| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
ICE's Perception Problem
00:04:23
|
||
| Paul, who may not agree with abolishing ICE, but 57% disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 40% approve. | ||
| Does ICE have an issue here, and are you concerned about how they are being perceived? | ||
| Well, I'm certainly concerned about how they're being perceived. | ||
| I would say a couple of different things. | ||
| I would say that there's a lot of misreporting out in the legacy media. | ||
| I think your caller, the last caller, was a perfect example of that. | ||
| I think she said, well, ICE is arresting U.S. citizens. | ||
| That couldn't be further from the truth. | ||
| Now, what ICE will do is when they go in, for instance, if they're pulling over someone that's a target, that's an illegal alien, and they have four other people in the car or four other people in the house, they are absolutely going to ask for their identification to understand who they are, just like any other police officer would. | ||
| If those individuals are U.S. citizens and they have outstanding warrants, guess what? | ||
| They're going to jail. | ||
| ICE is simply not going to release those individuals. | ||
| So there's a lot of detail here that gets missed all the time about certain laws. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. | |
| This is a very important one today. | ||
| We've worked on it long and hard. | ||
| For years they've been working on it. | ||
| And I see Kevin's in the audience, and I just want to thank you. | ||
| You were fantastic on television today. | ||
| I actually want to keep you where you are if you want to know the truth. | ||
| Kevin Hassett is so good. | ||
| I'm saying, wait a minute. | ||
| If I move them, these Fed guys, certainly the one we have now, they don't talk much. | ||
| I would lose you. | ||
| It's a serious concern to me. | ||
| So I just want to say thank you very much. | ||
| You've done incredible. | ||
| We don't want to lose him, Susie. | ||
| But we'll see how it all works out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Thank you, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great job. | |
| And thank you for all being here as we discuss the largest investment in rural health care in American history. | ||
| This is the big one. | ||
| We're delighted to be joined by many incredible members of the health care community, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists from all across America. | ||
| We're also very happy to have with us some very talented people. | ||
| A man who is really good at this, extremely non-controversial, which is, I wanted somebody non-controversial. | ||
| So I chose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Daddy Banger. | ||
| And he also happens to be a great guy. | ||
| Brooke Rollins, who's doing a fantastic job at agriculture, and thank you. | ||
| And how are the prices coming? | ||
| They're coming, sir, they're coming down. | ||
| Don't forget, we inherited a mess. | ||
| Remember eggs? | ||
| They were up four times higher than they ever were. | ||
| And in my first day, they said, what are you going to do about eggs? | ||
| I said, I didn't cause the problem. | ||
| We didn't cause. | ||
| We inherited a mess, but the prices are coming down. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Wholesale prices are down 86%. | ||
| Retail a little bit less than that. | ||
| But yes, you're making America affordable again. | ||
| With you in charge, I have no doubt, and I appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a really good man, a really brilliant guy, Dr. Mehmet Oz. | ||
| Thank you, Emily. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Raz. | ||
| And thank you also to Governor Jim Pillen, Senator Dan Sullivan, and Representatives Rob Bresnahan, Mike Lawler, John McGuire, and Nick Beggich. | ||
| Thank you all for being here. | ||
| I appreciate it very much. | ||
| We have other congressmen here, I see, and a couple of senators, and we appreciate everybody being here. | ||
|
Increasing Rural Health Care Funding
00:05:45
|
||
| Everyone wants to be a part of this. | ||
| It's very so important. | ||
| It's maybe, I don't know, for many people, there's nothing more important. | ||
| I would say maybe defense. | ||
| We need defense, and we need offense too, by the way. | ||
| As part of the Great Big Beautiful bill, we're increased and we have increased funding for the health care by an unprecedented $50 billion. | ||
| That's rural health care. | ||
| Nobody thought that was going to happen, and we got it done. | ||
| So we have rural health care. | ||
| For those that were trying to make a case that we weren't taking care of the rural community, I'm all about the rural community. | ||
| We won the rural communities by numbers that nobody's ever won them before, and we're taking care of those great people. | ||
| So we already did this. | ||
| We increased funding for rural health care by an unprecedented record-setting, $50 billion over five years, which will benefit Americans in all 50 states. | ||
| And this made possible and was made possible by cutting massive waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicaid and reinvesting those funds to revitalize hospitals and our cherished rural communities and hospitals and rural communities. | ||
| And I want to say with all of the fraud that we're seeing in Minnesota and California and other places, I actually think that we do an unbelievable job. | ||
| You could almost balance your budget, Kevin. | ||
| If you take a look at the kind of numbers you're talking about, nobody ever saw anything like it. | ||
| They're all corrupt politicians, from the governor of Minnesota to the governor of California to everybody. | ||
| They're just corrupt politicians. | ||
| And you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud, waste fraud and abuse, but in fraud, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| Under the Unaffordable Care Act, which is Obamacare, it's called the unaffordable. | ||
| It is unaffordable. | ||
| Remember that. | ||
| Rural hospitals and communities were devastated by soaring costs, and that continues. | ||
| Despite colossal increases in government spending since Obamacare was passed, only 7% of the annual Medicaid spending on rural hospitals has gone to rural hospitals. | ||
| So there's only a very little. | ||
| They didn't care. | ||
| Obama didn't care about the rural community, to be totally blunt. | ||
| What he did care about is insurance companies. | ||
| And this was a bill to make insurance companies wealthy. | ||
| And they did. | ||
| They made insurance companies very wealthy. | ||
| I would say they don't like me too much because they spent hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| And we're going to have that money spent to the people and given to the people, not we're going to circumvent the insurance companies. | ||
| Partially as a result, rural health care facilities have suffered from low occupancy rates, workforce shortages, and failing programs that put band-aids, literally put band-aids, over the problems in those communities. | ||
| And we're not going to have that. | ||
| We're taking great care of them. | ||
| With the Rural Health Transformation Program, we are getting rural communities the health support they need, and we're getting it immediately. | ||
| These funds will go to empowering rural hospitals, strengthening their workforce, modernizing facilities and technology, and ensuring that rural Americans get world-class health care in their own community, right smack in their own community, like they've never had it before. | ||
| And they've been hurt very badly by the Unaffordable Care Act. | ||
| Every single Democrat in Congress voted against the lifeline for rural communities. | ||
| And I hope everyone knows this. | ||
| And this is not about elections, but I hope you remember this in the midterms because the Democrats are just so horrible toward the rural community. | ||
| But I want to take a moment to thank the incredible House and Senate Republicans who worked so hard on making this historic investment possible. | ||
| That's what they did, and they did work hard. | ||
| We, I don't think, got a Democrat vote, did we? | ||
| Did we get one Democrat vote? | ||
| We got all Republican votes. | ||
| It was an amazing, it was amazing feat. | ||
| And I want to thank Mike, our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and John Thune, for really doing a great job. | ||
