| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Who is the most at risk? | ||
| Yeah, so there is an actual technical definition of what food insecurity. | ||
| And here in the United States, food insecurity essentially is when there's any household where a member of that household has to figure out how to make ends meet to be able to put food on the table. | ||
| That's a very just quite simple way of just defining what food insecurity is. | ||
| And so there could be times where family members may be, well, moms and dads may be having to figure out, okay, how do we make the dollar stretch to be able to buy our groceries? | ||
| If there are times where you have to decide on whether you're going to be able to pay your medical bills or your rent or your car note so you can be able to buy food, or if you've had to sacrifice the types of food that you can purchase because of affordability, that is an example of what food insecurity looks like in this country. | ||
| And so here in the United States, we have over 47 million people who are considered food insecure in this country. | ||
| It represents around 12% of households in this country are listed as food insecure. | ||
| And when we dive into some of the federal nutrition programs, those programs are designed to help make food more affordable and more accessible for those individuals and families. | ||
| One topic that we are talking about a lot in Washington and also across the country is affordability. | ||
| According to NerdWallet, food prices have increased 32% since 2019. | ||
| I wonder if you can talk about how higher food prices has contributed or potentially inflamed the issue of food insecurity in the U.S. | ||
| I always consider food insecurity as an economic issue. | ||
| It's an affordability issue. | ||
| When jobs are prevalent, when good paying jobs are prevalent, people are able to make those decisions to purchase the foods that they need. | ||
| It's also an accessibility issue. | ||
| You have communities where there's lack of access to grocery stores and other farmers markets and other resources where people are able to purchase food. | ||
| There may be times where there's transportation challenges, what have you. | ||
| And so these are all the different things that are kind of combined. | ||
| It's almost like a stack on top of each other to really create a picture of what food insecurity looks like in this country. | ||
| So over the past few years, as our economy was fluctuating as a result of the pandemic, recessions that we had, and then of course inflation, that is where you see the indication of what food insecurity really looks like and really the overall health of our country. | ||
| Food insecurity started to increase over the years because of the pandemic. | ||
| And as we were pulling out of the pandemic, jobs were slowly starting to come back. | ||
| But the jobs were also not, the wages of those jobs were not matching the cost of food, essentially the cost of living. | ||
| And so that's why you would see food insecurity constantly steadily going up over the last few years as a result of the fact that people, despite the fact that they may be working or they're either inconsistently working, and if they are working, they're still unable to make ends meet to get food that they need. | ||
| We want to invite our viewers into this conversation and we've divided your lines up by regions in the U.S. | ||
| So for your Eastern and Central line, that number is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Mountain and Pacific regions, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for people who have experienced food insecurity, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, Eric, in addition to the issue of affordability and higher food prices that you just discussed, another topic that has taken kind of permeance around the U.S. since that U.S. shutdown, the government shutdown in Congress, has been SNAP. | ||
| Can you define for us what SNAP is, who is on SNAP, and what immediate impact did the shutdown have on that program? | ||
| Certainly. | ||
| And so SNAP is known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. | ||
| For those of us who are, I would say, millennials and older, we recall SNAP back when we were younger, it's food stamps. | ||
| That was the previous name of SNAP. | ||
| But SNAP is our largest domestic nutrition program. | ||
| It provides support to over 42 million Americans across the country. | ||
| And these are Americans who typically are some of the most vulnerable citizens from our most vulnerable neighbors. | ||
| Majority of SNAP benefits are children, seniors, persons with disabilities, and families who have to take care, family members who have to take care of those individuals. | ||
| And so I often say, you know, SNAP recipients go across the board. | ||
| They are in red states, blue states. | ||
| They're in urban communities, rural communities. | ||
| The beneficiaries are in our churches. | ||
| They work in our office buildings. | ||
| There are classmates that are in our kids' schools. | ||
| And so this is an issue that touches across all communities. | ||
| Now, during the shutdown, there were a few days where in certain parts of the country, that funding for SNAP lapsed. | ||
| Obviously, we know that the government went back and forth with the judicial system, trying to decide whether or not they were obligated to pay for SNAP as the government was still shut down. | ||
| I wonder if you have seen any potential long-term impacts just from those few days where some folks around the country didn't have those essential services. | ||
| We definitely saw those. | ||
| I mean, we worked with a number of partners who represent food banks. | ||
| And as you can imagine, when the level of inconsistency was on the rise, and particularly as a result of the shutdown and the decision was made to not fully fund SNAP benefits during the month of November, people had to figure out how to make it work. | ||
| And so often they were going to food banks and food pantries and really stretching the resources of those institutions very thin, as well as leaning on their neighbors, businesses, what have you. | ||
| We're also supporting individuals who were faced with the tough decisions of how to put food on the table. | ||
| And so those were some of the long-term impacts that were the immediate impacts that we saw. | ||
| And once the shutdown ended, of course, they had to, states and administrators had to figure out how to be able to get the systems back in place so that people could get their benefits. | ||
| It was going to really, it's really a case state by state, state-by-state basis because the program is administered by the states. | ||
| And so states were really kind of on their own, implementing their own policies. | ||
| You had some states who were providing full benefits during the shutdown, some states that were opting to do partial benefits. | ||
| And as a result, there was a lot of just confusion of how much people were getting, how long those benefits were going to last, and if those benefits were going to be able to meet the needs that people were facing at that day. | ||
| And even though it is administered state-by-state basis, it is still a federal program. | ||
| It treated as a, quote, appropriated entitlement. | ||
| Can you describe for our viewers what exactly that means and what the impact of that is, especially if there is a government shutdown? | ||
| We know that they're going to need a new bill come January. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so, yes, it's a mandatory program, which means that the program exists regardless of the yearly budget cycle. | ||
| But because, again, like you just said, Jasmine, it's appropriate entitlement, it still is relied on the annual appropriations process. | ||
| And so at the end of each fiscal year, the beginning of a new fiscal year, Congress authorizes our appropriation bills, our budget, essentially. | ||
| And so the SNAP benefits are funded through those, through that cycle. | ||
| When there was a shutdown, there was a certain level of money still available, but it was temporary. | ||
| And once that money runs out, the benefits were no longer made available. | ||
| And so that is where you saw the scrambling taking place during the months of November, October through November, to be honest, for the U.S. government to make sure that there was enough resources to pay for those, to pay those benefits. | ||
| The money goes to the states and are implemented by the states. | ||
| And so what happened is that with the U.S. government deciding not to fully fund or making the decision not to fully fund the benefits during the shutdown, states had to figure out how to close those gaps. | ||
| And that's where you started to see some of the scrambling taking place state by state and figuring out how to address the needs of its citizens. | ||
| Turning to our viewer calls, Ruth from Pennsylvania, who called on the food insecurity line. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Lauren. | ||
| I was watching a TV that sounds down. | ||
| I just wanted to say that there's been a lack of compassion. | ||
| There's been a lack of just caring from the top of our government. | ||
| And I don't know how we can control what's happening when the people at the top don't seem to care. | ||
| It's almost like we need to vote for somebody that has integrity. | ||
| And there's a lack of integrity. | ||
| And that covers so much of this food insecurity. | ||
| I'm fine now. | ||
| In the past, I've had food stamps back when they were paper. | ||
| Things are good now, but it hasn't always been like that. | ||
| And I just think people need to start voting for people with integrity. | ||
| And the rest of it goes out the window. | ||
| We just need to see who we're voting for because if they don't care about things, then things are going downhill. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Eric, do you have a response? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think there needs to be compassion across the board as it relates to poverty in this country. | ||
| Our country tends to, I would say, villainize people who are struggling. | ||
| And the reality is, is that majority of people who are using SNAP benefits are working Americans. | ||
| This is not someone just sitting on their couch using their benefits to purchase lobsters. | ||
| The average SNAP benefit is around $6 a day per person. | ||
| I don't know about you all, but you can't buy much with $6 a day. | ||
| And again, like I said before, like I said earlier, majority of people are either working or our children, some of our older citizens, and people with disabilities. | ||
| So we're literally talking about some of the most vulnerable people within our community. | ||
| So I would agree with the caller that it's very important for our elected officials to really understand that it's the people who are in their communities, their constituents, who are impacted by these policies. | ||
| We want to invite more callers to join in on the conversation. | ||
| Those lines are now divided up by regions. | ||
| Eastern and Central areas, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain Pacific regions, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And those who have experienced food insecurity, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Eric, getting back to the SNAP program, we know that there are potential or not potential, there are changes coming to that program. | ||
| Can you walk us through what those look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So over the summer, when Congress passed HR1, some call it the One Big Beautiful Bill, there was some significant policy changes to the SNAP program. | ||
| Overall, that bill is set to cut around $186 billion from the program. | ||
| So it's a drastic, drastic cut from the program. | ||
| And in those policy changes, it'll do a number of things. | ||
| The things that we are really concerned about, of course, is the expansion of the workforce requirements that's in the program, but also shifting a lot of the burden back down to the states. | ||
| And I think, Jasmine, you said earlier, this is a entitled program that's funded through the federal government. | ||
| But under HR1, starting, I will say as early as the next fiscal year, they will be putting more of the burden on the states. | ||
| And states are going to have to figure out how to close those gaps in order to be able to ensure that food insecurity does not increase in those states. | ||
| And so there are some drastic policy changes that I have to go into more detail in that are really going to empower the level of insecurity we're in this country. | ||
| Yeah, these conversations about changes to SNAP obviously have been in the headlines. | ||
| I want you to take a listen to what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rawlins said on News Nation this week when talking about the SNAP program. | ||
| I think unintended consequence of the Democrat shutdown was now the spotlight has been shined on and we have to make sure for those who really need this benefit that we are able to make sure that it's going to the right people. | ||
| So we're making a lot of structural changes in SNAP. | ||
| We'll have a big announcement about that the week after Thanksgiving, exactly what that's going to look like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well and absolutely, you know, cleaning up fraud certainly needs to be a priority, but some people, you know, you talked about unintended consequences and I think a lot of people would worry that it's children who may go hungry as a result. | |
| What do people need to know as they reapply, Secretary? | ||
| Well, I think first of all, you know, it's about an average of $200 per month, the benefit, depending on a lot of factors, but about $200 per month per family member if you qualify. | ||
| And that's 42 million Americans. | ||
| This is a massive government program. | ||
| So ensuring at the front end that we are asking, you know, are you really eligible? | ||
| Are you able to work? | ||
| About 80% of those who qualify, about all those that are able-bodied that qualify for food stamps or for SNAP, don't have a job and don't work. | ||
| So are you, and that could be volunteering? | ||
