Washington Journal dives into the ACA’s $1.5B+ subsidies expiring Dec. 31, with Trump blaming "flawed" policies despite caller data showing modest 2.7–2.8% premium hikes—while Schumer warns of millions losing coverage. Callers clash over single-payer vs. HSAs, citing VA failures and $40 aspirin price gouging. Meanwhile, Trump pushes Schedule III marijuana rescheduling amid concerns over unregulated CBD risks (liver damage, psychosis) and hemp’s unintended harm, including synthetic drug deaths. Rubio frames foreign policy as "national interest" over charity, detailing Trump’s ceasefire efforts in Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond, while redefining aid’s role—raising questions about humanitarian vs. strategic priorities. [Automatically generated summary]
KFF, who does surveys and analysis of health care, put out this poll recently that found when they asked who is to blame for ACA tax credits not being extended, of all those responded,
39% said President Trump, 37% said Congressional Republicans, and 22% said it was Congressional Democrats would be to blame if these ACA enhanced tax subsidies were not extended.
And a reminder, they expire at the end of this month.
President Trump was asked yesterday at the White House if he wanted Congress to extend the expiring ACA subsidies.
President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday on these expiring health care tax subsidies.
You heard there from Dr. Oz as well on the issue.
We want to know, are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
Republicans, your line this morning is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, call us this morning at 202-748-8002.
We're going to get to these calls in just a minute.
Let's go to the other side of the aisle.
Here is the Democratic leader in the House, or excuse me, in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, on the Senate floor yesterday, criticizing President Trump's recent televised address and his handling of the expiring ACA subsidies.
Let's talk about one of the most important issues for Americans when it comes to cost health care.
Last night, Donald Trump offered exactly zero solutions for how we're going to lower Americans' health care premiums.
He kept blaming Democrats.
He kept saying the health care crisis is not his fault.
But here are the facts.
Immutable facts, Donald Trump.
No amount of finger pointing, lying, hyping it up, patting yourself on the back is going to undo the fact that the American people are going to pay a lot more for health care come January 1st.
Because on January 1st, the ACA enhanced premium tax credits are going to expire because Donald Trump chose to let them die.
Even our Republican colleagues have told us time and time again, if Trump would do something here and support an extension of the tax credits, as we Democrats are fighting for, that maybe they'd be able to do something.
But he doesn't.
And now, tens of millions are going to see their insurance premiums double on average.
Four million people will lose insurance because Donald Trump let it happen.
And he's there sitting in front of the TV camera, patting himself on the back.
Unbelievable.
Millions more with private insurance will see their premiums go up because Donald Trump let it happen.
Emergency rooms are going to be even more overrun.
People are going to be kicked out of nursing homes.
Rural hospitals will close.
And there's Donald Trump congratulating himself on how great he is.
And look, because of Republican total inaction on health care, huge damage has already been done.
And nothing we do after January 1st can undo so much of that damage.
As I've said before, the toothpaste is out of the tube.
However you want to say it, the point is this.
Because of Republicans, it is now impossible, sadly, to prevent people from having to pay hundreds, if not thousands, more on their premiums next year.
It's going to start January 1st.
Even if we can figure out a way to stop the bleeding next year, that's a very big if.
Republicans are still in shambles and have no plan themselves.
The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, on the Senate floor yesterday, his comments follow votes earlier this month by senators.
One vote to extend these ACA tax subsidies, the enhanced subsidies, for three years.
That was the Democratic proposal.
And then there was a Republican proposal to replace them with Health Savings Act.
Neither accounts, excuse me, neither one of those proposals were able to garner the 60 votes needed to get over the filibuster in the Senate.
The House this week then moved to this health care debate over these ACA subsidies, and the Republicans did not allow a vote on the extension of the ACA subsidies offered by bipartisan groups of members of the House.
Instead, they voted on a Republican proposal on that side of Congress.
It passed on the party line votes, but moderates then, for moderate Republicans, signed on to a discharge petition offered by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to extend the ACA subsidies for three years, and it garnered the 218 signatures it needed to force a vote on this, but not until January.
This morning, are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
And William, do you remember when the government shut down in recent months and Democrats refused to open up the government until there was a vote on the Affordable Care Act?
It didn't end up that they got that vote.
They got a promise of a vote, which took place this month.
Did you agree with Democrats' strategy to keep the government shut down over a vote over these enhanced subsidies?
unidentified
But I'm telling you, I'm sorry that they reopened the government, but he was starving poor people just to get the government back open.
Okay, we're going to go to Harold in Edwardsville, Illinois, Democratic caller.
Harold, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm not satisfied with either side.
Actually, I think the Obamacare is way too expensive.
And the insurance companies, from what I understand, the insurance companies are making trillions of dollars and everybody agrees that they're making all this money off of this.
Well, why doesn't Orange Boy, the deal maker of the century, just go before them and tell them that we're going to take over this insurance thing here from you?
The government's going to have a single payer plan where we're going to pay in off of our taxes and everybody's going to be covered like Medicaid.
You just go in and you get fixed up.
If they don't agree to lower the prices, well, then the government takes over it and takes some of that trillions of dollars.
I don't see what the problem is why the government, if there's trillions of dollars to be made off of this, why the government won't get in and let us pay 5%, even the billionaires pay 5% like you did on Medicaid or Medicare.
And we ought to all be covered.
Go to the hospital, get you covered, have your prescriptions right there.
Well, we're talking specifically about health care.
unidentified
I know, I know, I know, but you asked.
Here, my boy, six days ago, was in a small car accident in town, 25 miles an hour.
He had open heart surgery three years ago, had a valve replaced.
Now, he's only 42 years old, right?
But now he was just a little sore.
His wife got all over him because he should go get checked out.
So he went and got checked out the next day.
Okay, he was there four hours.
They ran a couple tests on him, his blood pressure and MRI or whatever.
He got his doctor bill hospital bill yesterday.
Six days later, he got his bill.
$16,000.
Now, I asked him, How long were you in there, Michael?
He says, four hours.
I says, well, that's $4,000 an hour.
Then he says, well, the insurance company called him, and he had told him that he'd already received a bill because it wasn't his fault, but he went and had it done.
And he told him that it was $16,000.
And they said, well, that's fine.
They'll get that knocked down to about $8,500.
That's fine.
Don't worry about it.
Now, are you serious?
For a bumper beat accident, you go in and get checked out, and they're wanting $16,000.