| It was tough. | ||
| You know, we have small majorities. | ||
| And I want to thank the congressmen that are here for doing, in particular, for working so hard in getting this done. | ||
| Yesterday I also announced our framework to lower health care prices for all Americans, including those in rural America. | ||
| And we're calling it the Great Health Care Plan. | ||
| You know, we had to come up with a name, and everybody wanted to say, oh, well, can we put something about lowering costs? | ||
| Because we're lowering costs very substantially. | ||
| So I had Bobby and I had Oz. | ||
| We had everybody in there. | ||
| We had a whole group of people who are trying to come up with, so we're saying the cost reduction plan that gives you good health care. | ||
| And I said, it's too long. | ||
| It's not going to sell. | ||
| I said, we had more plans. | ||
| And they wanted to get the words cost reduction in their law, especially you. | ||
| They wanted cost reduction in, and then they wanted great health care in. | ||
| I said, look, you can have one or the other, but it gets too long. | ||
| We're talking about the name of a plan. | ||
| So we got it down to seven or eight words, which is far too long. | ||
| Nobody can remember that much. | ||
| And I said, how about just call it, because this is the great health care plan. | ||
|
Cost-Effective Healthcare Plan
00:07:28
|
||
| Now, a great plan has to be cost-effective, otherwise it can't be a great plan. | ||
| That's the way I looked at it. | ||
| So we have a very glamorous name. | ||
| It's called the Great Health Care Plan, not the Unaffordable Care Act. | ||
| I don't like that name. | ||
| This is called officially the Great Health Care Plan. | ||
| That means low price and great health care. | ||
| So you're going to have, at a lower price, great health care. | ||
| First, our proposal codifies the massive discounts on prescription drugs that my administration is achieving through our most favored nation provisions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| We can go into this. | ||
| We can go into this for hours, but the bottom line is we'll be paying the lowest price of any nation in the world. | ||
| Whoever is paying the lowest, we match it. | ||
| This could have been done years ago. | ||
| I was going to do it in my first administration, but when COVID came toward the end, I said, I can't believe it wasn't the right, it wasn't exactly a good time to be doing it. | ||
| But I said, why isn't somebody doing it? | ||
| And the reason they're not doing it is that no other nation would agree. | ||
| France, as an example, paid 10% of what we paid. | ||
| Germany was paying 13 or 14% what we paid. | ||
| In other words, we paid many times more, not a little bit more, not 10% more, 10 times more. | ||
| A pill would cost 10 times more in New York than it would cost in London, as an example, than it would cost in Munich. | ||
| And this went on for many decades. | ||
| This was right from the beginning. | ||
| And the reason it went on was a little bit of the health care companies, but it was other nations. | ||
| And I understand that. | ||
| If I were heading Germany, I'm not going to double and triple and quadruple my health care. | ||
| They got the health care companies to pay, just took place over a long period of time, got worse and worse, and it just hit numbers that were just absolutely unsaleable. | ||
| And if you remember, the doctors in the audience remember they said, well, we have to do research and development. | ||
| I said, well, what about research and development for Germany? | ||
| Well, we've decided to put up the so the pill would cost five times more because of research and development and five times more for other reasons. | ||
| They had all these phony reasons. | ||
| And finally, I said to the health care companies, can't do it anymore. | ||
| We can't do it. | ||
| And it started, really. | ||
| I tell the story. | ||
| It wasn't meant to be funny. | ||
| People find it funny. | ||
| But a friend of mine who's a very smart guy, very, very rich, very powerful man, actually, but he's very fat. | ||
| And he took the fat, I call it the fat drug. | ||
| I won't give you which one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was Ozepic. | |
| I won't tell you that. | ||
| And he went to London on one of his many business trips. | ||
| It's all he does his business. | ||
| He can't walk across the street, but he's a great businessman. | ||
| And he said, President, President, I said, What? | ||
| He used to call me Donnie. | ||
| Now he calls me President. | ||
| So I said, You've come a long way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He goes, But I have a problem. | |
| What's your problem? | ||
| In New York, I pay $1,300 for this drug. | ||
| Now, this means nothing to him. | ||
| This is like a penny out of your wallet. | ||
| The guy's worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. | ||
| He said, and in London, sir, I pay just a fraction of that. | ||
| I said, what are you paying? | ||
| $87. | ||
| I said, well, is it the same drug? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I knew exactly what he was getting at because I've, you know, it bothered me for a long time. | |
| He said, it's the exact same drug. | ||
| And because of his wealth and his business smarts, he had a check. | ||
| It was made in the same plant by the same company. | ||
| It's identical. | ||
| And here I pay $87. | ||
| And in New York, I pay $1,300. | ||
| So it was too much to bear. | ||
| Because after I told him that the drug does not work on him, because I saw him recently, he's actually fatter than ever. | ||
| I said, the drug is not working on you. | ||
| You're going to have to go to something else. | ||
| But it does work on a lot of people. | ||
| And he said, thanks, you make me feel good. | ||
| I said, well, I got to be truthful. | ||
| You always tell the truth, right, Mr. Congressman? | ||
| Oh, look, one of the great, one of the great Congressman, two of the great Congressmen. | ||
| But the drug, we have to do something about it because that's the same with every, I would say, Bobby, every drug, essentially. | ||
| It doesn't have to be in that proportion. | ||
| In some cases, it's much worse. | ||
| Because what happened, I might as well get off this crap because it doesn't explain it properly. | ||
| Because what happened is these countries are very smart, and the drug companies would go to them and they said, look, we're paying $10 for the pill. | ||
| We're not paying more. | ||
| Charge America. | ||
| And this happened one time, then the next year, the next year. | ||
| This is over 40 years. | ||
| All of a sudden, they're paying $10 for a pill, and we're paying like $130 for the same pill. | ||
| It just happened over years, slowly. | ||
| And it got to a point over the last 10, 12, 15 years where it just was unbearable. | ||
| And I went to a great executive at Eli Lilly, the top man, he's a very smart guy. | ||
| And I confronted him, and he had the same line that they always had, blah, blah, blah, research and development. | ||
| I said, look, look, we've got to stop this nonsense. | ||
| We're paying 10 times more for things in Europe. | ||
| It's not research and development. | ||
| And if it is research and development, they should pay their fair share of that too. | ||
| And he said to me, and he's a great guy, he said, look, you're right. | ||
| We can't defend it anymore. | ||
| I said, you're admitting it? | ||
| Because these guys had a stand, all of them. | ||
| They must have taken a class together. | ||
| Must have been probably illegal what they did, Laura. | ||
| You'll check it, right? | ||
| They must have gone to school together and said, this is the way we're going to fight this crazy thing where the United States pays 10, 12, 13 times more for a drug. | ||
| Same drug. | ||
| Same drug made in the same plant. | ||
| And he said, here's the problem we have. | ||
| The nations are brutal. | ||
| When we go in and say, we have to give you an increase, they say, no, put it on America. | ||
| We're not paying you anything. | ||
| And they say it with such power. | ||
| And they actually shut us off from selling the drug. | ||
| And it just happened over and over again. | ||
| It got a little worse, a little worse, a little worse. | ||
| All of a sudden, we're paying many times more for the same. | ||
| I said, it's not going to happen anymore. | ||
| He said, the problem is, sir, you'll never get the nations to agree. | ||