| Like we're really opening up the market here, wanting to make sure that those who are receiving this supplemental nutrition benefit, it was never meant for the long term, are really those who need it. | ||
| So whatever that reapplication looks like, again, we're working on that right now, but it won't be too onerous. | ||
| And for the families that really need it, we'll make sure that they're going to get it. | ||
| Now, just a few hours after Rollins appeared on News Nation, Politico published a story, the headline, Trump admin backs up the idea to force SNAP users to reapply. | ||
| Officials will rely on state standards that are already in place to ensure eligibility, despite USDA Chief Brooke Rollins' comments. | ||
| Eric, I wonder if you could respond to both of those things. | ||
| I think the one thing I would say is the narrative around fraud in the program. | ||
| There's no data that tracks the number of fraud, the level of fraud in the program, but our understanding is around one, maybe less than 1%, where there's intentional fraud happening in the SNAP program. | ||
| Oftentimes, what you'll see are errors, which are actually implemented as a result of state error, administrative error, where there's overpayments or even underpayments where people aren't receiving enough of the SNAP benefits. | ||
| And so the narrative that this is a program that's full of waste, fraud, and waste, fraud, and abuse, it's just a false narrative that I think we need to do more in pushing back against. | ||
| And obviously, I think that that's my opinion the Secretary was bringing forward or at least implying as part of that conversation around who deserves to be on the program. | ||
| There's two things I want to make clear is that this program, SNAP is an economic program. | ||
| In a sense, when I say that, I mean that when the economy improves, the need for SNAP goes down. | ||
| When the economy is in dire straits or when people are struggling, the need of the SNAP benefits go up. | ||
| It's because, again, it's based on economic situation. | ||
| It's a very good canary in the mind, if you will, really understanding what the economic health is for our nation. | ||
| When food costs have gone up, when the wages or jobs aren't available to be able to cover those gaps, then yes, people need to use the SNAP benefits to make things work. | ||
| And I will agree with the Secretary of this. | ||
| It is a supplement. | ||
| It's not meant to replace your entire food pantry, which is why people use SNAP benefits, but also have to rely on food pantries and food banks, et cetera, to also cover some of those gaps. | ||
| It's made to really be able to provide the basic needs that someone needs to have in order to be able to take care of themselves and their family. | ||
| Nelson from Florida, your lines open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me okay? | ||
| Sure can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We were on food stamps for about three months in the mid-1970s. | |
| I was going through job changes at that time and we needed it. | ||
| But we did get off after about three months. | ||
| And what we discovered was the amount of fraud that was going on at that time. | ||
| And I know, Mr. Mitchell, with all due respect, that there's a whole lot more fraud going on now than just 1% of those that are applying. | ||
| We live in a community where SNAP is used by many people, and some are legit, but most aren't. | ||
| And that really is a fact. | ||
| So with all due respect, sir, if the fraud situation is not addressed a little more succinctly, people who really do need the SNAP program are going to suffer because there will be less available for them. | ||
| Eric, response? | ||
| And I can't say what happened in the 70s, but what I will say is that the data just doesn't support that in today's, with today's technology. | ||
| They now have moved to the EBT cards, where SNAP is uploaded onto a debit card. | ||
| And essentially, that shopper is there to use those benefits to purchase those foods on top of other foods. | ||
| And through that card system, it determines what a person is able to, how much that person is receiving in SNAP benefits. | ||
| And so there may be things that they're buying that technically the SNAP benefits aren't even being used to purchase, but the person behind you doesn't necessarily know those things. | ||
| And so, I just don't think the data really, from what we understand, the data doesn't track around what the level of fraud is. | ||
| I'm sure, as always, there's ways for people to get around systems to be able to take advantage of, but the data doesn't show that it's overwhelmingly a majority of what you're seeing the mistakes or errors are as relates to SNAP benefits. | ||
| Majority of the mistakes that are happening or the misuse of funds that you're seeing with SNAP is done through administrative error, which is usually a result of administrative mistakes that are happening at the government level. | ||
| And, Eric, can you walk us through the changes of work requirements? | ||
| I know you spoke about it briefly earlier, but obviously, I wonder what real impact is the changing of the work requirements from the OBB1 Big Beautiful bill or other ways going to have on the population. | ||
| And sure. | ||
| And so, just another thing to make clear is that there were already work requirements established for SNAP recipients. | ||
| But what this has done is it's expanded the age limit to now, I believe, to over 60, as well as also has a very great age of 14, they now have to show that they're either working or in school or in a training program, where it used to be a time if you were a parent with children under 18, | ||
| you may be able to have a waiver to be able to not have to be qualified to work in order to receive the benefits. | ||
| And also, the way the law is written, and this is under previous and current laws, that you're allowed for SNAP benefits for three months if you are showing that you are, in fact, working. | ||
| From the impact standpoint, we think that these policy changes will impact up to 22 some million some odd people in the U.S. | ||
| And so, it's a huge impact as a result to seeing people either see their benefits decreased or eliminated as a result of these policy changes. | ||
| I think it also just puts in fact, you know, it's particularly as it relates to some of our older Americans, it's not taking account people's independent life choice, you know, life stamp, independent situation in the sense of their ability to be able to work, access to jobs. | ||
| Are they in a community where employment is prevalent? | ||
| Now, these are also different factors that up to now, states were able to get approval to have waivers put in place that, okay, if this is an area where there's high propensity, high levels of unemployment in a certain region of counties, et cetera, you're able to waive those work requirements. | ||
| Under the new law, those waivers will be eliminated. | ||
| And that is effective as of, I believe, the start date is actually set to be for November 1. | ||
| So, states are starting to implement some of these policy changes or looking into how they can implement these policy changes right now. | ||
| So, that's an actual immediate impact that we're seeing right now. | ||
| Frank from Prairie Hill, Texas, calling on the food insecurity line. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Fram. | |
| I was just wondering, this is a fine young man that's talking there. | ||
| I'm all for the SNAP program. | ||
| I think most people own it or do need it and are good people. | ||
| And we have some wonderful white and African American people down here that's own it. | ||
| And I love all of them. | ||
| But I would have to say that just like in Minnesota, it's been all over the news for the last two or three days. | ||
| The New York Post covered it. | ||
| All good, the real good news outlets covered it about the Minnesota fraud run by the Democrats that were funneling money over to the murdering killing al-Qaeda terrorists that have murdered Marines and Al-Shabaab. | ||
| They've been funneling money over the Democrats have from Minnesota welfare over to the murdering killers. | ||
| And I would just like to see your response on that. | ||
| And I couldn't understand why Jasmine Wright owner said she didn't know what was going on. | ||
| It's put all over the news for the last two or three days. | ||
| Eric, can I have you respond to perhaps the type of people that use SNAP, where they come from, which states have more or larger SNAP programs than others, while we kind of research the other comments about Minnesota? | ||
| Yes, and I appreciate a gentleman calling saying I'm a fine young man. | ||
| I'm almost 50, so I'll take anyone who says I'm young. | ||
| I'll take that as a compliment. | ||
| But where SNAP is prevalent, it's parts of the country, as you can imagine, where unemployment is the highest. | ||
| I'm here in Florida and here in the South and the Southeast region, SNAP participation is high as it relates to some of the other states where employment is a little bit better. | ||
| I don't have the specific data in front of me right now, but as you can imagine, it's basically in areas and regions where you would imagine where work is harder to come by, where incomes and wages are the lowest. | ||
| And so that's where you'll see the level of food insecurity disproportionately where it's higher. | ||
| And so that's where you'll see SNAP benefits disproportionately are being used the most. | ||
| Okay, Leonard from Virginia calling in on the Eastern line. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I was calling in from Virginia. | ||
| So I came out of work on disability. | ||
| I have COPD and I have hip problems. | ||
| But yet still, I know that there are people out here on SNAP that's good and well to work. | ||
| And I know I've seen it with my own eyes. | ||
| And it's sad. | ||
| I know there's people out here that needs this benefit. | ||
| My sister and whatnot, she needs it. | ||
| So that is really, you know, can't work. | ||
| But at the end of the day, I know there's people out here that's selling the food stamp for drugs. | ||
| I know this. | ||
| I've seen it with my own eyes. | ||
| You know, and it's sad to say this right here, but these people right here, they're able to work. | ||
| Get $200, $300 a month and sell half of their stamps right there for drugs. | ||
| Eric, any response to that? | ||
| You know, I know that people can come with specific individual stories of what they've seen. | ||
| Again, I would just say that the overwhelming data that we are able to follow doesn't show that there's a high propensity of intentional fraud happening within SNAP beneficiaries. | ||
| I will also say that the gentleman is right. | ||
| Are a number of individuals who are disabled, who who or family members who are taking care of individuals who are disabled, who want to work but aren't able to work because they're either taking care of a loved one or they don't have the capabilities that they needed for to be able to seek employment. | ||
| And as this new law is starting to roll out, you know that more guidance is going to be put forward, i'm assuming, from USDA and as well as from states around. | ||
| What are the different qualifications of disability? | ||
| Um for individuals? | ||
| Uh, to be able to um, that will have to fall under these, these new provisions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so you know, it's kind of almost a scenario of you know building this plane as we take off, Shirley from Pasadena Texas, calling on the mountain line. | |
| You're next hi, good morning um oh hi, good morning sir. | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| Trump said uh recently that uh, when he was in his first term, that there was about 12 million people around uh that uh number on on uh snap, and now that there's 42 million, and what the gentleman was was just talking about was uh selling the, how they trade uh sell drugs and so forth. | ||
| I live here in Texas, and there are people who have SNAP in three, four, five different states in America. | ||
| And I think that it should be specifically they need to come up with programs for people who truly do need it. | ||
| And somehow they've got to be able to get cracked down and get these other people. | ||
| people off, because it's it's really truly um breaking our country Eric. | ||
| Any response? | ||
| Yeah, I think one point I would say is, reason why, you see, you saw snap beneficiaries going up, the level of food insecurity going up, you know, over the last last number of years is again when there was record high unemployment as a result of the pandemic um, and as people were starting to, you know, come off of that, you know there was a response to really address the pandemic, you know, and being able to make sure that people had to have what they need, | ||
| to be able to purchase food and get the food that they need. | ||
| And then, as we started rolling off of the pandemic, those numbers were going were still steadily uh on the rise, mainly because it was again. | ||
| It was because of this, because of affordability, food is becoming more and more uh expensive, and so that is the reason why you started to see it uh go up, you know the the, the level of when people are going through the application process and the paperwork process to be able to receive those benefits. | ||
| Um again those those, those are just, they're certified and that's determined by you, The federal government, and by the states, you know, the different rules of who applies and how they apply. | ||
| You have to show certain paperwork and citizenship, et cetera, residency, proof of employment, proof of employment, as well as proof, showing pay stubs, etc., to show that you actually qualify for the program. | ||
| And so there's a huge, a very extensive process for individuals to be able to get the benefits. | ||
| It's not something you can just turn around and just do overnight. | ||
| It takes weeks to be able to get that certification to get those benefits. | ||
| I don't have an answer regarding what she's saying. | ||
| She, you know, her seeing people going across state lines and being able to use SNAP benefits, you know, use, get snaps from other states, et cetera. | ||
