C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/01/2025) dives into the ACA subsidies crisis, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune promising a mid-December vote amid 26% premium hikes and calls for universal healthcare clashing with Republican HSA pushes. Rising electricity costs—driven by AI demand, grid upgrades, and fracking-era coal plant closures—expose regulatory failures, while debates over nuclear reactivation and hydrogen’s industrial role hint at energy policy shifts. Callers blame corporate influence, undocumented immigrants, and past tax cuts, but experts warn infrastructure delays will soon hit consumer bills hard. [Automatically generated summary]
Providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Congress returns later today from the Thanksgiving holiday recess.
The House is back at noon Eastern.
Later today, members will vote on legislation banning those who are involved in the October 7th terror attack on Israel from entering the U.S.
The Senate returns at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Lawmakers will vote to advance President Trump's nomination of David Bragdon to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Off the floor, talks are expected to continue on health care reform proposals to extend health care subsidies, set to expire at the end of the year.
Majority Leader Thun has promised to hold a floor vote on healthcare legislation by mid-December as part of the deal to end the government shutdown.
Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, the Senate on C-SPAN 2, and all of our congressional coverage on our free video app, C-SPAN Now, and our website, c-span.org.
Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, Wall Street Journal reporter Natalie Andrews and Punch Bowl News Congressional Reporter Max Cohen will talk about Washington News of the Day and preview the week ahead on Capitol Hill and the White House.
And then heat map news editor Robinson Meyer talks about rising electricity and utility prices in the U.S. Washington Journal starts now.
Congress returns after Thanksgiving recess to a wild three-week sprint to the holidays.
On their year-end to-do list, government funding, a massive defense policy bill, and perhaps the biggest policy fight of them all, addressing those expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.
And that's where we begin this morning.
What's your message to Washington on health care?
Should those ACA subsidies be extended?
What reforms are needed?
And what concerns do you have about your health care costs?
Here's how you can join the conversation.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
You can also text us at 202-748-8003.
Includes your first name, city, and state.
You can also post on facebook.com forward slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
We start this morning with healthcare, a topic of conversation here in the nation's capital and across the nation for weeks.
Obamacare premiums are set to rise on average 26%, according to an analysis from KFF.
That is, if lawmakers in the White House don't step in and provide some solution.
And Americans are beginning to be concerned.
According to an NBC article from last month, headlines, a record number of Americans are anxious about health care costs going into next year.
And they cite a Gallup poll from November 17th, which found nearly half of U.S. adults are worried they won't be able to afford necessary health care in the coming year.
The highest level of concern recorded since West Health and Gallup began tracking the measure in 2021.
One in five Americans, also a record high, report that they or someone in their household couldn't pay for prescription medications in the past three months.
These are merely two of countless health care hurdles Americans face hurdles Americans face.
And a report from Scripps News with the headline, Congress has just weeks to decide whether to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, says that when lawmakers return on December 1st today, they'll have less than three weeks to debate and potentially extend Biden-era Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year.
The Senate is guaranteed to take a vote in the first two weeks of December on the extension on those subsidies, but it's not clear if the vote will pass.
There's also no guarantee the bill comes up for a vote in the House of Representatives.
Before Thanksgiving, we heard from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the issue, who basically previewed how Democrats are approaching this next big battle.
Well, the Affordable Care Act tax credits are going to expire on December 31st.
And if that happens, tens of millions of hardworking American taxpayers are going to experience dramatically increased premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.
In some cases, premiums for health insurance will increase by $1,000 or $2,000 per month.
This is for working-class Americans, middle-class Americans, and everyday Americans.
Health care will be unaffordable.
People will be unable to go see a doctor when they need one, and that's unacceptable in this great country, the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
Over in the Senate, it's my understanding that Leader Thun has recommitted to a vote on an Affordable Care Act extension no later than the second week in December.
So there are ongoing discussions that are taking place in the Senate.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, in the House, my Republican colleagues have shown zero interest in doing anything related to the ticking time bomb of the Affordable Care Act tax credits expiring.
House Democrats have launched a discharge petition to try to compel an up or down vote on a straight three-year extension so we can provide working class Americans with the same level of certainty that my Republican colleagues provided their billionaire donors when passing the one big ugly bill.
Now in the days before Thanksgiving, reports about President Trump's health care proposal that would extend subsidies in some form, among other issues like the issue of eligibility, was met with backlash from Republican lawmakers and that rollout was paused.
Yesterday we heard from Kevin Hassett, a top aid economic aide to President Trump, who basically downplayed this proposal.
Is that sometimes people leak pre-decisional things that are confidential and pre-decisional and I think that somebody did that and then it rolled back because it hadn't been through the whole process.
But President Trump has been clear that he's very concerned about the cost of health care and that's why we had $50 billion for rural hospitals of the Big Beautiful bill, why we tried to get $30 billion in for cost sharing and the Democrats didn't like that.
They had an alternative approach.
And so I think that what we're going to see now between now and Christmas is that people are going to work this out because we have a solution, the White House has a solution for cost sharing and the Democrats have an alternative and people don't want for the few seniors that have really, really massive increases to see those.
But don't forget that the vast majority of people in the Affordable Care Act are getting their insurance for less than $50 a month.
And so while this is an issue that needs to be worked out, we don't want to cause panic for the folks who are worried that they're going to lose the thing that they have.
It's really just the very, very high-cost people who are closer to retirement age that have the problem.
That was Kevin Hassett talking about the president's proposal that was postponed.
It was expected to roll out the beginning of last week.
Now I want to enjoy, joy, I want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
And of course, this morning, for the next hour, we are talking about health care.
So, obviously, there's the question of what proposals do Republicans want to see when it comes to health care costs, especially if they do not want the proposal that was addressed or that was expected to be addressed from President Trump just last week.
So, there's a Washington Times article that I'm reading that says, What's in the GOP's plan for government-funded tax-exempt HSA Health Care Savings Act and why Democrats don't like it?
Obviously, that has been a Trump.
I mean, that has been an idea floated from President Trump saying that he wants money to go directly to consumers and not to insurance companies.
So, this article says that congressional Republicans are considering tax-exempt health savings accounts as their preferred vehicle to deliver on President Trump's call to send taxpayer-funded health care subsidies directly to consumers instead of insurers.
It says Republicans are providing aid to consumers through HSA.
Republicans say providing aid to consumers through HSAs will give them more flexibility over their health care choices that then embrace subsidies, which are tax credits mostly paid in advance to insurance companies to lower what Obamacare customers pay out of pocket for their premiums.
If you scroll, it says that Democrats counter that HSAs are used predominantly by wealthier families who won't do enough to help lower-income families afford health insurance.
They note that HSA funds can't be spent on premiums and have annual contribution limits that are insufficient to cover major health expenses.
Now, if we turn to an article from CNN that was published on November 24th, it says, Who will get hit hardest by ACA premiums increases in four charts?
Now, of course, remember, KFF News found that premiums could rise 26% if nothing is done.
And so, it says that the enhanced subsidies, which are scheduled to lapse at year's end, have enabled many lower-income Americans to obtain coverage with no or very low premiums and broaden eligibility for assistance to many middle-class consumers.
But that will all change if Congress does not agree to renew the more generous subsidies.
In order to end the recent government shutdown, Republicans, Senate Republicans, agreed to hold a mid-December vote on the enhanced subsidies in exchange for extending federal government funding through January.
Those who will be hit hardest by soaring premiums include lower-income, older, and middle-class enrollees.
Turning to our callers right now, Mark from Oklahoma, a Democrat.
Your line is open.
unidentified
Yes, my deal is: I think that it's just like I'm on disability and Social Security, and the reason I have insurance that I've been happy with is because of the Affordable Health Care Act.
And, you know, I think maybe Congress should and the House of Representatives should have to go in the marketplace and buy insurance for themselves to see what it's like.
Why do you say that, Mark?
Well, they it's like I've had like five to ten fraud calls and everything, and and scammers trying to scam and stuff on it.
And I would like to see the House of Representatives and Congress get a taste of what it's like.
I think they don't have no taste at all what it's like.
Like when the shutdown was on, they didn't have a taste, they got their paycheck.
And I think if they would feel a little bit more what the rest of America feels, maybe they would understand a little better.
Richard from Texas, Independent, your line is open.
unidentified
Oh, good morning.
I'd like to comment that I really think America is really held hostage by the insurance companies.
I think that I saw the other day on BBC or Sky News over in England that they tax sugar, sugar, like milkshakes and stuff, and they're trying to lower the sugar.
You know, if your sugar products are below a certain level, you're not facing a higher tax, and they're trying to prevent diseases for like diabetes and sugar diabetes.
Also, I think I'm a firm believer that we need universal health care.
We don't need to be paying a middleman like insurance companies.
The military has insurance.
People are talking about AI coming down and how that's really going to benefit the medical field.
They need to be training people, using money for that instead of paying insurance companies and get more people in the medical field and just get rid of the middleman, which is insurance companies.
And again, I really feel like we're being held hostage by the insurance companies in America.
Edward from Virginia and Independent, you're next.
unidentified
Good morning.
Yes, I guess my comment would be with these, the last gentleman said, get rid of the tax breaks, if we cost all that back and we put that towards health care, would that even make a dent?
I'm sorry, repeat your question for me, Edward.
I was saying if we took those tax breaks, as the gentleman just said before, and put them back into the system, would we even make a tax?
You know, would that even make a break into the problems we have with funding this stuff?
And also, going back to the privatization of it, wouldn't it like people talked about privatizing Social Security in the 90s?
And if we have done that and you'd made 5% to 6% on your money since then, wouldn't we all be better off?
Right now, Edward, obviously, Obamacare premiums are set to hike.
Obviously, there's larger questions about entitlements and all those things.
But what should Congress be doing in the next three weeks to ensure that people have access to health care now?
unidentified
Well, I think obviously the single-payer option is out there, but I mean, if you can get it entire-based and make it more incentive-wise for the employers to help with that, I think that would help.
I've been ex-military, I was, and then I went obviously into the private sector, but I've always had employment help me with that, whereas versus the subsidies, I assume, are for people who can't afford anything, and then that has to all be paid for by the government, correct?
Yeah, I don't actually think that that is correct.
A lot of people obviously are paying into the Obamacare system, and those subsidies, which were instituted during COVID, were to kind of keep down prices in the intermediate, and they've grown since then, something that Republicans obviously dislike, and Democrats believe should be continuing to happen until there is some alternative.
So, I don't know if it's that people just aren't able to afford it versus this is a mechanism put in place by Congress during COVID to keep some of these prices down for people who are in the Obamacare system.
unidentified
I mean, you say COVID didn't happen.
Wouldn't the prices have gone through the roof, anyways, just by the design of Obamacare?
I'm going to call and say something about the insurance, the insurance policies.
I think that if these politicians, Republican and Democrat, had to live like the lady from Oklahoma said, take their insurance away and see what they would do.