| It's impossible. | ||
| They're very tough, and they are. | ||
| And they'd have to agree to a doubling or tripling of their drug prices in order to get you down, because the world is a bigger place than us. | ||
| So it's not like you cut it in half. | ||
| Actually, if they raised it a little bit, we'd go down a lot. | ||
| You understand that? | ||
| I think people understand that. | ||
| So you raise it like from $10 to $20 or $10 to $30, but we'd go from $130 down to $30. | ||
| We're down to $20. | ||
| So, because the numbers are much bigger, the numbers on their side are much bigger. | ||
|
Jimmy Carter's Gift
00:03:08
|
||
| So they'd need a doubling or tripling or quadrupling. | ||
| Now, if you're the head of France, the last thing you want to do is say, I'm going to quadruple the cost of a drug. | ||
| And that's the way it is. | ||
| But I said, I know, but it's not fair. | ||
| And this has taken place. | ||
| And the head of Eli Lilly, and I really mean it, an unbelievable executive, an unbelievable guy, one of the most successful companies, and who's, by the way, spending hundreds of billions of dollars right now. | ||
| He's building, he told me the other day, he's building six major plants in the United States. | ||
| You know why he's doing that? | ||
| Because of tariffs. | ||
| He's doing that because of tariffs. | ||
| Without tariffs, he wouldn't be doing it. | ||
| Nobody understood tariffs until I came along. | ||
| Nobody understood, other than President McKinley, he understood them a long time ago. | ||
| And because of him, we were the richest nation that we ever were at that period of time. | ||
| And then when he died, he was assassinated. | ||
| Teddy Roosevelt came over and he inherited a war chest. | ||
| And he built the Panama Canal, which is the single most expensive thing ever built in the history of the United States, relatively. | ||
| We spent what would be the equivalent of $5 trillion building the Panama Canal. | ||
| It was also the most successful thing probably we've ever built and to this day. | ||
| And then Jimmy Carter gave it away for $1. | ||
| This is the same theory we have on favorite nations. | ||
| The great Jimmy Carter, President Jimmy Carter, gave it away for $1. | ||
| We lost 38,000 men in those days. | ||
| It was men. | ||
| I hate to say this, but mostly men. | ||
| They didn't have a lot of women workers on the Panama Canal. | ||
| But we lost 38,000 people. | ||
| They died from malaria and snake bites. | ||
| It was a combination of that, a vicious snake, one of the most vicious. | ||
| You get hit, you're dead. | ||
| They died from snake bites. | ||
| 38,000. | ||
| They paid workers from the United States three times more than they made to come over to Panama and dig. | ||
| For many of them, that was not a good deal. | ||
| They died. | ||
| 38,000. | ||
| We gave it away for that. | ||
| But that same stupidity having to do with the Panama Canal, and I could tell you about a hundred other stories too. | ||
| You don't have time. | ||
| But that's what went into this whole thing with favorite nations. | ||
| So Europe and other nations all over the world were getting drugs from the same plant, same factory, same everything, same location, everything, same company, for a tiny fraction of what we're paying. | ||
| So our people were paying a tremendous amount. | ||
| So the gentleman from Eli Lilly and others, we had a root meeting, and they all finally put up their hands. | ||
| You got us. | ||
| We give up. | ||
| And they were great from that time. | ||
| But we had a problem. | ||
|
Why We Left Google
00:11:55
|
||
| The other nations weren't going for it. | ||
| France turned it down. | ||
| Germany turned it down. | ||
| UK turned it down. | ||
| European Union turned it down. | ||
| The whole group. | ||
| And they said, there's nothing you can do about it, sir. | ||
| I said, yes, there is. | ||
| No, there isn't. | ||
| You'll never be able to get them up. | ||
| I mean, the whole industry is going to be torn apart. | ||
| I said, we'll get them up easily. | ||
| Are you crazy? | ||
| Of course we'll get them up. | ||
| That's what I do for a living. | ||
| I get people up. | ||
| So I called, I started with President Macron of France, a very nice person. | ||
| I like him a lot. | ||
| I hope he's listening because he doesn't believe that, but I do. | ||
| He's a nice man. | ||
| And I said, Emmanuel, yes, Donald, Donald, thank you so much for calling. | ||
| I said, you're not going to like this call. | ||
| You're going to have to get your drug prices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I will not do that. | |
| I said, Emmanuel, we're paying 13 times more than, 13 times, not 13%, 13 times more than you are for this pill. | ||
| I rattled off some numbers that are crazy. | ||
| You know the numbers I'm talking about, Oz. | ||
| Oz would give me some numbers. | ||
| I'd say, this is crazy. | ||
| We're paying 10 times, 12 times, 13 times. | ||
| No, no, no, no, I will not do that. | ||
| I said, look, you've got to do it. | ||
| 100% you're going to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, Donald. | |
| I told you I will not do that. | ||
| I said, here's the story, Emmanuel. | ||
| If you don't do it, I'm going to put a 25% tariff on all goods, wine, champagnes, and everything else coming into the United States of America. | ||
| He said, Donald, I would love to do this for you. | ||
| It would be a great honor to do it. | ||
| And that's where it began. | ||
| And I went through country after country. | ||
| Susie was responsible for getting every one of those leaders on the thing. | ||
| Susie, by the way, stand up, Susie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She is doing such a good job. | |
| She's the first female chief of staff. | ||
| And she might be the best chief of staff, too. | ||
| But she's doing a great job. | ||
| Thank you, Susie. | ||
| So Susie, Susie got him on. | ||
| And I just went one after another. | ||
| I called Germany. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no, we will not do that. | |
| I said, no, we're going to put a 25% tariff, which is, by the way, about seven times more than they would have to pay by raising their drug, like seven times. | ||
| This wasn't like a little bit more, seven times more. | ||
| And I may do that for Greenland, too. | ||
| I may put a tariff on countries if they don't go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. | ||
| So I may do that. | ||
| I'll give you a little, I'll talk about, I'll take you out of that. | ||
| In fact, that'll end up being the story. | ||
| But actually, this is a much bigger story because we're reducing health care by numbers that you haven't seen. | ||
| So I spoke to the top 10 countries. | ||
| They all said no, and within about two minutes, they all agreed. | ||
| And we were off to the races. | ||
| And now we have favored nations. | ||
| It's called most favored nations. | ||
| So if France is paying, let's say, $20 or $30 instead of $10, we are going to pay that $20 or $30. | ||
| We pay the lowest price, whatever the lowest price is. | ||
| So if France is paying $100, but Germany's paying $20, we pay what Germany pays. | ||
| So we go from a horrible situation on drugs, prescription drugs, to the lowest price anywhere in the world. | ||
| Is that a correct statement, Oz? | ||
| Because they're going to blame you. | ||
| If you want to correct me, you can, but you won't be here for long if you do. | ||
| Oz has left employment. | ||
| No, but is that a correct statement? | ||
| That's an absolutely correct statement. | ||
| And that's what we want to codify in the great health care plan. | ||
| That's why it's codified. | ||
| Because if the President is not here, there is a flight risk with these companies not obliging us anymore, because I think it's the strength of your personality, but also they know they will follow through with the threats if we don't act. | ||
| So we believe other countries will change their opinions, and so will drug companies. | ||
| So we have got to get it into legislation. | ||
| Well, if you have the wrong president, the countries have tremendous influence over us. | ||
| You know, they look, why did we go to an income tax system instead of a tariff system? | ||
| We had the wealthiest nation. | ||
| If you go back to the 1800s, 1887, we had money, so much money, we didn't know what to do with it. | ||
| But the countries at that time, same, no different. | ||