| But I know that there's a massive process and a very extensive process for certification so that people are able to, so that we're able to figure out who qualifies for the program. | ||
| That's Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger. | ||
| Thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| Up next, we'll take a closer look at President Trump's recent executive order focusing on improving the nation's foster care system. | ||
| That conversation with Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
|
unidentified
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On Thanksgiving Day, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern, C-SPAN presents a day-long America 250 Marathon, all part of our more than year-long coverage of historic moments that explore the American story. | |
| At 11 a.m., we'll feature Boston's Freedom Trail through a guided tour featuring the site of the Boston Massacre, Old Statehouse, Fanyu Hall, and Old North Church. | ||
| Give me liberty or give me death at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, Patrick Henry's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech on the 250th anniversary and in its original location, St. John's Church in Richmond. | ||
| At 6:05 p.m., the U.S. Navy 250th anniversary Victory at Sea concert in Philadelphia with a musical performance by Patty LaBelle. | ||
| Also at 8 p.m., the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, where more than 1,000 reenactors commemorate one of the earliest and most consequential Revolutionary War battles. | ||
| And at 9:30 p.m., a celebration of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, featuring a parade through Washington, D.C., an enlistment ceremony, parachute demonstration, and fireworks. | ||
| Watch the America 250 Thanksgiving all-day marathon on Thursday on C-SPAN. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org to get the full schedule. | ||
| Kenneth Feinberg is a Washington-based attorney who served as a special master of the U.S. government's September 11, 2001 Victims Compensation Fund. | ||
| Mr. Feinberg worked for 33 months pro bono deciding who should be compensated as a result of the deaths and injuries from 9-11. | ||
| Kenneth Feinberg, who today is 79, was interviewed on C-SPAN's QA about his book, What is Life Worth? The unprecedented effort to compensate the victims of 9-11. | ||
| Here is an encore presentation of that July 1st, 2005 interview 20 years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Kenneth Feinberg with his book, What is Life Worth? The unprecedented effort to compensate the victims of 9-11 on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined by American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley here to discuss the U.S. foster care system and recent actions by the Trump administration aimed at foster youth. | ||
| Naomi, thanks so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| I want to start. | ||
| Can you just tell us about your work at the American Enterprise Institute, your background and how that has informed your thinking on both child foster care and child welfare? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, thanks so much for having me. | ||
| So I'm a senior fellow at AEI. | ||
| My background is as a journalist, and I've spent the last couple of decades doing research in different areas that affects children education, among other things. | ||
| A number of years ago, I wrote a book about American Indians, and I traveled across the country to different tribal territories. | ||
| And I was interested in a lot of different topics there, but the one that ended up sort of striking me most was the child welfare situation in a lot of these communities. | ||
| Very high rates of abuse and neglect, unfortunately, in these communities. | ||
| And I came back from those travels really kind of wanting to understand what the rest of the child welfare system looked like. | ||
| And so around 2018 or so, I started at AEI and I spent a lot of time just really kind of trying to understand better all the different elements of the child welfare system, child protective services, foster care, adoption, how the family court system works. | ||
| And, you know, it's a kind of mixed bag in a lot of ways. | ||
| You know, every state has its own child welfare system. | ||
| Some states actually have individual counties running their child welfare system. | ||
| About half of the money for child welfare comes from the federal government, but most of the rules and regulations around child welfare are actually coming from the states themselves. | ||
| And especially the oversight is really coming a lot from states. | ||
| So on the one hand, it kind of leads to a lot of variety in sort of how things are done. | ||
| But on the other hand, you know, you can look and sort of see what's working better in some places than others. | ||
| You know, my work is really, you know, journalist work, but I try to have it be informed by a lot of research and data that's out there. | ||
| I think that a lot of people don't really understand what the child welfare system and the foster care system are really about. | ||
| And so I'm trying to kind of explain to a pretty broad audience what is going on behind the scenes here. | ||
| To that point, Naomi, can you define for us what the foster care system is and what it is intended to do? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, there are about 3 million reports that come in every year of child abuse and neglect. | ||
| Those are kids who are being physically abused. | ||
| That's sort of what we traditionally think about. | ||
| But most of those are neglect. | ||
| And a lot of people don't understand what neglect is. | ||
| Some people think it just means that there's poverty in the home, that maybe there's not enough food or something like that, that these people need more material resources. | ||
| Neglect more often than not involves often substance abuse, unfortunately, in the home, domestic violence, sometimes serious mental illness that really prevents parents from being able to take care of their children properly or even ask for help when they need it. | ||
| Up to 90% of families who are involved in the child welfare system are actually struggling with some kind of addiction issue. | ||
| So that's really driving a lot of what's going on. | ||
| That's the child welfare system as a whole then responds to those reports by doing investigations and more often than not, trying to provide families with services, whether that's drug rehabilitation or other kinds of interventions, anger management, parenting classes, ways that parents can improve the way that they are caring for their children and making sure that they're doing it in a safe and responsible way. | ||
| In a very small minority of those cases, though, we determine that the children are at too much risk to remain in their homes. | ||
| Often, this is after multiple attempts at interventions, you know, trying to bring in other family members who can maybe offer support to a family. | ||
| Again, offering these kinds of classes, offering material supports to families. | ||
| But there are a small minority of kids who really just cannot safely remain in their homes. | ||
| homes and those children are removed into the foster care system. | ||
| Many of those in the foster care system are actually still taken care of by relatives. | ||
| A grandmother or an aunt will step in. | ||
| They will be certified by a foster care agency to do that, to take custody of the children, essentially. | ||
| But in some cases, they are taken care of by non-relatives. | ||
| These are people who simply decide that they want to step in and help children who are in vulnerable situations. | ||
| And they receive training. | ||
| They receive small amounts of payment for their work, but they welcome children who are in the foster system into their homes. | ||
| Most of those children end up being reunified with their parents after a period of time, but some remain in the foster care system. | ||
| Some of those are adopted by the foster parents or by someone else after a period of time. | ||
| And then a small percentage of those, about 20,000 per year, end up aging out of the foster care system, meaning that they are separated from their parents for reasons of the risk there, and also that they don't end up in another permanent home after that, either adopted or with another family member taking permanent custody of them. | ||
| I want to invite our viewers to join in on this call. | ||
| Again, we've divided those phone lines by regions. | ||
| For your Eastern and Central line, that number is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Mountain and Pacific regions, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And those who have experience with the foster care system, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Naomi, I want to talk about something that happened this month. | ||
| We saw President Trump sign a new executive order as part of the administration's, quote, Foster the Future initiative. | ||
| Can you tell us what it does? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, it's actually quite an interesting occasion. | ||
| Both the president and the first lady appeared at this signing ceremony for the executive order. | ||
| That's not something you see too often, but the first lady has also been very interested in this issue, both in this term and in the previous term. | ||
| The first thing that the order does, I think, is something that probably not a lot of people, like it doesn't jump out at a lot of people. | ||
| It's not kind of the sexiest part of the order. | ||
| But it actually instructs the HHS, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to start to undo some of the bureaucratic morass and the reporting requirements that states are really burdened by when it comes to child welfare. | ||
| So as I mentioned, on the one hand, the federal government is not in charge of these child welfare systems. | ||
| They are state-run. | ||
| But on the other hand, we require them to report a lot of things. | ||
| Some of those things are useful, like we want to find out the number of kids who are in foster care. | ||
| We want to find out the number of kids, for instance, who have died of maltreatment fatalities. | ||
| We want to find out those sorts of things. | ||
| But there are a lot of other smaller things that we burden states with. | ||
| There was a recent report that came out that found that the federal government is approximately paying that the cost is approximately $600,000 per state just in reporting requirements. | ||
| And that doesn't even really take into account the fact that many states are sort of organizing their entire child welfare systems around these reporting requirements. | ||
| State child welfare systems, you may know, are not very well funded. | ||
| We probably don't pay our child welfare workers enough. | ||
| You can probably get paid in your state more working at, say, Walmart than you can as a child welfare worker in many cases, and there'll be a lot less heartache, frankly. | ||
| So the fact that the Trump administration has sort of come in and said, like, let's work out what it actually is that we really need and not just keep piling on these reporting requirements, I think is a sign that they actually want to kind of take a fresh look at this and really kind of think about what states need to do and how they can best focus their attention on children, on seeing kids, on figuring out whether they're safe, on figuring out where they should be if they're not safe in their families. | ||
| In addition to the reporting requirements, something that the initiative focuses on, Naomi, is the idea of aging out. | ||
| I know you said about 20,000 kids age out of the foster care system, but can you talk to us about when that happens and what the process of that looks like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, you know, these are kids who are, you know, often have been in the foster care system in and out for a long time. | ||
| Some of them have been in congregate care settings. | ||
| Many of them have bounced around to different homes. | ||
| And what happens is, you know, they a lot of states have used to, it used to be that you aged out at 18 when we're all sort of adults. | ||
| But now most states have actually added extended foster care, which means in some states, you can stay in the foster care system, which is to say you can continue to receive money and, you know, be kind of supervised and in the custody of a foster family until you're 21 or even 23 years old. | ||
| But still, what happens is, you know, that's still a kind of temporary arrangement in a lot of cases. | ||
| Sometimes it's a family member who's taking you in, but often, you know, it's a group home or sometimes, you know, it's a, you know, it's a foster parent who still is kind of watching over you. | ||
| And these kids, unfortunately, because they have spent so long in the system and been bounced around a lot, you know, and because many of them experienced significant amounts of maltreatment very early in their childhood, have a lot of time, a lot of difficulty adjusting to life as an adult. | ||
| You know, they are often, they're experiencing homelessness at high rates, experiencing substance abuse, mental illness, having a difficulty finding a job because many of them have not been able to stay in school. | ||
| Or if they have, they haven't really gotten a good enough education to put them on the path either to college or to a career. | ||
| And so I think in some ways the kids who are aging out are the most visible parts of this population to certain Americans. | ||
| And they really worry about them. | ||
| And I think we should. | ||
| But I think one of the concerns I have about the executive order sort of focusing on a kid's aging out is that the interventions really should have happened much earlier. | ||
| A lot of times we knew that these kids were being abused and neglected in their homes, you know, from the age of five or six or seven. | ||
| And we have, you know, kept them in the foster system. | ||
| Often they've gone back and forth to their biological families or to different foster homes. | ||
| And we have not found them the kind of permanency that they need for long-term stability, mental health, and to be well-adjusted adults. | ||