I believe that if they lost their insurance, it wouldn't matter to them because most of them can write a check and pay their families' medical bills.
It's the same thing about their salaries and stuff.
They work for the people, but it takes the people maybe five, six, ten years to make the kind of money that they make.
Okay, I just wanted to make one point, maybe remind some people of some things.
Back when Obamacare was working its way through, you know, the process, Democrats made a lot of concessions, one of them being the public option, which Republicans got them to remove from the bill.
And I remember watching Mitch McConnell, a couple other Republicans on Fox News, arguing against the public option.
And the argument was that private insurance companies would never be able to compete against the rates that a public option would afford consumers.
And I don't know.
I hear people talking about the issues with Obamacare.
I mean, there's issues, there's issues with the cost of health care.
But I thought that was the strangest argument.
And it's amazing how that's fallen by the wayside.
Calvin from North Carolina, Democrat, you're next.
unidentified
Yes, thanks for taking my call.
My comment is the guy from Florida who was complaining about the tax subsidies in Obamacare.
And, you know, he's talking about his job and he gets his job for his job.
Well, you know, he's getting tax subsidies too.
You know, all these people that get insurance through their jobs, all the companies are doing is writing off every nickel, dime, and quarter they spend on health care to their employees.
So the taxpayers are actually subsidizing their health care to the tune of over $800 billion a year.
And the other issue is there's no limit on the tax subsidies.
The companies can have any kind of health care they want.
Linda from California and Independent, your line is open.
unidentified
Hi.
I do appreciate all these good comments I'm hearing about this.
I live in Chico, California, and have been working strong with a very strong group that supports single-payer health care or Medicare for all.
And one very important thing is we must remember, and this I learned from that group, but no one seems to pay attention to it that much.
But boy, all these scholars that you have today surely know their stuff.
But I want to say is it is cheaper to give health care to everybody than it is to set up a system that hires lawyers, et cetera, to keep people from having, getting health care that they're paying for to insurance policies or anything else.
If it wasn't for ACAs, I wouldn't be able to have any health care at all.
I mean, I've had four artery bypasses in the last two years, and that doesn't come cheap.
But I mean, I just know that without it, if they lose the ACAs, I probably end up giving up my Medicaid and Medicare and all that stuff because I can't afford it.
I live on $1,500 a month, and I don't think anybody can.
Your last caller is talking about your refrigerator.
People with low income live with what their pocketbook will afford.
My view on the ACA is that it's fundamentally flawed because it's an expense.
The subsidies are an expense on the ledger sheet.
And what that means is that you spend it once and it's gone.
It would be better to take the money and put it into assets.
Oh, by the way, when you expense something, it's just like inflation.
You put too much money, and they didn't build hospitals.
They have more money coming into the same hospitals.
So it's inflationary.
So the hospitals raise their prices.
The better way to do it would be to take the health care money out of expenses and put it into assets, like building actual rural health care centers that would service people in all areas of the country, inner city, country, but to have regional health care centers.
And what you're doing in that aspect is you're increasing your supply of health care and on your demand, so your costs will go down.
So you increase supply and you have the same demand, your costs will go down.
But if you put money into expenses, your costs and have the same amount of health services, you have an imbalance of more money, too much money into the health care, and you have inflation in health care.
James, can I ask somebody who is on Obamacare, would you be against something that Republicans have floated, which is basically converting what they're paying now in those ACA subsidies to an HSA account that the individual user, so you, could use versus making those payments to insurance companies?
unidentified
I don't think that'll work.
And that $50 million that they're talking about throwing out next to the hospital if this bill don't, if Obamacare don't get extended, that is nothing but a drip in the bucket.
No.
This, we have got to keep.
Why?
Look at Margie Taylor Green.
Look at two or three other Republican congressmen.
They're resigning because they know they can't, they're not going to fight the Democrat because they know they're going to lose.
Al from Tennessee and Independent, your line is open.
unidentified
Yeah, I'm going to talk about two things.
One is rights, and the other is costs.
If you believe that health care is a right, then the country's over because there's simply not enough wealth in the country to fund everyone's health care.
But I believe that they need to make a new party because mathematically, you know, the people can't afford these outrageous prices, and it's all ran by a cartel.
Look, my doctor sent me to a gastroenterologist because I was having a lot of nausea and vomited.
And his office bill, you know, just for office visit, $300.
And he's got, you know, a couple of people in the office and a couple of nurses there.
And so they did an endostopy colonoscopy.
And I got a copy of the bill.
I shouldn't have, but I got a copy.
Not the hospital bill, but his actual bill that he submitted 15 minutes, okay, 15 minutes from the time he put me out to the time they woke me up, $45,000.
If he does two an hour, if he works six hours a day, that's half a million dollars a day.
And there's three of them, him and his two people, the anesthesiologist and his assistant, okay?
Half a million dollars a day.
The man's in there three days a week and he does office hours two hours a week.
We've got to get this pricing under control.
These insurance companies are out of their minds.
And that's the problem.
If the Democrats are willing to give in, they're willing to give in to what's being billed and let it fly.
And we can't do that.
You know, if people are raising cane about the price of eggs, they need to be raising cane about the prices that these doctors are charging.
Yes, I'm sitting here listening, and I heard you say Obamacare.
If everybody would stop calling it the incorrect name to demonize President Obama, because he sent that money to every state in the Union, the only Republican who kept that money was John Kasich.
Then the Republicans started naming Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare, the black man, the black man.
Every last one of these states would have been in good shape.
Why don't you bring John Kasich on and ask him?
He's a Republican.
He kept the money.
And how are anybody trusting somebody who will put gold leaf on antique frames in the White House?
Jimmy from Spring Lake, North Carolina, Democrat, you're next.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
I would just call him because I can't understand why we giving money to other countries, and we got people in this country that are sick and can't afford the medical bills that come with going to the hospital.
But we have money to give to country billions of dollars given to why can't we just take care of our own people?
This big, beautiful bill don't seem so beautiful right now.
It's hurting people that need the money and need the health care.
When they had the government shut down and they were arguing over the health care bills, Democrats gave in, Republicans got what they wanted, and now we are the ones that are suffering.
Donald Trump, in my opinion, is nothing more than a pie piper.
He's leading the mega people down the wrong road, and they're following right behind him.
And in my opinion, that's what the problem is right now.
I think the big problem with health care that we have in this country is a threefold problem in that three different industries are all working together to keep prices high on us and drain us of our finances.
We have the pharmaceutical companies, big pharma.
We have the insurance companies, obviously, and we have the medical service industry, which is hospitals and people that do tests.
And there's this weird twisted reverse competition going on with prices where the pharmaceutical industry and the medical services industry all raise their prices so that they can offer a bigger discount to be preferred on insurance companies' lists.
unidentified
And that just ends up for every that just ends up with everybody else losing.
I don't think it's hard to I don't think that government sub-subsidies on health insurance is a good answer to this as it just kind of like helps promote and incentivize the current practice that they have.
I think trying to dismantle this relationship that these three industries have is where we should go.
I don't have good answers because it's such an entwined, entangled mess as far as government is concerned.
Maybe sub sub-subsidizing a piece of equipment or purchasing, say, a few MRI machines or x-ray machines or something to lower the cost so that people can come in and get the tests that they need and not get charged tens of thousands of dollars or thousands of dollars, even with insurance, to get the services that they need.
James in Cincinnati, Ohio, a Democrat, you're next.
James, your line's up.
Your line is open.
Are you there?
Bill from Baltimore, a Republican.
You're next.
unidentified
Hi.
I would have a lot of comments about the health care system, but mainly my experience has been that, I mean, the goal should be good health, not good health care.
And my experience is that, you know, it's best just not to go to the doctor at all.
I had a situation when I was consultant once, the Republic of South Africa.
And what happened there is that they give away drugs basically pre if they're on the World Health Organization place of essential drugs.
And when I did a study over there, I found that the poorest people that only had access to just limited drugs were outliving the wealthier people.
And my own experience with our health care system, particularly as it's applied in various deals, I've been in because I was poor and got arrested.
But it's a long sad story, but the bottom line is that health care, the way it's operated today in the U.S., it's not good for your health.
John from Greenville, South Carolina, Independent.
You're next.
unidentified
Yeah.
Hello.
Yes.
Hi.
So we all know the ACA didn't work because enough young people didn't buy into it.
So the membership has doubled, and people would rather take the they tried to take the penalty, but that was knocked down.
So 16 years or 15 years, the Republicans had to come up with a plan to fix health care, which Trump campaigned on.
And in my opinion, the fact that the caller from Nebraska is 100% right, that everything is too intertwined with the insurance companies, the pharmaceuticals, and hospitals.
And where is Doge on this?
Let's get an investigation because these Republicans are too heavily campaign-financed by these companies.
And we really need to have an investigation on why everything is so expensive and not throwing money at something i is not working.
You just keep putting more and more money into their pockets and there's no end in sight.
And just to go back to the gentleman who called before, Ann, who said that the reason why health care costs were so high was because of undocumented immigrants.
I'm on healthcare.gov right now, and it says healthcare coverage for immigrants.
People in these groups can get coverage through the marketplace if they're eligible.
United States citizens, U.S. nationals, lawfully present immigrants.
Undocumented immigrants can't get marketplace health coverage.
They may apply for coverage on behalf of documented individuals.
Edward from New York, a Democrat?
Your line is open.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
My name is Sidney.
Anyway, the problem that I keep hearing everybody say is the price of care, price of this and that, where nobody is really asking how much the CEOs are making.
They are pulling down anywhere from a million to $2 million a month, right?
So why is it that they're not addressing that?
You know, two.
The Republicans and all the senators, the taxpayers pay for their health care.
So they don't care if America has health care or not.
Why?
Because we're paying for it.
They are covered.
They are good.
And another thing was what the sister said about Obamacare.
They try to demonize Obamacare until people realize that it's the ACA and that when they lose it, and they're like, oh my God, I didn't know ACA was Obamacare, Obamacare was ACA.
You said that nobody's talking about the prices that insurance companies are getting from the Affordable Care Act.
Obviously, the president has said that he wants direct payments to go to the consumer and not to insurance companies in the form of an HSA or something like that to basically replace those subsidies.
Would you be in favor of that if the idea is that insurance companies would be getting less?
unidentified
What I'm talking about is the CEOs.
The CEOs are pulling in millions and millions of dollars.
Why are they getting that much money?
Why are the people that work for them getting less money?
Why does an operation cost $100,000 when we know it shouldn't even cost that much?
Like someone said about the doctors.
That's the point.
I don't know too much about the money and all of this, but what I do know is that the CEOs of everyone from United Healthcare to all the other ones are pulling in millions of dollars plus bonuses, plus bonuses.
My name is Sharon, and I just have something to ask and add.
All the money that is going to our military, we're buying people that are fishing, and yet the president is giving a pardon to another drug dealer from Honduras.
I don't understand all this money that they're wasting doing this, and they're letting drug dealers out.