| They have a tremendous influence over this country for whatever reason. | ||
| I don't know, but they do. | ||
| So if you have the wrong president, they will change the system in two minutes. | ||
| I mean, they will change it. | ||
| And the drug companies are very powerful, too. | ||
| You have to deal with them. | ||
| In this case, it was both. | ||
| I mean, you had a problem with the drug companies, but you had a tougher problem in theory, other than the fact that I understood how to deal with them. | ||
| And I'm the tariff king, and the tariff king has done a great job. | ||
| And I hope we win the Supreme Court case, because if we don't, be a shame for our country. | ||
| Be a shame. | ||
| We have a great, safe, beautiful country now. | ||
| We are doing better than we have ever done. | ||
| We hit 42 stock market highs during the 11-month period that I have been here. | ||
| There has never been anything like it. | ||
| Stock market is hitting a new high again today. | ||
| So it's been incredible. | ||
| So just to end it on this, because it's such a big subject and it can't be explained by reading as good as my speechwriter is he is fantastic, but he can't write it in one sentence what we're talking about. | ||
| So we're going to get most favored nations. | ||
| We will be taking prescription drugs down to levels never even contemplated. | ||
| And that's all great for health care, because when you are paying a tiny fraction of what you had anticipated paying prior to today, prior to this month, this all took place over the last month and a half. | ||
| And the sad part is that when we first announced it, and we did it in a little bit less more general form, when we first announced it, the Times did a story on page 22 or something, way back in the little story in the back of the newspaper. | ||
| This is the biggest revolution in the history of medicine in this country because it is price. | ||
| You are going to buy the drugs for a small fraction of what you were paying for them last month. | ||
| And I tell the story of my first term. | ||
| I was the one, after 28 years, that got drug prices down. | ||
| It was either one-quarter or one-eighth of one percent. | ||
| I got them down for the year. | ||
| First time in 28 years, I was so proud of myself, I called the news conference. | ||
| I said, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in 28 years, drug prices have gone down for the year. | ||
| One-eighth of a point. | ||
| In fact, I had a chart. | ||
| It was the worst chart I have ever seen. | ||
| It was a line that went from January to December, and it was dead straight. | ||
| You had to get a little, you know, like a carpenter to see. | ||
| I said, does it look good? | ||
| It's not the greatest line. | ||
| But I was proud of it because it did. | ||
| It went down either a quarter of a point or an eighth of a point, tiny. | ||
| And now think of what we are doing. | ||
| We are bringing medicine down by many times, by many times. | ||
| Nobody has ever seen. | ||
| And there are two ways of calculating. | ||
| You could say 1,000 percent, 2,000, or you could say 90 percent or 80 percent. | ||
| The Democrats want you to say 90 or 80, but there are two ways of calculating it. | ||
| You understand that, Dan? | ||
| And we will take either way, it doesn't matter. | ||
| But we will be paying a tiny fraction. | ||
| So that's going to go into our plan. | ||
| And what Oz said is very important. | ||
| It's very important that whoever is in this office is strong and intelligent. | ||
| And if they're not, it could be ended. | ||
| But what we want to do is we want to have it codified so it's very hard to change. | ||
| And that's all part of the process. | ||
| I think it's the greatest revolution because it's financial is a big part of the drugs. | ||
| And all of the doctors sitting there know exactly what I'm talking about. | ||
| They have their patients in Europe and they say, I can't believe it. | ||
| I'm buying the same thing for 15 percent of what I pay in New York or in Chicago. | ||
| And they're all nodding their heads. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's not going to happen anymore. | ||
| We pay now, just to end it, the lowest price in the world, whatever that is, that's what the United States of America will be paying. | ||
| Isn't that an amazing, long story? | ||
| I was going to say long, boring. | ||
| It's not boring. | ||
| To me, it's long and exciting. | ||
| It's the biggest thing to happen to health care. | ||
| I don't think there's anything we can do. | ||
| We can do all of our different methods, but there's nothing we can do that can ever top what we do. | ||
| And the press should treat it fairly instead of not writing about it, because they don't write about it because it's me. | ||
| Primarily because it's me, but also because it's Republican. | ||
| And they don't write about it, and they should be ashamed. | ||
| But fortunately, the public understands it, and that's why we won the election in a landslide. | ||
| So it's a great thing. | ||
| Instead of Americans paying the highest drug prices anywhere in the world by far, by 10 times sometimes, we'll now pay the lowest cost paid by the lowest nation. | ||
| So the lowest nation, whatever that is, I hope they negotiate a great deal. | ||
| I hope somebody out there of all those nations is going to be a better negotiator than everybody else. | ||
| And whatever they get, we get, Mike. | ||
| Is that pretty good? | ||
| Look at Mike. | ||
| Even Lawrence, first time I've ever seen him smile. | ||
| And next, our plan would reduce your insurance premiums by stopping government payoffs to big insurance companies and sending the money directly to the people. | ||
| So instead of, and this started, and I'm not really a health care Maven, but I was always a good businessman. | ||
| It started, I'm reading the paper, and I see the money that the insurance companies were making from us on Obamacare, and they're up by 1,000 percent, 16, I think one was up 1,723 percent, 1,700 percent. | ||
| And it's because of the massive amount of money that's sent to them by the United States government. | ||
| And I said, why don't we just send it directly to the people instead? | ||
| And I made that statement. | ||
| It was a common sense statement. | ||
| I didn't check with anybody. | ||
| I didn't even call Oz or anybody. | ||
| It just made sense. | ||
| I made a statement, and it went viral. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| It was so popular. | ||
| In other words, we cut out the insurance companies. | ||
| They're making a fortune. | ||
| And, you know, they're good people. | ||
| They're business people. | ||
| I don't blame them. | ||
| But we cut them out. | ||
| We pay the money directly to the people. | ||
| The people love it. | ||
| I said it, you know, I said it as a non-professional in that business. | ||
| And I made the statement like all of a sudden it's like the biggest story, that one, the biggest story. | ||
| And I get a call from Caroline, who's around here someplace. | ||
| She said, sir, we're getting inundated. | ||
| Margo called me too. | ||
| Margo, you called me too. | ||
| Margo, everyone knows Margo. | ||
| She's been here from the beginning, right from the beginning. | ||
| But she said, sir, both of them. | ||
| They said, sir, we're being inundated by what? | ||
| You made a statement about health care being paid directly to the people into health savings accounts or whatever you want to health care accounts. | ||
| And I said, I did. | ||
| What's the story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said, it's crazy. | |
| It's blown up. | ||
| People loved it. | ||
| And so that's where we started. | ||
| So Obamacare was designed to make insurance companies rich. | ||
| It really was. | ||
| I mean, maybe not knowingly at the time by Obama, because he didn't know much about this stuff. | ||
|
Great Health Care Plan
00:15:38
|
||
| That was designed by other people in Congress that are total pros that are bought off by the insurance companies. | ||
| And the problem we'll have with this is we'll get no Democrat votes, even though it should be very bad, very bad for them if they don't. | ||
| But maybe you'll get some. | ||
| You'll call some of your friends, fellas, and Bob, you'll call some of your friends over on the other side. | ||
| I don't know how they can reject it. | ||
| It's just so popular. | ||
| It's so compelling. | ||
