling back into session for the first time since late September to reopen the government.
Then Ovik Roy, co-founder and chair of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, talks about health care reform and bipartisan solutions for addressing health insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
Also, Adam Gentelson, Democratic strategist and former top aide to then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
He'll discuss shutdown politics and the future of the Democratic Party.
And California Democratic Congressman Sam Licardo on his bipartisan legislation to address the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.
First off, they're going to swear in Representative Elect Gorhalva, who is replacing her father, which has been a point of contention amongst those in the House, both Democrats and even some Republicans have called her to be sworn in.
So they'll be doing that around 4 o'clock.
And then after that, they're going to get to voting on the rule for this continued resolution.
The Senate passed continued resolution passed out at the Rules Committee last night.
So they'll vote on the rule, which basically starts the kind of parameters for debate, gives the kind of parameters for amendments, et cetera.
There are not many, not any.
They're just going to get basically here.
They're going to come, they're going to debate, and then they will vote later on tonight.
And this should not have an issue passing.
This should pass relatively easily off the House floor and get to President Trump's desk later tonight.
Yeah, so this is originally the House passed the continued resolution to November 21st.
Obviously, that is not enough time to continue to fund the government and see it as we are a week away from November 21st.
And so that has been changed in the Senate to January 31st.
So it just extends the deadline.
There's a three-part appropriations mini-bus that is attached to it, which is basically three appropriations bills to fund three different sects of government.
It's Milcon VA and then a couple others that I'm blinking on at the moment, which basically funds the government, which is how appropriators in Congress is supposed to do appropriations.
They're supposed to fund government in individual portions through appropriations bills, not continuous resolutions, as we have seen over the past couple of years.
And so basically this will fund those parts of the government.
And then it will also reverse those layoffs that Trump's administration did at the onset of the shutdown, if you recall.
OMB Director Russ Vogt had said that he was going to make this as painful as possible for Democrats if the government were shut down.
Obviously, the government did shut down, so they did lay off quite a few federal workers at the onset.
And this was a bargaining tool the Centaur used to get some of the Democrats and independents on board with voting ultimately to fund the government, which will reverse those layoffs that happened since the beginning of the shutdown as a little bit more of an incentive to vote to reopen the government.
If you'd like to talk to Rhys Gorman of Notice, you can call us on our lines by party.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
We also have that line for federal workers.
It's 202-748-8003.
That's the same number you can use to send us a text.
And of course, we're on Facebook and on X. You mentioned, DeRees, that there's not a whole lot of time between now and January 30th, especially given the holidays in the middle.
Are they going to be able to finish all the appropriations bills and get this done?
I mean, Congress for so long has, they've been saying, well, we're going to do all 12 appropriations, but we're going to do all 12 appropriations, but it's been a couple years since they've done that.
They have been living on this, over a year, they've been living on this Biden-era continuing resolution funding levels at the Biden spending.
I mean, it's been a while since they have actually passed 12 appropriation bills.
And I've talked to a handful of appropriators numerous times that are very upset.
I mean, appropriators don't want to live on these continued resolutions, but they've had to.
And so basically, this three-quarter mini-bus is a good path and good start to get this government funded.
But a lot of times Congress, as many of the viewers know, as you know, likes to wait to the last minute to do things.
They don't like to get things kind of the ball rolling until they're running right up on deadline.
And I believe that after once these appropriations bills start, they will start trying to work on them.
But if history is any indication of where we're going to be going, they're going to be waiting to the last minute to actually try to pass some of these bills.
And it's going to be difficult.
It's going to be hard.
And so that's kind of where we are right now.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
But history is not very favorable to Congress passing all 12 appropriation bills right now.
Yeah, I do not believe everyone is in town as of right now.
I believe that the speaker and the leadership team is hopeful that everyone will be in town by the vote.
They will obviously, if they can keep a vote open for as long as possible.
And I believe that what we'll see happen is they will, if people are in town and they need the members to pass the bill, that they will just continue to hold the vote, vote open for that elongated period of time.
Yeah, so if we, last on this last CR that we saw passed, God, some 50 days ago now, only two Republicans voted against it.
It was Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky, who will likely almost 100%.
I don't want to give it a certainty, but almost certainty, that he will be voting against this one as well.
Republicans already trying to get him on board.
And Victoria Sparts was the other member who voted against it.
Sparks is known to flip.
She's known to change her mind.
She's known to kind of just do, just vote wherever the wind takes her.
So she is kind of a wild card at the moment.
We don't really know how she's going to vote.
Another person to watch, I believe, is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She's been very critical of Johnson.
She's been critical of some of Trump's even policy positions since the shutdown began.
I believe she voted, and a fact that she voted for this most recent CR that passed 50 days ago, but she has become more critical since this.
So I think she's one to watch.
I think Representative Kevin Kiley is another person to watch.
He's been really aggravated with the speaker about redistricting.
He was in California.
He was just drawn out of his district due to the California redistricting.
So he is a little aggrieved at the moment and has a bone to pick.
So I would be watching those four, but if I had to put kind of just make my best guess at the moment, I believe that probably you would just see Victoria Sparks and Massey be the only no's.
But I do think there's a likelihood that Massey is just the only no.
But Republicans feel very bullish right now that they have the votes to get this done with Republicans alone.
But I also believe that if you watch, you'll get a handful of Democrats.
I think a lot of the Blue Dog Democrats that will be voting for it.
Representative Jared Golden, former chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, was the only Democrat in the House to vote for this continuing resolution last time it was on board.
Marie Gluzenkamp-Perez, who is currently co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, tried to vote yes but did not get her vote in on time.
So there would be two Democrats supporting it right there.
I think you'll see quite Henry Queyar spoke positively about the continued resolution but stopped short of just saying that he's going to vote yes.
But I think I would not be surprised if some of those more moderate vulnerable Democrats do vote yes on this continuing resolution today.
But I think Republicans from that source that I'm talking to and leadership are bullish that they have the votes amongst Republicans to pass this, especially because the Freedom Caucus, who are usually the main wildcards when it comes to spending bills, released a talking, not release, I obtained and then released it, this talking points memo where they basically are just touting the wins.
They said this is a huge win for the Freedom Caucus.
It's a huge win for conserved values.
So the Freedom Caucus behind it, the chair Andy Harris, I think you saw even Chip Roy are very supportive of this legislation.
So with them backing it, leadership is very, very confident that they will get this over the finish line regardless of where Democrats fall.
We'll start with Jim Norwood, New Jersey, Democrat.
Good morning, Jim.
unidentified
Good morning.
I would really like for somebody to explain to me how health insurance companies are in business for profit.
Seems to me that the difference between premiums paid in and claims paid out makes the profit for the health insurance companies.
I would like to know how people cannot understand that.
Paying off ceos exorbitant paycheck uh and and having shareholders making a profit for health insurance okay, all right let's, let's take that up, go ahead uh, Reese hi yes um, so I believe his question was about the health care industry.
I'm not a health care expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can touch on kind of how this was a big part of this um shutdown fight, and a big reason why this shutdown prolonged for so long was because uh, Democrats were adamant.
There's these enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are put into um the one of Joe Biden's uh Covid, uh relief packages um back in 2021, and so they were set to expire at the end of the year, which we'll see.
We've already seen um customers premiums spike and without these subsidies, and so this was a huge fight for the Democrats to in the Senate, both in the House that's why the most Democrats in the House voted against it and then Senate, why they held out for so long was because they were trying to get some kind of deal on these Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Now ultimately, Democrats folded and they did not get anything that they wanted.
On Affordable Care Act subsidies, they took a deal of Senate.
Majority leader Jonathun promised them a vote on extending the Aca subsidies, but without but they.
So they promised them a vote but did not promise them a result.
So basically he'd been.
He'd promised that since the beginning of the shutdown, since november 6th, he had been saying this is it.
But Democrats held out, hoping to get something else.
They ended up not getting anything additional besides a promised vote, and so ultimately, I think enough of them just had enough and they voted without getting absolutely any change on health care.
Um, but if you look at the flip side, Mike Johnson has not promised a vote on A Ca subsidies and it a lot of the House Republican Conference do do not want to see these extended.
There wasn't a member who really voted for this in the first place and they believe that Republicans believe that they could do.
The Affordable Care Act subsidies have been a disaster.
They believe that they at least there's a majority of them.
There is a sect of Republicans in the house and members that want to see these extended with some reforms.
There's definitely a possibility, but that's just discharge.
Petition takes so much time and that is well.
It's different than voting against leadership.
Leadership really views a discharge petition as almost kind of a slap in the face because they're going around them, they're they're circumventing them, and so it takes a lot more for members to sign on to a discharge petition than it would for members just if there was a bill on the floor just to vote against their party.
All right, and here's John, Mechanicsville, New York, Independent Line.
Good morning.
John, are you there?
Yes.
unidentified
Yes, I'm here.
Can you hear me?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I just got a few thoughts on that.
I wonder what your guest thinks.
I believe that in the future, the essential services with regard to things like SNAP benefits and PACO air traffic controllers and things should be exempt from any budgetary negotiations.
They should be held in place.
And the American people definitely should not be held hostage because the two sides can't reach an agreement.
And having said that, also, I'm an independent, but I do have to say that the Democrats, as you've seen, really, I think, bear the responsibility for keeping the government closed due to the fact that they finally moved to reopen the government.
They got to six votes in the Senate.
And, you know, it's not a good look for people like Schumer and Jeffries to really what it appears to haven't kept the government closed for that length of time.
You have to, in my opinion, you have to understand something.
We had serious problems, $37 trillion in debt.
And we had these problems.
And then all of a sudden, the borders opened up.
We had 15 to 20 million additional people coming across that needed services of the ACA and other services.
My state here in New York was spending billions of dollars, okay, housing and feeding, clothing these people coming across from the border.
Yeah, so I think the first part of that question was about stuff like SNAP benefits and air traffic controllers, et cetera, being sent from the shutdown.
That's kind of hard to do just because of the nature that Congress funds everything.
Congress is the pocketbook for the government.
They appropriate funds.
And the government, kind of like in our personal finances, if we run out of money for something, we can't buy it.
If I don't have money for groceries one month, I spent it all already and I'm out.
I have to wait till I get paid to be able to afford my groceries.
The government's kind of similar in the sense where if they don't have Congress giving them money, there's no money to give out.
There's no money to pay people like air traffic controllers or TSA agents.
There's no money to pay into SNAP.
And there is some money in a reserve fund that the Trump administration had been fighting, saying that they don't have, and a contingency fund rather, saying that they don't have the authority.
Democrats and some Republicans even have said that they do have the authority.
But I'm not going to get into that debate necessarily.
I think it's just based on the language of the funding mechanism right now.
I think it's harder to, Social Security is funded much longer in advance.
It's funded more in that fashion, where SNAP is solely funded by Congress.
It's Congress appropriating funds to a certain thing.
And if they don't do that, you're going to have to change the whole funding mechanism of it, which I think is more difficult than not because of how it's funded through an agency.
And if the agency is not getting the funds from Congress, then they can't give it out.
There are some pieces of legislation that have been introduced that if the government were shut down, then an automatic continuing resolution would just kick in.
I don't think those have a lot of legs at the moment because I think it would fund it.
The legislation is weird, but it just doesn't have a lot of legs at the moment.
Some people argue if it's even possible to pass such legislation.
But it's really difficult to shut down.
I mean, the only way to do it is just to fund the government.
I mean, they don't happen that often, if you think about it.
I mean, we had one in 2013.
We had one in 18.
We had one in 18 and 19.
And this is the first one since then.
So it's about seven, six, seven years since our last shutdown.
And so it's not like an often occurrence.
The Congress does usually appropriate funds.
They do usually fund the government.