On the Capitol steps yesterday, the Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, congratulating his party for securing a vote to extend the expiring ACA enhance subsidies.
He also called for Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule the vote.
You, House Democrats, for always showing up, standing up, and speaking up for the American people.
And because of the leadership of House Democrats of this House Democratic caucus, we've successfully secured a vote with a successful discharge petition to protect the health care of the American people and extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit.
We're here gathered on the house steps with one last thing remaining.
We want to make clear to Mike Johnson that the American people deserve a vote on the Affordable Care Act tax credit legislation and deserve that vote today.
No more excuses, no more delay, no more burying your head in the sand.
Under no circumstances should the House of Representatives adjourn until we successfully extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for tens of millions of Americans.
The American people deserve a vote today, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year, today.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the Capitol steps yesterday calling for a vote on extending the enhanced tax subsidies before Congress leaves for the holiday.
The House is not in session today, and they have left Washington for the holiday break.
The vote that will take place on extending the ACA tax subsidies is likely to come in January after Democrats were able to get four Republicans to join them on a discharge petition, which requires 218 votes.
Here is Speaker Mike Johnson talking to reporters on Wednesday about the four Republicans who broke ranks to support the Democrats' discharge petition.
I understand that every member has a different district with different dynamics and different demographics.
And some of them felt like it was a really important thing to have a vote on the floor.
I tried very hard, and they will all tell you that.
I tried very hard over the last several weeks and even through the weekend and as late as yesterday trying to engineer a way for them to have a vote on the floor so they could show that priority.
But it was not to be.
You know, you've heard all the machinations of how it came about.
There's no ill will here.
This is not a challenge to the Speaker's leadership.
They're using the rules.
Here's the reality, everybody.
We have a small majority.
We have a razor-thin majority, a record small majority.
And so things operate differently when you have a small majority.
In the old days, a discharge petition would never be used by the majority party or anybody in it because the speaker had a long stick that he would administer punishment for that, okay?
I don't have that because we have a small margin.
So look, I love all these guys and ladies that I work with.
I understand what their concerns are.
We talked about it at length.
I was in those rooms with them.
And we had, as we say in the deep south, you hear me say, oh, let's have some intense fellowship, but it's all good.
Everybody's in good spirits now, and everybody understands what's happening.
Speaker Mike Johnson, earlier this week, on four Republicans, those four on your screen breaking with their party and signing on to a Democrats discharge petition.
That's Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Lawler of New York, Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, and Ryan McKinsey also of Pennsylvania.
Those four signing on to the Democrats' discharge petition to have a vote on extending the ACA enhanced subsidies for three years.
Washington Post this morning, Johnson says he still controls House allies as allies break ranks.
Some fellow Republicans disagree.
From the article, they note that a motion to consider removing Johnson as Speaker would require nine votes from the Republican conference.
Such a coalition has not yet emerged.
For now, lawmakers are unwilling to remove Johnson from the speakership because Trump still backs him, and there's no guarantee lawmakers can quickly get behind a candidate.
Here's a quote.
If you vacate the chair, then there is no speaker and nothing can happen.
So not really a good solution, said Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican of California, who's been critical of the speaker.
He said that would not be fun.
We're here on Christmas on our 15th speaker vote.
That would not be great.
They go on to report that a bipartisan, the GOP-led House Rules Committee earlier this week ultimately blocked moderates from holding floor votes on their amendments, an outcome that moderates warned days earlier would come with consequences.
One Republican lawmaker said Johnson's handling of the issue led to the Democratic bill, which extends ACA subsidies for three years, garnering enough GOP support to get a floor vote with a discharge petition.
Quote, if that's not political and legislative malpractice, I don't know what is, said one Republican to the Washington Post.
Are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
Martha's a Democrat in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning, Greta.
I'm not satisfied with the way Democrats are handling this.
It is very disappointing that the Democrats can't make their case.
If you compare the Affordable Care Act to Medicare, if you go point by point, the Affordable Care Act is way more cost-efficient than Medicare.
So if you think that Affordable Care Act is a failure, look at our Medicare budget.
It is a colossal failure.
And the thing of it is, I was on the Affordable Care Act for five years while I was working.
And the federal income tax that I paid over those five years more than paid for the subsidies that I got for my medical insurance.
So aren't the Republicans all about giving people back their tax money?
So aren't these subsidies giving people their tax money back to spend on medical insurance?
And remember, back in 2017, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the House, he proposed the idea of turning Medicare into a voucher system.
And he proposed this several times during the debates on the Trump tax cuts, talking about our national debt and our annual deficit.
Paul Ryan wanted to give Medicare recipients a voucher, X amount of dollars for Medicare people to buy their own medical insurance on the open market.
Isn't that essentially what Affordable Care Act is?
Giving people a voucher, X amount of dollars to buy medical insurance on the open market.
So Paul Ryan saw this voucher system for Medicare as being more cost-efficient than the way Medicare was being run then.
Yeah, first thing off on the ACA, when we call them subsidies, it's just really taxpayer money.
It's not free.
We're paying for the subsidies for these people to get health care.
Second thing is this only really affects 7% of the American people, this ACA deal.
And then 5% of that is what you will save with these other taxpayers' money.
Now that that's out of the way, the Republicans have handled this terribly, and the Democrats, of course, always handled things terribly.
The last call is correct.
We need to get some investigative work into why everything is so much money here in America, and in other countries, not so much.
And before we all decide to go to single payer, I'm a veteran.
And if you want to go with me to the VA when I need to make an appointment and I got to wait two months before I can get there, you might end up being dead before you actually get any medical care.
So you might want to rethink the single payer.
And also with single payer, you're going to be paying 50 and 60% in taxes.
So you're going to get ripped off one way or another.
So I would love, you know, I like the idea of the, for the children that they've been doing with the health care savings accounts that they've been giving to some kids.
I think that's a good way forward for the next generation.
But for our generation, you know, the way it's always been, we always took care of ourselves.
You know, you should have planned accordingly.
And now that you don't have money for your health care, you want everybody else to pay for it.
And so you were saying you worked as, what was that?
unidentified
I was a medical assistant.
I worked in the emergency room at Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
I disagree heartily with the fact that the hospitals charge too much.
The hospitals charge to not only pay salaries, but to pay for people that come in that have no type of insurance or anything to help them.
They go ahead and they treat.
But we have a wonderful, wonderful group of people in the state of Ohio who love each other and want to care for each other, the rich and the poor.