| So Obamacare was designed to make insurance companies rich with taxpayer subsidies, and I want that extra money straight to the health savings accounts for you. | ||
| And you can choose your own health care. | ||
| You go out and negotiate your own health care. | ||
| It makes people entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurs. | ||
| They'll pick the health care that's best for them because it's so different. | ||
| A young person, they need health care for different reasons, and an old person doesn't need certain things that a young person needs, and vice versa. | ||
| To further reduce insurance premiums, my plan ends the giant kickbacks to insurance brokers and corporate middlemen. | ||
| We're getting rid of the middlemen. | ||
| How long have you heard doctors? | ||
| All these doctors over there, they look so smart. | ||
| They're all brilliant people. | ||
| I assume you're brilliant, otherwise you wouldn't be here, right? | ||
| I assume we have the best. | ||
| Do we have the best of the doctors, I would imagine, right? | ||
| Hey, how cool is the White House? | ||
| Okay? | ||
| They are always in operating rooms. | ||
| I wouldn't want to be in an opera. | ||
| I don't like operating rooms, but they do. | ||
| But how cool is the White House, right? | ||
| The coolest place on earth. | ||
| And this is where it all begins. | ||
| This is where we came up with a little concept about a place called Venezuela. | ||
| How did that work out? | ||
| And this is going to be the same thing in terms of its precision. | ||
| Its importance is so big. | ||
| It's going to work just like that. | ||
| Venezuela was so amazing, but I equate that to other things because we can do other things like that. | ||
| It doesn't always have to be a Minnesota where everything is corrupt, where they have health care centers that nobody shows up and somebody is making millions of dollars, where they have daycare centers where there are no kids. | ||
| It's a scam. | ||
| It's a big scam. | ||
| It's like a horrible thing. | ||
| We have a country that was great. | ||
| We have a country that's now great again. | ||
| It's really come a long way. | ||
| Make America great again is almost going to be obsolete because our country is very close to, you know, we originally were going to keep America great. | ||
| We may have to switch to keep America great. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| There's something about MAGA we should never change. | ||
| It Susie said, don't change. | ||
| We like MAGA. | ||
| Everybody likes MAGA. | ||
| So we want to make this precision just like a Venezuela, just like the attack on the Iran nuclear weapons, which wiped that out, just like all of the other things we do, they're precision. | ||
| We want to make it the opposite of Minnesota, California, and all these places that are so badly run. | ||
| So to further reduce insurance premiums, my plan ends the giant kickbacks to those insurance brokers and corporate middlemen that you've been hearing about for so long. | ||
| It also funds the so-called cost-sharing reduction program to bring down the cost of the most common plans on the exchanges by more than 15 percent. | ||
| And next, the great health care plan mandates unprecedented accountability and transparency from insurance companies and all health care providers. | ||
| We want trans you are not allowed to ask a doctor how much is it going to cost. | ||
| You are going to have your heart ripped out, and you are not allowed to negotiate. | ||
| This is a giant scam. | ||
| It is in certain ways, look, nothing can compare to most favored nations. | ||
| But when you give yourself the right to negotiate, you are not allowed to even ask how much it costs. | ||
| You are supposed to go into a hospital and get operated on. | ||
| Then they send you a bill and you have to file for bankruptcy. | ||
| Not going to let that happen. | ||
| So we are going to have insurance companies and health care providers going to have to have great, and hospitals, great transparency. | ||
| The word transparency is a very important word, so they can't get away with ripping you off any longer. | ||
| It requires insurance companies to make it easy for you to compare plans. | ||
| You've got to be able to compare plans. | ||
| You can't do that now. | ||
| You're not allowed to do that. | ||
| It's not even believable. | ||
| I'll tell you what. | ||
| I used to sit before I was a politician home and I used to say, how is that possible? | ||
| Things happen that I guess it's just the forces of nature, the forces of power. | ||
| And you end up with very, very badly treated people, and they won't stand for it. | ||
| But these forces are going to release an earthquake of reduced price health care. | ||
| You're going to have massively reduced costs. | ||
| This is no longer, we're going to cut it by the famous one-eighth of a point. | ||
| You're going to have massively reduced health care, and it's going to be massively better. | ||
| You're going to have great health care at a much lower price, which is the two things. | ||
| We want great health care and we want low price. | ||
| You're going to have great health care at low price. | ||
| Now you have terrible health care at a high price. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have horrible, horrible Obamacare health care. | |
| Like everything else he did, it was crap. | ||
| It was a horrible plan. | ||
| It was from day one and should have never been approved. | ||
| It was a very sad night that night when there was a thumb raised. | ||
| Most importantly, we'll require any hospital or insurer who accepts Medicare or Medicaid to prominently post all prices. | ||
| You're going to post your prices at their place of business, something they don't have to do, something they're not even allowed to do. | ||
| We'll have the maximum price transparency and the cost will come down just by that, not even talking about favored nations. | ||
| The price will come down. | ||
| So just in conclusion, I'm calling on Congress to pass this framework into law so that we can get immediate relief to the American people, including rural America. | ||
| And I hope to get Democrat votes. | ||
| They know, they saw it. | ||
| I know a lot of Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they say that plan is unbelievable. | |
| Are you going to vote? | ||
| Well, you're going to try. | ||
| They have tremendous pressure on them. | ||
| Vote no. | ||
| Vote no. | ||
| We have a couple of Republicans, Massey, Thomas Massey, he always votes no. | ||
| He's like, something wrong with a guy. | ||
| If you have any clinical psychiatrists in there, maybe go check out his mind. | ||
| But he always votes no. | ||
| He's a very bad person. | ||
| He's a very bad Republican, bad American when you always vote no. | ||
| Just vote no. | ||
| Do you approve? | ||
| No. | ||
| You know, there's not a thing you can say to him either. | ||
| Lawler, look, Lawla wants to be nice. | ||
| He likes to get along with everybody. | ||
| I don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't. | |
| But they vote no. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| You know, you have some people. | ||
| They're very, I call them Rand Paul Jr. | ||
| Rand Paul always votes. | ||
| I don't know why he votes no, but he just, I guess he thinks it's good politics. | ||
| I got him elected twice. | ||
| If I didn't endorse him, he wouldn't have been elected. | ||
| But he doesn't reciprocate, and I guess that's okay. | ||
| But I want to hear now, if I could, from Dr. Oz, and then we're going to have Dan Sullivan say a few words, and Rob and Mike, and Governor, you're going to say a few words. | ||
| And we appreciate you being here very much. | ||
| You're doing a fantastic job. | ||
| I just want to leave by saying that this is the biggest thing to ever happen to health care in our country. | ||
| It will not be covered that way by the fake news. | ||
| And that's a sad thing. | ||
| It will probably not be voted positively by the Democrats, and that's a sad thing. | ||
| They all know how good it is. | ||
| I think we can make health care into a Republican issue, because the Republicans are going to be close to unanimous on this. | ||
| It should be unanimous. | ||
| Maybe we will be unanimous, but it will be close. | ||
| But we have a small majority. | ||
| We probably need a little bit of help from the Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So whatever we can do, we're going to do it. | |
| It's the biggest thing to happen to health care, maybe from the beginning. | ||