This is more of just a kind of, I would say they're rare, but I don't think it's a normality.
I think this one feels very hard because it has been so long.
So many things have been affected.
So many people have been affected by it.
But I think that there is not an appetite because then there's no incentive to actually fund the government.
There's no incentive to pass appropriations bills and kind of provide more money for things that the government might need.
Otherwise, because you'll have people, if this is a case, like the Freedom Caucus, who will see this, who don't want to spend any money, who will then try to prohibit a lot of legislation from passing in order as a way to kind of reduce government spending if they know that there's no such thing as a shutdown.
The government's not going to shut down.
If we don't pass these appropriations bills that spend more money than what we have previously, then we'll just keep funding it at current levels and even cut some of the money.
So I think the appetite there is, there's not one.
And Roderick in Vancouver, Canada, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you.
My condolences again for the traumas that your country is going through.
The caller from England seems to have touched upon the question that I was hoping to ask.
So I'd like to ask a related question directly pinned to what What appears to be the root disagreement between the Democrats and Republicans.
And that relates to the American Constitution and its silence on the conducting of plebiscites.
Why would the Democratic Party not have made a condition of agreeing to reopen the government that the Republican Party would agree to pass legislation that would require a countrywide plebiscite that would ask voters,
are they in favor of eliminating the private insurance industry and having the United States become a single-payer health care system, thereby enabling the Obamacare concerns to be effectively dealt with in a fair way?
And one of the reasons I pose this question is because here in Canada, we are greatly affected by the turmoil in your country.
But not only that, we regularly compare our health care system with yours.
We pay approximately half the amount of money per patient, and yet we per year, so the annual expenditure on health care in our country is half yours per person, but our outcomes are better.
Your country has hundreds of private insurance companies, which apparently many are resented by the public and viewed as the biggest problem in this system.
Yeah, I mean, the American Constitution is really, it doesn't allow for these referendums on certain issues as state constitutions do.
This is more of a state issue.
I mean, as you see, states oftentimes put forth legislative questions or policy questions to a state referendum.
We can pull our voters, we can do whatever, but there's no really official way of having national elections run on policy issues.
Now, I mean, some Republicans might argue that voters did kind of say that they were against that in the sense when they voted for Trump, who is very anti this healthcare, Medicare, healthcare for all, as some of the Democratic candidates from Bernie Sanders, et cetera, in 2018 when they lost the primary.
And so I think some people might argue that presidential election was kind of also similarly on this question, but there's not really a way for the American government to put forth an election just to get on a policy referendum question.
I mean, Chip Roy of Texas expressed extreme kind of upsetness with this provision.
Representative Austin Scott of Georgia last night also did.
And even Tom Cole, to an extent, was even like, I have no idea how this got in here, but we can't strip it out because if they strip it out, then they have to send it back to the Senate.
And then they go through this whole song and dance again where the government's still shut down because the Senate's trying to negotiate.
But this was something the Senate snuck in.
Kind of nobody knew.
This wasn't publicized.
They didn't tell people about this.
It was only found because people read the bill and saw that it was in there.
But for all extensive purposes, Republicans, Democrats alike, are extremely upset that this provision made its way into the continuing resolution.
You know, it's astonishing that C-SPAN isn't challenging people who are going from Canada who are talking about their health care system as if anything they're conveying has anything to do with truth.
My twin sister is a physician in Halifax.
Her husband is a physician and had to wait a year and a half to see a rheumatologist and almost died because of the health care system in Canada.
Canada's healthcare system, and this is according to physicians, is a train wreck.
But that pales into comparison to what the American people have just witnessed by Democrats who are literally willing to throw millions of people under the bus with SNAP and essential programs in order for them to provide for their children.
Let's be very clear.
This is a punishment system.
Kareem Jeffries should be tossed out on his butt to use to weaponize SNAP and food resources for our kids.
I was a former Democrat.
This is just absolutely insane that the Democrats aren't even waking up to the fact that the Democratic establishment is literally weaponizing food stamps.
This is what they've done.
It's not Republicans who are holding anything hostage.
This is a fundamental foundation of evil that we are witnessing.
Yeah, I mean, this is something that had bipartisan support.
If they would have put this bill on the floor as a standalone, you would have seen Democrats and Republicans vote for it ever since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the assassination attempts on Trump.
You've seen lawmakers increasingly worried about their own security.
And so, this is a way of providing more funds so they can have more personal security to protect themselves from threats.
A lot of them receive a significant number of death threats, some every day, some every week, some every month, every year.
But there's been a significant rise in threats to lawmakers.
And so, there was bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done on member security.
If they would have put this bill on the floor as a standalone, it would have gotten a significant amount of bipartisan support, but because it's in the CR, it really just looks as though it's only Republicans supporting it.
But this is something that members on both sides of the aisle do want.
The lines are Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
While you're calling in, take a look at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaking to reporters yesterday about Democrats' efforts to extend ACA subsidies.
Republicans have created a health care crisis all across America.
Largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health centers closing all throughout the country because of what Republicans did in their one big ugly bill.
Medicare still at risk of the largest cut it may confront in American history unless Congress acts by the end of this year.
And of course, because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits in the midst of a cost of living crisis that already exists that they failed to address, health care for people all across this country is on the brink of becoming unaffordable.
Working class Americans, everyday Americans, middle-class Americans, unable to afford to go see a doctor.
This is in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
unidentified
Have you had any outreach yet to Republicans on that or is it too soon for us?
We haven't had any conversations with Republicans.
We're going to be before the Rules Committee shortly.
We're going to introduce an amendment that gives them an opportunity to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, and we're going to continue to make the point to our Republican colleagues.
Our position is simple.
Cancel the cuts, lower the costs, save health care.
If you'd like to talk about that or whatever else is on your mind, we'll go to Sandy, Fort Irwin, California, Democrat.
Good morning, Sandy.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'd like to talk about the eight senators that added the narrative to their money to get their money for the checking of the phones regarding the insurrection.
I think it's cringe-worthy because they're using taxpayers' money.
And a couple other things.
Oh, Representative Fernandez actually mentioned the eight names last night.
I watched the whole thing.
A couple other things real fast.
This snap has the word nutritional in it.
And if you ever watched through a grocery line, they've picked out chips and soda.
And so that has to be re-looked at.
I'm glad to give them back, but that has to be re-looked at.
Also, Sean Duffy said yesterday, I guess he said he needs $31 billion to do the upgrade of the airline equipment.
He could have got that $40 billion from Argentina.
And Sandy brought up the Arctic Frost and the provision.
This is the Washington Examiner saying Republicans signal unhappiness with phone record provision in government funding bill.
It says the provision would allow affected senators to collect payments for damages plus attorneys' fees of up to $500,000 for each time special counsel Jack Smith retained their call logs.
And we have a portion of that Republican Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia and Chip Roy of Texas.
It is beside my comprehension that this got put in the bill.
And it's why people have such a low opinion of this town.
I am torn also to the gentleman from Georgia because we need to fund the government and we need to get this passed.
And I'm trying to figure out what we can do to force the Senate's hand to say you're going to repeal this provision and fix it without amending it here to then delay the funding of government, which we want to proceed to go move forward with.
But that provision needs to get fixed.
And we need to find a way as a body to get it fixed as soon as possible.
This is an editorial in the Washington Post about that.
And it says, the check is not in the mail.
It says, thanks to his tariffs, President Donald Trump floated over the weekend, quote, a dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high-income people, will be paid to everyone.
It says, this appears to be his response to the success Democrats had in last year's off-year elections by running on a message of affordability and the skepticism his trade policy faced from conservative justices at the Supreme Court.
But it quickly emerged that Trump may not actually send out payments, certainly not anytime soon.
Instead, Treasury Secretary Besant curbed expectations on the Sunday show, saying that the 2,000, quote, could come in lots of forms, among them the tax cuts already enacted in July.
If you want to read that, it's in the Washington Post.
Again, that's an opinion there.
Here is Robert in Worcester, Massachusetts, Democrat.
Hi, Robert.
unidentified
Good morning.
I was so proud of my Jim McGovern from Worcester, Massachusetts, speaking up on the Rouge Committee.
He's a very good man.
You can go to his office anytime that you want.
Okay, January is going to be the worst month that Donald Trump and this country have ever seen coming up in this January because January 6th and January the 20th, they got the FBI James Cooney coming to court on January 5th, the day before January 6th, to distract from the Medicare.
You got people like John Bolton, Epstein case, is all going to come up in January.
We're not going to be able to get nothing done with Medicare and Medicaid because Donald Trump is going to make a muck out of January the 20th.
It's going to be one year.
Everybody right now is watching what happened on January 6th.
They're making films.
They're making documentaries.
So everything that's happening in January is going to be a distraction.
We got Laticia James.
She has to go to court before January.
Michael Bolton, Epstein files is going to come out.
This is going to be the worst year this country has ever seen in January.
That basically the big, beautiful bill within it, and they did do a confirmation vote there in the Senate over the weekend, that the executive branch moving forward, after he signs it, hopefully, you know, soon this week, he will now have power of the purse.
Congress will no longer have power of the purse, just like the previous caller was mentioning about where's the money, this and that.
The United States citizens will no longer be able to ask that question of our tax money or the direction it's going because it will only be up to Trump.
So if he wants to stop SNAP altogether, he will be able to do that.
If he wants to stop all federal employee salary, he can do that.
So we're in a moment that is quite unsettling, to be honest.
That's what I'm feeling.
That's what I'm feeling this morning.
I'm sharing my feelings this morning with America that the Big Beautiful bill is the opposite of what it's described.
But within that bill, there's a very specific section that the term pocket, I think it's pocket provisions, is it?
This is a previous caller talked about air traffic controllers.
So this is NPR yesterday saying Trump slams air traffic controllers who called out during the government shutdown.
It says he's slamming air traffic controllers who called out during which they were forced to stay on the job without pay.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social Monday morning that he was all caps not happy with controllers who took time off.
Quote, all air traffic controllers must get back to work now through exclamation marks.
Anyone who doesn't will be substantially docked.
It says the FAA had been contending with a shortage of air traffic controllers since well before the shutdown began, but the crisis deepened when the government closed and controllers received a partial paycheck and then no pay at all.
Ruth in Tennessee, Republican.
Good morning, Ruth.
unidentified
Good morning.
I have been a Republican my entire life, and I am so disgusted with this country.
I am pushing 80 years old.
I have no insurance.
I just put my hands, put my life in the hands of God, and whatever happens, happens.
I have Medicare, but I want to say to every senior out there, I have listened to our president, and I've voted for this man.
I have listened to him.
I have listened to his people say they want to make America white again.
They want to do this.
They want to do that.
What is going to happen after they get through with SNAP and everything else?
They're going to get into Medicare and Social Security.
Donald Trump, people's wondering where all these terrorists were gone.
I tell you where they're going.
They're going into Donald Trump and his family's pocket.
I have been watching this crypto and these meme coins.
I've been keeping a close watch on that.
He's making millions of dollars off of nothing.
These are nothing things.
And people are actually falling for it.
And it's really, I probably won't even be here for the next election.
But I'm telling you, our senator, Marsha Blackburn, every time I see that woman, I actually rented a van and went to nursing homes and carried people to the polls to vote for her because she was going to do so much.
I want to yank her through the TV every time I see her on there.
I don't think she flew to Washington.
I think she crawled to Washington.
Why We Can't Help Each Other00:15:28
unidentified
And as far as SNAP benefits, I make $22,000 a year.
That's a lot of money for me.
I take care of myself.
I don't depend on the government.
I don't depend on anybody.
But I give half, or not half, I give half of my grocery money every month to the little girl next door who has three children, works two jobs, and when her SNAP benefits were cut off, I gave her half of my grocery money to buy those kids food.
They come home from school in the afternoon.