I think we're looking here at someone, our president, and a few of his friends who decided first thing they would do was release some of these evil people that had already stolen from the United States of America.
In other news this morning, we'll get back to our conversation about health care, but in today, we are expecting the Epstein files to be released this because Congress passed a law and the president signed it that would require the Justice Department to do some redactions, but released release documents related to the Epstein files.
So that is happening today.
Be on the lookout for more news on that.
Ahead of the release, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, had this to say about what he expects today from the DOJ.
unidentified
Senator Jeffries.
Tomorrow is the deadline for the Epstein files to be released legally.
Is it your expectation that the DOJ is going to cooperate?
And if not, what is your expectation for what we will see tomorrow?
Based on my conversations with some of the top Democrats who've been working on this matter related to full and complete disclosure of the Epstein files, we do expect compliance.
But if the Department of Justice does not comply with what is federal law at this point, there will be strong bipartisan pushback.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on the release of the Epstein files today ahead of the release.
The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released 68 new photos from the Epstein estate.
We'll talk more about that later on on the Washington Journal.
The president yesterday was asked about the renaming of the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. Here's what he had to say about that.
unidentified
You just posted on the next year, Press Secretary, that the board members of the Kennedy Center voted unanimously to rename it the Trump Kennedy Center.
President Trump yesterday talking about the changing of the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center.
Now, from Axios' reporting, they say the Board of Trustees includes Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Second Lady Usha Vance, among other administration allies.
Representative Joyce Betty, Democrat of Ohio, an ex-member of the board, said her microphone was muted, preventing her from voicing her opposition to the name change.
Listen to what she had to say.
unidentified
I am bringing this to you live today because what you may hear is that there was a unanimous vote to rename the Kennedy Center the Trump Center.
Be clear, I was on that call, and as I tried to push my button to voice my concern, to ask questions, and certainly not to vote in support of this, I was muted.
Each time I tried to speak, I was muted.
Participants were not allowed to voice their concerns who were online.
Yet it was said at the end, it was a unanimous vote.
Clearly, the Congress has a say in this.
This center, the Kennedy Center, was created by the Congress.
I think it's important for us to know that this is just another attempt to evade the law and not let the people have a say.
Congresswoman Joyce Betty on the renaming of the Kennedy Center in case you missed it.
Back to our conversation with all of you this morning.
Are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
There are the lines on your screen.
We'll continue here until the top of the hour this morning on the Washington Journal, getting your thoughts on the health care debate that has taken place here in Washington in recent weeks, specifically over the enhanced tax subsidies for Obamacare.
In a recent poll done by KFF, when they asked those that they polled on support for extending enhanced ACA tax credits, 92% Democrats supported it, the idea, 82% of Independents, and 59% of Republicans.
When they asked, when they polled just Republicans, more specifically, this is what they found.
57% of MAGA supporters liked the idea of extending enhanced ACA tax credits, while 70% of non-MAGA supporters supported the idea.
Let's hear from Ron, who's in Florida, an independent.
Ron, good morning to you.
Are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
You're an independent, so let me ask it a different way.
Which party has handled it better?
Republicans or Democrats?
unidentified
Well, I don't believe either party has done a very good job, and no one looks for solutions.
You know, we have a lot of people that want to enter the medical field, but the cost of the education is so exorbitant that they can't do it.
They ought to be able to do it and then pay off their debt by working in community health centers throughout the country to make people healthier, to reduce health costs, and try to get the pharmaceutical companies out of the business of making profit on sick people in this country.
I mean, we should look at ourselves and say, how can we justify making money off sick people?
These are our fellow citizens.
These are the people that have helped build this country.
There's just something fundamentally wrong when you can't afford the education to do the job.
And when you do get it, the prices are so high to pay unreasonable costs because there's too much profit in health care.
But I hope that one of these days they get it together and Merry Christmas to the country.
Rob's thoughts there, Republican in Maplewood, Minnesota.
Let's listen to one of those four Republicans, Mike Lawler of New York, who joined us here on the Washington Journal yesterday, a day after signing that discharge petition for a vote on extending the ACA taxed enhanced subsidies.
In case you missed it, you can watch our entire conversation with Congressman Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, yesterday in the Washington Journal.
If you go to c-span.org.
Also, our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now.
Tim in New York, an independent.
Good morning to you, Tim.
unidentified
Good morning, Bretta.
I personally feel like the American people have been gaslipped for the past 60 years.
Every country in the world practically has universal health care.
We are the richest country in the history of the world, and we don't have it.
And we keep getting told, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Meanwhile, they spend $6 trillion on a war, $4 trillion on tax cuts.
Roosevelt, Troman, Eisenhower, Nixon, they all talked about universal health care and still have done nothing.
My sister and her family lived in France for 25 years.
They never had a single dime to pay in tax in health care.
You know, what's being done now is just a matter, I think, of pure politics and money.
If you take the money out of it and you get rid of the insurance companies, they'll be able to do something, I hope, very different.
But it falls on the Republicans and the Democrats.
And it seems to me that the Republicans don't want health insurance.
Now, they've got junk bomb policies on the market and people are buying it thinking they're covered until they get in that hospital and find out otherwise.
So what they need to do is do something about that and take the, for instance, the gentleman said about his son not being at fault for the 16 grand.
But if it was on the other way, or should I say, then he'd be in trouble trying to pay that kind of balance.
So that's the problem.
Everybody doesn't want to participate in it.
And I think it's the politicians who are hustling us.
If you participate in each state, then you will have a pooling of funds in order to pay these bills.
Then you can take care of the hospitals and whatnot.
But Bill Cassidy should not be advocating because he's a doctor.
I've never seen a doctor hold a conversation with me, for instance, about my health insurance.
Okay, Lee, with his thoughts in Charleston, South Carolina.
In the day ahead, some programming notes for you.
We'll hear from Secretary of State Marco Rubio at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Today, he'll hold a year-end press conference, and you can watch live coverage of that here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, that free video mobile app that you can download or on demand online at c-span.org.
We're also covering today President Trump.
He'll give remarks in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina tonight.
He's expected to talk about the U.S. economy, and he'll be joined by North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate and former RNC chair Michael Watley.
You can watch live at 9 p.m. Eastern Time here on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW, and C-SPAN.org.
Also, it's 7 p.m. Eastern Time tonight, a new edition of Ceasefire.
Host Dasha Burns is joined by Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, plus conversations with Republican strategists and Democratic strategists as well.