| So Oz, would you take it away, please? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Mr. President, thank you for standing up for American health care. | ||
| And I just want to underline this fundamentally important issue. | ||
| We need Congress to help craft the Great America Health Care Plan. | ||
| And the Great Health Care Plan will work. | ||
| It's a brilliantly conceived framework. | ||
| And as it comes to the American people, they understand that they'll want it. | ||
| And it should represent the analogous situation. | ||
| Similar to what you did so brilliantly last spring with the working families tax cut legislation that the president mentioned, has created the Rural Health Transformation FUND, which is why we're here today. | ||
| I want to put a little bit of texture around why this is such an important issue. | ||
| Because the Rural Health Transformation FUND is the largest investment ever in American history in our rural communities, 50 percent increase in the amount of money that Medicaid, which secretary Kennedy and I regulate into our rural communities, 50 billion dollars. | ||
| You can do the math. | ||
| It's one billion per state and that's an important factor because it got them competing. | ||
| There are 60 million rural Americans and these folks do not have access to the same care that's available in urban and suburban America. | ||
| Their life expectancy, if they're in a vulnerable situation, is nine years shorter because your zip code actually is your destiny. | ||
| It determines how long you're going to live and we can make a dent in this because the high rates of chronic disease and and other ailments that plague our rural areas are often driven because we they don't have access to care. | ||
| That's going to change because of the Sentinel legislation and again, it's similar teams, the same leadership, same president, same Congress that passed the Working families tax cut legislation which is incredibly popular around the country and will make the Great Health Care Plan successful as well. | ||
| From the day the legislation was signed to create this, this wonderful fund, this transformational fund, the see, the team at CMS, which is under secretary Kennedy, began working and they're here today, Steph Carlton, outstanding chief of staff, Alina Chekai and Emily Chan. | ||
| That day started working it was july the 4th, by the way on the specific vision for the program, how do you actually get the money out the door in six months? | ||
| The president was insistent, did not want the money in Washington, so began working closely to make sure that we'd use the money not as a band-aid but to empower those closest to the challenges that rural patients face. | ||
| And who are those people? | ||
| The 50 people who know rural health care the best. | ||
| The governors. | ||
| They wanted the money out of Washington into the governor's hands and that was done in a remarkable way. | ||
| The governor's thought big. | ||
| We have one here from Nebraska who's actually the first to start working on community engagement, which is part of that legislation as well. | ||
| But we have to right size health care in rural America, and that's an important phrase. | ||
| All 50 states submitted amazing ideas to transport rural health care in ways that should have been done decades ago. | ||
| The CMS team awarded each team their portion of the 50 billion dollars investment precisely with the same precision that we took Venezuela leadership, you know, convicted individual, and with Iran as well, the same precision on time before the end of the year and got it out of Washington into the States. | ||
| Now, I want to take a step back and do a little thought experiment, Mr. President, if you want to do this. | ||
| If you, and God forbid this happened, had turned your head the other way in Butler, Pennsylvania, it wouldn't have been an ear injury. | ||
| Now, I've been to Butler. | ||
| I'm from Pennsylvania. | ||
| Butler General Hospital is a good hospital. | ||
| They don't have neurosurgery there. | ||
| If you have an injury to the head, you have a golden hour to get cared for. | ||
| You were taken to Butler General Hospital. | ||
| Because the injury, thankfully, was not as lethal as it was designed to be, it wasn't the problem. | ||
| But if you'd had a head injury, you could have had your life saved. | ||
| But without a neurosurgeon, and there is no neurosurgeon at Butler General Hospital, unfortunately, you wouldn't have an option because Pittsburgh is a far, far ride away. | ||
| That's the closest metropolitan area where there are lots of neurosurgeons. | ||
| But with this bill, this legislation rather, this funding of $50 billion, Pennsylvania got its share. | ||
| And they're going to be able to build telemedicine hookups, even telebotic surgery that would allow an injured individual in a car accident or any other reason that has a head injury in Butler General and rural hospitals across the country to be able to access the best care our nation has to offer so rural America will not suffer. | ||
| That's the promise of what this money offers to our nation. | ||
| It's not just paying the bills, it's not just picking up the pieces, it's actually transforming using technology we have widely available in urban America the way we save lives in rural America. | ||
| Each state competed aggressively because for a billion dollars, Mr. President, you'll fight pretty hard. | ||
| And they gave us brilliant ideas that they're talking with each other about. | ||
| So we're actually creating teams that now across state lines will connect because they're all Americans and they base their advances on several pillars. | ||
| Secretary Kennedy can talk about Maha because there's Maha elements to this as well. | ||
| But very precisely, sustainable access. | ||
| We asked states, how can we bring top care closer, like in the thought experiment I gave you for Butler General. | ||
| In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, there are regional spoke models, which at Hub and Spoke means you've got a big hospital in the city and they adopt or work closely with some rural hospitals to solve the challenges of fragmented care. | ||
| And that actually works. | ||
| You share administrative back office work. | ||
| You group purchase your stuff. | ||
| You save money. | ||
| You exchange medical records. | ||
| Alabama has no OBGYNs in many of their counties. | ||
| So they're doing something pretty cool. | ||
| They're actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms. | ||
| So we can actually get those images back to the big center so we know if those child has a problem and we know if that mother's at risk. | ||
| We have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, in the country with the best medicine in the world. | ||
| It's often stated, people ask, does health care stink in America? | ||
| Well, they don't like it. | ||
| Would you leave America to get health care elsewhere? | ||
| Nobody leaves. | ||
| We have the best health care if you can get to it. | ||
| We don't want rural America left behind anymore. | ||
| As an aside, by the way, we've talked about the most favored nation drug pricing. | ||
| One of the first companies and areas we use most favored nation drug pricing is fertility drugs. | ||
| That's why we're going to have so many Trump babies, because we've dropped dramatically the most expensive part of the fertility space. | ||
| And so Americans no longer will pay so many times more. | ||
| In that case, it was 10 times more, for the same fertility drugs that they're available for moms who want to get pregnant in Europe. | ||
| I want to thank Terry, who's here as a nurse practitioner. | ||
| Andrew is a doctor, West Virginia, New Mexico. | ||
| They're representatives of the workforce in rural America. | ||
| But there are only two of them here representative because we don't have enough people working in rural America. | ||
| It's a big challenge. | ||
| Delaware is creating its own medical school, their first ever medical school in a rural part of the state, so that can get more local talent that will stay local in those parts of Delaware. | ||
| Michigan is launching the High School to Healthcare Pipeline Grant Program. | ||
| They want to take kids out of high school in Michigan, local rural communities, and get them into the system, get them trained as nurses, because they'll stay home because they're from those communities and they'll save lives for decades there. | ||