I watch over them until she gets home about an hour later.
I just don't know what's wrong with this country.
Why we can't help each other.
Are we just going to let it go down the drain and forget about it and turn it over to the people who are just bowing down to Mr. Trump?
He was on Newsmax on Monday, and he talked about the ACA subsidies.
unidentified
How and when are you going to do that?
Because at least according to political polling, 71% of the population that they polled at least are concerned about the subsidies ending at the end of the year.
So, you know, if this is just about subsidizing the insurance companies, you say, you know, the American people think it's something very different, then they're going to be getting the bills in the mail.
Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there about this, and some of that's intentional by our Democrat colleagues because they're trying to make this into something that it isn't.
This is what's really important.
We're not just talking about it on the Republican side.
We're actually doing it.
In the Working Families Tax Cut, in the Big Beautiful Bill, the version that passed the House, we had a provision in the bill called the Cost Sharing Reduction Provisions, and that would have driven down premiums on average by 12.7% for every person who has insurance.
But the Democrats fought to take it out of the bill.
So if they cared so much about health care costs, they shouldn't be fighting provisions like that.
We're putting together some ideas that will drive the premiums down because health care is too expensive in this country.
It's too expensive because the Democrats built a system that doesn't work.
So we need to look at the root causes of the costs that have skyrocketed and address that for the people.
Merely subsidizing something is not the answer.
When the government subsidizes something, it almost always means it's not working, and that's the problem.
unidentified
Well, is the Republican idea or solution going to go into effect at midnight on December 31st?
Because people are going to get sticker shock on this insurance.
I mean, this is really sort of an urgent matter for a lot of people.
Yeah, it's an urgent matter for us, and it has been, which is why we put it into the bill that we passed in the early summer, and the Democrats fought to take it out.
So we're reintroducing some of these ideas.
There's a lot of ideas on how to drive the cost down, and we have November and December to work on that.
We're going to have to get a bipartisan consensus on some of this, and so we'll be presenting our ideas and putting them on the table.
The Democrats, this is very important to point out.
They don't have any reform ideas at all.
Their argument is they want a completely unreformed continuation.
They would do it permanently, most of them, on government just subsidizing the insurance companies.
And that is not the solution.
And we're going to be educating the population along the way as we do this and come up with reforms that will actually solve the problem and not make it worse.
So I'm a little bit disheartened by some of the rhetoric right now around the senators that had voted for the bill for the current CR to advance.
So I'm a federal employee, and I think I'm furloughed.
And I think we've lost sight.
I think within my own party, and I'm a staunch Democrat, I want ACA.
I'm just prefacing that I want ACA credits to be extended.
I do care about the health care issue.
But I think for federal employees and also SNAP and WCAS recipients, I don't want it to be at the expense of us.
I know the struggle that I've dealt with in the last month, it's very difficult to not get a check and to not be able to pay my bills.
I can imagine it's even more difficult for people who can't feed their families, or that's now an unknown situation.
So I'm a little uncomfortable with the fact that the conversation has been centered around only health care without talking about the impacts of continuing to keep the shutdown going.
I think some of the conversation has been around keeping the shutdown, keeping the government shut down indefinitely.
I at least inferred that from some progressive representatives who've talked about the issue that we're going to keep it shut down.
We're going to hold the line until we get what we want.
There's something else I want you to react to regarding your comments.
So in the Associated Press, it says about Governor Gavin Newsom, and he says that he tells the AP that the eighth senators who struck the shutdown deal aren't alarmed enough about Trump.
He says that the eighth senators' decision to break with the Democrats and end the government shutdown, he warned that they are not alarmed enough about President Donald Trump's political norm shattering.
He says that President Trump has completely changed the rules of the game and that we're still playing by the old rules of the game.
And in my core, I'm stunned.
How do you react to Governor Newsom?
unidentified
I 100% agree.
So I actually have an MPA, so public service is my life.
Like I have dedicated my entire adult life to public service.
And as a public administrator, I understand that I'm apolitical.
I work for the people.
I work for the government.
I don't work for this administration.
My criticism of this administration and a lot of what's happened is that our democracy is crumbling effectively.
I've seen it.
I've seen that our system of government, checks and balances, that's going away.
And it's scary.
And I think more people should.
So I have a balanced view of it, that I absolutely understand that what is happening right now with this administration and what's happening, the policies are undoing our government right before our eyes.
But at the same time, I have to see, I'm a single mom.
I have to feed my son.
I have to pay my bills.
I have to stay housed.
And it's the same thing for SNAP and people that receive those benefits as well that people need to feed their families.
So I think my issue has never been with the what.
We should fight for health care.
People should have health care that they can afford.
This shouldn't be happening, but we need to restrategize.
I think Senator Angus King kind of put my thoughts in the best way.
And I'm not going to quote him verbatim, but he said something to the effect of like, we tried this.
We got the blue wave during the recent election, and they're still not going to do it.
And one week, and actually, this might have been Senator Shaheen, but one week, one month more of the shutdown is not going to necessarily change this.
And I think that's kind of where I was getting is like.
I got so many, so many responses, but I guess the main thing is that I want to comment about Ruth from Tennessee.
I appreciate her.
She sounds like such a sweet lady.
However, she said it herself.
She may not even be around for the next election.
And she's come around to realize who Trump really is through some grand epiphany.
But she's created this situation along with millions of other Americans that have enabled this guy to be an absolute terror in our country and have all the reins of power.
And it's sad that so many people were either too racist, too bigoted, too ignorant, or too blind to see what this is.
That this is an absolute dumpster fire led by a man who does not care about anybody other than himself, who enriches himself beyond measure.
And while everybody else is suffering from a shutdown, he's throwing lavish parties and wanting to build on to a ballroom on the White House.
This guy is crazy.
And it makes no sense.
And to the extent of all of this, the commotion going on, it's empowered by Republicans that are co-signing, congressional Republicans that are co-signing and allowing Trump to rain terror on all of us.
And the Democrats, I hate to contradict the previous caller.
I understand everybody got to pay their bills.
I get that.
But the Democrats should have held the line because there has to be somebody in government has to say no.
And what the Democrats did by folding is they sign away any kind of power they have moving forward because Trump will take the threshold to hell to make sure that he gets his way.
That's why he fought to the Supreme Court to not be snaps.
That's why he wanted to fire federal workers.
That's why he's harassing air traffic controllers.
Alan, Kenny Wick, Washington, Republican, you're on the air.
unidentified
Boy, is that guy nuts?
The boys say it was never about the ACA.
It was always about getting illegals free health care.
When people wake up and understand that they were furloughed so that illegals could get free health care, maybe they'll change their minds and vote for the Republicans.
Let's talk to Brian in Zanesville, Ohio, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, I just want to talk about the Supreme Court, how they're bending over backwards to make sure Donald Trump can get anything and everything that he wants, reaching into other part of the branches of the government and firing people.
And I just want to thank them because the next president of the United States, since there's no Constitution anymore, can fire them, like Ito and Thomas and Roberts, send them home.
And also, I just want people to know that it's not the Democrats or the Republicans' fault that the government shut down.
It's the people that's in Washington, D.C.
They care less about what's happening to the American people because they're getting paychecks, their health care is paid for.
They could care less.
All they worry about is them.
The bottom line is that we as American people need to fire every person that's in Washington, D.C. right now that supported this shutdown because they're the problems.
It's not a Democrat problem.
It's not a Republican problem.
It's the people that's in Washington, D.C.
And the thing about Mike Johnson, he's going around complaining or saying how he's a Christian and how he's a born-again Christian.
Your local senators or your, these are the U.S. senators.
unidentified
The local senators and the U.S. senators.
It's several places that I went yesterday.
And, you know, we see some people, you know, but we talk.
That's what I'm trying to say.
We need to start talking more.
And even our senators, some of our senators are on that end with Trump and, you know, believe that he's doing the right thing, just like Mike Johnson, all of them.
But, you know, we have to talk it out.
Like I told him, I said, all of y'all need to be PTA president before you even be a senator or before you even be in Congress.
Because, you know, PTA, you have to do things the right way for all the kids.
And see, and that's what that is about.
So if they be a PTA, maybe they'll do the right things for all the people.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you I agree with everything he does because I don't.
I can tell you from your previous callers as far as Bitcoin and being a guy that only thinks of himself.
He thinks of himself so much that he doesn't even take a salary.
Prayers Go Out, One Shuts Down00:05:17
unidentified
He's such a king that he allows protest and he allows people to do things.
Speaking of like kings, what about when we were during COVID where people had to get the jab or lose their job?
I mean, isn't that like a king or fascism?
And, you know, talking about a Queen CA or whatever, the Democrats voted on that how many times prior to this shutdown?
And then now they're not going to do it to keep the government open to negotiate the Medicaid and the SNAP, which there's a lot of people on SNAP and Medicaid that don't belong on it.
And of course, there's a lot of people that do need it.
And our prayers go out.
Louie, our prayers do go out to them, but there's a lot of people abusing the system.
The only thing I ask is that people do research.
Don't watch one news organization.
Don't just watch Fox.
Don't just watch CNN.
Go out and think for yourself, man.
Don't let Republican Party or the Democratic Party think for you.
You're adults.
Think for yourself.
Do your research before you get on here and spew things that aren't true.
One last thing.
Look what's coming out about the pipe bomb during January 6th with the BBC or whoever it is and all these things going on with the FBI there.
And here's Lucille, Crescent City, California, Independent.
Good morning, Lucille.
unidentified
Good morning.
Excuse me.
I wish you could pull up.
CNN has all the latest shutdowns.
There should never be federal workers do their jobs.
They should be able to work.
The people that need to be punished are the people who didn't do their job.
In other words, the Republicans can't pass a budget, so we go with the previous budget automatically.
They don't have to pass it.
We just pick up the previous budget and we keep going.
So it's Ronald Reagan if you pull up that list of shutdowns.
Ronald Reagan was the one that little tiny shutdowns.
He had eight of them.
And when they did that, they passed little tiny, like we'll send home some of the economic people.
We'll send home some of the IRS.
We'll send home.
You know, I mean, he set it up.
In other words, Chief Law Enforcement Donna Reno in Clintons, she should have went out and arrested the Speaker of the House for not, you know, telling us, I mean, he's the one that shut down our government.
We should never be able to shut down our government.
And this is CNN reporting House lawmakers are returning to Washington and to a changed world.
It says funding bill cleared a hurdle.
What's in the bill?
You can go ahead and see that.
It says Representative-elect Rahalva says she plans to confront Johnson at long delayed swearing-in ceremony.
That swearing-in ceremony is set to be at 4 p.m.
That will be covered here on C-SPAN.
So be sure to see that, Representative-elect Grijalva of Arizona.
Also, today for your schedule, the funeral service for conservationist Jane Goodall, known around the world for her 65-year study of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania and an advocate for human rights.
You can watch live coverage of that from the Washington National Cathedral.
That starts at 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
That's going to be on C-SPAN 3.
It'll be on our app and at the website, c-span.org.
Again, House gavel's in at 12 p.m. today.
You can see gavel-to-gavel coverage, as always, here on C-SPAN.
The vote to reopen the government through January 30th is set to be later in the day.
The House members, GOP members, are set to return after quite a while away.
September 19th was the last time House members voted and were in regular session.
Let's go to Gerard in Alexandria, Virginia.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you?
You know, I hear a lot of the comments that are on here.
And one gentleman from Kansas heard say that, you know, we need to end the hate.
I agree with him.
You know, it's sad to say it's not necessarily Democrats, not necessarily Republicans, what he said.
Circumventing The System00:08:06
unidentified
But unfortunately, we have a president that, in his own way, hate, and he spews out hate.
I mean, I hate, I mean, it's sad to say that, but that's what he does.