Watch tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
Are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
Yes, I was just wanting to know what would happen if the government would take over the insurance and Medicare and stuff.
If they get mad and come out of another shutdown like it did for 41 days, what would happen to the American people on the insurance and the billing part?
On the Washington Journal yesterday, we also spoke to Mike Flood, who's a Republican of Nebraska.
He joined us, and he is happy with his Republican Party's handling of health care.
He touted the legislation that House of Republicans passed on Wednesday and criticized the discharge petition to force a vote on extending those enhanced tax subsidies.
Here's what he had to say.
unidentified
I am the chair of the Main Street Caucus.
Our caucus has always had an interest in extending the ACA tax credits as long as it's paired with real reform.
What we did yesterday was something that the entire broad spectrum of Republicans could agree on.
Pharmacy benefit manager reform, just taking a look at the way these association plans work.
Listen, the Wall Street Journal came out and said that if we adopt what we advanced yesterday, it will save money.
It'll reduce premiums across the United States by 12% for everybody.
Now, as it relates to the ACA tax credits, this is a real issue.
It's a real hard issue, especially.
There's 24 million Americans on it.
This is 7% of all insured.
Of the 24 million, the GAO and others have independently said that up to 12 million of those did not file a claim last year.
What does that tell you?
That tells you fraud is rampant.
And we have said, as Republicans, we are, I have said, I am open to extending the ACA tax credits, but you've got to stop the fraud.
And this discharge petition doesn't do this.
This discharge petition lets people at 400% of poverty.
Some folks, depending on where they live, could be getting subsidies and they're making $280,000, $300,000 a year.
Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, he joined us yesterday on the Washington Journal along with two other lawmakers, Mike Lawler of New York, who was one of those four Republicans who signed the discharge petition, along with Betty McCollum, who's a Democrat of Minnesota.
If you missed our conversations with those members of Congress, find it online at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW.
Back to the conversations with all of you.
We've got a few minutes left here.
Are you satisfied with your party's handling of health care?
Yeah, I'm very satisfied with Democrats' handling of health care, health care, health insurance issues.
Democrats try.
You know, you were just playing that little snippet of, was it Congressman Flood, and he was saying that, right there's proof and evidence by the GAO or somebody.
He said that 12 million people out of 24 million people didn't submit a claim.
Believe it or not, you know, people don't like to hang out in hospitals.
You usually have to go there.
There's something really bad wrong.
You know, it's called health coverage.
It's not like people are handing people money.
And if there's fraud, well, yeah, I mean, insurance companies are obviously taking in a lot of that money, even if people aren't submitting claims.
Well, that's how costs are spread out and absorbed.
Okay.
But I would just, a couple thoughts on this.
And why I'm a Democrat, not a Republican, not to put everything in the blue and red teams, but we do make our choices to what we stand for.
As I said, Democrats are trying to provide solutions for health care.
And back when the Affordable Care Act was being designed during the Obama administration, all this kind of started 2009 and 10.
People go back and look at the history and the facts.
And the public option was proposed and designed into it.
And Joe Lieberman, God rest his soul, he'd been a Democrat for years.
He became an independent.
He was a senator from Connecticut.
He threatened to join with Republicans in opposing the whole Affordable Care Act, the whole thing, voting it out, you know.
And they had the numbers to do that in the Senate if they wouldn't get rid of the public option.
Well, insurance companies, private insurance companies, didn't want the competition from this public option.
What do you want to call it?
Universal health care, Medicare for all.
It would be based on people's income, what they're charged.
And so it was going to compete with private insurance.
Private insurance industry didn't want that competition from the public option.
And with Joe Lieberman's vote joining with Republicans, it would have been enough to block the whole Affordable Care Act.
All right, Jim, with a little history lesson there.
And for all of you interested in that debate from 2010, go into the C-SPAN archives.
If you go to c-span.org and you go into our video library search engine at the top, you can listen to those debates that happened in 2009 and 2010 for yourself.
In the meantime, we'll go to Diane in DeSoto, Kansas, Republican.
Diane, what do you think of the GOP and their handling of health care?
unidentified
I don't like it, and I don't like the Democrat plan either.
But I want to give everybody a wake-up call here.
I'm 79 years old.
I make about $65,000 a year in income.
My costs, $22 a month for Medicare, plus my supplement, which I have to have, costs me $600 a month every month.
That's $9,600 a year.
My healthcare.
People think Medicare is free.
I got news.
It's not.
On top of that, it doesn't cover eyewear.
It doesn't cover dental.
It doesn't cover anything like Medicare or Medicaid does.
But that's the facts of life.
And I'm stretching it this year to make that payment.
And so costs are around the board.
And I blame Congress for this, both sides.
I blame insurance companies and especially the Congress people that get their big donations from them.
Later on, the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by the House Armed Services top Democrat, Adam Smith.
He'll join President Trump's foreign and military policies.
We'll talk about that with him.
But first, President Trump signed an executive order yesterday to expedite the reclassification of marijuana.
Joining us next to discuss his concerns about the move is Kevin Sabette with the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Today, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country.
They joined host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch C Spire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend.
As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, reenactors mark the anniversary of the 1780 Battle of Camden in South Carolina.
The British victory led to the replacement of General Horatio Gates with General Nathaniel Greene as commander of the Southern Continental Army.
Then at 1.45 p.m. Eastern, the first of three holiday programs.
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush received the first menorah to be displayed in the White House.
At 6 p.m. Eastern, a 1968 United States Army film showcases how American soldiers celebrate Christmas around the world.
And then at 9 p.m. Eastern, the 1982 President Ronald Reagan Christmas message about military service and help for refugees during his weekly radio address.
And at 9.15 p.m. Eastern on the Presidency, Conversations on Christmas in the White House, hosted by the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the National First Ladies Library and Museum.
Exploring the American story, watch American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
This morning we turn our attention to marijuana and joining us for that conversation is Kevin Sebette.
He's the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
He's also the author of One Nation Under the Influence, America's Drug Habit and How We Can Overcome It.
Kevin Sebette, your reaction to the president trying to expedite the reclassification of marijuana yesterday, what did you think?
unidentified
Yeah, I think it's in some ways a mixed bag.
I mean, it wasn't wholly unexpected.
The president talked about it during the campaign trail and even went further.
He said he was voting for the failed Florida effort to legalize marijuana outright.