| These are the types of programs that can get our rural communities and economies up to high gear and keep it that way long after this five-year funding is done. | ||
|
Alaska's Health Care Challenges
00:10:06
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||
| And finally, tech innovation. | ||
| Rural communities would benefit the most from high-tech advances like we just discussed as possibly if there was a head trauma case. | ||
| Many states want to partner with our CMS data intraoperability network. | ||
| It was created by Amy Gleason, who spearheaded so much of the technology transformation in our government. | ||
| It's going to support the President's pledge to provide transparency that he mentioned as part of the great health care plan. | ||
| And Congress can ensure these are all available for decades to come if we can get this legislation through. | ||
| As the tech innovation forefront, just to give you a couple examples, Texas and Hawaii are making targeted investments in statewide telehealth, so everybody has telehealth. | ||
| The best doctors for the best knowledge available where you are. | ||
| We'll meet you where you are. | ||
| If you're a vet and depressed and you're thinking of taking your life, we'll be there. | ||
| Just let us know you're in trouble and we'll help. | ||
| Alaska wants to deploy, and I'm going to hand it to Senator Sullivan in a second, wants to deploy unmanned pharmaceutical distribution kiosks and drones that will deliver medications because in the north slope of Alaska, you can't get there this time of year. | ||
| So these technologies exist. | ||
| Why are we using them in midtown Manhattan? | ||
| We should use them in rural Alaska. | ||
| This administration is committed to collaborating with all 50 states, all 50, red and blue, all 50 states, to carry out bold plans to tackle the challenges that local communities face. | ||
| We're not pouring funds blindly, however, into a broken system. | ||
| We're going to carefully, precisely, as the President said, target this investment with health care front running rampant. | ||
| And I was in Minnesota this week, Mr. President. | ||
| It's worse than we've heard. | ||
| But Minnesota, pardon the pun, is not just a tip of the iceberg. | ||
| California is the varsity team when it comes to fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| We're not going to let that happen. | ||
| We want transparency for this $50 billion investment. | ||
| We owe it to Capitol Hill. | ||
| We owe it to this president. | ||
| And we want accountability to be a top priority. | ||
| For that reason, we've created an Office of Rural Health Transformation at CMS for long-term oversight. | ||
| The office led by Alina Chekai. | ||
| Alina again was one of the people who helped create this program in the forefront. | ||
| She was in the first administration, Mr. President. | ||
| She's going to guide states in implementing their rural health transformation plans, coordinate all the federal and state partnerships, making sure there's appropriate oversight. | ||
| In addition, every single state is going to have a dedicated project officer. | ||
| We will be there with you. | ||
| We're going to help you. | ||
| Please engage us. | ||
| You've got lots of lives at risk. | ||
| It's a true state-federal partnership, unbelievable, extraordinary milestone for health care. | ||
| Your zip code will no longer dictate whether you have excellent health care. | ||
| Your zip code will no longer be your destiny. | ||
| It's not going to dictate your life expectancy. | ||
| Mr. President, I cannot thank you enough for the leadership that it took to get this $50 billion investment in rural health care. | ||
| They don't make a lot of noise. | ||
| They just want to get the job done. | ||
| You stood up for them in Congress. | ||
| God bless you for making this possible. | ||
| Please do it again. | ||
| Please do it again for the great health care plan. | ||
| Let me hand it to Dan Sullivan, who's a spectacular member of the Senate. | ||
| And obviously, Alaska, they're pretty rural. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Oz, and Mr. President, I am very honored to be here. | ||
| This is a really exciting day. | ||
| I want to thank you, sir, and your team. | ||
| Worked really closely with Dr. Oz, Secretary Kennedy, many others. | ||
| You know, this is a great example of how Congress, working closely with your administration, can achieve historic things. | ||
| This is historic for our rural health care, certainly in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. | ||
| You combine it with what you were talking about, sir, in terms of drug price reductions for all Americans. | ||
| So these are two things that are happening right now. | ||
| in our historic, and I agree 100% with you, Mr. President, hasn't got a lot of press, even though it is historic. | ||
| It's going to really impact people in rural America, especially my state, this fund that I want to talk about. | ||
| But what you've done on the drug pricing is even... | ||
| Ben, will you get Lisa Murkowski to vote for it? | ||
| She voted for it. | ||
| No, are you going to get her to vote for the great, big, beautiful health care bill that we've done? | ||
| Oh, when we get that, I think MFN drug pricing, I bet every member of Congress votes for it. | ||
| Are you going to get her to vote for it? | ||
| We'll work on it, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll work on it. | |
| So let me actually talk a little bit about the context of what's going on in Alaska and how this and how this relates to it. | ||
| You know, after four years of being locked up and shut down by the previous administration, we are on the cusp of achieving some huge goals in my state that we've been working on for decades. | ||
| We have this huge resource development boom going on on the north slope of Alaska. | ||
| I was with a bunch of the Inupiat, Alaska Native people who live up there. | ||
| They are so excited about what's happening there. | ||
| We are, as you know, Mr. President, building icebreakers. | ||
| We're homeporting some of those in Alaska. | ||
| We have huge historic infrastructure and economic and national security investments happening. | ||
| In particular, the gas line that you have championed so much, the big LNG project. | ||
| All of these things are happening. | ||
| It's really exciting. | ||
| By the way, all of these issues I just talked about, all of those were in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, so there's a lot of excitement. | ||
| But, Mr. President, in addition to a strong economy, the thousands of jobs that these projects are going to have, we have to have a strong health care system in every state. | ||
| And rural Alaska, as you mentioned, as Dr. Oz mentioned, has often, almost always been an afterthought when it comes to investing in health care in America. | ||
| And that's not happening anymore after the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. | ||
| As you said, Mr. President, as Dr. Oz said, this is the biggest investment in rural health care in American history. | ||
| $50 billion, the award the great state of Alaska was able to get working with Dr. Oz, and the parameters of the bill was about $1.4 billion over five years to transform our health care system. | ||
| So that's really exciting. | ||
| But here's the big deal. | ||
| This is not just about money. | ||
| This bill isn't just about money. | ||
| The reason it's so impactful is that it's focused on letting states and governors design the system that they need. | ||
| Alaska has many unique health care challenges, Mr. President, as you know, but for decades the mentality in Washington, D.C. is this approach to one-size-fits-all. | ||
| D.C. tells every state, here's how you have to do it. | ||
| And it never works. | ||
| It never works. | ||
| It certainly doesn't work in my state. | ||
| I'll just give you one example, the federal match on Medicaid. | ||
| Our state typically has the lowest match in the country, even though we have the highest health care costs and highest delivery costs in the country. | ||
| The one-size-fits-all doesn't work. | ||
| This bill is different. | ||
| This bill that we wrote with your administration is all about allowing states to design a system that works for them with CMS guidance. | ||
| And this will be a generational opportunity for every state to bring health care closer to home, to make it more responsive to the people who live in that state, and make it more affordable. | ||