I heard a gentleman say that he only cares about himself, and he does.
He's not worried about that.
I don't think anybody is.
He's planned over the years from his first election.
He realizes that unfortunately, we have a government that has issues because we can't get things passed in Congress.
So what he chooses to do is he circumvented the system.
This is my thought.
He circumvented the system so that he can use the Supreme Court to bypass what he wants.
Now, I know that I'm not this big.
I mean, I live right here near and I have a wife that works with the government.
And it's crazy to think that she has to go to work every single day so that she's not getting paid.
You know, I think that the people need to finally stand up and just say enough is enough.
I think air traffic controllers have made a good stand.
But I think if they just say, hey, none of us are going to work, that's going to put all these rich billionaires and trillionaires at a halt.
And they're going to push the President Saint-Dan.
You got to make a decision.
We're losing too much money.
This country has gotten so monetary.
It's all about money.
Nobody cares.
But the people who circulate the money, which is the American people, we're the ones that are suffering.
I don't see any Congressperson that's not getting paid.
We're here at the Phoenix International Airport getting ready to board a red eye.
And people keep asking me how I'm feeling.
And honestly, I don't even know how to feel really.
We've been waiting 50 days, 5-0, for this moment to happen.
And I'm just really emotional, I have to say.
I'm also really frustrated and upset and frankly pissed that my first vote is going to be one that does nothing to make healthcare more affordable for you.
But I want to thank you for being a part of this journey.
I am a Republican, but I feel like we've lost our way.
Now, I have some questions for my fellow Republicans.
First of all, a stay-at-home Congress that is still voting Joe Biden's budget.
Is that what you voted for?
Secondly, a King George-type import t-tax on everything you buy.
Taxation without representation.
Is that what you voted for?
How about $38 trillion in debt with an administration that is spending money faster than you'd have to go back to COVID to see spending this quickly?
And also, to my evangelical friends, I am one.
There are more abortions being done now than ever.
And this administration just passed a new abortion pill.
Is that what you voted for?
And how about a Trump administration that is considered the gayest administration ever with the Treasury Secretary openly gay, married to another man, raising two kids in a big pink mansion?
Is that what you voted for?
How about a King George import tea tax on everything you buy?
I'm in the process now of changing my stuff over, my voter registration and everything else.
I am just so disgusted with the Democratic Party.
I would like to thank our federal employees.
I believe that they were a target.
They were victimized.
But for the most part, they stood up and they held the line and they showed up for work, not just because the dedication to the job, but many of them believed in what the Democrats were fighting for.
You know, and just to cave in like that is just a waste of time.
It's like all of that suffering that federal employees have done, you know, with the expectation they were doing it for a greater good is just gone out the window because the Democratic Party doesn't have the gumption.
They don't have the courage or the strength to fight for what the core values of the American people are.
You know, polls have showed that the majority of American people stood with the Democratic Party.
They just had a blue wave in the election that shows that everyone believes in what the Democratic Party was fighting for, and they just threw it out the window.
So, Mike, let me ask you this question, which is the argument that those Democrats that did vote with Republicans said was: look, Republicans aren't going to move.
So, we're just going to prolong the suffering of the American people, whether it's the federal workers or the people not getting snap or the people trying to fly.
Nothing's going to happen.
So, we might as well make the deal now rather than later.
How would you respond to them?
unidentified
I would say they lost faith in what the true backbone and the true blood of the American society is.
American people would join together.
We would not see any of our fellow Americans go without.
You know, and sometimes the sacrifice of the few is for the greater of the good of the many.
And I'm not saying that that sacrifice doesn't come at cost, but the federal employees showed that they were holding the line.
The air traffic controllers showed that they were holding the line.
The military, I'm with the military every day as they walked up and down the street, even though they got paid, they showed that they were willing to hold the line.
The only one that did not hold the line were the ones that we put in office, and we trusted to have our better good at heart.
And it's discouraging.
And just to hear the Republican, well, I'm not saying all Republicans, because if you go by party lines, then you've already failed.
But just to hear some of the comments today, it was over giving health care to immigrants.
Immigrants can't get health care through Medicaid, they don't have social security numbers.
You know, it's time for us to start fact-checking again, you know, just to have a network that has the courage to fact-check, make it public, let it be known because it's apparent that the sheep will follow the wolf just like sheep will follow a shepherd.
All right, and Mike, since you brought that up, I do have an article here for you from the Washington Post that breaks this down.
It's, here's who pays when undocumented immigrants get health care in America.
And it talks about how both sides, one side is saying they do get access to Medicaid.
The other side says federal law prohibits that.
It says: the reality of how undocumented immigrants receive health care doesn't easily match either side's portrayal.
Immigrants living in the United States illegally are ineligible for federal health plans, including Medicaid and Medicare, as well as insurance sold through ACA.
But federal money can indirectly help those immigrants by reimbursing hospitals that are required to provide emergency care to all patients and by supporting state Medicaid programs that use their own money to offer coverage to patients without legal status.
The White House has argued that restoring Biden-era Medicaid benefits, quote, will serve as a magnet for illegal immigration into the U.S. You can read that at the Washington Post.
It breaks it down as far as what illegal immigrants are able to access, which is essentially only emergency care because of Emtala, but you can read that for yourself.
It's dated October 20th of this year.
Summer in Jonesboro, Tennessee.
Democrat, good morning, Summer.
unidentified
Good morning, Limi.
Thanks for taking my call.
You're my favorite.
Woo.
Okay, so I'm disappointed, not just in the Democratic Party, as usual.
I'm disappointed in all our politicians.
They sit up there, they take their $100,000 a year, if not more.
They have insurance until the day they die.
Their families have insurance until the day they die.
They do not represent us anymore.
They don't represent the Democrats.
And I don't know how the Republicans feel about their representation.
Then they fold on this shutdown.
And listen, I love our federal workers.
I'm so thankful for them.
I'm really sorry that they had to work without their pay and leave it at that, but we should not have folded.
I just want to make two possibly polarizing points.
The first one being that I find it very interesting to hear a certain sector of our society, as in, like I said, this is going to be polarizing, as in white people whining right now about what's going on in America when they participated in where we are right now.
All of these illegals in America, they bring them into the black community.
They are for that, a certain percentage.
All those people that were out there with the No Kings Day, all of those people were out there marching because they want illegals to stay in the country in black people's neighborhoods.
And so now that the work, now that America, as in like the people who are in charge, as in white people who are in charge, they're turning their backs on the everyday white person.
They are upset.
They're whining on this.
They're whining on here.
As I've been sitting here waiting, whining and whining.
And then you have some black people, like the man, I can't remember where he was from, talking about talking to people, having conversations.
And I hate when black people say that, as if people don't know how they are, as if people who are racist, as if people who practice white supremacy don't know that.
So, Siper, tell me about your neighborhood and the impact that you've seen from undocumented immigrants.
unidentified
I'm seeing, so I live in a predominantly black neighborhood, black community, affluent black community, and I'm seeing an influx of immigrants, other groups of people just coming in, taking jobs that normally our teenagers have during high school and during college.
It's a total shift in change.
And I am so sick of black people voting for the Democratic Party against our own demise.
We do not benefit from immigration.
That is not something that we benefit for.
So we have everyone sitting here that typically has participated in this American government, white, black, and everyone else, and now they're whining because they're getting everything that they voted for.
So, Bradley, regarding the Caribbean, this is the New York Times with the, this is the latest aircraft carrier, moves into the Caribbean as U.S. confronts Venezuela, the carrier's aerial bolsters.
The arrival bolsters the extensive deployment of American forces in the region.
Britain has ceased sharing some intelligence with the United States because of concerns over boat strikes.
That's New York Times, and this is Andrea, Indiana Republican.
Good morning, Andrea.
unidentified
Good morning.
I just said, I think we're missing the question is: why do we have 42 million people that need assistance in America?
Something is, we need to fix that problem before we do any of the other issues.
And Stacey in Chicago, Illinois, Independent, good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
How are you?
And thank you for taking home.
I have a couple of things.
I know I don't have much time, but my concern, I was a Republican, and I would never ever go to Republicans that doesn't have feet to stand on, doesn't have a voice to speak, doesn't have ears and eyes, the ears to hear and eyes to see.
The so-called president of the United States plan, every one of us, for one, I'm so upset because he tore down, he demolished a 182 history.
No one has ever done that.
Why aren't people angry about that?
That's we, the people, our place, that he tore down without asking any of us.
We muttered the White House and his marble and gold because he doesn't plan on, he's planning on not leaving.
Have our military men, if the honorable John McCain and the honorable Carlin Paul were here, the honorable Elijah Connell, this wouldn't be like this.
He has our military men.
My dad is in his grave rolling over.
Our military men who I respect to come out to terrorize, to mobilize, and beat us down, the taxpayer on our money.
How can anyone, anyone say that it's okay for him to be in office?
He should be locked up.
The Republicans should not have a seat to sit at.
All of them need to go home.
The Supreme Court has taken our judicial system and made it the three branches into one and gave their powers to him.
This is sad.
We all need to get together and stand up.
This is not a black thing.
This is not a white thing.
But right now, it's a hunger.
It's a thirst that has happened because he himself and those who honor him and does not say God's name, does not say Jesus' name, but they say Trump, Trump, every day.
This has to stop.
We are, and another thing, yes, we have the ACA that they're speaking about, but we, America is what America is what you allowed in it.
They have allowed this disaster to come in here.
Let me say this.
We have communities of help.
I stand poor area.
I'm proud to be a black woman that became successful enough, not through what no one else said, but myself and parents, to raise up, first of all, knowing God love.
But my theme, we have communities.
We help one another.
He's not beating us black people down.
The white people are seeing and realizing that what we have went through, they have got beat by the National Guards out there.
They went through what our ancestors have already went.
We have struggled.
So we know how to stand.
We know how to fight with words and go out and march.
So why don't they come on and look and see that the color isn't what everything they're making look like it is.
But first, Ovik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity discusses healthcare reform and a bipartisan path for addressing the enhanced ACA subsidies expiring at the end of this year.
unidentified
We'll be right back.
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You know, I wish we could have a thousand C-SPANs across the media spectrum.
Unfortunately, we don't.
unidentified
I think C-SPAN is a huge, huge asset to America.
Not just the coverage that we get of both chambers on one and two, but programs like Washington Journal that allow policymakers, lawmakers, personalities to come on and have this question time during Washington Journal.
So it's a huge benefit.
I hope that all these streaming services carry C-SPAN as well because it's an important service to the American people.
Affordable Care Act Innovations00:15:46
unidentified
I'm actually thrilled that this time in Washington Journal, I'm getting a lot of really substantive questions from across the political aisle.
Our country would be a better place if every American just watched one hour a week.
They could pick one, two, or three, just one hour a week, and we'd all be a much better country.
So I've been involved in health care policy for about 15 years.
Previous to that, I was a major.
I majored in molecular biology.
I went to medical school.
Then I invested in healthcare companies for a bunch of years.
And then starting in about 2010, I started writing about the Affordable Care Act.
I raised some concerns about how I thought premiums would go up rather than down, because at the time, the president, President Obama, was campaigning on the promise that the ACA would decrease premiums.
That's why it was called the Affordable Care Act.
I was worried that the opposite would happen.
And here we are, 15 years later.
I now have a number of roles in the health policy world, including as co-founder and chairman of a think tank, a nonpartisan nonprofit think tank called the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, or FREOP.
Well, one of the things that I learned in my time working in healthcare policy is that healthcare is one of those funny issues where both conservatives and liberals can be right at the same time.
That is to say that progressives and liberals are right to be concerned that health care is unaffordable for so many people, to be concerned about the fact that so many Americans are uninsured or struggle to afford their insurance and their deductibles.