All that money could be going to our health care, and the military does not need trillions of dollars.
And I hope that y'all are not took off the air for letting people speak their minds.
But, yeah, I'm on ACA, and thank God somebody had guts enough.
Obama was the only person that I know of in my lifetime.
I'm 69 that ever even tried to step up and do anything, say anything about health care.
He did, and I do remember him saying, my door is open.
ACA is not perfect.
We know it's not perfect.
Anybody that's got any tweaking that we think that might work, my door is open.
Let's hear everybody's opinion so we can make it better.
So if anybody didn't walk across the aisle to try to make it better, then that's their fault.
Yes, this insurance company needs to be out of it.
No child or person needs to be sick.
Our old people don't need to be thrown out in the street.
This is awful.
We all need health care.
Now, how you go about it, I don't know.
I'm not no educated college professor or anything like that to try to figure out how we need to go about it, but I know there's some people up there that do, and I know that there's people up there getting their pockets fatted with money for these insurance companies.
I agree, the insurance company needs to be taken out of it.
Let me give y'all a pre instance.
I have to go to a specialist, okay?
Well, he does whatever he's going to do, injection, whatever.
Well, then I got to go back for a follow-up.
162-mile round trip for a follow-up.
I said, you make it a killing.
He said, I'm not the one that makes you.
I said, I could call down here and tell you I'm okay.
If I'm not okay, I'm going to come back.
He said, I'm not the one making you do that.
It's the insurance company that makes you come back down here for the follow-up.
So there you see, that's wasted money right there.
I don't have to make that 162-mile rail trip to tell him I'm okay.
The insurance company is getting that kickback.
Somebody's getting it.
Mike from Ohio, a Democrat, you're next.
Yes, I've got a question, too.
I'm here in Lake Shillin, Ohio, and I have a question, and I don't know if it's true or not, but is the American taxpayer providing free health care for Israel, including abortions?
So that's my question.
Where did you read that, Mike, if I can ask?
Well, that's what I need to know.
I've heard that, and I don't know if it's true or not.
I don't hear anybody happy about health care at all.
And I wish our congressmen and senators would be listening right now and take action, not just listen.
Universal health care is a modern 2025 society.
We have utilities, we have internet, we have satellites.
There is no reason that we should all not have universal health care.
It is possible the billionaires can be taxed.
In fact, recently, it was interesting, side note, I saw my MyPayCheck stuff.
It said, reason why you pay taxes is for health care and da da da da.
And I'm like, I don't get health care.
And it's like, why aren't the billionaires?
Why isn't that on their paycheck stuff?
They need to pay their fair share.
And right now, corporations are the problem, not the answer.
They've monopolized our health care.
Government should be run like a referee in this marketplace.
And my personal story is I have come across so much greed because my body has become a profit center to these doctors.
And in fact, I'll even get a little more personal here.
I was actually verbally and misdiagnosed and abused into getting a hysterectomy at a hospital here in Florida.
And let me tell you why.
Greed.
It was greed.
I did finally, when I got out and I was able to look up any public record about these two doctors, they sued each other, one sued the other, because they didn't think there was enough business in town.
So we need to get greed out of the system with universal health care.
I disagree with what you said that the illegals are not, we're not paying for their health care because what happens when they get sick, when they're going to have a baby or something like that?
unidentified
They go to our emergency rooms.
And what happens then?
They don't pay.
They can't pay.
So who do you think pays for that?
You know, there's only certain scenarios that can happen.
Either the hospital goes out of business because they're not getting enough profit, or the hospital charges people who can pay more.
That's us.
Through our health costs go up.
Or the taxpayer money subsidizes these hospitals.
So how can you say we're not paying for these people to go to the emergency room because that's the only option they have?
I didn't say that we are not paying for them to go to the emergency room.
I'm saying we're not paying for them to be in the Obamacare marketplace.
Later this morning on Washington Journal, you may have noticed your electricity and utility bills are going up.
We'll take a closer look at what's driving those increases with Robinson Meyer of Heat Maps News.
But first, after the break, a preview of what to watch here in Washington with Wall Street Journal White House reporter Natalie Andrews and Punchbowl News Congressional Reporter Max Cohen.
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Yeah, I think healthcare is going to be the key thing in the next two weeks because Senate Majority Leader John Thiun has promised Democrats an up or down vote on whatever health care proposal they come up with.
Of course, that was part of the government funding deal, right?
That they have to vote.
But as Natalie, as you mentioned, the White House engagement is key.
They floated that plan a couple weeks ago.
Did not go down on House Republican or Senate Republican circles at all.
Yeah, I mean, to your point, Republicans pretty resoundingly rejected what was leaked about that proposal that would have extended those ACA subsidies by about two years, but also would have put in some guardrails when it comes to the question of who is eligible for some of these provisions that are inside of the Affordable Care Act.
I wonder how, Natalie, did this all happen?
And how do you see the White House interacting with Congress, particularly Republicans in Congress, on the issue of health care going forward?
unidentified
Donald Trump is very interested in fixing the health care system when you talk to people on the White House side.
And Republicans acknowledge universally that there are really big problems with the Affordable Care Act.
So do some Democrats.
And the problem is just Republicans have a hard time finding the government's role in fixing it.
When you're a party that doesn't believe that the government should have a role in a lot of things, it's hard to extend that.
It's hard to say, well, we should use taxpayer funds to enhance the Obamacare subsidies, which was a Democratic program.
And so they are this tug of war in do we use taxpayer funds to try to find an off-ramp?
Do we try to pitch a different plan?
And we know that they have talked a lot, talked about a lot of plans.
Katie Britt has some plans circuling.
Rick Scott has plans that Donald Trump mentioned that would maybe create some health savings accounts.
But it's very confusing.
How do you take these people off of subsidized plans?
And then do you give them money and they use that money for the plan?
It's not quite set in stone.
And like Max said, they're supposed to vote rather soon, like next week.
Yeah, that's something John Thune promised Democrats as part of this negotiation.
So I'm pretty confident that vote will happen.
But I think there's increasing pessimism among both sides of the aisle that that vote will result in anything substantive at all.
We're already hearing from some set of Democrats that they just plan to offer up what they have been demanding all along, which is a clean extension of these subsidies, which would give no policy concessions to Republicans, which would be dead on arrival in the House, and which could shift this whole discussion back to what many saw coming, which is just political talking points, right?
Democrats saying, we tried to save your health care.
Republicans blocked it.
Republicans saying they're not trying to change anything.
They're just pushing these crazy spending, et cetera.
Natalie, when we're talking about the White House proposal that hasn't come, it was reported that the president could be rolling it out last week.
Then that was postponed.
You had this great article in the Wall Street Journal.
The headline was, Speaker Johnson Warren's White House GOP is weary of Trump's health care push.
Can you walk us through what you reported?
unidentified
Yeah, so we understand that the White House started briefing lawmakers and Mike Johnson and Top and Thune on what they want, what they were thinking.
These were high-level conversations, but this wasn't necessarily Donald Trump presenting a PowerPoint to leaders, right?
This is kind of what we're thinking.
This is what we're looking at, a two-year extension of these ACA subsidies, which a lot of people receive and benefit from and expire at the end of the year.
And it immediately ran up into some hurdles.
Johnson is looking at one of the most narrow House majorities in history and knows that he can only get a certain plan through.
And it's tricky for Johnson.
If the White House endorses something, that's a lot different than if Senate Republicans endorse something.
If the White House endorses something, Mike Johnson's going to feel pressure to get it to put it up for a vote.
And there are some concerns with how the funds could be used to go toward health plans that cover abortions, which a lot of Republicans oppose, and overall using taxpayer money to continue an ACA program, which a lot of Republicans campaigned on repealing.
Yeah, I think let's focus on some vulnerable House Republicans for a moment.
These are the most electorally vulnerable members up for reelection in under a year, and they're really pushing for some kind of vote from their leadership to give them political cover because they know the top Democratic super PACs have already spent tens of millions of dollars hitting Republicans on health care.
And they're saying to their leadership, if we need to defend ourselves against attacks, we need something to show voters.
Now, I think that's somewhat unlikely that Republican leadership will give this group of 20 to 25 electorally at-risk members a vote because the majority of their conference, as Natalie mentioned, hates Obamacare and wants to repeal it.
So it's just kind of a tough situation.
What could be next?
A discharge petition is another possibility.
We saw that work with the Epstein files.
Could it now work with some moderate Democrat and a couple of moderate Republicans getting on board saying, let's extend these in some sort of compromise?
Yeah, I think there are two different answers, right?
You asked the group of 10 or so Senate Democrats who cut this deal, they will say yes.
And you actually saw some of these senators, Mackie Hassen, Gene Shaheen, issue statements after this plan got leaked the other week saying, this is a good start.
Changing subjects here, another flashpoint that we can expect to happen on Congress over the next three weeks is obviously these U.S. military strikes in Venezuela on alleged drug trafficking boats.
Bipartisan members of Congress have raised questions, have raised doubts.
Obviously, that has increased over the last few days after the report that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. troops to, quote, kill everybody aboard the initial vessel that was struck in September.
The White House and Hegseth, Department of Defense, have denied that.
But I wonder, Natalie, is the White House firmly behind Pete Hegseth on this issue?
unidentified
This is the ongoing question with Pete Hegseth, right, really since his confirmation.
As we've seen Pete Hegseth from reporters getting added to a pretty important signal chain to the report over the weekend, will the White House separate or will they continue in public?
Donald Trump has continued to defend Pete Hegseth in private.
I think that this reporting will possibly show more cracks in the trust that the White House may have for the head of the Department of Defense or war.
I think the most notable statements we saw from Congress were both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House to Armed Services Committees and the Senate Armed Services Committee saying, we're going to look into this.
And most times when it's something with the Trump administration, you just see the Democrats say that.
But these are joint statements issued by Jack Reed, Roger Wicker, Mike Rogers, Adam Smith, both sides of the aisle saying, if true, this is concerning.
We'll look into it.
And that shows that this is permeating way more than a normal Trump mini scandal.
This could be a big deal, and there might be hearings, there might be investigations, and that's not normal for this Congress led by Republicans.
unidentified
It's probably notable that it's Pete Hegset, too, right?
Like, this is not someone that lawmakers universally trust, like Marco Rubio.
This is someone that they have suspicions or doubts about in Congress, and this is giving them an opening to launch into an investigation.
It's pretty surprising comments from the Republicans, I thought.
I don't have the CBO report in front of me, but the CBO is estimating that it would cost the government more if the ACA subsidies were, if the enhanced ACA subsidies were not extended.
And that is because people will often drop their plans if they can't afford them.
And it then, in turn, if they don't access any sort of government program, they may not seek care.
They might end up in the emergency room.
Those costs often pile up on the back end if people don't have health care.
So I don't have the CBO report in front of me.
I can't tell you the amount, but I do believe the cost is that it will cost people more money should these tax credits expire.