| We want to now bring in our viewers, Jack from Hickson, Tennessee. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, CSMAN and Ms. Riley. | |
| My question is one that it's my understanding that in the past, judges and the court system used to remove children from homes more frequently because parents couldn't feed, clothe, and support their children. | ||
| There was just too much of a financial burden, and you had just total derelict parents. | ||
| But it just seems like we leave them in the homes, just like you were just saying. for an extended time period only to find them, you know, when they're teenagers out roaming the streets at one, two, three o'clock in the morning. | ||
| You read about all kinds of trouble people get into. | ||
| It just seems like kids should be removed from terrible environments much earlier by the courts. | ||
| Why can't that happen? | ||
| So, you know, if you go back, as you said, you know, historically speaking, like if you go back to the, you know, first half of the 20th century, you know, when we didn't have large social safety net programs in this country, it is true that, you know, sometimes children were removed because of poverty from their homes. | ||
| And in fact, there were parents who even brought their children to orphanages, for instance, because they could not care for them. | ||
| I think we have come a long way in this country, both in terms of public and private safety nets to make sure that kids are fed and clothed and have shelter. | ||
| And now I think, excuse me, what the system is dealing with is more parents who are really unwilling or unable to care for their kids, not because of a lack of material resources, but because those parents are suffering, as I said, often from addiction and certainly from serious mental health issues that are really preventing them from doing the things they need to. | ||
| Especially when it comes to young children who are, you know, disproportionate number of the kids who are in the foster care system. | ||
| You know, as any parent knows, you know, even being perfectly sober, it is awfully hard and taxing to take care of, let's say, a zero to three-year-old. | ||
| You are up in the middle of the night. | ||
| You are preventing them from running into the street and touching hot stoves and getting into the bathtub and all sorts of things that they shouldn't be doing. | ||
| When you're trying to do that while dealing with some kind of serious mental impairment, puts the kids in a lot of danger. | ||
| So to answer the caller's question about kind of why we've moved in this direction, I think the pendulum has probably swung too far toward what's called family preservation or family reunification at all costs. | ||
| We have really kind of given parents, put parents in the driver's seat here and told them that, you know, we want their kids to be with them no matter what. | ||
| And I think that that has put a lot of kids in danger. | ||
| Just to, you know, to mention 2,000 kids, more than 2,000 kids a year in this country die from maltreatment fatalities. | ||
| So parents who maybe it's, you know, they actually physically abuse them to the point of murder, but often the problem is that they have decided they're dealing with a drug addiction and they have left the child alone for two days while they go seek drugs. | ||
| You know, some of them, some of these are unsafe sleep deaths where the parents are intoxicated, roll over onto a baby and smother them. | ||
| And so these are the things that I think the child welfare system is dealing with now. | ||
| And I wish we could be sort of more clear-eyed about what the problems are that we're dealing with. | ||
| Osiris from Chicago, Illinois, calling on the foster care experience line. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, can you hear me? | |
| I can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Look, I was on the foster care system from the age of three all the way to 17. | ||
| And I can tell you from my experience, and even from what I've seen in my adult life, that the child foster care system is probably one of the most corrupt systems in America. | ||
| From the time that I was taken all the way into the time that I left, I don't experience one good foster family. | ||
| I bounced around from foster home, the children's home, foster home, and almost every single one I got abused in some shape, form, or fashion. | ||
| And it took me years, and it completely broke up my family. | ||
| It completely broke up our family. | ||
| I got brothers and sisters all across this nation, just spread out. | ||
| And at the time, I'm 50 years old. | ||
| At the time, they were just taking kids away for the most smallest issue. | ||
| And they didn't even try. | ||
| And this is based upon what my aunt had told me at that time. | ||
| They actually wanted to take me and my other two brothers that got taken at that time. | ||
| The courts didn't even allow it. | ||
| They just put us into the system. | ||
| And that's we just became farther for the system for decades. | ||
| So I believe that the foster care system in America needs probably to be taken over by the federal government, not even be left over by the states, because I was in the foster care system in St. Louis and it was terrible. | ||
| And from what I understand, it still remains to be terrible. | ||
| And I own, and luckily, I was able to get over that trauma, still needed therapy and all of that. | ||
| But I always, I tell parents, whatever you do, do not allow your kids to go into the foster care system. | ||
| Don't allow it. | ||
| Take your children to go overseas somewhere before you, before you, before the states, before you allow the state to take your kids. | ||
| That was Osiris in Chicago. | ||
| Naomi, I wonder if you have a response. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, you know, absolutely. | ||
| It is, you know, obviously traumatizing for a child to be removed from a foster home. | ||
| I mean, I'm not going to ask Osiris about his background, but a lot of the kids who are taken into foster care are dealing with extremely difficult and traumatizing circumstances at home. | ||
| And so, you know, foster care really is a last resort that we have to engage in for kids who are being abused or severely neglected in their homes. | ||
| But I think, you know, interestingly, I think the executive order actually focuses on some of the issues that we need to think about with foster care. | ||
| One of them certainly is how we recruit very good foster parents. | ||
| I think that has improved a lot in this country over the last number of years. | ||
| A lot of churches have really stepped up. | ||
| Not just that religious people are stepping up to take care of kids in foster care, which I think has long been the case, but many churches have stepped up in terms of making the training for foster parents more rigorous, in terms of making sure that foster parents are supported. | ||
| About half of foster parents quit within the first year. | ||
| And I think that, you know, you get sort of good, well-intentioned people who don't necessarily have the training and the support that they need in order to do this. | ||
| And I think some of these churches have also done a very good job of recruiting the kind of families that we need to do this. | ||
| I mean, honestly, you know, we need to get stable, middle-class families to do foster care. | ||
| It's not that poor people can't, you know, love children just as much as anyone else, but I think when you're thinking about what kind of environment you want to put a child in who has experienced extreme trauma in their home of origin, you want that to be a family which is not worrying about where the next rent check is going to be coming from or whether they can get enough food on the table. | ||
| You want these to be families that have long-term stability and that can take in a child who often is dysregulated or traumatized. | ||
| And the last thing I would say is that the agencies really need to do a good job of treating foster parents well because there's a cycle here where if the agencies are not treating foster parents well, those foster parents are going to quit. | ||
| And then the ones who you're left with are the ones, frankly, who might be doing it just for the money or for some other purposes. | ||
| And I think that's where you get into the corruption that the caller was mentioning. | ||
| People who are doing this for the money, who are taking in far too many kids. | ||
| And it works out well sometimes for the child welfare workers who just want somebody who will be there whenever they want to show up. | ||
| Maybe that person doesn't have a job and this is their only source of income. | ||
| So that could really be a problem. | ||
| But I think the executive order does focus on the importance of recruiting high-quality foster parents. | ||
| And that's something that all the agencies need to focus on. | ||
| I'm not sure that, frankly, the federal government is going to do a better job at this than state governments do. | ||
| It's just sort of public bureaucracy one way or the other. | ||
| But I think the federal government can put good incentives in place to make sure that states are acting as well as we can expect them to. | ||
| Robert from New York, calling on the foster care experience line. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I had two experiences with the system. | ||
| One experience was I had one kid in the house. | ||
| Well, the daughter of the family, she was mad with a mother because her mother had to go to work. | ||
| So she called social services. | ||
| Social services came and split the whole family up. | ||
| So I got the kid. | ||
| So when the kid came to me, he was just, he was not angry, but he was, why am I here? | ||
| So he gave me his mother's phone number and I called her. | ||
| When I called her, she said, they did this because I had to work. | ||
| And they told me if I want my children back, I have to go on welfare in order to get them back. | ||
| The second kid I had, which was he, he was really great. | ||
| Seven was really a great kid. | ||
| We got him uniform because he had to wear a uniform to go to school. | ||
| So we brought him the uniforms and he loved his little uniform. | ||
| I think Seven must have been around seven, six or seven years old. | ||
| He loved his uniform. | ||
| And he'll get up in the morning, you know, do himself up. | ||
| Well, in the middle of the school day, they came in there in the classroom and took that kid out of the class. | ||
| And I can see him in my mind right now as that guy was walking him down the street and Seven is reaching back as I'm coming right. | ||
| Why are you taking him like this? | ||
| And he's reaching back for me and nothing I could do for him. | ||
| So that just soured me from any kind of foster care system. | ||
| But my last point is, how many of these children, when she said they age out, how many these kids wind up in jail? | ||
| Because they don't get educated. | ||
| They do not get any education. | ||
| This is available to watch online at our website, cspan.org. | ||
| We are going to leave this here for now for remarks from President Trump, made just a short time ago. | ||
| We're going to end his Air Force face to group of work, especially for our great Air Force. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're doing some pickups of the base, which you see. | |
| We're going to try and reinstitute the golf courses. | ||
| I'm meeting with the great Jack Peter, where he's a person. | ||
| And he's a coffee trying to bring their recreational facility back. | ||
| It's a great place that has been destroyed over the years through lack of maintenance. | ||
| So we'll fix that up. | ||
| Jack will be the architect, you know, design it. | ||
| Two existing courses that are in very bad shape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we can throw very little money fixing up towards the Air Force base. | |
| And we're looking at other things over at Andrews. | ||
| So we're going to be stopping. | ||
| It won't be too long. | ||
| We'll be stopping over there. | ||
| I think some of you will be there. | ||
| And the economy, as you saw, some incredible numbers came in. | ||
| Investment in our country is bigger than ever before by a factor of two or three. | ||
| And that means a lot of things are being built. | ||
| And a lot of plants will be opening very soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Before you had a fight with Elon Musk, you guys were able to work it out. | |
| No, I get along with everybody. | ||
| We see the same thing happening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not? | |
| I mean, I get along with everybody. | ||
| No, not my fault. | ||
| Now, we'd like to get to peace. | ||
| It should have happened a long time ago. | ||
| The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened. | ||
| If I were president, it never would have happened. | ||
| We're trying to get it ended. | ||
| One way or the other, we have to get it ended. | ||
| So are you willing to? | ||
| Well, then he can continue. | ||
| Then he can continue to fight his little heart out. | ||
| Are you having any comment about Wolfenaro's arrest? | ||
| Do you have any comment about Wolfenero's arrest? | ||
| A former Brazilian president. | ||
| So I spoke last night to the gentleman you just referred to. | ||
| And we're going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, are you willing the president being arrested today? | |
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you coming about the former Brazilian president being arrested today? | |
| No, I don't know anything about it. | ||
| Are you willing to hear her? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a president. | |
| Are you willing to? | ||
| Is that what happened? | ||
| Yes, there's a fight. | ||
| Speaker, that's too bad. | ||
| That's too bad. | ||
| No, I just think it's too bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you still plan to deploy the National Guard to New York City? | |
| If they need it, right now, other places need it more, but if they need it, we had a very good meeting yesterday. | ||
| We talked about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if they need it, I would do it. | |
| Are you willing to forgive Congresswoman Taylor Green? | ||
| Forgive for what? | ||