And at the same time, conservatives are right to be very concerned about the fact that health care spending in America is fiscally unsustainable.
And they're also rightly concerned about how government policy has made health care more expensive and less flexible and less innovative and less patient-friendly as it could be.
So our work at FREEOP in healthcare and many other issues is to put those two things together, to show how a more competitive based system in which the private sector is involved and where there's a lot of choice and innovation can serve Americans whose incomes or wealth are below the U.S. median.
So at FREOP, we have a rule that all of our work has to, number one, expand individual liberty and support free enterprise.
And number two, it has to meaningfully improve the lives of Americans whose incomes or wealth are below the U.S. median.
So how do we show that actually Democrats and Republicans and the values they have can actually come together with the right solutions?
Well, let's talk about the big issue at hand here, which is the ACA enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year.
You wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post with the headline, this bipartisan compromise could end the government shutdown, extend Obamacare's expiring subsidies, and permanently reform its costly insurance regulations.
So first, you are in favor of extending the ACA enhanced subsidies.
Well, in the context of reform, so I think what the lines you've heard or the lines you've read about if you followed this debate is that on the one hand, Democrats, majority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, in particular, has advocated a permanent extension of enhanced ACA subsidies that were really originally meant as a temporary measure during COVID.
It was originally a two-year enhancement of the subsidies, and then it became a four-year enhancement, and now many Democrats want those enhanced subsidies to be permanent.
And this is again above and beyond the original subsidies that came with the passage of the ACA in 2010 and 2014.
So that's one side of the debate.
On the other side of the debate, you have a lot of Republicans who say, hey, this was supposed to be a temporary enhancement of the subsidies.
That means temporary.
So let's let them expire just as the law was designed when Democrats passed it in 2021.
So those are where sort of party-line Democrats and party-line Republicans are at the moment.
And what I've advocated and what we've advocated at FREOP is a kind of a middle ground on this, which is to say, let's have a temporary extension of the subsidies for one or two years to make sure that people who use Obamacare today are not massively disrupted in the kind of insurance they're able to afford.
But use that transition period to actually reform the things about Obamacare that have made the insurance on Obamacare so expensive in the first place.
If you just subsidize the insurance without actually solving the underlying problem of why the insurance is so expensive, you're only papering over the problem.
You aren't actually solving the problem.
And there are several things that we can do to make the premiums lower than they are today.
So just to give some examples of what the problem is, in 2013, the last year before Obamacare went into effect, the average monthly premium for an Obamacare-like silver plan was $232 a month.
In 2026, it's going to be $625 a month.
So that's a difference of about $4,300 a year.
And also the deductibles have gone up.
The deductibles have more than doubled over that timeframe from, I think, about $2,300 to about $5,300.
So the deductibles have more than doubled.
The premiums have nearly tripled.
And this goes against President Obama's promise when he said actually when he was campaigning for this law as a senator in 2008, he said Obamacare was going to reduce the average family of four's health care costs by $2,500 per year.
At this point now, we're up to about $10,000 or more for a family of four.
So that's the problem.
And that's the problem that we can fix if we fix some of the design flaws that were embedded in Obamacare in 2010.
There's kind of a laundry list, but there's two that really matter in terms of the 80-20 rule.
Where do you get the most bang for the buck in terms of Obamacare reform?
And there are two things that I talk about in that Washington Post op-ed that I would highlight as the most important things to fix.
And they are basically put simply that we overly punish young people relative to the old and healthy people relative to the sick in Obamacare.
We all know that one of the things that Obamacare supporters like to talk about is that the law requires insurers to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
That's one of the features of the law that polls well and that a lot of people support.
What a lot of people don't realize is what the law also does is it requires insurers to charge the same premiums to the healthy and the sick.
And that causes a lot of challenges.
So if you think about car insurance, you know, if you get into a lot of accidents and you need to put a lot of repairs into your car, that costs money.
And the insurers will charge you a higher premium for your auto insurance in next year because the way they look at it is if you're going to spend a lot of money on repairing your car, they can't go broke.
They need to charge you a higher premium to fund all those expenses.
Whereas if you're a really safe driver, your premiums are lower because you don't cost the insurers that much when you drive around.
Now in health insurance, it doesn't work that way because we think it's unfair to charge the sick a lot more than we charge the healthy.
Well, so let me just finish explaining, because it is important to get through the whole explanation.
I know these things with healthcare can be complicated.
So one of the things that Obamacare did is it passed a kind of a one-size-fits-all federal law that it used to be regulated at the state level.
Different states had different policies on this prior to the ACA.
So for people who get insurance on their own, who don't get it from their employer or the government, where these rules are already in place.
But for people, the 30 million people or 20 million people to 30 million people who buy insurance on their own, freelancers or people just who don't get offered coverage by their employer or who just need it for other reasons.
If you buy insurance on your own, that market now requires insurers to charge the healthy and the sick the same amount, effectively overcharging the healthy and undercharging the sick.
And the problem with that is if you don't, if you don't are not forced to buy the insurance, the healthy person or the younger person says, you know what, this insurance is too expensive.
I'm 27 years old.
I'm in perfect health.
I go to the doctor once a year.
I probably spend about $300 a year on health care.
And yet, I'm being charged $7,000 a year for my health insurance premium.
Why is that fair?
So those people drop out, and then the sick people end up having to pay more because if only sick people sign up for the insurance, the insurance premiums go up in what people call the adverse selection death spiral.
So that's the design flaw in the ACA, is that young people are overcharged to fund the sick, and healthy people are overcharged.
I mean, excuse me, healthy people are overcharged to fund the sick, and young people are overcharged to fund the old.
And so there are ways to fix that.
And the ways to fix that are basically to directly subsidize for all 330 million of us Americans to directly subsidize the cost of covering those people with pre-existing conditions, those people who are ill, those people who are older, instead of forcing young and healthy uninsured people who are already struggling to afford coverage to pay that price.
So hold them harmless.
Let young and healthy uninsured people have actuarially fair premiums that represent the actual consumption of health care that they use every year.
Have them have a fair price for health insurance, but lets all of us, all 330 million of us, pony up to help subsidize the costs of those sick and older individuals.
And the term for that in health insurance speak is reinsurance.
Some people call it a high-risk pool or an invisible high-risk pool, but the proper way to do this is using something called reinsurance.
We use this in Medicare Advantage.
So Medicare Advantage is a form of Medicare where private insurers deliver the Medicare benefit for seniors.
It works extremely well there.
A lot of other countries use reinsurance as well, and we can use it in Obamacare.
All right, and I'll just invite our viewers to start calling.
And now, if you've got a question for Ovik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity or FREOP, anything about the ACA, about the subsidies, or about possible reforms?
You can give us a call.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Independents 202-748-8002.
You wrote a paper called Medicare Advantage for All, Patient-Centered Plan for Universal Coverage.
We had a call actually this morning from somebody in Canada saying that he was very happy with their universal coverage in Canada and it was cheaper than in the United States.
Another caller said that he had a relative in Canada that it took a long time to see a specialist.
So what are your thoughts on instituting something like that in the United States?
Yeah, it's so interesting, Mimi, because we actually, one of the studies that we do every year at FreeOp is called the World Index of Healthcare Innovation.
Your viewers can look it up at yi, w-i-h-i.f-re-e-op-p.org.
And there we look at the 32 wealthiest countries by GDP per capita that have health care systems.
And we say, okay, how do these health care systems compare against each other on things like quality, health outcomes, patient choice, science and technological innovation, and fiscal sustainability.
And Canada doesn't do that well on our service.
It's true that their health care system is much less expensive than the American system, but they have the advantage of having the U.S. as a backstop.
So if you're waiting for a year to get a knee replacement or two years to get a hip replacement, you can just go across the border to Detroit or Buffalo and get treated.
And that's not something that Americans would have the option to do if we had a Canadian system.
And that's not to say we shouldn't learn from how Canada has made their system so much less expensive than ours.
But it turns out that almost every country has a less expensive health care system than ours.
And there's a lot that goes into it that I'm happy to talk about.
And basically what it comes down to is we made two big mistakes in the 20th century.
The first was in World War II, when all the men were off to war and women weren't yet really entering the workforce, the Roosevelt administration was really worried that there would be a labor shortage.
There wouldn't be enough workers, and that would lead to really high labor costs.
Wages would go spiraling up because there was a scarcity of workers.
And that would mean prices for everyday goods and services would also go up, and that would lead to an economic crisis.
So they literally produced a schedule that said, if you're a mechanic, here's how much you can make an hour.
If you're a barber, here's how much you can make an hour.
But what the loophole for that was, health insurance wasn't counted.
So employers figured out that, yes, I may only be able to pay this mechanic 45 cents an hour in $1944, but they could offer health insurance.
So all of a sudden, we had this system in which employers were offering you health insurance instead of you buying it on your own.
And then the Eisenhower administration made that tax-free.
So you don't pay any taxes on the value of your health insurance that your employers sponsor for you compared to your wages, your salary where you pay income taxes and state taxes and Medicare and Social Security taxes.
You don't pay any of those taxes on health insurance offered by your employer.
But if you buy insurance on your own, you have to do it in after-tax dollars after you've already paid all those taxes.
So that means there's a massive economic advantage for employer-sponsored insurance.
And that means that you yourself don't have the agency to shop for the best plan.
Your employer just buys it for you.
And that made Americans very complacent about how much value they were getting for the insurance that they were being offered.
And for the last 80 years, we've had that system.
And then Medicare and Medicaid were built on top of that.
And that's the biggest driver of why healthcare in America is so expensive.
It's basically like going to an open bar and thinking, well, it's all paid for.
I can choose the fanciest drink at the bar because you don't think that you're paying the cost.
All right, let's talk to callers and start with Dave in Wisconsin.
Democrat, good morning, Dave.
unidentified
Good morning.
Yeah, you know, when the ACA first came into effect, a lot of it had to do with pre-existing conditions.
But, you know, in order to get it passed, it was pretty much a giveaway to the insurance companies.
Now, we're talking about health care, and all our year is insurance.
You know, you'd think our country, as supposedly rich as it is, it is rich, but where's all the money?
Why Health Care Costs So Much00:10:18
unidentified
It's basically in one area.
You know, in order for this the ACA to work, and it doesn't work for a lot of people, especially the middle-income people, they have to pay way too much.
Now, my situation, I got caught in between jobs where I didn't have any insurance, and I had some pretty serious health problems where I was in the hospital.
Well, I got stuck with a bill I'll be paying for for the rest of my life.
You know, a lot of what AC was trying to do is keep people from going bankrupt over health costs.
And that happened.
That was probably the primary reason for bankruptcy in the United States.
And you think our country, supposedly as smart as it is, we could figure out some way to put in some kind of a single-payer system where everybody would be involved.
Well, first of all, I'm really sorry you went through that episode.
And by the way, there are a lot of services, nonprofit services, that will help you negotiate that hospital bill down or hopefully get the rest of it forgiven.
So if you reach out to me on Twitter, if you use Twitter, find me there, and I'll try to point you to some of those services that can help you with that hospital bill.
But to your broader question about why health care is so expensive in America, as I mentioned, we've had this 80-year system in which not only is an insurance company paying for your health insurance, which is true in pretty much every country, but you're not picking the insurance.
A third party, your employer or the government, is typically buying the insurance for you.
So you have no relationship to the cost and value of the insurance you buy.
That's one of the things that Obamacare was trying to fix, to say, hey, let's have this market for people to buy insurance on their own that works and that protects pre-existing conditions and things like that.
And I think the intent in that sense, I totally agree with.
And my criticism ever since 2010 has been that the design of the ACA was not going to achieve the intended result.
I think I have a little experience in this item because I've been an insurance agent for 35 years in the state of New Hampshire.