You know, my concern and my concern with marijuana generally is that we're dealing with a fundamentally different drug today.
This is a new drug, really, that's been genetically altered to highly, highly potent, you know, strain, a highly potent level of THC, which is the active ingredient that gets you high.
And it's levels we've never seen.
It's exponentially higher, almost an order of magnitude more than in the Woodstock days where it was called weed for a reason.
It could have been 1% to 2% strong.
Now it's up to 99.9% strong with these vapes and dabs that are out there.
And it's causing terrible harm across the country.
It's causing psychosis, schizophrenia, other mental health problems.
New study almost every week.
Last week was heart disease, stroke, diabetes.
Then there was a big study in the Journal of the American Medical Association saying that most of the reasons why people take medical marijuana, there's no evidence behind it.
And one in three of those cardholders are actually addicted to marijuana.
So I worry that this could expedite the normalization and really commercialization of marijuana.
I've spoken on this network and many others about my concern with the mass promotion.
I don't really care if an adult smokes a joint in the privacy of their own home.
And I don't want to arrest adults and put them in prison and give them a criminal record or anything like that.
But I think we've been sometimes caught in this false dichotomy between criminalization on the one hand and mass commercialization on the other.
And I am very concerned about the latter.
Of course, rescheduling would not legalize or commercialize the drug.
So it is important to emphasize that.
But what it would do, I think, is expedite the commercialization in some ways because it offers, it will offer tax breaks to the industry.
They're now able to, if it's a Schedule III, which it's not yet, it's just the process has been basically encouraged is what the executive order essentially is doing.
But if that ends up happening, companies can take tax breaks.
And that's really where this whole thing came from.
It came from one or two of the president's golf friends, really.
I mean, he was very open about it.
I mean, if it's one thing, you know, you can't, you know, you can say about this president is, you know, he pretty much tells it like it is, even if it's sort of hard to hear.
That, for example, his business associate and golf buddy and person that's invested in the industry was the one who convinced his entire administration to sort of grin and bear it and be okay with this.
That was kind of hard for many of us who've been doing this for so long and listening to the research and the science.
It was kind of hard to hear, but that's really where it came from.
And it came from some polling that the industry had done about medical marijuana.
So the president tried to draw a bright line between non-medical and medical, which in some ways I appreciate because I'm glad that he said he wouldn't take it.
He doesn't want people to do it.
I mean, he was very open about that.
This wasn't legalization.
So I'm grateful for that because maybe that clarified kind of a muddled message.
But I am very concerned this is really expediting the commercialization.
I'll just say one other thing about it that I think is an interesting point, which is that, you know, if marijuana is truly going to be a Schedule III drug, it'll be the only Schedule III drug that does not have an FDA approved, that is not FDA approved.
It's not an FDA-approved product or medication.
So we're going to be in really unknown territory in so many ways.
And, you know, Schedule III drugs have to go under strict guidelines with regards to advertising or disease claims.
I mean, Tylenol with codeine cannot be in a gummy bear and it cannot be, you know, touted as curing every disease under the sun, which is what marijuana is being touted as now.
So I don't know if the industry quite grasps that.
Who knows if that'll be enforced, even, but that is part of this whole thing.
So I think we don't really know what this means as there's a long way to go.
But it was certainly interesting to watch that press conference yesterday.
Well, we want our viewers to join us in this conversation.
We'll get your thoughts on the president's move to federally, not federally legalize marijuana, but his move would ease tax burdens for cannabis businesses and facilitate more research.
That's from reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, as the Wall Street Journal reports.
We'll have you join in the conversation this morning.
Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
Text us with your thoughts if you'd like at 202-748-8003.
Kevin Sebette, before we get to calls, though, let's listen to the president in his own words yesterday.
So I've always told my children, don't take drugs, no drinking, no smoking, and just stay away from drugs.
I have been, they would look at me and they say, Dad, would you stop saying that?
I would say every time I looked at it practically.
Young Americans are especially at risk, so unless a drug is recommended by a doctor for medical reasons, just don't do it.
At the same time, the facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered.
In some cases, this may include the use as a substitute for addictive and potentially lethal opioid painkillers.
They cause tremendous problems.
This can do it in a much lesser way, can make people feel much better that are living through tremendous pain and problems.
President Trump, on reclassifying marijuana yesterday, our guest this morning is Kevin Sebet.
He is the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and also the author of the book, One Nation Under the Influence: America's Drug Habit and How We Can Overcome It.
Let's get to calls.
Kevin Williams joining us in Virginia, Democratic Caller.
unidentified
Yes, I use marijuana for my pain.
I served 20 years in the Marines.
I had a serious accident in the Marine Corps.
I got both of my shoulders rotated cups of torn and can't be repaired.
I got severe arthritis in my cervical spine.
I got brusidis and arthritis in both my hips.
I'm losing muscle in both of my corporateps.
I need both of my knees replaced.
I got numbness in both of my feet, permanent nerve damage in my right hand, severe arthritis in my lower back that pushes on my nerve and cold numbness in my feet.
I got a brain tumor.
I got prostate cancer.
What if I got?
I got all kinds of things.
I use medical marijuana.
I tried termidol for pain.
I had a bad reaction.
I passed out.
I tried the drug for nerve pain.
I passed out for that, so I stopped using it.
And I started using marijuana, and I get around good.
I don't have any pain, but all the stuff I got going on.
And for people to visualize that marijuana, when it's happening, people like me every day.
First of all, William, I mean, thank you for your service to our country.
And I'm very sorry for what you have gone through.
I want to be clear that I don't think anyone is saying that if marijuana, forget marijuana, methamphetamine, I mean, anything, even much more dangerous drugs in some ways, give people with, I mean, the number of things you listed, I don't think I've heard so many.
It's awful for one person.
You know, no one is saying that, you know, you shouldn't be going to jail or you shouldn't be getting that.
But my worry is that we're basing, and this is what the president emphasized when he said, people that I know, we're basing policy not so much on broad scientific evidence, but on anecdote.
And the plural of anecdote is not data.
So William, why think you should do what you need to do for yourself?
And, you know, interestingly enough, you're going to Washington, D.C., where it's actually not legal to sell.
So the product you're getting, I'm, you know, we don't know what's in it.
But the bigger issue is that's why we need FDA-approved medications.
I think, you know, we owe it to our veterans.
We owe it because we also know marijuana can cause PTSD.
It can cause long-term mental health damage.