| No, I just disagreed with her philosophy. | ||
| She started backing perhaps the worst Republican congressman in our history, just a stupid person named Massey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I said, go your own way. | |
| And once I left her, she resigned because she would never have survived the primary. | ||
| But I think she's a nice person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those were the latest comments from President Trump. | |
| We've returned now to our scheduled programming already in progress. | ||
| And they tested him in Wisconsin, and because he was a marijuana user, he was excluded. | ||
| In Wisconsin, which I didn't know, marijuana use, both medicinal and recreational, is not permitted. | ||
| And I also saw a symposium about a week ago listening to it about the crisis in maternity care. | ||
| And I was surprised, you know, if you come in and you're going to deliver a baby and you're heroin addicted, but I think there was a reporting requirement. | ||
| And the symposium said, well, we don't always report because the child may be taken away. | ||
| But my question is this. | ||
| How do different state laws and in terms of drug use and what is permitted, how does that interact with the foster care system? | ||
| I mean, in terms of testing parents in terms of getting their children back, in terms of who can be take care of children in foster care, how does drug use testing in each state, how does that work into the system? | ||
| Naomi? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, as you've observed, obviously different states have different laws, especially around cannabis use. | ||
| And so those have kind of thrown child welfare systems for a little bit of a loop. | ||
| They've had to change some of their requirements in terms of foster parent licensing and training, what they are and are not allowed to do. | ||
| And so in some states, cannabis use looks much more like, you know, do you, you know, occasionally drink? | ||
| And obviously you can occasionally drink and still be a foster parent. | ||
| You know, but there are more extensive questions that we need to be asking. | ||
| You know, how much does the use of this drug impact your ability to parent? | ||
| And if we are going out, you know, there's sort of a difference. | ||
| I think there should be a different and frankly higher standard, obviously, for foster parents. | ||
| These are people that the government is going out and recruiting in order to take care of kids who are already in vulnerable, difficult, traumatized situations. | ||
| And so, you know, you don't want to take any chances with those kids. | ||
| And so I think, frankly, in the same way that we have, you know, different requirements for people who fly planes or people who do open heart surgery with regard to their drug use, I think we have to have higher standards with regard to what foster parents do. | ||
| But states right now are very confused about how to handle not only cannabis use, but a lot of drug use, frankly. | ||
| I mean, you know, states like Oregon had this whole experiment with the question of, you know, let's, we're going to basically legalize everything several years ago. | ||
| And that actually, you know, really contributed a significant amount to the child welfare crisis that was going on in Oregon because now you would have parents who was perfectly legal for them to possess and use heroin or cocaine. | ||
| And the state could not get those, you know, could not figure out how to deal with those parents because many of them were not doing a good job caring for their children. | ||
| But what they were doing was technically not illegal. | ||
| So that presented all sorts of problems. | ||
| I do also want to address the last part of the question, which was about essentially about babies who are born substance exposed and mothers who are using whether it's cannabis or heroin or whatever while they're pregnant. | ||
| Unfortunately, a lot of states have moved in the direction away from reporting those incidents. | ||
| Some states have announced that they will report a substance exposed child, but only anonymously. | ||
| That is to say, we don't know who that child is. | ||
| It's just like they're counting the number of babies who are born substance exposed. | ||
| This is a huge problem across the country. | ||
| And there's no follow-up in some states, like New Mexico, for instance. | ||
| A baby born substance exposed. | ||
| A mother is simply handed something called a voluntary plan of safe care, where the mother is, you know, might have just handed brochures about drug rehab programs, but she is sent on her way and there's no report made to child protective services. | ||
| And I think a lot of Americans are very concerned about the danger that that implies there. | ||
| What is happening when this mother, who is clearly suffering from addiction? | ||
| I mean, this is a mother who could not give up, you know, heroin or crack or whatever it is during the course of her pregnancy, and we're sending her home with a brochure about drug rehab. | ||
| What is the likelihood that when she has a baby who may also be medically compromised because of the substances that they were exposed to in utero, they're going home with that mother. | ||
| The baby, you know, may be crying, may have other difficulties, you know, other medical difficulties that that mother is not prepared to deal with. | ||
| I don't think that's really the point at which she's going to start to decide to get clean. | ||
| And so, but we have no one, no way of being that mother being accountable, no way of checking up on that family afterwards. | ||
| And frankly, a lot of those children are coming back into the system as being severely abused or neglected. | ||
| And a surprising number of child maltreatment fatalities are coming back that way. | ||
| That we knew that this baby was born substance exposed, but we did not do anything to intervene. | ||
| Brenda from Manchester, Washington, who called in on the foster care experience line, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you. | |
| Thank you for this topic. | ||
| I'm a foster parent. | ||
| We have had R2 since they were one and three. | ||
| They are now four and six. | ||
| We have been in a permanency plan to adopt for two years now. | ||
| You are absolutely right about the reunification. | ||
| They put too much emphasis on reunification. | ||
| Forcing a parent to be a parent that does not want to be a parent makes no sense. | ||
| R2, she was headbanging and crying. | ||
| He was stomping and roaring. | ||
| They are now well adjusted. | ||
| Little guy's in kindergarten now, and she's in preschool. | ||
| And they're doing so well, but they just keep wanting to forcing these parents. | ||
| Their visit record is horrendous. | ||
| We are a couple of hours away from the parents. | ||
| So they transport them through a visit specialist, and then sometimes they don't show up. | ||
| So the kids come back so dejected. | ||
| I've been trying making some headway on that. | ||
| So now they have to meet all summer long. | ||
| My goodness, we had no summer. | ||
| We had to be up at six, Saturday, and Sunday on the chance that there would be a visit. | ||
| And you cannot hide the visits from the children when they know they're getting up that early and feeling the dejection from the parent. | ||
| We are hopefully making progress. | ||
| They bifurcated the cases because of the paternal issue. | ||
| They have different fathers. | ||
| And then the father of the boy is dead. | ||
| And so they were going to actually terminate that one. | ||
| And I was so elated. | ||
| And then I found out they were not going to terminate her. | ||
| And I said, how can you send her off to see her mother when the boy is the only one that wants to see the mother? | ||
| She doesn't even know the mother. | ||
| She doesn't want to see her. | ||
| She has no memory of her. | ||
| So you are absolutely right about the reunification. | ||
| She's also, these are the third and fourth children. | ||
| I don't know about the older. | ||
| These are the second and third children. | ||
| She has five. | ||
| She just had another child born addicted taken from her in custody. | ||
| There is definitely something wrong. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Children need to be with their parents. | ||
| But if the parents are not functioning parents and they have families that want them, let them have them. | ||
| That was Brenda from Manchester. | ||
| I wonder if you can respond to the focus on reunification with the families. | ||
| Yeah, unfortunately, you know, that story is not an uncommon one, you know, especially when you're dealing with very young children, you know, and a parent has already demonstrated that they can't or won't, you know, care for these children. | ||
| You know, we really need to think about what the timeline is for these children. | ||
| So, you know, there is a federal law that was passed in the 90s with complete bipartisan support called the Adoption and Safe Families Act. | ||
| And it said that if a child has been, you know, in foster care for 18 of the last 22 months, the state is supposed to, for 15 of the last 22 months, I'm sorry, the state is supposed to move to terminate parental rights. | ||
| That means that the child would be free to be adopted by another family member or by a foster parent or adoptive parent who is licensed and has been recruited for that. | ||
| And unfortunately, states just blow by these deadlines all the time. | ||
| I mean, there are states where you could be waiting three, four, five years and a child is still going back and forth as these attempts at reunification are made. | ||
| And I should say, we've talked a lot about the agencies, but really family courts are the ones that are responsible for making the final decisions here. | ||
| And so it's not only the child welfare workers who are sort of pushing this reunification, it's also these family court judges who believe that the kids should be with their biological parents no matter what. | ||
| And I think we just don't understand what the timelines are like. | ||
| You know, six months in the life of an adult, you know, is six months. | ||
| Six months in the life of a two-year-old, those are extraordinarily important years for making sure that a child is attached and feels secure with a caregiver and to have that child going back and forth. | ||
| And I think that, you know, the caller's explanations about visitations are very important too. | ||
| To have a child who is old enough to understand, three, four, five, to understand that they keep going to visit this parent of theirs who is not showing up for these visits. | ||
| It is devastating for them. | ||
| It makes them feel like they're insecure, like they're unwanted, like they're unloved. | ||
| And I think, you know, obviously, in some ways, the last of our concerns are the feelings of foster parents because, you know, they are signing up for a lot of heartache no matter what, no matter how these cases turn out. | ||
| But it is, you know, I think a lot of foster parents do feel like, you know, am I making this situation better? | ||
| Like I got, I came into this in order to care for these children. | ||
| Yes, I understood there was a good chance they would end up back with their parents. | ||
| But am I now contributing to the trauma by being part of this system where kids are constantly having to be uprooted and go back and forth because of this almost ideology of reunification that is going on here, despite all the evidence that, as this caller said, the parents don't want to parent or just simply cannot parent. | ||
| You know, we sometimes as a system really need to face that reality. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Roberta from California, you're next. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm a volunteer in an amazing support nonprofit in San Diego that supports the foster youths that are aging out. | ||
| And I have to applaud the efforts of your guests to keep the kids in their home. | ||
| Just the removal is just another massive trauma in their life. | ||
| But this organization is a nonprofit. | ||
| It's grown to be governed mainly by former Foster youth and it has a vast number of mentors. | ||
| A great proportion are former foster youth. | ||
| Because of the void that foster children that are moved around a lot of not having a family and learning so much from the social development and life skills from just occupying in a family. | ||
| I think such things as financial management, contracts, how not to get ripped off at auto repairs, organization, get into school and trade schools. | ||
| There's even people that will help them write their essays to get into college. | ||
| They're provided with the electronics that they need for their education. | ||
| And so this is, as I said, a nonprofit that joins with the state, but really helps fill the void of being ripped up from out of school, as your other callers described, moving from home to home with a brown bag with their belongings, new faces all the time, no school records. | ||
| How do you apply for places when you've been in 15 schools in your lifetime? | ||
| So there's a lot of assets out there. | ||
| First of all, with these former people. | ||
| Roberta, can I ask you to repeat the name of that organization you're describing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's called Just in Time for Foster Youth. | |
| Naomi, I wonder if you can talk about those type of programs across the country. | ||
| Are there enough of them? | ||
| Do they help the situation when it comes to the foster care system? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And there are a lot of these programs now. | ||
| I think the most important part are the mentorships, the relationships that they're forming with other adults. | ||
| I think a lot of people, you know, unfortunately sort of think about this in terms of material supplies. | ||
| Like, obviously, we don't want them traveling around with trash bags of their stuff. | ||
| But I think the mentorships and the ability of adults to sort of come into their lives and really try to help them navigate these adult systems, whether that's getting a driver's license or financial management or figuring out how to find the right career for themselves. | ||