So I'll give people a little historical perspective from my point of view.
So when I started in the business, I worked for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
I became an individual agent.
I went off on my own.
There were bills passed in New Hampshire.
It was a bill called 7-Eleven by Gene Jaheen that eliminated medical underwriting from all private insurance companies.
And we all went in and we testified and said, you know, if you eliminate, you know, if you eliminate medical underwriting, all the insurance companies are going to leave the state, and they all did.
So our individual market went from probably 28, 30 companies down to about five or six or seven companies.
And then Obamacare came along, and Obamacare basically put a complete knife through the private health care system.
Now we've got maybe, you know, in New Hampshire, we have like three.
We have three companies on the exchange.
But this is a lot more complex.
I love what he said about the employer system.
I agree with that after the war.
But we also have malpractice is rampant in this country.
We have lawsuits everywhere from lawyers.
And that drives defensive medicine.
Liability insurance, malpractice insurance.
Some OBGYN doctors and other doctors pay a quarter of a million dollars, $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance.
Yeah, you have the problem on the uninsured.
Like you said, we had a risk pool in New Hampshire.
We had a risk pool that people could go into.
And I always advocated for keeping risk polls to, like he said, talked about the people with preexisting conditions.
And maybe those people could get subsidies.
But you've got to reform the private market.
You've got to give incentives to insurance companies to go back in.
And it's worth pointing out that New Hampshire, I don't remember if this is true this year, but for most years, when you look at the stats, New Hampshire has the most expensive premiums of any country or any state in the country.
So New Hampshire has not solved its problems by getting rid of medical underwriting and some of those other things that happened in the pre-Obamacare days.
Now, it's important to make a couple of points.
One, you know, I went to medical school.
I have lots of friends who are doctors.
And I hear this point about malpractice all the time.
And actually, a number of people have looked into this.
And, you know, how much, if you actually reformed malpractice litigation, how much would that actually save the health care system?
And the answer is about 5%.
So you would save something.
5% of the trillions of dollars we spend on health care, it's real money, it's not nothing.
But the real drivers of the high cost of health care in the U.S., other than these underlying incentive problems I talked about before, the World War II changes and employer-sponsored insurance and all that, the biggest components of health care spending are hospital care, prescription drugs, and physicians, physician visits.
Those are the big three categories.
There's lots of other things too.
And really, anywhere you look in healthcare, everything in America is much more expensive than it ought to be.
It's not so much wasteful, like defensive medicine, oh, we're doing too many tests, or that there's wasteful care.
Yes, there's wasteful care, but there's wasteful care in every country.
The real problem is that the prices that American health care providers and drug companies and the like charge are 3, 5, 10x what they are in other countries.
And the reason for that is because Americans themselves don't have any agency in shopping for value.
Yeah, so first of all, it's important to note that a lot of insurers are nonprofit, quote unquote, meaning they're 501c3 tax-exempt organizations, just like FREOP is.
But nonprofits are still businesses.
They can't go broke, right?
They have to collect in premiums or revenue enough to pay their bills.
So this kind of nonprofit term in the business world is a bit of a misnomer.
It's really there's tax exempt structures and there's non-tax exempt structures and you can use either.
But whether you're a nonprofit hospital or a for-profit hospital, whether you're a non-profit insurer or a for-profit insurer, you still have to keep the lights on.
You still have to make enough money to pay your people and to pay your bills.
So that's point number one.
Point number two, in terms of your question, Mimi, which is what percentage of health care spending is going to the insurers that they're keeping for their overhead and other things.
Health insurance is only one of the things they do.
The fastest growing part of their business is actually their non-health insurance component of their business, which is called Optum, that does a lot of different things, including pharmacy benefit management, artificial intelligence, a lot of tech-based stuff.
They own a bunch of physician practices.
So, United Health Group is a fairly complicated company that has a lot of different components to it.
But again, what's driving health insurers' stocks, and there are more pure plays, so United's maybe not the best example, but health insurance stocks have done well since 2013, and that's largely because of Medicare.
The baby boomers have retired.
More baby boomers have obviously enrolled in Medicare as they turn 65.
And Medicare Advantage plans, which are again the form of Medicare in which private insurers supply the Medicare benefit, have proven very popular.
When Obamacare was passed in 2010, I think about 15%, one five of seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans versus traditional government-run single-payer Bernie Sanders-style Medicare fee-for-service.
So it was 85-15 back then.
Today, about 55% of seniors are in Medicare Advantage, the private insurance form of Medicare, and only a minority are in the 1965 vintage traditional Bernie Sanders-style Medicare plan.
So, that's one of the things that's ironic when Bernie Sanders talks about Medicare for all.
Medicare today is a very different program than it was in 1965.
And where insurers are making most of their money, it's actually in Medicare Advantage.
Let's talk to Ali in Lorton, Virginia, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Very quickly, three comments.
First, I don't believe it was smart to choose comparing someone with a pre-existing condition with another driver who got into accident.
Your guest lost me when he said that.
I don't believe that was smart or sensitive.
Second, please don't attack other countries' systems.
Fixing Health Care Economics00:05:29
unidentified
The whole world, I believe, the whole world is on a single-payer system.
It worked.
For Americans who didn't live abroad, they don't know that, and that's why they believe you and listen to you.
But for anyone else who lived abroad, it's working.
It has a flaws that can be fixed, but it's working.
And third, and thank you, Mimi, for your question about the stock prices and the shares.
And again, your guest, I don't believe he was transparent about it.
It is the cost of all the legal things that we are paying for.
And the lobbying effort, citrangling resources, buying a simple inhaler that is available in Egypt for 80 cents or in Germany for about $15, while you have to pay $150 for it here is just, it's a crime against the American people.
And obviously, your guest is not the best present.
Well, let me try to address all three of those points if I can, perhaps going backwards.
So, first of all, I've spent the last 15 years of my career fighting against the high cost of American health care and recommending and proposing lots of policies to get it done.
I completely agree with the caller that it's ridiculous that drugs and hospital care and doctor services and all these things, lab tests, cost so much more in America than they do elsewhere.
And if you want to fix that, you have to understand, just like when you go to the doctor and a doctor diagnoses what's wrong with you and doesn't just give you aspirin to solve your problem, right?
Similarly, here, aspirin isn't going to solve the problem.
You really have to get in and understand what is the underlying disease.
And the underlying disease in the context of American health care policy are these factors like the decisions we made in World War II and the Eisenhower administration in the 1960s that we're still living with today.
So that's the thing that we have to fix, and I'm all for fixing it.
And if you go to our website, you'll see a lot of writing about how to fix it.
That's number one.
Number two, about the point about it's not sensitive to compare car insurance to health insurance.
The point I'm trying to make is that economically you have to understand how the economics of insurance work.
And if you ignore economics, you're not going to have an economically functional system.
That's why Obamacare hasn't worked, right?
They basically ignored the economics of punishing healthy people to fund the sick and punishing young people to fund the old, and it hasn't worked.
And that's why premiums and deductibles have gone up so much.
That's the problem we have to fix.
And you can't fix that problem unless you understand why health insurance works differently than car insurance.
And I completely agree with the caller that it's not someone's fault if they're born with a genetic disorder or they get cancer.
We should try as a country to solve that problem and make sure that vulnerable populations have the support they need.
I'm all for it.
I'm for universal coverage.
But there's a way to do it that works economically and there's a way to do it that doesn't work economically.
And unfortunately in America, for the last 80 years, we've chosen the wrong approach.
One of the recommendations from Senator Cassidy, who is a medical doctor and heads the health panel in the Senate, is HSAs, so health savings accounts for all Americans.
Quickly, because we're running out of time, what's your assessment of that idea?
Look, I think health savings accounts are valuable.
I think they're important, particularly for funding everyday expenses like, you know, very predictable things like your routine care, your lab test, your routine office visits.
They're not necessarily going to work for covering what happens when you have a stroke or you have cancer or you have a giant hospital bill like one of our earlier callers had.
HSAs won't help you with that.
You're still going to need insurance.
And what I want, and I think what Dr. Cassidy wants, I think he's one of the smartest guys on health care in the Senate.
But what I think you really need if you want to fix American health care is you need to have a system in which ideally every American is shopping for their own health insurance rather than you getting it from your employer or the government.
That's number one.
And number two, we have to have a holistic system for making sure that the people who need the help economically, whether they're poor, whether they're vulnerable, whether they're sick, have the help they need to afford those premiums.
And there's a way to do that, again, without punishing the young and healthy people who are also struggling for insurance.
We talk about that a lot in that Medicare Advantage for All health reform plan that we've produced.
There's actually been congressional legislation that's been introduced in both the House and the Senate called the Fair Care Act that is based on our work, that would solve these problems, that would reduce the underlying cost of health care.
It would make the system more fair in terms of covering all vulnerable people who need an affordable option, but do so in a way that reduces the federal deficit and puts us on a fiscally sustainable path.
Coming up, Adam Jentelson of the Searchlight Institute on the future of the Democratic Party.
We'll be right back.
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I think what you're seeing among Democrats is a very powerful desire to see more fight from their leaders.
And for a while, for 43 days, exactly, they thought they were getting that.
And, you know, the Democrats' polls were doing better.
Donald Trump's polls are going down.
Democrats succeeded in making health care costs a central focus of the debate, which is something they've struggled to do for a long time.
And then I think a lot of them were caught by surprise, especially after the elections last Tuesday, where Democrats did well across the board.
They were surprised by this shift in Democrats deciding to compromise and end the shutdown.
I think what that reflects is this desire to see fight.
For many, many years in this party, we've been sort of riven by these purity tests, which come on ideological issues.
And I think what you're seeing today is a shift away from sort of issue-based purity tests towards like a fight-based purity test, where they want to see people fight.
They want to see people go up against Trump and oppose him with every tool at their disposal.
And so for a while, that seemed to be happening.
And now that it's shifted, people are a little disappointed.
I don't know that it's resonating among Democrats at the moment.
It would probably be best for folks to just sort of let passions cool a little bit before trying to really make that argument aggressively.
I've seen some of the leaders of the compromise deal try to get out in front of media and do interviews and try to drive this message, and I don't think that's a particularly good idea.
But sure, I mean, I think there's validity to it.
I mean, SNAP benefits have been curtailed.
There are poor people going hungry in America today, right into the holiday season, because of this shutdown.
Obviously, that's Donald Trump's fault.
He has made decisions that have caused those benefits to be stopped.
However, Democrats have this liability of actually caring about the American people and poor people, and I'm using liability sarcastically for the record, but they do care about this, as they should.
And so the problem is that there's no end game in sight.
It was unclear what Democrats would gain if they held out for another week, another two weeks.
There's no exit strategy, which is a problem with the shutdown all along, but that was really coming to a head with SNAP benefits starting to be denied, with flights starting to be canceled.
And so in the absence of an end game, eight Democratic senators decided to cut a deal and end that suffering that was very real for a lot of the American people.
I mean, in a lot of ways, Democrats were trying to save Republicans from themselves when it came to health care premiums and health care costs that are going to go up next year by trying to extend these premiums, which are set to expire next year.
They were trying to save Republicans from facing a public backlash over health care costs.
Democrats didn't succeed in getting an extension, but Republicans are probably going to pay the price for that next year when, you know, because of these rising prices and premiums, health care costs are going to continue to be a central focus of the political debate all through next year into the midterm.
So Republicans might have sort of won the battle and lost the war here by defeating Democrats' demand for an extension of the subsidies.
They put themselves in a position to face voter backlash next year when premiums go up because of their inaction.
I think generational change is something that is coming to this party, whether our leaders like it or not.
And I think I worked for Senator Harry Reid when he decided to retire.
He was up for re-election in 2016.
He decided not to run again and step down.
I think there's a lot of wisdom in deciding to do that of your own volition.