So it might feel good in the short term mentally, but in the long term, it can be highly damaging is what the data says.
So what I would like to see is, you know, FDA approved medications, not so much medications by popular vote or medications by, you know, what a legislator or one president or another or where the political wins are, what that says, but actually what the scientific evidence says.
And, you know, something about rescheduling that was mentioned, of course, was they said that we can now do research.
It's possible that this will increase some research because it does make it slightly easier to do research.
But it's very, we need to be very clear that we have done almost $5 billion of research on marijuana in this country in the last 40 years, according to NIH reporter.
You can literally add up the numbers when you put in marijuana or THC or the cannabinoids.
And there are over 50,000 peer-reviewed published studies on marijuana.
So listen, I'm a PhD.
I definitely want more.
I always want more research.
Okay.
Research is good.
Love to do more research.
But what's going to drive research is funding, not just these sort of, you know, proclamations that we should do something.
It's funding will drive the research.
So, you know, I don't know if the president's prepared to fund.
I mean, the NIH budget was cut.
So if we could increase the NIH budget for funding, including into cannabinoids, including into other medications as well that are not marijuana or opioid-based medications.
There's a suite of medications.
Now with AI, we're learning so much more about personalized medicine.
I mean, there's so much we should be investing in to get these answers.
But for the people that can't wait, like our caller that we just heard, you know, I'm not against them taking something that might help them.
The issue is, how do we form public policy and what do we base public policy on?
He just answered my question, but I'd like him to clarify it a little bit more.
My question was if he would clarify on the legality of doing research on a Schedule I drug, which is where marijuana is now.
And there are other Schedule I's that you can't do research on, but by moving it into a Schedule III, it will now allow whatever mechanism it is to get research done other than through the NIH.
I don't know if that's possible, but could you go into some of that of how research monies are granted?
Can you get it through anyone other than the NIH?
Appreciate your time.
Take care.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Thank you.
There's so much misinformation about research and how it's done and the scheduling system because, you know, the scheduling system is over 50 years old.
I would reform the scheduling system.
I would change it in the whole system in some ways.
There's probably smarter ways to do it now.
But I think some of the misconceptions sometimes people have is they think that because marijuana is in a Schedule I and let's say heroin and LSD and PCP, for example, are also in Schedule I, that therefore we think marijuana is as dangerous as heroin.
And that's actually not what it means.
It's not a harm index by any means.
It's not even an index for criminal penalties.
There are Schedule II drugs that carry much harsher criminal penalties than Schedule I drugs.
So it's very confusing, admittedly.
You know, what Schedule I means is that it doesn't have accepted medical use.
In other words, the FDA has not approved a product called marijuana, just general marijuana.
That's why, by definition, it sort of has to be in Schedule I.
And the way that I think the government's trying to get around it now, and this was started, you know, admittedly in the Biden administration, is I think what they're trying to say is, well, because it's so popular, because it's been passed in so many places and thousands of people use it, therefore it has accepted medical use.
And that's the first time that definition has ever been used.
So the government had to sort of do a lot of legal and regulatory gymnastics to get to this justifiable idea that it can be anything other than Schedule I because it's not an actual approved product.
Now, there are marijuana-based medications that are not in Schedule I that are interesting.
So Schedule II, Schedule III, Schedule IV, those are, and there are things like Marinol, which is a synthetic THC.
It's been around since 1985.
It was fast-tracked through the National Cancer Institute during the early part of the AIDS epidemic and also for nausea related to cancer pain.
Interestingly, marinol is not widely used now.
We have much more superior drugs than marijuana-based drugs for nausea, but it is available if you need it.
There's also Epidialex, a newer drug that took over a billion and a half of dollars of more than that of private investment, not government investment, to get it passed.
And Epidialex is a purified CBD oil for seizures if those seizures do not react to normal, or I should say, to traditional medication.
And by the way, that's a minority.
Most of the seizures react well to traditional medication.
Some don't.
And those are some stories you see on TV with some of the kids that don't react well.
It's heartbreaking.
They're having multiple seizures a day.
Cannabidiol oil, and it's called epidialex, is available through the FDA, through your pharmacists.
And so it's purified and you know what you're getting.
And so that's all I'm saying is let's do this like we do any other medicine and do the research, see what it is.
And you can do research, though, with Schedule I drugs.
And to answer the caller's question directly, we have plenty of research we're doing on heroin.
That's a Schedule I drug.
We have research on PCP, LSD, MDMA.
In fact, MDMA almost passed trials.
It failed because of safety concerns that MDMA is not safe, actually.
And there's a lot on the psychedelics front, which we're not talking about this morning, maybe another day.
But that failed.
But there was a lot of research that you could do with it.
And that was a private company that was doing the MDMA, a very interested private company.
So private companies can do research with Schedule I drugs.
It does make it slightly easier in that, for example, with Schedule III versus Schedule I, you know, you can have few, you don't need to have as many safes that cover the product.
I mean, it's like little things like that.
Like you don't need to have the same exact kind of license.
You can transfer the license to someone in your lab if they're certified with something else.
I mean, it's some of those intricacies that change.
And maybe that will spur a lot more research.
It's possible.
But I don't, I'm skeptical.
I think what's going to spur research is the funding, not so much the schedule status.
I worry the schedule status instead is going to encourage some of the bad players, the for-profit pharma, other type of players that really don't really, they haven't been playing by the rules for the last 20 years and sort of don't intend to do so now.
I was wondering how getting marijuana reclassified under Schedule III may intersect or impact the recent redefining of hemp that was included in the bill to end the government shutdown earlier this year.
So just for some background, essentially, hemp was, you know, for years, we've had hemp available in your Whole Foods market and in your mall little kiosks to get the necklaces and stuff.
And those have been imported from Canada and China because they produce hemp so cheaply.
And we have imported it for years.
Seven years ago, hemp farmers, mainly in Kentucky, said, you know, we want to give American farmers a chance to grow hemp and be part of that business.
So the government agreed to that.
And what ended up happening was the legitimate hemp market, I mean, it didn't really help U.S. farmers because it's too cheap from Canada and China, even with tariffs.
Of course, there weren't tariffs then for that, but even with tariffs.
And the market is too small.
So, you know, the idea of American farmers in a southeastern state competing with China on hemp, that wasn't really going to happen.
But what unfortunately happened is you had some very entrepreneurial, essentially drug producers and dealers and networks, criminal networks, that exploited that hemp provision and found a loophole to allow them to create synthetic marijuana products based on the hemp plant.