| And really just being there to make sure that they're staying on kind of this straight and narrow path toward adulthood is very, very important. | ||
| But I do want to just address this question about kind of the kids moving around a lot before they age out. | ||
| You know, that is what is going on in the system. | ||
| Again, we need to kind of look back at what has happened before the kids reach 16 or 17 or 18. | ||
| Many of these kids have been left for long periods of time in these very abusive and neglectful homes because we are hoping that this family situation works out. | ||
| But once you finally decide to remove a child from that situation, that child often has significant emotional behavioral dysregulation. | ||
| And then you try to take that child and put them into a typical foster home. | ||
| And most parents, even great parents, are going to have a lot of trouble dealing with those kind of behaviors. | ||
| Many of those children actually are going to need even residential stays in psychiatric programs in order to handle some of what has happened. | ||
| And frankly, some of what we have forced to happen by leaving them in these horrible situations. | ||
| And so what happens is then, oh, we'll try you in this foster home. | ||
| We'll try you in that foster home. | ||
| We'll try you. | ||
| The kids will start to act out. | ||
| The parents will be overwhelmed. | ||
| Some of these kids are going to need 24-7 supervision. | ||
| We can't ask that of a lot of most foster parents. | ||
| They might need to have some kind of much more significant psychiatric intervention. | ||
| So, I'm just, you know, I am so concerned about the kids who are aging out, but I also want us to start to think back to what we could have done to prevent this situation. | ||
| And one of the things that we need to think about is how long are we leaving kids in abusive and neglectful homes such that their emotional and behavioral problems become so difficult that it then becomes very hard to find them a permanent family. | ||
| Rick from Texas, you get the last question or comment here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's so sad hearing about all these things. | ||
| I'm not very familiar with the system and all the good things that come in life. | ||
| Anytime there's something bad or something good that can come from it, the only thing I know, and I would like to mention maybe there's something they could do about it, is I've seen sometimes the way the process starts at CPS. | ||
| CPS used to be something that there was money to help with the kids, and that's why they started coming out instead of every 10 years when we had the census, every five years to see if there was a need they could meet with the kids. | ||
| And somewhere along the line, the culture started turning into you being a good parent. | ||
| And the first place is how you define a parent is if you see it's a man, it's like a thing or has a similar fiber or something like that. | ||
| Rick, we're running out of time here. | ||
| What's your question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the form that I've seen, a girl that I know received, she said the form read in the interest of, and it had a 2025 FLD-011281. | |
| And this is a mutual fund that trades in Bitcoin. | ||
| But then it listed the mother and then the kids. | ||
| And it gave the appearance that it's in the interest of the kids, but it was in the interest of defunding whatever resources they had set aside for these kids, putting them in this trust fund, and then paying off a foster fund. | ||
| Rick, do you have a question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, why is it in the interest of the expert that's there? | |
| What's the 2025-FLD-00? | ||
| Okay, we're going to have to wrap that conversation. | ||
| Naomi Schaefer-Reilly is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| Thank you so much for joining us this morning. | ||
| More of your calls after this break. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| Start calling in now. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independence, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday with our guest famed chef and global relief entrepreneur, Jose Andres. | |
| His books on reimagining food include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader, David Rubinstein. | ||
| Are people afraid of inviting you over to their house for dinner because they'd be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When people cook with love for you, it is great, but you know, you know, the dry turk in Thanksgiving is unnegotiable. | |
| It's always dry. | ||
| But yeah, turk is hard so dry. | ||
| That's why gravy exists. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with Jose Andres, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo quarter. | |
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| This is now open forum where you can call in and talk about any public policy or political issue that you want to talk about. | ||
| While we wait for your calls to come in, I'm going to read you some headlines from this week. | ||
| Something that captivated Washington obviously was this question about sedition. | ||
| It came after Democratic lawmakers put out a now viral video telling military members that they should not follow unlawful orders if made by the president. | ||
| President Trump responded in kind. | ||
| An Axio's headline said, quote, punishable by death, Trump slams dim video urging troops to reject illegal orders. | ||
| In this piece, they write that the president on True Social wrote, quote, this is really bad and dangerous to our country. | ||
| Their words cannot be allowed to stand. | ||
| Seditious behavior from traitors, lock them up. | ||
| Another post made just over an hour later used similar language. | ||
| In that post, Trump wrote, seditious behavior punishable by death. | ||
| Now, at the White House press secretary, at the White House press briefing earlier this week, Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, was asked about these comments from the president repeatedly. | ||
| Take a listen to our answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump accused six Democratic lawmakers of seditious behavior punishable by death. | |
| Just to be clear, does the president want to execute members of Congress? | ||
| No. | ||
| Let's be clear about what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the president's response, but not what brought the president to responding in this way. | ||
| You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president's lawful orders. | ||
| The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command. | ||
| And if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed. | ||
| It can lead to chaos. | ||
| And that's what these members of Congress who swore an oath to to abide by the Constitution are essentially encouraging. | ||
| We have 1.3 active duty service members in this country. | ||
| And if they hear this radical message from sitting members of Congress, that could inspire chaos and it could incite violence and it certainly could disrupt the chain of command. | ||
| These three members of Congress, I will also add, knew exactly what they were doing. | ||
| You look at Alyssa Slotkin. | ||
| She's a former member of the CIA. | ||
| Mark Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy. | ||
| Maggie Goodlander was a naval officer. | ||
| And notably, she was also, she is also the wife of Joe Biden's National Security former advisor, Jake Sullivan. | ||
| And so these members knew what they were doing. | ||
| They were leading into their credentials as former members of our military, as veterans, as former members of the national security apparatus to signal to people serving under this commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office. | ||
| That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law. | ||
| I'm not a lawyer. | ||
| I'll leave that to the Department of Justice and the Department of War to decide. | ||
| That was Caroline Lovett from the White House Briefing Room earlier this week. | ||
| This is open forum. | ||
| You can talk about any public policy or political issue that you want. | ||
| And I'll just remind viewers that what those Democrats said in the video is that you can refuse illegal orders. | ||
| You must refuse illegal orders. | ||
| And Sambi from Oakland, California, a Democrat, your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm calling in about the foster care system. | |
| Is it okay for me to speak on that? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That guest has left us, but if you have a comment, would love to hear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| I am a foster mom, and I've had 17 foster children. | ||
| The last child that I had was addicted to substance abuse when I picked him up from the hospital when he was two days old. | ||
| And I had to nurse him back to health. | ||
| I was not told that the baby was addicted. | ||
| And that is a strike for the system for not letting foster parents know the children that they're dealing with. | ||
| But I was able to overcome that. | ||
| And I eventually had to adopt him because I saw that the system was broken and they allowed his mother to leave the hospital and not name him. | ||
| And because he was not named, nor giving a birth certificate, nor giving a social security card number, he was up for trafficking. | ||
| The system trafficks the children. | ||
| Mari from New York and Independent, your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, what that last caller said just really took me. | |
| I mean, that was heavy. | ||
| There's something very wrong about our foster care system, and we have got to do something about it. | ||
| And I really wanted to call in the last segment as well, but I want to say this: you know, even in situations where there is domestic violence happening in the home and the children are taken from the mother who is being abused, there is a travesty that is happening to those children. | ||
| They're led to believe that something is wrong with the other parent and so forth. | ||
| And the whole system works with these false narratives to children. | ||
| We've got to protect our children and we have got to be able to tell them the truth. | ||
| So I, you know, always being solution-oriented, started a petition on change.org. | ||
| It's www.change.org forward slash letter to legislation. | ||
| And I've gotten almost every single elected official in New York City and state to sign on to this assembly member, state senators, local council members to sign on to this to do something about protecting our children from systematic oppression, especially in matters of domestic violence. | ||
| And what the last caller just said about children being trafficked, this is what we have got to watch out for, especially in this Epstein situation. | ||
| We have got to look at this whole entire foster care system and the whole family court system about what's happening. | ||
| We even do court tours in the family court now. | ||
| Lisa from Alexandria, Virginia, a Republican. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to speak out about these videos that the Congresspeople had made about you can defy unlawful orders if you're a service member. | ||
| And my thing is that they should have explained you can go through your chain of command and request it. | ||
| Because if everybody in the military is going to defy what I'm a service member and I say, well, I think that's unlawful. | ||
| So I'm not going to do it. | ||
| You are being insubordinate. | ||
| And to just do a commercial saying, defy unlawful orders is really triggering something that's already in our non-military community where people are just going out and attacking ICE officers and disrupting things. | ||
| If you have disruption in the chain of command in the military, to me, that puts, I'm a citizen of America. | ||
| I'm like, I feel unsafe if any person in the military can just say, well, it's unlawful, so I'm going to defy it. | ||
| I think that we're going down a really dangerous path. | ||
| That was Lisa, a Republican. | ||
| Going back to that Axios article that I read earlier, it said that the lawmakers did not specify what unlawful orders they were referring to in the video. | ||
| However, Representative Jason Crowe said in a Fox News interview Wednesday that the video was just a quote simple reminder about their legal obligations. | ||
| He added that service members are often put in very difficult positions and that Trump has quote put them in very difficult positions and has alluded to putting them in even more difficult positions in the months and years ahead. | ||
| Rudy from Sun City, California, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| If your name is Jasmine, I would like to welcome you aboard. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're welcome. | ||
| My message today is to my American citizens that have probably voted for Donald. | ||
| And I'd like to know how they feel being accosted now by government officials for simply for what they look like. | ||
| It's a pretty sad day when that happens to American citizens on the street. | ||
| Okay, thank you very much, Jasmine. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tony from Pennsylvania, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I was also called in to get into the foster care discussion. | ||
| And, you know, what strikes me is many of the issues that we face as a country, being the richest country in the world, are pretty easy to solve. | ||
| Like health care, I'll say guns, and even how you take care of foster kids. | ||
| The problem is it's the values. | ||
| It's really the systems that are in place. | ||
| They're not really designed to take care of the people. | ||
| And all you have to do is look at how this country treated the Epstein victims. | ||
| We're talking about foster kids. | ||
| You're talking about throwaway kids and throwaway people and populations. | ||
| And so when you think about the Epstein victims, you have like, you know, decade after decade, it's being covered up at the local level, the state level, the federal level, at all levels. | ||
| And so you have to ask why. | ||
| And then the other piece about the foster care kids is that, you know, I think about 90% of those will do time, and it's a really sad thing. | ||