Changing subjects here, President Trump is vowing to, quote, permanently pause migration from third world countries in the wake of the Afghan national ambush on National Guard members.
Take a listen to what he said last night on Air Force One to reporters.
unidentified
Your administration made a lot of moves throughout the last few days after we know that Afnia National is the suspected shooter of these National Guards people.
No, I don't think they're all third world, but in many cases they are third world.
They're not good countries.
They're very crime-ridden countries.
They're countries that don't do a good job.
They're countries that don't register from the standpoint of success.
And we, frankly, don't need their people coming into our country telling us what to do.
When you're talking about DNA, I'm talking about like Somalia, where you have a congressman goes around telling everybody about our constitution, and yet she supposedly came into our country by marrying her brother.
Well, if that's true, she shouldn't be a congressman, and we should throw her the hell out of our country.
There was President Trump on Air Force One talking about this new pause and migration.
Obviously, Natalie, President Trump said it affects 19 countries, but what more do we know about this policy?
How written out or thought out is it so far?
unidentified
I think we're still waiting to get the full details of what this could mean and what it could mean for people who are in the country, right?
I mean, they said they want to go back through and re-vet people who did have some sort of legal status during the Biden administration, after they came into the country.
And that's where a lot of immigration arrests and detentions have happened with people who've lost various forms of status in the past year.
And this is a whole new grouping of people who are now wondering, okay, what will their status look like in a few months, in a year, how long?
Also, we don't know how long this vetting process is going to take.
I mean, I think there's a lot of uncertainty about what the White House is doing.
I think what we've seen, of course, is the White House slash refugee applications asylum already.
Of course, there is that big focus on the white South Africans who are immigrating here as refugees, and that's been the most notable of Trump's immigration standpoints on their asylum, at least, so far.
I think we've seen some Republicans speak up very strongly in favor of the Afghan nationals immigrating here under the program after our evacuation, saying, I serve with many of these people in Afghanistan.
They're our allies.
They deserve to be here.
So this is an issue which Trump is trying, obviously, to widen outright since he's not just talking about Afghanistan.
Now, he's talking about many other countries.
But I think on the Afghanistan issue, it's a tricky one because Republicans, of course, are more reflexively anti-immigration than Democrats.
But on this issue narrowly of the Afghan evacuees, there is some diversity of thought among Republicans.
One issue that we heard a lot about a few weeks ago, including last week, that has kind of fallen out of the news cycle is the Epstein files.
We have a question for you both from Twitter, or excuse me, from X, from Chris Bashir saying, did anyone hear anything about the Epstein files, obviously, since Donald Trump has signed that legislation?
Yes, so in that discharge petition, which passed and then was signed the law very quickly, we should note by President Trump, it's 30 days from when that was signed is when the files will start being released under this legislation.
So expect a couple more weeks to wait before the DOJ starts releasing anything.
But I think we all should caution that there might be some pretty severe redactions given what was included in the legislation, which said if it's related to an ongoing investigation, there is some leeway for Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, to withhold some files.
unidentified
Yeah.
Tony from Pennsylvania Independent, you're next.
Yes.
I was just going to make some comments about healthcare, but I just wanted to stay on the Epstein.
They're absolutely right that nothing will come out.
They'll basically use two things.
One is national security, and the other they'll say it's under current investigation.
So we won't get any new information.
Everybody knows that both parties spent decades covering up the Epstein situation.
So nothing new is going to come out.
I'm not sure why we're pretending, but I'll be proven correct.
Let's talk health care really quickly.
So it's just so weird to talk about how do we afford health care.
The rest of the world does it.
It costs approximately half the price.
It's called universal health care, health care for all.
And then in this country, we have something very, very strange that's happening.
It's like the worst of both worlds.
It's twice as expensive.
We get worse outcomes.
We have lots of people that aren't insured.
Prior to Trump's cuts to Medicaid that just went through, we had approximately 68,000 Americans that died per year because they couldn't access or they were late in access and care.
Now that number is going to move up to roughly 50,000 more, which is about 9,000 per month.
Americans dying because they can't access health care.
And then this weird thing happened.
The United CEO was killed by Luigi Magnone, maybe.
I guess he hasn't been proved guilty, but the weird part wasn't that he was killed.
The weird part was that half of America cheered and was like, me too.
I have been harmed and mistreated by private health insurance.
So why does either party support it?
Nobody likes their private health insurance.
They basically spend a third of the cost on overhead.
It's just they push paper, they obstruct and make it hard for you to get care.
I think that that's something that's come up since the ACA was passed first in 2010.
The Congress, as federal employees, have health care.
And so I think they're, this was a little while ago, Matt, but since the ACA debates in which this came up, but I think this came up because members of Congress have federal health care.
They are not on the marketplace.
They're not participating as folks who maybe have a small business or folks that are seeking out insurance have to navigate that, which, as the previous caller noted, is difficult.
I think one of the points the caller just made is accurate in the sense that, and this also relates to earlier callers, the healthcare industry is a powerful player within the American political process, and that does not exist to a similar extent in other countries, right?
In the campaign finance situation, in the donations, in lobbying.
Yes, the healthcare companies and their trade groups are influential.
There's no doubt about that.
And I think that's what separates the United States from other countries: we have this powerful, well-funded interest group that wants their interests protected and they use a lot of levers of power to exert that, just as many other industries do, right?
Healthcare industry is not unique in that.
But I think it is unique that in America we have that compared to other countries where there's more nationalized medicine.
There's not the private health care we have here.
unidentified
Yeah, it would be really hard to upend an entire system.
And as a caller noted, it's possible countries have done it, but there's a lot of powerful players and people tied up in that.
Speaking of profitability and healthcare, I want to segue to student loans and point out student loans have been robbed, stripped of constitutional bankruptcy protections.
The Department of Education is profiting $100 billion a year in interest on the federal student loan program, and some of those profits are being used to fund Obamacare, the ACA.
Bankruptcy rights have got to be returned to these loans.
And thankfully, we're hearing conservatives like Tucker Carlson, like Matt Gates, Josh Hawley, John Cornyn, many conservatives finally pointing that out.
And quite frankly, the colleges with their massive endowments could easily reimburse the government for discharges.
So I would urge Josh Hawley, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, and even Dick Durbin on the Democratic side to get that going.
But really, this thing all hangs around the neck of the Republicans.
So return bankruptcy to student loans, make the colleges accountable.
In terms of the legislative standpoint, it's not something that's necessarily top of mind before the end of the year.
unidentified
Definitely not before the end of the year.
I've covered extensively how the administration has been trying to negotiate with universities and bring universities into some sort of compact, is what they called it.
Student loans is not necessarily part of that, although they want to get schools to commit to freeze tuition for five years.
And if schools have a certain endowment level, they want them to not charge tuition for certain topics.
Like if you're studying engineering, these industries in which the country needs more talent and people, they want these schools to commit.
They haven't yet had a single school commit to these points that they've had, but they say discussions are ongoing.
Elizabeth from New York, a Republican, you're next.
unidentified
Yes, hi.
So I note that there's a lot of, obviously, bias with our press.
They need to seem to always be against anything that Trump does.
For example, asylum.
We just had an administration that allowed all these people to come into our country, claim asylum with next to no proof at all, just coaching them on how to say that they are seeking asylum and they fear for their lives, and boom, they're on a path to free this, free that, housing, healthcare, education, food, everything.
These people that your guests are also saying about health care and how the rest of the world seems to be able to make it happen, but we can't get it together.
Well, the difference is, is healthcare in other countries, they have a higher rate of participation by their population.
If everybody's paying in, then everybody can take out.
But you cannot have open borders and a welfare state.
You cannot have huge classes of people who are entitled the minute they set foot in our country to everything and then expect the taxpayer to fund that burden.
And of course, we know that there's all kinds of problems with, for example, portability, that insurance companies can't work from state to state and people can't take their health care with them.
So I would just say that we have to look at the root causes of all these things, something that the Democrats are always happy to talk about.
Why is it that there's so much bias in the mainstream media?
You know, an asylum, look, the Democrats, once again, they crawl.
Natalie, I wonder if you can take the question of bias in the media.
unidentified
It's a great question for Max to answer this, King.
I think that it is a common thing.
I think you always have to be aware of where your reporting is, who you're talking to.
Should you make one more call to try to report out a story further versus competing with a deadline?
But I think most journalists that I talk to from organizations like Punch Bowl, Notice, New York Times, The Journal, the goal is to really lay out what's happening.
And I think we, at the journal, try to lay it out and let folks decide whether it's bad, good, take that analysis on their own.
I think there's issues like healthcare where you can universally agree after talking to everybody that it is broken.
It's just that there's no path forward in how to solve it.
But I'll let that debate carry out in the opinion pages of our various publications.
I would say that we will save a lot of money when our system switches to Medicare for all.
It's easy to see, and I bet you AI could be trained or learned how to transfer all Americans' information right on over to Medicare to give Medicare to everybody and save a lot of money at the same time.
What I like also about watching the Donald Trump Urbanier, my father passed a few years ago, and when I miss him, I just turn on Donald Trump.
He sounded just like that when we were growing up.
I can address the Medicare for All Point because I think it's an interesting ideological fight happening within the Democratic Party, right?
In the 2020 presidential primaries, a lot of the candidates staked out a position saying, I'm for Medicare for all.
This is a good position.
But then a candidate who eventually won the primaries in the presidency, Joe Biden, did not go that far.
I think it would be fascinating to see in 2028.
I'm curious what you guys may think is are Democrats going to be shifting further to left on health care, given that's where the ideological energy of the base is saying, let's go bold.
No, it's not time for half measures, right?
We just had Donald Trump's four years.
The argument will go, let's do something different.
unidentified
Democrats have really struggled with, are we bold?
Do we go, do we push in the left like we just saw in New York with the mayor's race?
Or do we try to appeal to the middle?
And yeah, 2028 will give us a new glimpse into that.
Do you think though in 2026 Republicans will have to answer, let's say, if there is no compromise had before January 1st on the ACA subsidies of where is their plan?
Will that be a Democratic talking point?
Will that be something that voters are responding to?
What do you guys make of that for the midterms?
unidentified
I think it will 100% be a topic in the midterms.
I think we saw Democrats bring it up in 2018 and they won the House.
And so Democrats will come at this full throttle saying, Republicans, you don't have a plan.
You should have fixed this.
They'll point to the expired subsidies and they'll say, look, plans just went up by X percent.
They'll have numbers to back it up.
Now, the enhanced subsidies, it's a wallpaper thing.
If it does get extended, it's not a long-term solution.
But they will be able to point to it and say, we had a solution and you didn't.
Yeah, the U.S., when it comes to our health care costs that we pay as taxpayers, it's a lower fund.
We pay it through insurance companies.
It's a different system.
I think it would fundamentally cha, a national health care system would fundamentally change how we thought about health care in such a way, I think it's hard for a Congress that's used to incremental change to pass something like that.