That's nothing to do with hemp other than it was based on the hemp plant.
But they got the chemical structure.
They altered the chemical structure and they infused it in things like gummy bears and edibles and elixirs.
And they sold them at gas stations because they were totally quote unquote legal under this hemp provision, but not regulated at all because the government certainly wasn't expecting this.
It was a disaster.
We had deaths.
We had hundreds of thousands of emergency room admissions.
It was not a good thing other than for this industry that was making a lot of money, which is always usually what it comes down to.
So we actually, our colleague, our group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana and other groups, we worked very, very hard to reverse this.
Mitch McConnell did not want this as his legacy either, because of course he's Kentucky and he got the first farm bill passed.
So we, to Rand Paul's consternation, who wants to legalize all drugs, he was okay with it.
But almost everybody else wasn't okay with it.
And we had 25 Democrats join 50 Republicans, one of the few bipartisan things probably this year in banning hemp as part of the government spending bill.
That's where we are now.
The executive order yesterday does direct agencies to try and find CBD derived, you know, hemp-derived CBD products that can be helpful and do research and expedite that through, you know, HHS.
And we don't really know what that looks like.
It's very vague in the EO.
You have no idea.
But they are trying to do that.
I don't think I never thought that the repeal of the hemp provision was actually going to affect sort of some of the CBD supplement type things that you see at the store.
What I will say about those supplements is I just tell people, including my neighbors and even relatives who and good friends who ask me, hey, I'm taking CBD gummies to fall asleep.
Is this helpful?
Is it good?
Is it bad?
What I tell them is just buyer beware.
This isn't really regulated at all.
No one really knows what's in it.
A lot of the studies show placebo.
They show really very little change.
Some of them show extreme liver damage.
In fact, my understanding was FTA was looking at a black box warning for CBD products because of liver damage.
I don't know if that's happening anymore, but there's data on liver.
It's a nickname because I don't want to be called to HR in the morning or Monday morning.
My question is: I've always wondered, and it's about time.
I was always wondering when this subject was going to come up on the show.
How employers are going to deal with this and insurance companies?
Because I wouldn't want one of my bridge inspectors up on a bucket truck or on a crane inspecting a bridge, a very old bridge, which takes a lot of time to do.
And you spend a lot of time by yourself up there burning one if they thought that was acceptable, you know?
And you're right.
This stuff is so strong anymore.
You see, walking down the road with my dog, and then somebody comes by, and I feel like I got a contact high coming from their car.
It's a very, very good comment, a very astute observation.
And if you think it's bad where you are, Milo, walking your dog, you should go to our wonderful cities like New York City and see what it smells like, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles.
It's complete legalization and commercialization has totally changed the landscape.
And we actually think that it's one of the reasons we've seen a backlash to marijuana.
And I'm encouraged that you were on the Democratic line and said this, because this is not a partisan issue.
It should not be a partisan issue.
We now have people in very blue states that want to repeal the sales of marijuana because they are concerned about commercialization.
It's not so much about the adults' right to use and the privacy of their own home.
It's about this public display and the smell, which travels.
It's much more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke in terms of a secondhand contact high.
It travels much further than tobacco.
That's why you smell it more likely to smell marijuana than tobacco when you're walking down the street.
Because if someone's doing it in any near vicinity, you're going to smell it.
So it's a huge issue.
And the contact high and secondhand smoke issue is something we don't talk enough about in this country.
The other thing that we don't talk enough about that you mentioned was the issue of testing.
And it's very important because we don't want people building bridges and up high and inspecting them and driving our trucks and driving our kids on the school bus and operating in our surgical rooms.
We do not want them high on anything.
And marijuana stays in your system longer.
It doesn't mean that you're not intoxicated, but you test longer.
It actually means you are affected longer than a drug, for example, like alcohol, which is in and out of your system in 24 hours.
And for marijuana, the effects can last a few days.
Studies show that.
They show that this is not just right when you feel high.
It's even when you feel like you're not high anymore, you will do poorly on tests when they test you for different things.
So I'm very concerned about it.
There's a drug testing organization called Endesa, which is very highly respected, that's looking at what this means for our pilots, what this means for our Department of Transportation, mandated testing.
I don't think these things were thought of by the president and his golf buddies, to be honest.
There are wide implications about what this means, and it's extremely uncertain.
Yeah, I would just say that I like the topic today.
I like the guest and what he's saying.
I would say the commercialization, that cow is already well out of the barn.
I do social work in Philadelphia, so I get to go to the schools.
I smell it all over in the high schools.
I smell it all over in the middle schools.
I smell it when I'm driving.
It's wasting out of the windows.
The other driver in the car is using it.
Commercialization, it's done.
Colorado, it started.
It's legal in Jersey.
That cow is well out of the barn.
So what do we do from this point?
You know, our drug treatment is a failure.
Our drug policies are a failure.
Mass incarceration didn't work.
None of this stuff is working.
I like that the person here is talking about getting data to drive policy.
The problem is that in this country, data doesn't drive policy.
Billionaires do.
Insiders do.
This is a billion-dollar industry.
And so they're going to drive policy.
They're going to write the policy that Congress is going to pass.
And that's a problem.
And then, as far as the FDA, and we just need to maybe regulate or get the FDA more involved, look at the Sackler family.
They did more mass killing of Americans than any other thing or entity.
If you look at one family and the pillaging and murder of our citizens, all approved by the FDA and the medical community, when they knew the research was in for a decade that that was bad.
So I would just challenge why we're talking about marijuana, why we're not broadening the conversation to why so many Americans are so miserable when I walk around Kennedy.
Hey, Tony, I've got to jump in at that point and get a response from our guest.
unidentified
Well, Tony, first of all, thank you for your service working with kids in the city of Brotherly Love.
It's a great city.
And it's not easy what you do.
And I know you're underpaid and underappreciated, but people do appreciate you.
Those kids need you.
They're the future of our country.
And we very much appreciate your perspective.
And in some ways, it's depressing what you said, but in many ways, you're right.
I mean, we fought the Sacklers.
I fought the Sacklers very hard in the opioid epidemic in the early days when I was in the Obama administration when we saw that wave of prescription drugs.
Now, of course, there's a place for prescription drugs.
We don't know.
They help some people, of course, too.
And thankfully, a minority of people who use those prescription drugs got addicted to them.
But that minority was such a big number still and caused so much damage.