We see that happening right now with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And she's having a similar experience as Senator Reed did when he decided to step down, which is that you get to define your own legacy.
You get to celebrate a storied career, your many successes, and you also have a fair amount of control over what the next, what the succession looks like.
So there's a lot of advantages to deciding to be proactive about that and then enjoying, as opposed to sticking around, overstaying your welcome, and having something like a health issue or some other factor cause you to.
And I'd like to say this, that first off, President Trump became president because of Democrats.
Democrats far, far outnumber Republicans in this country.
And I think that the Democrat Party, a lot of it, sick and tired of the wokeness going on in the party and the lunacy that's happened and all the lying and the dishonesty, like Biden being pretty much like a vegetable for four years and being lied to, lied to about everything.
And I think the Democrat Party needs to change and look for more conservative candidates, quite frankly, and get away from all that.
And the first thing that happened with Democrat voters splitting off was because of abortion.
And the Republican Party took them in with open arms.
And the Democrat Party needs to get away from abortion.
Well, I think what I hear that voter is some justifiable anger at what was seen as deception over President Biden's state of mind and state of health.
And I think that's very, I think that's something a lot of voters feel.
And I understand why they feel it, because clearly President Biden was not doing as well as the public was told.
That's manifestly clear.
It became clear in that debate.
And then I think that seems to be dovetailing with anger about other issues where, I think, look, I think you're actually seeing a movement, probably not as far as this caller would like them to go, but Democrats are sort of coming around to the idea that in order to win in the places where we used to be able to win seats in the Senate and win in the Electoral College states like Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, Arkansas,
Democrats need to have a little more flexibility and embrace candidates who have positions that reflect the voters' views in those more conservative states.
So that's inevitably going to mean having a mix of views, some of which are going to be more conservative.
I think a lot about when I worked in the Senate in 2010, Democrats had 60 Senate seats.
I know that seems unbelievable today, but the way you got to 60 was by embracing candidates like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Byron Dorgan.
These were senators who had very liberal views on a lot of issues, but also had conservative views on things like the fossil fuel industry, on abortion.
You had a bunch of pro-life candidates in the caucus at that time, more conservative on issues like gun control.
And that doesn't mean that other Democrats have to change their views.
It just means we have to build a big tent as a party and welcome in candidates who have more conservative views on some issues.
I think what we need to find on the national stage is a candidate who can craft the broadest possible appeal.
And that, because of this desire among the base for a strong fighter for something who someone who's pugilistic, who knows how to throw a punch against Trump, you're going to have to find somebody who combines both of those things.
There's no reason why you can't be a strong fighter against Trump, but also hold moderate positions on a string of issues, right?
I'd like to speak to the senator about the universal care that the Democrats need to start speaking of it so it can become reality because we are spending a crazy amount of money.
And another thing is the subsidies that corporations receive, they are subsidies for health care for their employees.
I've talked about this before, and Steve Ban, it's so unfortunate that people are not listening and learning from this channel, even when their senators speak it their truth and they still don't believe it.
So healthcare, you know, a major, major issue for voters.
And Democrats did a good job in sort of centering the debate around healthcare with this shutdown.
But to the caller's point, there's so much more that needs to be done.
And Democrats have sort of gotten away from talking about that as a central issue.
After the passage of Obamacare, you know, there was a lot of focus on it.
The policy became popular.
Democrats got scared off a little bit.
But as Obamacare went into effect, the actual planks of that policy, things like allowing young people to stay on their parents' health care until they're 26, ending exclusion for pre-existing conditions, those policies started to kick in and people decided they liked what was in that bill.
So I think it would be very wise for Democrats.
This is a kitchen table issue.
It is core to Democrats.
It is still something that voters give Democrats an advantage on, and there aren't that many issues that's true about these days.
So it would be very wise for Democrats to center on healthcare, but I think they also need to come up with some new and big ideas to make that issue salient again.
Well, Color, I don't think you're Polyanish, but I'm going to fact-check you.
I think that was Buffalo-Springfield, not Crosby-Sills-Nash and Young, although Neil Young was in Buffalo-Springfield.
So anyway, but point well taken.
I think the nature of the debate today is very absolutist.
People go to their corners.
We're in this period of intense polarization.
We've never had three presidential elections in a row that have been as close as the last three.
And you can either look at that and say we are stuck in this era of everybody's right or everybody's wrong, we're totally divided straight down the line, or you can think it's got to give one way or the other.
Typically in American history, these periods of polarization resolve into dominance for one side or the other, depending on which side does a better job of reflecting what the American people want.
So it's a jump ball right now.
And I think how it resolves is going to depend on which side does a better job presenting the American people with an agenda they find broadly appealing.
What we're trying to do is craft an agenda that affects a realignment.
That we think that we are on the verge of a realignment and we want it to be for the liberal side.
But we think that what we have to do in order to do that is to break out of this period of ideological rigidity that has dominated the Democratic Party for at least 10 years.
And so we're trying to craft the ideas that will undergird that realignment, that will provide the policy agenda for that, because we do think ideas are powerful.
And typically throughout American history, realignments are preceded by leaders offering a different menu of ideas to the American people.
So we're trying to help generate those ideas.
And then we do a lot of polling and analytics to help people understand what the American people actually think on these issues that are sort of the topics of the day.
So Searchlight is, so, you know, there's this sort of literal meaning of trying to find a way out of the darkness, which I think is, you know, something we're trying to do here today as a country.
But then I think it is also a reference to the hometown of my former boss and mentor, Senator Harry Reid, who came from a town called Searchlight, Nevada, which is a tiny mining town.
Its current population is 323 people.
And the Democratic Party used to be the party of people who came from towns like Searchlight.
Let's talk to a Republican in Spokane, Washington.
Laura, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hi, my name.
It's nice to talk to you today.
I'm calling because I've read what the Democrats are demanding as far as in healthcare.
And what I see is that it does nothing to stop or make things better or lower the premiums whatsoever.
It's $1.5 trillion.
And most of it is giving permission for illegal medical care.
You know, how that comes about, I don't know.
I didn't bother to go that far.
But that's what I found by listening or by reading that bill.
It's very, very much not in the interest of the American premium player.
So, and the guy before me finally said, hey, it's really get blown up premiums huge.
It is.
And there's another question also I have, and that's regarding the so-called royalties that go back to certain politicians.
I won't mention any names, but there is in Obamacare and in this bill where these things are okay.
And so I would like that cleared up.
And I got to tell the, I got to say this, it's awful, but I am so tired of fighting with horrible people that scream obscenities and scream and say awful things about the president.
The president is a good man and a fine man.
He went through hell to get back there.
And if he was rich, and he was rich before, he ain't making no dang money off of our taxpayer money.
And I think, you know, I actually, I think the voter is correct that a lot of the money that goes from the federal government does end up as in the form of subsidies to healthcare companies, to health insurance companies.
And I think that's a feature of our health care system that that's sort of the best way policymakers have figured out to pass on savings to people.
I think there's more work to be done to try to have that money not just be going into the pockets of health insurance companies.
There's bipartisan ideas to do this.
It's actually something we're going to be working on at Searchlight.
And then the other thing I would say, though, is the caller's correct that the proposal for Democrats would not necessarily lower subsidies, but what it would do is prevent them from going up dramatically, which they are on track to do going up by as much as a third in a lot of cases.
On another topic, this has just been released by the New York Times.
Epstein alleged in emails that Trump knew of his conduct.
In a message obtained by Congress, convicted sex offender Epstein wrote that Donald Trump spent hours at his house with one of Mr. Epstein's victims.
The question for you, Adam, is this topic getting a good one for Democrats, or is it kind of showing that they're just trying to throw anything at President Trump and trying to damage him in any way they can?
Well, as an independent, I watch both sides toil with whatever's going on because there's too many distractions by Trump.
But the real problem is when you talk about the future, you're talking about generations that people my age are not going to live that long.
And so they kind of ignore this national debt issue as kind of a tacit problem in the background.
And everybody knows, and the economists are trying to make everybody aware of it, that this thing is going to sink America's economy if we don't get a handle on it.
And I found, I've worked for 20 months on a formula to fix this thing.
And it's going to take between nine and 15 years to do it.
And both parties sit here and they don't think beyond four years, maybe eight years.
So you can't solve something if you're not going to be there's an initiative where both parties got to get together and decide the one issue that needs to be solved is the national debt.
And when you're not paying a trillion dollars annually, you get to take that trillion dollar savings and everybody gets free health care.
That is, you know, that is the kind of, we talk a lot at Searchlight about heterodoxy, about, you know, issue ideas that cross party lines and break out of clear ideological boundaries.
The caller's idea of bringing down the national debt and using that money to pay for universal health care is exactly the kind of heterodox thinking that we love.
Look, I think the caller's correct that I think as a substantive issue, but also as a political issue, deficit politics are sort of coming roaring back.
This was a big issue under President Obama, and we tried to craft a grand bargain with Republicans, and Republicans ultimately backed out of the deal.
I mean, one of the most effective ways to bring down the national debt and deficit is to ask the wealthiest people and big corporations to pay their fair share in taxes, which they are not currently doing.
But Republicans have a tendency to like to talk about the debt and deficit, but then not do some of the steps that are required to bring it down in a fair way.
I'm glad to be on the show again for probably about 20 or something time.
But I believe that Dick Durbin and those other Democrats caved in thinking, well, just because they're going to get a vote on health care, that's solving the problem.
And that we need to hold the feet to the fire on the ACA.
When it was being created, the Congress did not allow the American people to get into their exchange that they have health care with, which probably would be a good thing that Americans could have got into.
And last night, I saw Congressman Lawless from New York say, we subsidizing the European health care.
No, we're not.
They have a flat tax in most European countries, which is high, that pays for their health insurance.
And that they buy the medications from American companies, but they sell it or give it to their people at a much lower cost.
Corruption and greed in the capitalist system is what causes our problems in America.
And too, last year, April, I said we're going to have a dictator in the White House.
It's on the C-SPAN archives April last year when Mr. Cohen was on the show, and I told him we're going to have a dictator in the White House, and he's going after everybody.
You know, fighting over what kind of health care plans would be available to all people was a big fight during the passage of the Affordable Care Act and then subsequently afterwards.
I think the caller is completely correct that more needs to be done there.
We have, you know, and I think what's interesting, I mean, Democrats tried to pass a public option.
They didn't have 60 votes for it.
Democratic or independent Senator Joe Lieberman defected and wouldn't vote for that.
So we came close, but I think there are some big things we need to do on health care that we could do if both sides would come together.
I would just like to go to the root of some of this stuff.
Just go to the root.
There should not be reproduction on a planet where you have to pay for the substances that keep you alive.
You see what I'm saying?
You should not be born to a place where you have to pay for substances that allow you to live.
Food, water, shelter.
Those are the things that you must have to be a complete human.
So we should not have, that should be, and also on the educational note, I think we have been miseducated from the get-go.
No one has asked me about George Washington since I've been out of school, but they have asked me for food.
We should be taught to grow food at school.
And if your government is on the up and up and it's for the American people, if they go to space, we should have been able to go to space to see where we live and to get that magnitude of where we live.
It is, you know, puts it in perspective, certainly, to see that, to see it in that way.
I think, look, you know, what the voter of the caller is describing is sort of the American ideal that, you know, if you work hard and play by the rules, you should not go hungry in this country.
And I think that's an ideal we've not yet been able to reach as a country, but it's certainly one that's worth striving for.
And I think our major steps to get closer to that ideal, things like social security, things like Medicare, have always been done by adopting ideas from across the spectrum.
And I think if we're going to reach that ideal, that's what we need to do again today.
In a few minutes, we'll be joined by Democratic Representative Sam Licardo of California.