But yes, it would involve a lot more taxpayer money.
And the one thing I'd add, I think the caller is 100% right.
Europe as a society is, I'm not sure they're okay with it, but they have accepted a higher tax rate in exchange for more social services and a more active government.
The United States, I was just watching the excellent American Revolution Ken Burns documented on PBS, but I didn't need to watch that to know this.
We were founded on an anti-tax institution.
Americans are way more wary of paying government taxes than our European counterparts.
So it's a fundamental change in society, changing the way we do things.
And it is true Europeans pay a higher tax burden.
And raising taxes, just ask any politician in Congress or the White House, it's the worst thing you can say to the American people.
I mean, George Bushwright, no new taxes.
Read my lips.
These are fundamental political third rails that American politicians aren't likely to go to.
unidentified
Then you end up doing things like gymnastics through reconciliation because you promised you wouldn't raise taxes.
So then you're trying to find money to fund your programs through tax bills that always have an expiration date.
And so so many programs, including Donald Trump passing no tax on tips and things like that, they expire after three years.
And so you end up with voters in the American public that's going through whiplash every few years as these programs expire.
The reason I'm calling is the journalists and reporters do not seem to take important things and report them.
Like in the Big Beautiful bill, they're going to cut food stamps next year by half.
That's the SNAP program.
They're going to cut LIHEAP.
It's already a month late getting distributed.
That's LIHEAP is going to be cut in half.
That's low-income heating for the elderly and the handicapped, the disabled.
Also, they're going to cut Medicaid, and a big chunk of it's going to be cut in 2026 and 2027.
And also in 26, 27, they're going to cut low-income housing and Section 8 housing and make people pay more, and they can't hardly afford to pay what they've got now.
These are very important issues that I think should be addressed by the journalists.
And I wish they would address it right now.
Max, you did a lot of reporting on the One Big Beautiful bill.
Yeah, I mean, the caller makes important points about what Republicans included in their reconciliation package, which is major reforms to these programs.
I think it's important also to note if you ask Republicans about this, they will say, yes, we're cutting, but we're cutting to exclude X, Y, and Z group, undocumented immigrants, et cetera, people making, people who are not working, et cetera, from getting these benefits.
So there are major reforms happening to these programs.
Democrats in their paid advertising was calling it cuts, and they think they'll be very effective to remind voters time and time again, Republicans are cutting your program.
Then I cover a lot of the campaign ads.
Look at what Republican groups are running.
They say, your congressman is fighting for you.
He's looking to protect Medicaid by making sure there's no waste, fraud, and abuse.
This is politics, right?
Either side is going to spin it.
What we can't say is there are changes to these programs.
But if you ask either side, they will tell you different things about what this achieves and whether it's a good thing.
unidentified
Tony from Connecticut and Independent, you're next.
Good morning.
I'm calling to piggyback on the woman that club a few calls before regarding media bias.
And just add a couple of comments for both of your Punch Bowl and the Washington Journal.
When did their companies, when did their news medias initially report on Biden's deficiency, mental deficiency?
That's question one.
Question two here is, and this is more for Washington Journal reporter.
She knows that 70% of all taxes are paid by 10% of the top wage earners.
So when people call and say, oh, the wealthy don't pay their fair share, she should correct them.
There's certain things that people can have their own opinions, but not their own facts.
And that's just the top of it.
And that's why people don't trust the media.
I don't know which is worse, the media or Congress, but you guys are really, really at the bottom.
The Wall Street Journal reported the best, most deeply reported, deep dive into how members of Congress are concerned about Joe Biden's mental state.
And I think that's just, unfortunately, I don't think people are well-read enough on the issue to comment on it because accuse the journal of not reporting on bias.
I think that Annie Linsky story came out in the middle of the day.
unidentified
Annie Linsky and Siobhan Hughes wrote, and I'm very proud of them.
I've worked with both of them for years.
They worked on that story for months because I think when you're going to report on something of that nature, you need to know that it's very solid.
They worked on that story for months.
It came out before the Biden and Trump debate, either late May or early June.
And it was resoundingly criticized by Democrats for being just, how dare you?
And then the debate happened, and we know that Joe Biden ended up dropping out.
I think it's I understand that folks lose their trust in journalism.
I understand that you can open the paper and you're going to read things that you don't agree with and that that's frustrating and that it may make you lose your trust.
But I do think that if you're looking for credible sources, it's important to know that journalists will put a story out there, not caring really how someone feels about it.
You're trying to present the best version of truth that you can possibly report.
Natalie Andrews of Wall Street Journal, Max Cohen of Punchfull News.
Thank you both so much for your time.
And in about 30 minutes here on the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by Robinson Meyer of the energy and climate news site HeatMap News about what's driving the increase in your electricity and utility bills.
But first, after the break, more of your phone calls and open forum.
Start calling in now.
unidentified
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So on what Steve was referencing, I pulled up an article from RollingStone.com.
It came out June 30th of this year.
It says, Rick Scott demands more cuts to Medicaid, which his company allegedly scammed.
Scott proposes slashing $313 billion more for Medicaid, a safety net program his hospital company was accused of fraudulently billing.
And it says that the legislation, and they're talking about that one big beautiful bill, already cuts $930 billion from Medicaid, the nation's government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, and would eliminate coverage for millions.
Scott's amendment, expected to get a vote Monday, of course, this was back in June, would take away another $313 billion.
And Scott has framed his proposal, it goes on to say, his proposed Medicaid cuts as necessary to preserve the program for, quote, those who will truly need it and not able-bodied adults.
Mark from Maryland, a Democrat.
unidentified
Your light is open.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Excuse me.
I do want to stress that the ACA saves lives, American lives.
Approximately 40,000 American lives are saved per year through the ACA.
It minimizes so much suffering throughout this country.
There are different references, different scientific publications.
Admittedly, Medicare for all would save more lives, but that ain't going to happen in Congress.
Another critical point I don't hear the Dem stressing is that with Medicaid expansion, during Trump's administration, you were much more likely to have providers in your county with Medicaid, if your state had Medicaid expansion than whether it did not.
You were more likely to have three or more providers, insurance companies in your county.
While if you did not have it, you were much more likely to have only one insurer.
And the last quick point is: let's not forget COVID.
1.2 million Americans died during COVID.
That had a dramatic impact on our country, on our economy, and on our health care system.
Thank you for this opportunity, and it's too bad Kennedy cut the research that would continue fighting COVID.
Today on C-SPAN 2, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Cox Communications versus Sony Music, a case questioning whether internet service provider Cox and companies like it can be held liable for their users' copyright infringement.
We'll have live coverage beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-span.org.
James from Newark, New Jersey, an Independent, your line is open.
unidentified
Yes, hi.
Thank C-SPAN.
My mother was in revolution since 1927.
She fought with other Roosevelt to talk to Epihon.
It was kind of scared of the Coxland and out big business.
But other Roosevelt was that scared.
I'm done.
So we got Torti done.
So one that did away to begin with a little days from 19 to 19.
Judy from Princeton Junction and Independent, you're next.
unidentified
Good morning.
This is the first time I'm calling C-SPAN, and I would like to make a few comments about health care.
I think that rather than politicians and the Congress and being critical of our journalists, we should focus on insurance companies since they've changed the face of health care.
They're in business for making money, hence they control health care and the approval rates.
For every one doctor, according to Metscape, there are 11 administrators.
They've broadened how many, how different how different individuals who provide health care in this health care system now operate.
Whereas, for example, non-physicians generally work A 35 or 40 hour week,
whereas doctors who are employed by hospitals, if they're lucky, they work a 60 to an 80 hour week, so that you need many more non-physicians to provide the same to provide the services that physicians ordinarily have provided, but again, they supervise non-physicians.
I think that before we could even look at remaking health Medicare for all, we need to look at the insurance companies because if we do go to a health care for all system,
then you need to do something to prepare insurance companies since they are such a large part of our economy.
David from North Carolina, Republican, you're next.
unidentified
Hi, two quick points.
One on health care.
I wish more people would refer to the subsidies that are about to expire as subsidies for COVID-19 from the American Rescue Plan.
ACA itself is not going to be touched.
Government subsidies for ACA will remain in effect.
These are just the extra ones from COVID-19, from the American Rescue Act, but I never hear that.
You do hear it from Republicans, but never from Democrats.
And a quick question.
Did you ever look at the net flow of doctors to and from the United States from other countries?
That would be an interesting topic.
But my other point is about prices and price inflation.
There's monetary inflation, which leads to price inflation.
And when we borrowed several trillion dollars for COVID-19 pandemic, that's extra money that's going into the money supply, and that has a secondary effect on prices.
And there's another one that's just simply supply and demand.
And when we invited roughly, let's say for argument's sake, 20 million people into the country, they all have to need a place to eat or live.
They have to eat.
They do need health care.
We use emergency rooms when necessary.
And they don't kill their babies.
But that represents a great supply and demand for goods.
So prices go up.
So it takes a while to turn these things around and to stabilize them.
So you can't do it in 11 months or 10 months.
So it's going to take a while, but it will happen if we stop pumping trillions into the economy to solve one problem after another that we cause.
And we stop inviting people from all over the world.
The gentleman who said 70% of the taxes are paid by the rich, they're still not paying their fair share, the rich.
When Elon Musk says he pays $40 billion in taxes, it's still not his fair share of taxes.
We have healthcare.
We have a healthcare system for profit.
And if you're making profit on me being sick, well.
The other idea is that if we do have a universal health care that most progressive countries have, then business benefits.
Because if you have a small business, your workers would stay with you.
They wouldn't want health care.
And if you lose your job, you lose your health care.
And then you have to wait for healthcare again.
It is really a lot of distortion.
I know of people who go broke when they get sick and they lose their house.
The ambulance to the hospital costs you money.
It's not free.
So be smart and do universal health care.
The other comment I want to make is the 60% lady about Europe.
Besides healthcare, they get a lot of other benefits like a month vacation, like child care, like leaves, and a lot of benefits from that type of system.
I think health care can be improved, but I think how we got to address it is not through health care.
I think we've got to address it through campaign contribution reform because it's these end term limits because we've got these senators and congressmen that's been in there for 30 years and they're owned by those companies and they're not about to change and they're going to throw every spoke in the wheel they can in order to stop any progress in the front.
Health care is so, so expensive.
And I just read that 64% of bankruptcies are due to health care costs.
I mean, so it's crippling the country and it's suppressing a whole class of people.
So it seems that if the congressmen and senators would work for us instead of the insurance companies, we might stand a chance.
But otherwise, it's always going to be the same.
So we're kind of trying to fix the problem from the wrong direction, I think.
This is Open Forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue that you want.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Randy from Hagar City, Wisconsin, a Republican?
You're next.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning, C-SPAN.
I got a couple of quick things here.
Number one thing is corporations are not owned by single diameters.
Corporations are owned by the people buying stocks.