| The piece that I want to say is that I think the way that this world is sort of moving the way we're treating maybe the Palestinians and the people in Gaza, that's sort of the future, you know, of how we treat unwanted populations. | ||
| And I just hope and pray that I don't become one of those unwanted populations that's deemed a problem because it sounds like they can actually exterminate you, literally exterminate you, and then call people that call in and protest against that anti-Semitic when you're killing and genociding a Semitic people. | ||
| That was Tony from Pennsylvania. | ||
| Another issue that we saw happen in the headlines across Washington, D.C. this week was the issue of the stock ban bill. | ||
| We have from Notice an article that the headline reads, this is a fist fight. | ||
| Lawmakers Pursue Stock Ban Bill as pressure on leadership grows. | ||
| A prohibition on federal lawmakers owning individual stocks got a boost Wednesday, but not everybody is on board. | ||
| This is a topic that came up on Ceasefire, which is airing right after this program at 10 a.m. | ||
| Here on C-SPAN, take a listen to a part of that conversation. | ||
| Earlier this week, you said this place is crooked as a dog's leg when you were talking about a bipartisan group of lawmakers discussing a bill that would ban members of Congress from engaging in insider trade. | ||
| Yeah, and everybody wants Not Pelosi. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, she's made, what is it, an incredible return on her investments, obviously, but she's like number 11 in the top 15. | ||
| It seems like a rule that people should get. | ||
| Oh, you know, that's right. | ||
| It seems like maybe Congress would do what's right, but they're not going to. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Because they're greedy, and you all let us do it. | ||
| 12% of the population goes to the dadgum polls, and they get re-elected every dadgum time. | ||
| It's crooked. | ||
| Go to the Unusual Wells website, read the top 100. | ||
| I'm not in it. | ||
| I think we're doing some insider trading. | ||
| I think some people have some genuine knowledge and grasp of the economic system. | ||
| Case in point, Jared Moskowitz, he was successful before he got to Congress. | ||
| But these guys get in Congress, not worth anything, and they leave worth multi-million dollars. | ||
| Man, we're briefed on stuff before you get it. | ||
| We have people's ears. | ||
| People are doing six, seven hundred trades a year. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
| That was Congressman Tim Burchett on our ceasefire program. | ||
| That will be airing at 10 a.m. right after Washington Journal. | ||
| Now back to our viewer calls. | ||
| This is Open Forum. | ||
| Larry from Tennessee, a Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I want to say something about the Epstein business and now this military business that the Democrats have gotten into. | ||
| Anytime we start listening to all the different justifications and so forth, rationalizations, we have wandered off into the forest where the trees are no longer visible. | ||
| Both issues are not about the issues. | ||
| They're about the smear. | ||
| When people are told, service members are told to defy orders, I don't get off in the whether it's legal or illegal. | ||
| I look for the motive of the people, these Democrats that are saying the same way with the Epstein issues. | ||
| It's about the smear. | ||
| Trump has been slimed, and you're not going to ever change any of that, regardless of the outcome. | ||
| The intent of these people doing this is to slime and smear. | ||
| They've been successful in much of it, and I'm sure they will continue to do so. | ||
| Mac from Germantown, Maryland, a Democrat. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm calling to comment on the ridiculous comment by the president calling accusing the Democrats of seditious comments. | |
| You know, the military, the military has both the Democrats and Republicans serving in it. | ||
| There's a lot of Democrats in the military. | ||
| There's a lot of Republicans. | ||
| There's a lot of independent. | ||
| This is the same president that says that he stood on the open pullium and said he hates opponents. | ||
| He hates the Democrats. | ||
| This is calling for the execution of publicly elected congresspeople. | ||
| It's wrong. | ||
| This is the sin in the line. | ||
| This is the straw that breaks the camel's back. | ||
| And I think members of Congress, specifically the Democrats and fair-minded Republicans, the need to write an article of impeachment. | ||
| This president, on this particular issue, he should be impeached. | ||
| And I think people should stand up against this comment about this seditious act comment that he made. | ||
| There should be protest asking him to, there should be protest in the street for him to step down. | ||
| George from Ellicott City, Maryland, an independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your line is open. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| My question was for the previous guest, unfortunately. | ||
| But I wanted to ask her, has there ever been a study between these adopted children or fostered children with the LGBTQ community? | ||
| Because my concern is you have a child or baby from a mommy and daddy family and being put into a daddy and daddy family. | ||
| I mean, I'm not sure what that is. | ||
| I mean, do they prepare those children for that? | ||
| I mean, how confusing would that be? | ||
| Well, you're right, George, that that guest has moved on. | ||
| We will take your question and perhaps somebody in the control room can find an answer to whether or not there have been studies on that issue. | ||
| Bruce from Lexington, Kentucky, a Republican. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks. | |
| Thank you, Call. | ||
| These Democrats lie, lie, lie. | ||
| They rigged their last three presidential primaries to the fact that they put up a person that didn't receive one vote to run for president. | ||
| They said we could keep our doctors with the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| They said it wouldn't add to the deficit. | ||
| They said it would save families $2,500 a year. | ||
| Now they're wanting $150 billion a year and not adding to the deficit. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| And they're the Democratic Party when they rig their own elections, and they're the ones that are supposed to be protecting democracy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think it's the lies that they spill are just so many. | ||
| How can you ever believe anything they say? | ||
| They do not tell the truth. | ||
| Bruce, on the issue of health care, since you brought it up, I wonder what you make of the current conversation about the extension of the Affordable Care Act, Obama, excuse me, Obamacare COVID subsidies. | ||
| Do you believe that Congress and the White House should extend those to save people from skyrocketing premiums? | ||
| Would you like to see Congress offer some sort of replacement? | ||
| Where are you on that specific issue on health care? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, the Affordable Care Act, it's obvious, man. | |
| It's a failure. | ||
| Families didn't save $2,500 a year. | ||
| Premiums have gone up 169% since 2013. | ||
| Something else needs to be done, and the truth needs to be told. | ||
| This is not working. | ||
| We can't afford another $1.5 trillion to dump into this. | ||
| It's bad money. | ||
| It's good money after bad. | ||
| I want some kind of new system. | ||
| Michael from Connecticut and Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yeah, as of what the press conference with the speaker there and her saying, lawful orders, it's obvious, and it should be obvious to everyone, that they said unlawful orders. | ||
| So the first thing that came out of her mouth was just another lie. | ||
| Everything that comes out of Trump's mouth is a total lie. | ||
| On the Epstein thing, you know, he's trying to disavow all of it. | ||
| Epstein had a picture of Donald Trump on his desk. | ||
| Let me ask you, how many guys out there have a picture of your best friend on your desk? | ||
| I don't think that's happening. | ||
| As far as the health care thing is, how many years have they had to put up a new bill and make it happen? | ||
| And they come up with nothing. | ||
| Everything Trump says is a lie. | ||
| And the deficit is going up and up and up. | ||
| But, oh, we're making trillions of dollars on all these tariffs. | ||
| Why isn't the deficit going down? | ||
| Where's all that money from this tariffs going? | ||
| I'm paying twice as much, $18.99 for a thing of coffee that used to be $8.99. | ||
| I mean, this is making America great. | ||
| Hey, people out there who voted for Trump, are you feeling great? | ||
| On Michael's point about the Epstein files, here's President Trump and the Oval Office earlier this week when asked about the Epstein files by an ABC reporter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? | |
| Why not just do it that way? | ||
| It's not the question that I mind. | ||
| It's your attitude. | ||
| I think you are a terrible reporter. | ||
| It's the way you ask these questions. | ||
| You start off with a man who's highly respected asking him a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question. | ||
| And you could even ask that same exact question nicely. | ||
| You're all psyched. | ||
| Somebody psyches you over at ABC. | ||
| You're going to psych. | ||
| You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter. | ||
| As far as the Epstein files is, I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert. | ||
| But I guess I turned out to be right. | ||
| But you know who does have? | ||
| Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, who ran Harvard, was with him every single night, every single weekend. | ||
| They lived together. | ||
| They went to his island many times. | ||
| I never did. | ||
| Andrew Weissman here. | ||
| All these guys were friends of his. | ||
| You don't even talk about those people. | ||
| You just keep going on the Epstein files. | ||
| And what the Epstein is, is a Democrat hoax to try and get me not to be able to talk about the $21 trillion that I talked about today. | ||
| It's a hoax. | ||
| Now, I just got a little report, and I put it in my pocket, of all the money that he's given to Democrats. | ||
| He gave me none, zero, no money to me. | ||
| But he gave money to Democrats. | ||
| And people are wise to your hoax. | ||
| And ABC is, your company, your crappy company, is one of the perpetrators. | ||
| And I'll tell you something. | ||
| I'll tell you something. | ||
| I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it's so wrong. | ||
| And we have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that because I think when you come in and when you're 97% negative to Trump and then Trump wins the election in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible and you're not credible as a reporter. | ||
| So I've answered your question. | ||
| You should go and look at the Democrats who received money from Epstein, who spent their time. | ||
| Larry Summers was with them all the time. | ||
| That creep of the fund guy was with them all the time. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Reed Hoffman. | |
| Reid Hoffman. | ||
| I don't know Reid Hoffman, but I know he spends a lot of money on the radical left. | ||
| Reed Hoffman, in my opinion, should be under investigation. | ||
| He's a sleazebag. | ||
| And those are the people, but they don't get any press. | ||
| They don't get any news. | ||
| And you're not after the radical left because you're a radical left network. | ||
| But I think the way you ask a question with the anger and the meanness is terrible. | ||
| You ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter. | ||
| No more questions from you. | ||
| That was President Trump earlier this week in the Oval Office after being asked about the Epstein files. | ||
| I want to go back to a question from George from Maryland who asked about what happens or if there are any case studies around LGBTQ youth and the foster care system. | ||
| We found an article from LGBTQ Nation, an online news magazine, reporting on issues relevant to this. | ||
| They said, quote, LGBTQ plus youth are disproportionately represented in the foster care system. | ||
| A 2019 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that 30.4% of foster youth identified as LGBTQ plus and 5% identify as trans, compared to 11.2% and 1.7% respectively of non-foster youth. | ||
| The organization Children's Rights cites several other stories regarding the increased challenges LGBTQ plus youth face in the foster care system, including the fact that 44% have been removed, thrown out, or run away from their home as a result of their identities. | ||
| These youth are also at high risk of abuse, institutionalization, and indiscrimination, and are less likely to find a permanent home before aging out. | ||
| Turning back to our calls, Kathleen from Dayton, Ohio, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jasmine, I've been watching C-SPAN, Washington Journal, for 35 years, and you are one of the best editions I can imagine. | |
| You're so gracious and well informed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Measured. | |
| You're incredible. | ||
| I'm not kidding you. | ||
| I just really feel that about you. | ||
| It's wonderful to see you and hear you. | ||
| I hope I get as much time as the last four gentlemen who called in. | ||
| But I have three requests to C-SPAN or Washington Journal. | ||
| One I've asked for over and over again, which is to have more Palestinian guests on, like Nora Arakot, Barghouti, Zogby, Diana Butto, people who can talk about what's happening in Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Palestine being both of those internationally recognized pieces of land. | ||
| And so please have more Palestinian guests on. | ||
| On the wages issue, it's so interesting during this whole SNAP issue. | ||
| I didn't, I'm a junkie with the media, left, right, and center. | ||
| And not once did I hear any of the hosts or guests when they're talking about SNAP or need for SNAP. | ||