He'll discuss his bipartisan legislation to address the expiration of the ACA subsidies.
But first, it's Open Forum.
Here are the numbers: Democrats 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
We'll be right back.
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We had talked about Thanksgiving and what was going to happen if we got to Thanksgiving.
As I was looking at the data with the FAA, my concern was not Thanksgiving.
My concern was this Thursday and this Friday.
I think that this was the critical juncture where we were going to see, if you thought this weekend was bad with delays and cancellations, truly this Thursday and Friday, I think you would have seen mass double, triple the number of cancellations and delays in the airspace.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and some news for you from about an hour ago on X by Oversight Dems.
They say this breaking.
Oversight Dems have received new emails from Jeffrey Epstein's estate that raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein's horrific crimes.
Read them for yourself.
It's time to end this cover-up and all caps, release the files.
Also from this morning, Axios reporting, Trump officially asks Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu.
That's on Axios.
Those are charges of corruption against Israel's prime minister.
And this is Jane in Augusta, Maine.
Republican, you're on the air, Jane.
unidentified
Hi, I'm Jane.
I'm a dietician.
I usually call once a month.
And I was trying to call earlier about the Abbot Roy discussing systems in health care.
And as a dietitian, I know that there's going to be great discussion about medical nutrition therapy, the cost of that, wellness versus Maha caregivers.
But the main thing regarding information is right now patients can look up their actual health care costs from their bills, be it Medicaid, Medicare, to see how much their cost is in comparison to their insurance.
And in Maine, the thing is, there's a lot of data collected, maybe not systematically much on a national level, but in Maine is the Maine health data organization and the Maine quality forum.
And they have tried to look at the data and make comparisons on a lot of issues.
So a lot of visual data, data visualization there.
So just people need to be looking at their own health expenses.
I'll be voting no for several reasons, but most importantly because I've been working over several weeks to try to fashion a bipartisan effort to propose an extension of the ACA tax credits.
We came out with a bill with a couple of Republican colleagues just a couple days ago.
I think we need to get something done rather than putting Americans through 40 days of misery really for nothing.
Anything that will interrupt the cruelty and chaos of having this administration decide for itself whether or not it's going to comply with the law in providing SNAP benefits to 42 million Americans who desperately need that funding.
I think this is a welcome departure for sure.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty about a continuing resolution I would support.
The real issue is what is missing here.
And what's missing is what we've been saying for several weeks all along.
We need to fix a health care crisis.
And right now, we are doing nothing but kicking this can down the road about 81 days until we face this crisis once again.
There was no path to any fix on health care with the government closed.
So I supported the Democratic position in this from the very beginning until middle of last week.
We had a big win in elections in Virginia, and Donald Trump woke up Wednesday morning and decided finally to engage and negotiate.
And as I predicted, within a matter of a few days, if the president engages, you can find a path forward.
Here's where we were last Wednesday.
We had no path forward on health care because the Republicans said we will not talk about health care with the government shutdown.
And we had SNAP beneficiaries and those relying on other important services who were losing benefits because of the shutdown.
So no path to a health care fix, SNAP beneficiaries suffering.
I got into the negotiation Wednesday.
I realized we needed to help turn this around.
And so now we have full funding for a year for the 45 million Americans.
One in eight, our most vulnerable people for SNAP, repairing some of the damage that the Republicans did last summer.
We've got a path to a health care debate and vote within a month on the Democratic proposal to fix health care, where we will have a fight with Republicans and see who stands up for Americans.
First, I think all they got in this negotiation that Senator Kaine was referring to was a pinky promise that at some point Republicans might consider an ACA tax extension, tax credit extension, which clearly they're not bound to vote in any way at all.
So the result for the American people is no better.
But critically, the timing doesn't help.
81 days from now when we face the next shutdown deadline, 22 million Americans will already be paying premiums that will be twice as high as they were before.
And the rest of us will all be paying higher premiums as well, though perhaps not so severely.
This is not a solution.
I think there was a path.
I had been on the phone with a couple dozen Republicans over the prior three weeks.
We came out with a bill with a couple Republicans on the bill, and I'd heard from several Republicans that they were willing to support that path forward, but obviously they were getting a lot of pushback from leadership.
The question was: who is going to be out there first?
Well, we got out there.
Now, the question is: are we going to see leadership or followership?
I think this is an opportunity for leadership that we missed.
Well, Tony, in response to your first question, last I checked, the Republicans have a majority in the House.
The Republicans have a majority in the Senate.
The Republicans are in the White House.
So who is running the government?
The Republicans.
As Donald Trump said in 2011, when there's a shutdown, you blame who's in charge, and they're in charge.
They could have negotiated, but instead, Senator Johnson sent everybody home.
We showed up three weeks in a row with nobody to negotiate with, surrounded by 200 Democrats here on Capitol Hill, nobody to negotiate with.
The shutdown was engineered from the top, and we understand the cruelty and chaos that is part of the strategy of this administration.
Now, with regard to taxpayers and who benefits and who loses, you know, frankly, I agree that there could be limitations placed and savings found in the current program,
and that's why I came out with a bipartisan bill that would actually identify those savings, essentially taking a Republican bill from the Senate from Bill Cassidy that would address the upcoding bonanza that too many insurance companies benefit from.
In Medicare Advantage, I think to the detriment of many U.S. taxpayers, billions of dollars are going to insurance companies, frankly, wastefully.
And so we included provisions in this bill that would address that waste to pay for an extension of the two-year tax credit and cap it at 600% of the poverty line, which is about $192,000 for a family of four.
That way we could ensure that middle-class Americans and working Americans could benefit, and we could do it without burdening taxpayers or future generations.
I just want to say that the Affordable Care Act was good.
I actually had a hip replacement on it.
I used it as a bridge from age 60 to 65 until I went on Medicare.
If not for the Affordable Care Act, I would have had to wait five years to have my hip fixed.
And I want to say this to the representative.
I am a lifelong Democrat, and if you think that the Republican parties are going to bargain with you guys, you're crazy.
They're not.
Baker Johnson is going to hold you guys hostage.
He's going to say yes.
We'll make a deal with the Democrats on the subsidy.
But we want the Epstein file to go away because we know Donald Trump is in them all over the place.
That's what's going to happen.
And the reason why we have a $38 trillion deficit is because of Reaganism and trickled down economics 45 years when the tax rate went from 90% on billionaires to 10% on billionaires to blame the Republican Party for our $38 trillion deficit for not paying taxes for 45 years.
Mike, going to your central point, I agree with you.
Look, the ACA has been essential in the case of your own situation and so many millions of other Americans.
This is what is extending their ability to work their work years because they're able to get the needed surgery or the critical health care that can keep them going supporting their families.
It is essential.
I understand your concern, and I know many shared about whether or not Speaker Johnson would ever negotiate.
He wouldn't.
He never negotiated with us.
That's why I went around him to other Republicans and was on the phone literally with dozens of Republicans over three weeks because I knew it was never going to happen at the leadership level as long as Speaker Johnson was unwilling to even talk.
Look, I was a mayor of a city of a million people.
I understand how it works when you're in charge.
You have to negotiate, and you have to negotiate with people you disagree with.
And there's plenty I disagree with in the Republican platform.
That doesn't mean we can't sit down and negotiate.
And frankly, I think we gave up the leverage to do just that two days ago in the Senate.
I would say, look, you've got PBM's pharmacy benefit managers that are earning huge margins in the transmission of these pharmaceuticals to the end user.
You've got insurance companies.
I referred to the upcoding Bonanza that too many insurance companies are betting from benefiting from a windfall that needs serious reform.
We've got insurance brokers that are engaged in fraud, literally signing up folks for ACA without their authorization in order to earn commissions.
There's a lot of folks who are earning money here that we need to be focused on.
Yes, we can enact reforms.
Yes, we can save money and we can pay for coverage for Americans who critically need it.
I want to go back to your proposal called the Fix It Act on health care.
And you talk about limiting excessive Medicare Advantage payouts to insurers and also cracking down on fraud by insurance brokers.
Can you drill down a little bit on those two and explain how that would work, how much money that would save, and why hasn't there already been a crackdown on fraud?
Yeah, so this has been proposed by Senator Cassie.
I'll refer first to the Medicare Advantage issue.
What's going on there is, the structure of Medicare Advantage creates an incentive for insurance companies to engage in what they call upcoding, which is taking a patient who might be relatively healthy and looking at a whole panoply of whatever past diseases or maladies or whatever they can do to essentially characterize this person as being less healthy than they really are in order to earn more compensation from the guy.
government.
And so we know that insurance companies are up coding in a massive way.
There's been a lot of studies on the tens of billions of dollars of waste that occurs as a result of this.
And the Congressional Budget Office has already evaluated what this particular provision might do in savings, estimated $124 billion over 10 years if we're able to form those incentives in Medicare Advantage to really undermine the upcoding trend that we see for too many insurers.
On the other hand, with regard to insurance brokers, this is a provision we took from a Democratic colleague.
We're taking from both sides, Deborah Ross, what she proposed was a way for us to go after brokers, insurance brokers, hold them accountable, civil and criminal penalties, and ensure there's greater transparency so that consumers are not signed up for ACA plans without their authorization.
We know some brokers were out there very illegally, fraudulently earning commissions in this way.
There's a lot of waste we can cut.
We've got to be focused on the waste while we're doing everything we can to protect vulnerable Americans.
Yeah, as far as the ACA goes, when it was passed, the big driver in savings would have been the individual mandate.
And when the Republicans got in charge, the first thing they did was get rid of the individual mandate, which they knew would drive up costs so that they could run on something that, okay, Affordable Care Act is not affordable.
And the individual mandate, you know, said that, look, we've got to have healthy people involved as well as the sick to make these costs go down and keep them down.
And once that happened, the Republicans knew that they had a horse they could kick.
Insurance pools only work if we get young people and healthy people who are the least likely to get insurance, if we get them into the pool.
And that's important.
Obviously, it protects them from the risk that still exists of some need for very significant health care.
At the same time, it makes it less expensive for everybody.
So, yeah, we need everybody in the pool.
And this really goes to an important Republican talking point because we hear over and over again about how ACA has failed because we know tens of millions of Americans aren't even filing claims, even though the taxpayers are somehow helping to subsidize through tax credits or otherwise their insurance.
Well, the reality is we want lots of people on the health exchange who are healthy, and that means they may not be filing claims.
That's okay, it reduces the cost for all of us, but they still ensure they have the peace of mind of knowing if they're hurt on the job, they've got protection.
You know, I think that for tens of millions of Americans, health care costs are absolutely top of mind because right now, as we sit here today, we're in open enrollment.
And right now, millions of Americans are looking at their choices.
And what they're seeing is average premiums increasing 19% across the board.
And for 22 million Americans, those premiums are going up 93%.
In other words, they're doubling.
For 22 million Americans, these are all working-class Americans who are going to struggle to be able to pay their rent and pay for everything else they've got to pay for and still hold on to health insurance.
And as a result, millions are going to lose their insurance coverage.
So this is quite real, and it's something that I know that perhaps it's not circulating as well on maybe some of the Republican channels, but we've been talking about pretty loudly for many months as we saw the demise of Medicaid through nearly a trillion dollars in cuts through the last budget bill.
And now this extension of the ACA tax credits, which we have long been warning, had to be dealt with before the expiration, which is just in a few weeks.
This is the time to do it because people have to make their decisions now about their insurance choices.
Yes, since Marjorie Tatrick Green has talked about her children having problems with their health care, why don't the Democrats form a coalition and put her in as Speaker of the House to replace Mike Johnson in the coming year?
And that would really hurt the Republicans, but I think she would be open and some Democrats should work to form a coalition with some of the Republicans and put Marjorie Taylor Greene in as Speaker of the House in the coming year.