So they got to get off this corporation deal and they pay so much money.
No, that's number one thing.
Number two thing is Obamacare.
Obamacare was sold to us as if you like your doctor, you can keep it.
Your premium will not be over $2,500 per year.
What happened to this?
This whole ACA is nothing but a big scam.
And it's exploding, and it's not the last two people you had on there.
I mean, goodness sakes, they twisted it all around to make it sound like it was all definitely the Republicans' fault for everything, just like even C-SPAN does it.
And another thing, one more thing and last that I'm done, is the COVID.
COVID was a bad thing.
COVID was a disease or whatever it was that affected us.
So what Tina was talking about in Ukraine, obviously we know that yesterday U.S. officials met with Ukrainian officials in Miami as peace talks are ongoing, something that the Wall Street Journal has on their front page today.
U.S. and Ukraine discuss thorny issues, quote, productive talks center on land swaps, guarantees Trump aids set to visit Russia.
The article says that talks yesterday in Miami covered possible timetables for new elections in Ukraine, the prospect of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine, and a senior U.S. official said other key issues that remain unresolved include the nature of U.S. and Western security guarantees for the Ukraine,
for the Ukraine, and whether the Kremlin will continue to demand international recognition of the territories it has seized from Ukraine since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
And U.S. officials are set to travel to Moscow today to talk with Putin as those talks continue.
Ian from Colorado and Independent, you're next.
unidentified
Hello.
I wanted to, I know it's open forum, but I wanted to say something about healthcare.
My family's involved in the healthcare industry, and I want to appeal to my fellow Americans.
Many have called.
I listen pretty religiously.
And for example, there was a fellow who called recently from Texas stating that he went in the emergency room and everyone in there was an illegal alien.
I'm not sure how he knew that from looking at them, but I'm just amazed at how in a short span of 10 years, we've managed to become a country that's pointing their fingers at people of color, people different from them.
The point that has to do with health care is I know personally of professionals, very well respected, who defraud Medicare and Social Security regularly as routine business, as do hospitals, as do people like to call it brought up Rick Scott.
And so what happens is people just start pointing out people of color.
And this is the most prototypical nationalism.
If we want to reform, we'll never get it where it's universal, but if we want to reform it, why aren't we looking at the providers?
It's not those illegal aliens that my friends in the Red States that have the worst infant mortality, the worst health care, the worst education.
They're pointing at illegal aliens.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
And so please, let's get a grip.
It's not illegal aliens that are causing our health care crisis, nor is it the ACA.
Wanda from California Republican, your line is open.
unidentified
Thank you.
I want to say that when illegals from Mexico or even legals from Mexico get free health care here if they do, why don't we just bill Mexico because Mexico has socialized medicine anyhow, and those are their citizens.
So just either bill Mexico or deduct it from the millions of dollars we give Mexico in foreign aid every year.
Before we dish, get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which was something that was in Massachusetts, I believe, by Romney.
We don't want to lose the protections of preexisting conditions and the cap on catastrophic illnesses that help people and allowed your kids to stay on your health plans till age 26.
As far as Ukraine goes, it's just disgusting me.
I mean, it is not a peace plan.
It is a surrender.
Just like in Afghanistan when a surrender was negotiated with the Taliban.
How much, if the United States was attacked, how much of the United States would you be willing to surrender to the aggressor?
We should be helping Ukraine.
It's not America First to be pro-Russian.
And maybe we could read Marco Rubio's Senate report on the 2016 Russia investigation that they were involved in it.
It was an intelligence report led by Marco Rubio.
And now, as far as pardons go, I urge Republicans to Google all of the pardons that are taking place.
Let's just take, for instance, the January 6th people, 1,500 or 1,600 people pardoned that attacked our Capitol.
Did any of you bother to watch any of the nine hearings?
One guy was sentenced to eight years for assaulting Capitol police officer.
He was pardoned by Trump.
Now he was arrested in connection with a home invasion.
And there are many others that were doing crimes after they've been pardoned.
One for sexual assault of a seven-year-old, another one plotting to murder an FBI.
Look at some of the legal troubles they're having, terrorist threats, child pornography.
These are the types of people that are being pardoned, and nobody's looking into it.
On the issue of Ukraine, there was a CNBC article from two hours ago which starts: All eyes are on Russia this week's as talks over a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine shift to Moscow and step up a gear.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling to Russia on Monday and is due to meet with Russia President Vladimir Putin for discussions on a U.S.-backed 19-point peace plan.
The latest plan is an amended version of an initial 28-point plan reported several weeks ago that had been devised by the U.S. and Moscow without Ukraine's involvement, which favored Russia.
Russia will be eager to have its say on the amended proposals after a flurry of diplomacy and discussions between U.S. and Ukraine officials in the last week, and talks being in Florida on Sunday.
Terry from Minnesota, a Republican?
You're next.
unidentified
Good morning.
See, I hear people when they're calling saying we should send money.
And here's the thing: if your statement is we should, the only way that we help Ukraine win the war is we're going to have to send over troops and or we're going to have to send over missiles that can strike deep in Russia.
So the question is: how many of you people are willing to send over your children to go fight and die in Ukraine?
How many of you are willing to risk a nuclear war?
Which certainly sending these missiles will escalate the possibility of.
I think that it's nice to come on here and speak your red.
Up next, we have Robinson Meyer from the energy and climate news site HeatMap News joins us to talk about rising electricity and utility costs and what's driving it.
Yale Constitutional Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar's second book in a trilogy is titled Born Equal, Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920.
In Professor Amar's introduction, he writes, Millions of Americans can recite by heart Lincoln's opening line at Gettysburg, but how many of us understand it?
This sentence sits at the very center of this book.
Akhil Amar was born in 1958 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in California after law school at Yale, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and became a junior professor back at his alma mater at age 26.
unidentified
Author Akhil Reed Ammar with his book, Born Equal, Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920 on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
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Joining us now to talk about what's driving the rising costs of electricity and utilities across the country is Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of HeatMap News.
Rob, thanks so much for being with us.
I want to dive right in.
But before we begin, can you just remind our viewers what HeatMap News is?
unidentified
Absolutely.
So thank you so much for having me.
First of all, HeatMap News is climate and energy news for the real world.
So we tell the inside story of the companies, people, utilities, energy providers, merchant power plants, everyone in the energy system that's trying to provide energy to the American people without doing without as much pollution, maybe as we're used to.
And we also track regulation across all 50 states, and in fact, in every county in the country, to see the current obstacles to building energy construction to help renewable developers and other kinds of developers find the best sites for their projects.
Now, a recent report by the Century Foundation found that from March 2022 to June 2025, an average monthly energy bills rose from $196 to $265, a 35% jump, nearly three times overall inflation during that period.
The report also cites industry experts who estimate it will cost families an average of $976 to heat their homes during this winter season, a 7.6 increase.
And the National Energy Assistance Directors Associations found electricity prices have increased 11% in the first half of 2025, one of the largest increases in more than a decade.
Obviously, that's a lot of numbers there, Rob, but can you explain to us what is going on?
unidentified
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you think about a power bill, there's basically four things that go into it.
There's generation, that's the cost of making the electricity.
There's transmission, that's the cost of sending electricity long distances from power plants to your town or city or region.
And then there's distribution.
That's the cost of getting electricity that last mile from the substation to your home.
And then I mentioned the fourth category, that's like other.
That's all the other costs associated with the system that don't fall cleanly in one of those three buckets.
What's interesting is that the electricity price increases we've seen across the country over the past few years, and which have really stepped up, I would say, in the past year or two, are driven almost entirely by higher costs in the distribution system.
That's the cost of getting electricity the last mile from the substation to your home.
It's the cost, first of all, of higher, of more expensive poles and wires, the cost of more expensive transformer equipment.
We've seen transformers be in short supply basically since the pandemic.
And that continues to drive up prices.
And it's the cost of sometimes having to run power lines underground because of a natural disaster or because of a wildfire risk.
And so those three costs together have been the, and the whole rising cost of distribution system as a whole has been the primary driver of higher bills over the past few years.
And so I want to invite our audience to join in on the conversation.
Our lines are split up by regions.
And so 202748-8000, that's going to be your eastern and central region.
And 202-748-8001, that's going to be your mountain and Pacific region.
I wonder, Rob, obviously you said that it's the way that heat is being distributed is kind of the rising costs.
Can you put this into perspective for us?
Is this kind of historic rates of rising or do these sometimes happen every once in a while?
unidentified
Yeah, totally.
So there's a few things to think about here.
The first is that the electricity system is coming off of 15 years across the whole country, basically, outside of Texas, maybe a few places that have seen really rapidly growing economies.
The electricity system across the whole country has seen the past 15 years of not very much electricity growth.
And that's because at the same time that the economy was growing and Americans were kind of getting richer, we were also switching to LED lights.
This is really the reason.
It's really interesting.
And as we gradually switch to LED lights, especially big commercial properties, switch to LED lights, that has reduced our electricity use.
And at the same time, we've been increasing electricity use due to getting richer or population growth.
And those have equalized to basically no load growth whatsoever across the country or no rise in electricity demand.
After the pandemic, basically we'd gotten all the juice out of the LED light bulb lemon, so to speak.
And so there was really no other savings left to get in the system.
And because of that, that economic growth and population growth that has been a little suppressed by conservation gains over the past 15 years has started to come back through.
We've started to see electricity growth again.
And so demand for electricity is increasing over the has increased over the past five years or is beginning to increase seriously.
And now we expect it to keep increasing with the rise of AI and the data center build out, but also because of like the return of factories to the United States, the switch to EVs, all those things are just contributing to a rise in electricity demand.
Now, I know I said earlier that most costs so far have come from distribution and the distribution grid.
unidentified
But I think one thing that's happening broadly here is that during the period of time where American electricity demand was flat or not rising very much, there were a lot of investments made into the distribution grid.
And that's where utilities made a lot of their money.
But those costs from the distribution, maybe the rising cost of the distribution system that we weren't really paying attention to because generation costs were going down on the bill, have now really started to hit us.
unidentified
So we do see, to answer your question, we do see, you know, every so often power bills do go up.
I think for the past 15 years, partially thanks to the rise of the natural gas industry across the U.S. and the fracking boom, we've had very cheap electricity production here and generation costs have fallen and that's kept bills pretty low or stationary in nominal terms.
You mentioned it a little bit in your answer there, but I wonder if you believe that the power grid that we have across the nation in various different regions is able to withstand this growing demand.
unidentified
Yeah, totally.
I mean, I think we are absolutely seeing a moment where the electricity grid is becoming more important to the U.S. economy overall.
I mean, of course, electricity is always important to the U.S. economy.
But with the rise of AI, the data center build out, the return of factories and manufacturing to the United States, which is a goal of both parties, and the just inexorable, you know, maybe slower than once projected, but ongoing switch from to EVs and electric vehicles from gasoline cars, there's just going to be more demand on the grid.