| I didn't hear anybody talk about what the wages are out there. | ||
| You know, I don't hear Republicans or Dems talking about people like here in Dayton, Ohio making $12 an hour at Family Dollar on Wayne Avenue. | ||
| Walmart employees making $14 four years ago when I was asking them, they were making $11 and $11.50. | ||
| An assistant manager at Dollar Tree making $11.50 an hour. | ||
| People at Kroger starting out at $12 an hour. | ||
| These are multi-billion dollar for-profit companies paying people $12, $13 an hour. | ||
| I mean, we wonder why people need food stamps and help with their rent. | ||
| What are we doing making it easier for multi-billion dollar for-profit companies making, I mean, the wages need to go up, whether it's different for these huge companies like Amazon, who are making billions of dollars off the backs of workers. | ||
| So please do a program on wages on illegal immigrants. | ||
| I keep wondering over the decades, you know, most of these people are, you know, come into our country because they're struggling in their own. | ||
| And why don't we see more of the going after, if they want to turn off the job faucet, go after the people who hire illegal immigrants, fine them, jail them. | ||
| I'm not against illegal immigrants at all, but I am against them being taken advantage of. | ||
| And I live in Dayton, Ohio part of the year in Boulder. | ||
| And there's illegal immigrants all over Boulder where generally very white people are paying these illegal immigrants pathetic wages. | ||
| That was Kathleen from Dayton, Ohio. | ||
| John from New York, a Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| A couple of things real quick. | ||
| The Epstein file is more important things than the Epstein files. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Trump, I tell people all the time, I talk to people all the time, they're complaining about prices, the immigration. | ||
| His main issue is immigration. | ||
| You come to this country illegally, you go back, okay? | ||
| What they're doing to our law enforcement, ICE, and everything else is wrong, wrong, wrong. | ||
| You come here illegally, whether you're a criminal or not, you get deported. | ||
| I tell people, sit in Trump's shoes, okay? | ||
| Sit in his shoes. | ||
| And after the last four years, what he's done, I wouldn't want to sit in his shoes. | ||
| God bless President Trump. | ||
| He's doing a great job. | ||
| Give the man a chance, okay? | ||
| Give him a chance. | ||
| And Mississippi, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to say, you know, I don't know why everyone is so surprised at how they do the young lady in Ohio. | |
| America was built off of slavery. | ||
| You enslaved the Africans for 400 years. | ||
| You just get them freedom, what, 60 years ago in 1965? | ||
| And you've had redlining. | ||
| You've assassinated their leaders with CORE and TELPRO. | ||
| You've put drugs into their neighborhoods. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| I love this country. | ||
| I serve this country. | ||
| But at the same time, I got to be real and say that maybe all the other races have gotten into a room with their leaders and decided, okay, we're going to keep the African race down because we have to pay the same back. | ||
| We have to pay the same money back as everybody else. | ||
| Daryl from Fall Brook, California, a Democrat. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
| We've got about 30 seconds left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| I'm a retired 20-year veteran. | ||
| Articles 90 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice make arrangements for military members to disobey unlawful orders. | ||
| And an unlawful order is any law order that is not in line with the Constitution of the United States. | ||
| We swear an oath. | ||
| And that's all we have for Washington Journal today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Another edition comes to you tomorrow at 7 a.m. C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | |
| From Washington, D.C. to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Sunday morning, we'll talk about the Trump administration, the future of the Republican Party, and political news of the day with Rich Lowry of the National Review. | ||
| And Progressive Talk Show host Tom Hardman discusses Trump administration policies, the Democrats' agenda, and the progressive movement. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Here's what's ahead. | ||
| Next, key events from this week's summit in Washington, D.C. between U.S. leaders and Saudi officials. | ||
| First, the Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where they were questioned about the killing of an American journalist at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. | ||
| After that, the White House dinner with President Trump and the Crown Prince. | ||
| Both the president and the prince talked about U.S.-Saudi cooperation. | ||
| And later, remarks by the President and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at a U.S.-Saudi investment forum. | ||
| Join BookTV this weekend for the 2025 Miami Book Fair at Miami-Dade College. | ||
| Highlights include discussions with historian Pamela Nadel with her book Anti-Semitism, an American Tradition, an investigation into the depths of anti-Semitism's history and its recent manifestations. | ||
| Cartoonist Art Spiegelman revisits his Pulitzer Prize winning series Mouse in his book Meta Mouse. | ||
| The president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, with his book, The Pursuit of Liberty, which explores clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson and the lasting effects on the power dynamics in America. | ||
| And CNN's Abby Phillip, with her book, A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power. | ||
| Book TV will also feature author interviews with viewer Collins, with MSNBC's Jonathan Cape Hart, and his memoir, Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home. | ||
| Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vinman and his book, The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. | ||
| Journalist Fez Siddiqui with Hubris Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk, biographer Sam Tannenhaus, and his book, Buckley, capturing the facets and phases of writer and intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., and documentary filmmaker Laurie Gwen Shapiro on her book, The Aviator and the Showman: The Untold Story of Amelia Earhart's decade-long marriage to publisher and explorer George Putnam. | ||
| Watch the Miami Book Fair this weekend on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. | ||
| Also, be sure to get the full festival schedule online at booktv.org. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday with our guest-famed chef and global relief entrepreneur, Jose Andres. | ||
| His books on reimagining food include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein. | ||
| Are people afraid of inviting you over to their house for dinner because they'd be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When people cook with love for you, it is great, but you know, you know, the dry turkey in Thanksgiving is unnegotiable. | |
| It's always dry. | ||
| But yeah, turkeys are so dry. | ||
| That's why gravy exists. | ||
| watch america's book club with jose andres sunday at 6 p.m and 9 p.m eastern and pacific only on c-span c-span democracy unfiltered We're funded by these television companies and more, including Buckeye Broadband. | ||
| Buckeye Broadband supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| President Trump welcomed the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to Washington, D.C. this week. | ||
| In addition to remarks from the Oval Office, there was a White House dinner held in his honor. | ||
| First, we'll show their meeting in the Oval Office, then the scene as the royal party arrived for dinner, and later remarks by the president and the prince to attendees. | ||
| Well, thank you very much, everybody. | ||
| We have an extremely respected man in the Oval Office today and a friend of mine for a long time, very good friend of mine. | ||
| And I'm very proud of the job he's done. | ||
| What he's done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else. | ||
| And he's the crown prince, the future king. | ||
| And I just want to pay my greatest respect to your father, King, who is an amazing man. | ||
| I met him early on. | ||
| He greeted me at the airport at an age that was pretty high up there. | ||
| And it was about 117 degrees. | ||
| And he was standing on the red carpet as I came out of the plane. | ||
| And he's amazing. | ||
| And when I met his brilliant son, it was at the Oval Office shortly thereafter. | ||
| You came in representing the country. | ||
| And I called the father. | ||
| I said, this guy is fantastic. | ||
| And I don't know if that helped you or hurt you, but obviously it couldn't have hurt too much because here you are, right? | ||
| But we had a great meeting, and the office has changed quite a bit. | ||
| And we inherited a mess. | ||
| You actually told me you thought the country was in big trouble. | ||
| I'm not going to use the exact word that you use. | ||
| I refuse to say that you thought our country was dead a year and a half, two years ago. | ||
| But our country was in trouble, and now we have the hottest country in the world. | ||
| You said that also. | ||
| And we do. | ||
| The United States is right now the hottest country in the world. | ||
| And between the tariffs and the election, November 5th election, we've done things that nobody can believe. | ||
| $21 trillion will be the amount invested in the United States or committed to invest in one year. | ||
| So I'm here in nine months. | ||
| We're up to almost $18 trillion. | ||
| Biden, as an example, the Biden administration, if you call it that, it's not, to me, it was the Biden lack of administration. | ||
| They were less than $1 trillion for four years. | ||
| We're going to be $21 trillion for one year. | ||
| I think that's hard to believe. | ||
| The biggest in history was a certain country, $3 trillion. | ||
| We're going to be $21 trillion. | ||
| On top of that, prices are coming down. | ||
| We inherited a mess with high prices. | ||
| The worst inflation in the history of our country. | ||
| We had inflation that was a single four years, the worst inflation in the history of the United States. | ||
| Gas prices threw the roof. | ||
| And that's after destroying our petroleum reserve, which was meant for wars and big emergencies, not to try and win an election. | ||
| They opened up the reserve so that people get $3 less in gasoline. | ||
| And it didn't work. | ||
| They got about 3 cents less. | ||
| Because as big as those reserves are, they're peanuts when you're talking about that kind of traffic. | ||
| And we're rebuilding the reserves. | ||
| We're doing all of this. | ||
| And we've done a job. | ||
| We're also bringing down prices very substantially. | ||
| And we've already brought them down very, very substantially. | ||
| Gasoline is way down. | ||
| I think you'll be seeing $2 gasoline. | ||
| But we're now at $2.50, $2.45. | ||
| Some are lower than that. | ||
| It was $4.50, $5, $6, $350, $375, underbiden, all different numbers, but way high. | ||
| And we have energy way down. | ||
| But the biggest thing to me, because I know what it means in jobs, is the fact that we're at over $17 trillion, Scott, and we expect to be around $20, $21 trillion in one year. | ||
| And that's many times bigger than in history. | ||
| The highest number was $3 trillion. | ||
| And we're going to be at $21 trillion. | ||
| That means new plants, new AI, new auto plants. | ||
| We have auto plants coming in from Canada, from Mexico, from Germany, from Japan. | ||
| Toyota just agreed to invest $10 billion on new auto plants, all-American workers. | ||
| We've never been in a position like this. | ||
| You can go back to the beginning. | ||
| Our country has never been in a position like this. | ||
| And it really is because of the fact that we use tariffs to bring all this money in. | ||
| And you're going to see the results in a year when these plants start to open up. | ||
| We have more plants under construction now than at any time in the history of our country. | ||
| And these are big plants. | ||
| These are the biggest plants anywhere in the world. | ||
| And I want to thank you because you've agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States. | ||
| And because my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I'm going to have to work on him. | ||
| But it's $600. | ||
| We could count on $600 billion, but that number could go up a little bit higher, yes. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| But we appreciate it very much. | ||
| So Saudi is going to be investing at least $600 billion. | ||
| And that means investments in plants, in companies, money on Wall Street, and what it really means for everybody that really counts as jobs, a lot of jobs. | ||
| We have a lot of jobs. | ||
| So I just want to thank you. | ||
| We've been really good friends for a long period of time. | ||
| We've always been on the same side of every issue. | ||
| I think we've done a great job in wiping out the nuclear capacity of Iran. | ||
| Nobody else could have done that. | ||
| No other president would have done it. | ||
| We had the pilots in the Oval Office right here. | ||
| We were celebrating a very successful attack. | ||
| So I had them in with that beautiful B-2 bomber that's over there. | ||
| And they said, sir, for 22 years we practiced this attack. | ||
| Our predecessors, these were very young guys. | ||
| So 22 years, they said our predecessors and us practiced the attack on Iran. | ||
| But no president ever gave us the go-ahead. | ||
| Three times a year they went out and they practiced the attack. | ||
| Nobody let us do it until you came along. | ||
| And I let them do it because it was the right thing to do. | ||
| You can't have a nuclear Iran. | ||
| And so we put you in a very good position. | ||
| But I just want to say it's an honor to be your friend and it's an honor that you're here. | ||
| And if you'd like to say a few words, but thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you, Mr. President. |