And we didn't listen.
And instead, we listened to them because they had a lot of money, just like we listened to the tobacco industry for 80 years, even longer than we listened to the Sacklers, when we allowed the tobacco industry to manipulate a product that had been used for thousands of years, relatively innocuously.
Think about it.
Tobacco used for thousands of years, very few deaths.
And it started killing people more than any weapon of mass destruction when they turned it into a cigarette.
And that was an industry innovation that did that.
And my worry is if we turn this over to the marijuana industry and the people who are invested in the pot industry, like some of those people around the Oval Office, which I never thought I would see around the Resolute desk yesterday, I think that that's not a good thing.
We should not turn this over to that billionaire class.
What we can do, though, Tony, is we can, first of all, educate.
We're going to leave this here for live coverage of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, holding an end-of-the-year news conference at the State Department.
And then I'll answer it in English after I answer it in Spanish.
So any other languages, you know, won't be able to do it.
But those two.
And then, so I look, when I took over Secretary of State, I'll refer you back to the hearings we had in the Senate in January about the role I hope to play.
And I believe very strongly this president was elected.
One of the reasons why he was elected, very specific things, but one of the reasons why President Trump was elected is sort of an understanding among the American people that our foreign policy was in need of a complete recalibration.
A recalibration because the world had dramatically changed.
Many of the institutions, policies, assumptions that our foreign policy was operating under were built upon a world that no longer existed.
And it required us to re-examine that.
One of the assumptions that I think we had lost during this period of time, and I don't mean to make this an academic lecture, but I wanted to give you some insight into the broader thinking.
As I highlighted at that hearing less than a year, almost a year ago now, is one of the assumptions was the loss of the notion of the national interest in our foreign policy.
At the core of foreign policy needs to be the national interest of the United States.
Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't issues and things we care about in the world, but at its core, the core principle of the national interest, the core principle behind our foreign policy needs to be our national interests.
So you have to, first of all, define what is the national interest and then you have to apply it.
We defined it as we are in favor of foreign policies that make America safer or stronger or more prosperous.
Hopefully all three, but at least one of those three.
And then it requires you to prioritize.
Even the richest, most powerful and influential country on earth has limited resources, has limited time.
And it has to be able to dedicate those resources and time through a process of prioritization.
That includes geographic prioritization.
It also includes issue prioritization.
And that's what we intend to do here.
Then you have to have the mechanisms of foreign policy to deliver on it.
In essence, you have to have a Department of State and a National Security Council and all the elements of U.S. foreign policy influence and power to deliver, to identify and then deliver on those priorities.
And that's what we've attempted to do here, and I think we're well on our way to doing it.
There's more work to be done.
There's things we will improve upon.
But generally speaking, it was the genesis behind the reorganization of the department, oftentimes applying reforms that secretaries of states of both parties, appointed by presidents of both parties, have long sought to do.
And we're very proud of that going into effect and continuing to work forward.
I think we generally avoided massive disruptions to our operation, although any transition involves some disruption.
but we're very happy with the way we empowered our regional bureaus, meaning our embassies and the folks at the desks here behind the regions have become more empowered and having influence over every element of our foreign policy, particularly how it's applied tactically.
At the same time, one of the things we looked at is foreign aid.
Foreign aid is not a separate activity of the United States government.
It is an element and a tool of our foreign policy, and it should be used for the purpose of furthering the national interest.
That doesn't mean we don't care about human rights.
That doesn't mean we don't care about starvation.
That doesn't mean we don't care about hunger.
That doesn't mean we don't care about humanitarian need.
What it does mean, however, is that even foreign aid, which is not charity, it is an act of the U.S. taxpayer.
Now, American charities are free to give their money to whoever they want, as long as it's not a sanctioned entity.
But the United States and the taxpayer money should be spent in furtherance of our foreign policy.
Should be spent in places and on things that further our foreign policy.
And even that is not unlimited.
We have a limited amount of money that we can dedicate to foreign aid and humanitarian assistance.
And that has to be applied in a way that furthers our national interests.
And that's what we have sought to do as well.
And in that endeavor as well, we have empowered the regional bureaus and our embassies to play a dramatic role.
In fact, they are not just the implementers of this.
They, in many cases, are the ones that are suggesting and are leading the response.
And so bringing the tools of foreign aid underneath the umbrella of our broader foreign policy has been an important and dramatic reform.
Even in the midst of all that, we remain engaged around the world, including in conflicts that perhaps are not central to everyday life in America, but the President has made it a priority to be a peacemaker.
And so you've seen us engaged, whether it's Russia, Ukraine, or India and Pakistan, or Thailand and Cambodia, which is an ongoing challenge, or the tragedy we see now in Sudan, or the potential for further strife in South Sudan and that falling apart.
I mean, no matter our Armenia and Azerbaijan, we are always looking for opportunities, if possible, to play the role of a mediator that brings about the avoidance of war or the ending of conflicts.
And obviously, in many of these cases, you can get people to the table and agree, and then there's the implementation process.
And so we've made progress in many of these, particularly in getting them to agree to certain conditions.
Obviously, it's ongoing work to make sure that those are implemented and applied.
And some of these conflicts have deep roots that go back many, many years.
But we are prepared to be engaged and helpful in ways that perhaps other nations can't.
We've been viewed as indispensable in that regard, and it's a role the President takes great pride in in the promotion of peace around the world and something he deserves a lot of credit for.
He is personally engaged in all of this.
Obviously, the big one was the situation with Gaza, which again is ongoing.
There is now a ceasefire.
War is no longer going on at the scale and scope and all the things that were going on before.
But obviously there's more work to remain.
We are still through the process of trying to implement phase one and lead to phase two and phase three.
That is a long-term project, some of which will extend beyond the four years of this administration, but I thought it was a very important achievement as well.
So we have a lot to be proud about.
I know you probably have some specific questions and we can get to those, but I wanted to let that, you know, lay that out as the preface and predicate for everything we're going to do today.
So I'm going to start.
How do I start?
I'm going to start from the back row forward and then I'll just juggle in between.
I'll be here pretty long, so we'll get to everybody.
Don't get desperate.
Don't get wild.
All right, I'll start with this gentleman with the white hair in the back.
Yes, sir.
unidentified
Thank you all for ask you about Gaza.
U.S. wants Pakistan troops to be in Gaza.
Has U.S. got a consent from Pakistan that they'll be sending their troops in Gaza for peace building and peacemaking.