And we can see almost what happened to the natural gas and oil system in the U.S. over the past 20 years, where there was new sources of demand, new sources of supply, and it forced the whole system to modernize.
That kind of is what's happening to the electricity grid now.
You know, it's very economically significant.
There's more demand than ever.
People are very aware of it.
Companies are very aware of it.
Everyone kind of wants it to work better.
There's a lot of demand for investment in it.
And that's driving an overall modernization of the grid.
I do think we need to kind of keep investing in the grid.
And I think we are going to see some of the policies and structures that we've used to organize the grid over the past, say, 20 or 30 years now be tested.
And it might be time to change them just because of how our use of the grid is going to change in the next five or 10 years.
I wonder if you have thoughts on how both federal lawmakers or the White House and also state and regional lawmakers, whether or not they're making the right investments in the grid to try to shore up these capabilities and bring costs down for people.
unidentified
Well, I think it's complicated.
I mean, I think one thing that we really struggle with in the U.S. is building enough transmission.
These are long-distance transmission lines.
And in other countries like China, for instance, they've been very successful building transmission lines from their sunniest or most areas where they have the most hydroelectric dams or their windiest areas, the areas where they have the most electricity demand.
And that's able to procure very low-cost energy for their people.
We don't have the same supports here in the U.S. for building those long-distance transmission lines.
That's something Congress has looked at, either making it as easy to build a transmission line as it is to build a gas pipeline or by offering some kind of tax credit for transmission lines.
I would note broadly that the Biden administration put in a large number of tax credits for energy generation.
Those were all on the generation side.
The Trump administration and the current Congress has repealed two of them.
They've discontinued the tax credits for solar and wind, but then they've continued the tax credits for batteries, new nuclear, advanced geothermal technology.
So there's some thought from this from federal policymakers.
I'm not sure if it's as much as we might like to see.
I guess what I'd say broadly here is that a lot of utility, I mean, the electricity grid is regulated at the state level.
And state regulators are often who oversee these systems.
And it's not a part of the government that a lot of people pay very much attention to, frankly.
In all but 10 states, I believe, these regulators are appointed by the governor.
unidentified
I think we're going to have to see some creativity from those regulators about how to make sure the rising cost of the grid falls on, when appropriate, the largest new consumers of electricity, like data centers or like new factories, so that everyone isn't paying for those grid upgrades that are just needed for a few big customers.
And I also do wonder, you know, over the past 20 or 30 years, a number of states, I think about half, have switched to what are called, you know, electricity markets or restructured electricity systems where there's not a big monopoly utility that provides generation and the power lines and all that.
There's like a market for electricity and lots of merchant power plants in that market.
And then your utility is just responsible for getting power the last mile to your door.
Those markets were created at a moment when there wasn't rising electricity demand across the country.
And I wonder if we're going to have to restructure them again to get ready for this new era of rising load growth.
Some questions that we have on X right now includes Aztec, who asks, like internet services, are utilities mostly a monopoly?
unidentified
It's a great question.
And it depends on the part of the country you're in.
So just about everywhere in the country, or in most places in the country, a utility has what's called a distribution monopoly.
And so that is, you know, the company you get your power bill from is the utility that's responsible for getting electricity that last mile from the substation to your door.
And you pay them the delivery costs.
But then the generation costs go to this larger electricity market where your utility is buying power for you, but they're not really setting the price of that power.
They're not deciding what power plants go on and off.
They're not keeping the grid up and running on a moment-to-moment basis.
That's all handled by the grid operator, the power market.
That's about half the states, you know, in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, in D.C., Chicago, California all have that kind of system.
In the southeast, there are still monopoly utilities.
So those are large, these are Southern Company, Georgia Power.
These are large integrated vertical monopoly companies that are both responsible for generating the power and getting it to your door.
They often operate very large-scale nuclear, natural gas, coal power plants, partially for efficiency reasons, partially because that's kind of the thing they're good at.
And in those states, you'll have heard of your utility.
It'll be Georgia Power.
It'll be Southern Company.
It'll be one of those big names.
That tends to be concentrated now in the Southeast.
It gets in the middle of the country.
It gets different.
You might have a rural co-op that takes on some power functions.
Texas is completely separate from the rest of the country.
They have a power market that I think Texans will be familiar with called ERCOT.
So it depends a little bit where you are, but in about half of the country right now, your utility is only responsible for getting the power the last mile to your door.
And then a little, and in the southeast, mostly your utility is responsible for the whole power system generation, distribution, and transmission.
Another issue that we know is being discussed at length across the country are data centers.
I want to turn to this question on X from Yoshi P.
It says, my city, Julia, Illinois, will be installing a massive data center.
My question is, what role do citizen utility boards play?
Are these boards as corrupt as politicians?
Because I see data centers being approved by utility boards with zero price controls in consideration for price spikes.
unidentified
Rob?
I'm not familiar with the citizen utility board structure that the caller is describing.
I think it might be specific to how the central Illinois utility works, or the northern Illinois utility works.
But often, you know, the way that utilities are regulated is not through citizen boards necessarily, but through state public utility commissions or state regulatory commissions.
These are often appointed by the governor, though not always appointed by the governor, and then confirmed, you know, often by the upper legislature of the state congress or state legislature.
And they are responsible for approving the costs that the utility wants to pass on to consumers.
So if the utility wants to build a new power plant or in a place like Illinois where the utility is more likely to just have control of the distribution system, if they want to build a new substation or they want to upgrade everyone to smart meters or something like that, the utility brings those costs to the state board.
The state board looks at the documents and then they tell the utility whether or not they can pass on those costs.
They might argue a little bit with the utility over them.
But I think those boards across a lot of the country have a reputation for usually just kind of agreeing to what the utility wants.
And that's because the utility is able to bring to state regulators something very worrying to state governments, which is, well, if you don't approve these costs, then we can't guarantee reliable supply.
There might be blackouts.
And blackouts are very worrying to state regulators, obviously.
And so they're very likely to kind of, the utility often has the kind of upper hand there.
We have started to see in places where voters elect their state regulatory boards, their state public service commissions, they're usually called.
unidentified
In places where voters elect them, we have started to see some backlash to data centers or to rising electricity costs.
In Georgia last month, voters across the state, actually not just voters in the metro Atlanta counties, but voters all over the state, elected two Democrats to the Georgia State Public Utility Commission.
And those were actually the first two statewide at state level races that Democrats had won in Georgia for like 15 or 20 years.
And it's the first time since the 1990s that there have been Democrats on that commission.
And it was a race, you know, kind of entirely run on and campaigned on around rising electricity prices, the risk of data centers, and the cost of a big new nuclear power plant that the State Utility Commission in Georgia recently approved to pass on to customers.
The first thing I would say is, first of all, you know, power costs often increase over time.
But if you feel like you're getting, there's something wrong with your bill.
This actually happened in my household.
We were charged $1,000 for gas one month.
We thought that's wrong.
Those that state regulatory office, the Public Service Commission or the Public Utility Commission, often has employees who will help advocate for you or help solve a problem with your bill.
So if you feel like there's something that's wrong on your bill, it has to be quite wrong.
I mean, it has to be, maybe you get charged $1,000 for gas one month, and the utility isn't helping when you bring it up.
Often, you know, in many states, those people are there to help you, or there's some kind of consumer advocate office in the state, in the state public utility commission.
In terms of the question of why utilities didn't build power plants in advance of the current rise in electricity demand, that's a really interesting question.
It's a question actually that interests as well the Department of Energy.
Chris Wright, the current Secretary of Energy, sent a letter to utilities.
He put out some requests for information basically saying, look, we know electricity demand is coming down the pipe.
We know that these AI data centers are getting built.
We know that we need more electricity.
Why are utilities not building or power plant providers, you know, in a lot of the country, because it's not utilities, as we were saying, but utilities or power plant developers not building the amount of power that we expect that we need?
And the response from utilities and developers has been interesting.
They've said, look, we know that there's forecasts of new electricity demand and higher electricity demand.
Can see those forecasts, but we don't fully believe them.
And for us to start building a new power plant, especially the scale of power plant construction that we might need, that's a big piece of capital investment.
And once we start, we're not going to be able to stop.
And if we build it, we're going to have to pass on the cost to our consumers and our ratepayers.
And we're very reluctant to do that because we've seen in the past these big projections of rising electricity demand, and then they haven't materialized, and then we've gotten burned.
You know, we have to eat those costs, or we have to stick our consumers with a higher bill or something.
And so I think this is actually a question that the whole power system is figuring out right now: how much are these projected demand increases due to AI or other sources of economic growth real?
And then if they are real, how are we going to pay for the power plant upgrades or new power plants that we need?
Because right now, it's just a very risky proposition for utilities or developers to invest in because they're scared they're going to build a plant and then we're not going to need it and then they're going to be stuck paying the bill.
First of all, in Florida where I live, FPL has several power plants, nuclear power plants, one in St. Port St. Lucie, and then one down at Turkey Point in Miami.
And they seem to have a great deal of future growth to even be able to put in two more nuclear power plants.
And what seems confounding to me is that over the past like 10, 15 years, there's been such a push to go to green energy.
I am sure that there have been power plants that have been taken offline or destroyed.
And I wanted to find out: is there a place you can go to to see a map of where all these decommissioned power plants, whether they be coal fire or otherwise, so that you could identify what could possibly be brought back online?
And then, whatever also the state governments do relative to, like in, I think it's in New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania, they have an additional carbon tax that is put onto the electric bills in order to justify environmental protections.
I'm not aware of a map showing all the decommissioned power plants.
I think it's interesting.
You know, in the 2010s, we basically saw power plants get decommissioned for two reasons, speaking very broadly, because there's hundreds of power plants across the country, and I don't know the situation with all of them.
But we saw coal power plants, as Color was saying, get decommissioned largely, partially for regulatory reasons, partially because there were higher standards on mercury pollution put in place, and also partially because natural gas was coming online from the fracking boom.
And it was so much cheaper than coal that a lot of utilities or power plant operators looked at their facilities and they said, well, it's a lot cheaper to just run gas all the time rather than coal.
We're going to switch to that.
And for engineering reasons, it's quite, it's straightforward or it's not very expensive, not as expensive as building a new plant to switch a coal power plant to a natural gas power plant.
And the natural gas power plant is much more efficient because basically you can run two different generators off one natural gas stream instead of just one in a coal cycle power plant.
So this one thing that was happening in the 2010s, people were moving to natural gas from coal for cost and regulatory and fracking-related reasons.
The second thing was happening was that a number of states were shutting down their nuclear power plants.
New Jersey decommissioned a plant.
New York decommissioned a plant quite near the city.
And California was on the verge of decommissioning a plant called Diablo Canyon.
It's now paused that decommissioning.
And something that's happened since the pandemic is a number of, I would say mostly blue state governors.
I mean, I think Pennsylvania falls in this category as well, have looked at these shuttered facilities and been like, you know, we closed these down when our voters or our constituents or our coalition maybe was very worried about nuclear power.
But now we have to supply new electricity to the grid.
We have to supply additional electricity to the grid.
And our coalition is more worried about climate change.
And hey, nuclear power, say what you will about it, is zero carbon.
And so maybe we should look at bringing some of these plants back.
And as I mentioned, California has paused the decommissioning of Diablo Canyon.
Michigan and Pennsylvania are both trying to repower shuttered nuclear plants, turn them back on.
And here in New York, we have a bit of an unusual situation because a big player in our state-level electricity market is actually a state agency that was created around the New Deal that runs the big hydroelectric dams upstate.
It's called the New York Power Authority.
And the governor has said, I want the New York Power Authority to build new nuclear plants.
Like, it's time.
Basically, like, we are going to need more electricity.
New Yorkers want zero carbon electricity.
It's a blue state.
And so the only way to meet that demand is to build big new nuclear power plants.
And so, again, I'm not aware of a map where you can check all this stuff out.
But what's interesting, I think, is that we are seeing a move away from decommissioning nuclear power plants specifically and toward actually building new ones.
And by the way, we're also seeing a move from away from decommissioning coal power plants.
The Trump administration has stepped in and actually argued, blocked several coal power plants from closing.
And the cost of those delayed closures are going to wind up on ratepayers in those areas.
But the Trump administration basically argued that it's time to stop some of these decommissionings during a period of high load growth.
Well, first of all, I would be loath not to say I'm from central New Jersey, and so it's always good to talk to a fellow central New Jerseyan.
And central New Jersey does exist, as they say.
Hydrogen is interesting.
You know, hydrogen got big.
There were big incentives for hydrogen in the Inflation Reduction Act, the large legislative package passed by the Biden administration.
Most of those were taken away by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
I think what we're seeing is that hydrogen could be useful for some cases.
It could be useful for energy storage.
Some utilities have expressed an interest in mixing it into their natural gas supply, like small amounts of it, maybe up to 10%, in ways that wouldn't increase, you know, wouldn't decrease safety, but could allow for a cheaper or cleaner burning natural gas.
I think honestly, what's happened with hydrogen is that, like, you know, 20 years ago, if you remember back to the Bush administration, there was a lot of excitement about using hydrogen to power vehicles like trucks and cars and trucks and like passenger vehicles, the kind that you and I own.
That really, and Japan also invested heavily in hydrogen.
Honestly, it hasn't really worked out as a technological bet because EVs have proven to be more economical.
And at this point, I think a lot of the uses that we thought hydrogen would play in the energy system, in like a low-pollution energy system, it's turned out that batteries are better at those uses.
We can build them more efficiently.
They're cheaper.
They just work better overall.
Where you tend to see hydrogen get talked about now is as a feedstock into steel making or chemical production.
You know, there's certain places across the economy where right now we use natural gas or coal as a chemical input into some kind of manufacturing process.
And the idea is: well, if we had cheap, you know, low-carbon, zero-carbon hydrogen, we could use that instead.
It might make more sense.
But I honestly think that over the past 10 years, the story of hydrogen has been one of gradually getting out-competed by batteries.
Yes, I think in our area and around the tri-states, the MISO has become a new controller of the utilities.
And so they regulate where power is coming from, where, at what cost.
So I used to, it was done by the utility dispatching.
But now I think many have signed up with this MISO controller that now controls where the power goes.
And a number of states went into elected to deregulate.
And I know our neighboring state, Ohio, when they deregulated, a lot of their coal plants were shut down when the gas boom came on.
And so basically, they couldn't compete with all the natural gas generation coming on.
So a lot of those plants were shut down, the coal plants, because of the low cost of the gas generators.
So, you know, everything has kind of a whipsaw to it.
When you go messing with an industry and that industry has to try to adapt and change to keep up, you get the corporations making decisions on where to invest and where to reduce cost.
And so the same thing with the coal plants now.
You want to bring them back, but many of the coal mines have been shut down.
I know the few coal burners we have, you have to restock their coal pile with expensive coal now because the availability of coal, the coal mines being shut down has drastically increased the cost of coal.
Robert, I wonder if you have a response to kind of industries going or industries going and kind of meddling into the energy of it all and what that impact is.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, the phenomenon that Collar has described is real.
I mean, this thing where states have banded together into these electricity markets is the primary development in the energy system over the past 20, 30 years.
It really accelerated during the 90s.
And so now all the mid-Atlantic states are in this power market called PJM.
There's MISO or MISO in the middle of the country.
ERCOT is its own thing, but that's the Texas power market.
California and the West is kind of stitching together kind of a power market.
And New England also, by the way, has its own power market.
What I'd say is that, you know, and then what happens is that those markets operate largely like markets.
And so they do respond to price changes.
And when natural gas, I mean, the collar is right.
Like when natural gas got cheap and suddenly the U.S. had huge amounts of natural gas very cheaply because of the fracking boom, it made sense to switch from coal to natural gas.
And that was able to, you know, that's how power companies were able to procure power at the lowest cost to their consumers.
And we experienced that in the 20 teens as an era of basically flat power costs compared to inflation.
Nationally averaged.
I can't speak for every power bill.
I think now what we're running into is that there are benefits to those power markets.
But the downside is that in a place like New Jersey, where power bills have gone up quite a lot over the past two years, and where the governor's race was basically fought on the question of utility rates and the electricity system, New Jersey is part of the PJM grid, which the PJM just stands for Pennsylvania New Jersey and Maryland, but it's kind of a larger grid than that now.
It's the whole Mid-Atlantic.
It's Chicago.
It's Ohio.
New Jersey is part of the PJM grid.
And so state-level regulators actually have less control over what's happening across the grid.
They can't control what's happening outside of New Jersey.
And New Jersey has kind of gone to being a net importer of power.
It relies on the whole grid.
What that means is that when state leaders decide that they want to see a change in the power system or that there's something about the power system that's no longer working for state residents, they have less power, frankly.
I mean, they have less capability, authority, to affect what's happening across the grid.
Now, at the same time, you could say maybe every state finds itself in that situation because every state imports and exports power.
New York has its own power market, but it too imports and exports power.
And what we've seen in PJM is that all the governors tend to band together and they ask for reforms to the PJM system, which they think is too controlled by utilities.
But I think it is true that now we're in this era where we've had these power markets for 20 years or 30 years.
And there's beginning to be questions about are these power markets really designed for the kind of rapid load growth, the rapid electricity demand that we're seeing now?
Are they designed for a reindustrializing economy, let's say?
Way back in 1935, I think that FDR signed legislation establishing the rural trification administration.
Are they still have a hand in this or has this been closed down or what?
And are they a player in this?
I mean, I think they I think it was mainly to make farms electrified.
But then what about the tax benefit?
It used to be that if you reinvested your dividends in a power company, if you were a stockholder, it helped the it helped economically somehow.
And then my third question is, my third part of my question is, what about all of the dams that used to have a power plant attached are now being closed down or opened up?
So I don't know if this has anything to do with your subject today, sir, but I'd like to hear what you had to say.
So yeah, so let's talk about rural co-ops and rural electrification.
So the FDR story is interesting.
I suspect the collar knows this, but like for a long time in the 1920s, 19 teens, it was the cities that had electricity and the rural areas did not have electricity.
And the Roosevelt administration mandated, I'm going to simplify the story, but they mandated that utilities had to cover or co-ops of some kind or another had to cover those large rural areas and utilities said it wouldn't be profitable.
And then they started covering them.
They found ways to do it.
It turned out to be profitable.
And now we have electricity everywhere in the country, more or less.
Those rural co-ops still do survive.
There are a lot of them.
They tend to be in the Great Plains.
They often fall under state-level jurisdiction.
And frankly, there's so many of them that I can't talk about them with a lot of specificity.
Other than to say there's other parts of the country where cities still maintain some kind of cooperational control over their utility.
I can't talk about the tax question.
I don't know or wasn't aware of the incentive that Color was talking about.
And the last question is on dams.
It's interesting.
I mean, when you look at the grid and the history of the grid in the U.S., we actually got more electricity from zero carbon sources in the 1950s and 1960s than we did until very recently.
And that's because we relied on dams to supply a lot of that power in the 1950s and 1960s.
And then we kind of got upset about those dams.
I mean, the early environmental movement shut down some of those dams.
Some of them weren't built for long-term operation.
It made sense to convert them.
There's just a lot of changes made.
We wound up moving back.
It is an often forgotten part of the U.S. power story, but coal had been kind of squeezed out of the power grid in the 60s.
And then the 70s with the oil crisis, at the time, the U.S. was burning a lot of oil for electricity.
That oil, of course, got very expensive, and coal came back on the power grid.
And so coal is a presence on the U.S. power grid.
It's actually a much bigger deal in the 80s and 90s and oughts than it is, say, in the 60s or 50s.
But, you know, those dams were sometimes replaced for environmental reasons.
They were taken out.
They were replaced by other forms of generation.
It's the kind of thing where I do wonder, you know, if there's going to be keep being electricity demand growth, then maybe we are going to see a return to building dams in the U.S. or to adding more power to the dams that we have.
It is a very environmentally destructive process, and it's hard to imagine the place in the U.S. that would let you do it today.
Of course, back when we were doing it in the early 20th century, farms and towns got displaced, got moved.
It was just a matter of course.
Whole communities got destroyed.
It was just something we accepted at the time.
It's hard to imagine accepting that, finding a place that would accept that today, but maybe we would.
And maybe the government would decide it was worth it to procure new low-carbon power cheaply.
Okay, Rob, leave us with a thought on what you are looking for next when it comes to heating prices or the power grid or what we should be expecting to see from our legislators and lawmakers on this issue.
Quickly, you got those.
unidentified
Yeah, totally.
Well, what I'd say is that right now, as I was saying at the very beginning of the hour, almost all the price increases we've seen across the country have come because power lines have gotten more expensive, transformers have gotten more expensive, undergrounding equipment has gotten more expensive.
It's all that last mile problem.
What we haven't seen yet is rising demand feed its way into higher power bills.
I expect that to happen over the next year.
We already see wholesale prices are going up.
And because of that, I think that unfortunately, this is an issue that's only going to become more salient for legislators and policymakers over the next year.
And it's something we're going to all have to figure out and hear about more and more.
That is all for our program today for another edition of Washington Journal.
Join us tomorrow at 7 a.m.
unidentified
Thanks for watching Congress returns later today from the Thanksgiving holiday recess.
The House is back at noon Eastern.
Later today, members will vote on legislation banning those who are involved in the October 7th terror attack on Israel from entering the U.S.
The Senate returns at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Lawmakers will vote to advance President Trump's nomination of David Bragdon to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Off the floor, talks are expected to continue on healthcare reform proposals to extend healthcare subsidies, set to expire at the end of the year.
Majority Leader Thun has promised to hold a floor vote on healthcare legislation by mid-December as part of the deal to end the government shutdown.
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