| I'll just end with this, Mr. President. | ||
| Like I said, a lot of excitement. | ||
| We got Governor Donlevy, who sends his greetings, was hosting the stakeholders in Alaska who are going to be applying for these funds, working with CMS in our State. | ||
| Over the last couple of days, we have over 300 people coming to these meetings on how to use this transformation fund to better health care in Alaska. | ||
| And this is going to help my constituents, going to help every American. | ||
| And it is really exciting. | ||
| And I want to thank, again, you, Mr. President, and your team. | ||
| Thank you, Dan. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We're going to have to go very fast. | ||
| We're going to have to go very, we are way behind schedule. | ||
| And I have a couple of meetings that are very important. | ||
| Nothing more important than this, but let's go. | ||
| Come on, Bob. | ||
| Rob? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fire round, please. | |
| Mr. President, thank you very much for having me here today. | ||
| And I represent Northeastern Pennsylvania. | ||
| You're governor from Scranton, Pennsylvania, so never had the opportunity to meet. | ||
| But I inherited a very similar problem. | ||
| But before I was even sworn into office, I had two hospitals, Moses Taylor and Regional and Scranton, that were eminently facing closure. | ||
| And it's been, and working with Dr. Oz, Administrator Oz and the CMS team has been absolutely incredible on so many levels. | ||
| And thank you again for intervening and shepherding us through that process. | ||
| But when you're looking at Pennsylvania, we're going to receive over $193 million. | ||
| In five years, it will be over $1 billion for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. | ||
| And when you think about Northeastern Pennsylvania, clinics and regional hospitals, rural hospitals are the backbones of our communities. | ||
| So making a targeted investment that is not just going to band-aid over poor operational procedures. | ||
| It's going to actually transform rural health care. | ||
| That's what we are so excited about. | ||
| Pike County, in my district, is the largest growing county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where there's not a hospital. | ||
|
Unprecedented Investment in Rural Health
00:07:00
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|
unidentified
|
The nearest commute to a hospital is over 55 minutes away. | |
| So these are going to be funds that will be so imperative. | ||
| The unprecedented investment is going to be incredible. | ||
| And thank you for having me up here and being a part of this journey. | ||
| Thank you, Rob. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| This is a great opportunity to be here with you and your team. | ||
| Dr. Oz has been a tremendous asset. | ||
| The $50 billion commitment to rural health transformation is critical. | ||
| New York State is going to see about $212 million in the first year, which is vital for workforce development, access to care, primary, behavioral, maternal, emergency, telemedicine, et cetera. | ||
| How were we able to do it? | ||
| Because we rooted out waste, fraud, and abuse in the system. | ||
| Democrats will just say we cut a trillion dollars in Medicaid. | ||
| That's not what we did. | ||
| We said you need to be eligible. | ||
| You need to be a citizen. | ||
| You need to work if you are able-bodied without dependent children. | ||
| We reined in the provider tax and state-directed payments, which have exploded over years. | ||
| And we are taking this money, not only preserving Medicaid for the IDD community, our seniors, our children, our single mothers, but we are investing it in rural health. | ||
| When you look at Obamacare, health insurance premiums have risen 96 percent since Obamacare took effect. | ||
| Insurance revenues up 2,000 percent. | ||
| Mr. President, you are 1,000 percent correct that the insurance companies are the problem. | ||
| They wrote Obamacare. | ||
| It's to their benefit, and the American people are being screwed. | ||
| And so we can get a bipartisan agreement on what you are trying to do. | ||
| When it comes to lowering drug prices, I will tell you, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies is in my district in Westchester County. | ||
| I met with them in 2024 and I said, what would you do to lower drug prices? | ||
| And the response was go after the European price controls. | ||
| You are spot on on taking on the price controls that have been put in place, most favored nation, is the single best thing we can do to lower prescription drug prices here in America. | ||
| The pharmaceutical companies will tell you that privately. | ||
| And that is the fundamental fact. | ||
| We need to go after PBM reform. | ||
| Associated health care plans, we put that on the floor. | ||
| Every Democrat voted against it. | ||
| Every Republican for it. | ||
| Those would reduce costs by 11 percent because businesses, small businesses would be able to pool together and purchase health care plans at a lower rate. | ||
| We need to go after the PBMs and make sure that insurance companies are not owning providers and owning PBMs. | ||
| That is what is driving up the cost of health care in this country. | ||
| You've talked about IBF. | ||
| I've been a big champion on this. | ||
| We need to make sure the insurance companies cover it. | ||
| I also have a tax bill to provide tax incentives to Americans. | ||
| And what you have done to lower IVF costs on the drugs is critical. | ||
| And you are 1,000 percent correct on expanding HSAs. | ||
| I fundamentally believe that we can address the issues with Obamacare, make sure that the American people have access to care at a lower rate. | ||
| We can get a bipartisan agreement to address the EPTC with expansion of HSA so that the money goes to the people and not the insurance companies. | ||
| We are committed to working to get this done, and I thank you for your leadership. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Governor Gillespie. | ||
| Mr. President, a gigantic thank you, and thank you for your incredible leadership. | ||
| Your courage gives me more courage to say it the way it is. | ||
| We're working very hard in Nebraska to run government like a business. | ||
| This investment into rural America, which by the way, in all of Nebraska, you pull 85 percent. | ||
| I don't know what the hell is wrong with the other 15, but 85 is a pretty good number. | ||
| I think, be very, very brief, this plan will allow us to do common sense, pragmatic investments in rural Nebraska, and they will be sustainable. | ||
| We will make sure that we don't need another dollar after five years. | ||
| We are working on simple things like food, real food, is good medicine. | ||
| We're working on making sure that all of our veterans, Nebraska is 500 miles long, 250 miles wide, no longer are veterans going to have to drive to Omaha to get care. | ||
| We're going to take care of our veterans at home. | ||
| Investments in technology so we can educate our children in rural Nebraska to provide health care are really, really important issues. | ||
| And I think that the other is we've developed what we call six regions, one, Nebraska, and that will focus and take advantage of those. | ||
| So we're working on what we have and then being able to use these resources to also help us with mental health and drug care as well. | ||
| So we're incredibly grateful. | ||
| Nebraska, we work hard. | ||
| We're about faith, family, hard work, the American dream, and we don't ask for much help in rural Nebraska. | ||
| So we're really grateful for this investment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| One minute. | ||
| How about 30 seconds? | ||
| How about 30 seconds, sir? | ||
| As a small town kid from Glen Rose, Texas, population 1,200 where I grew up, what you are doing today changes everything. | ||
| And on behalf of our farmers and our ranchers in rural America, it is a new day, and we're so grateful. | ||
| The final thing I'll say is: I think about Abraham Lincoln, who also sat in this room, and I think about other presidents throughout American history. | ||
| And you think about how the fundamental course of American history has changed in certain pivot points throughout history. | ||
| I think about you as the peace president, eight wars solved, more coming. | ||
| I think about you as the security president, a border that is secure for the first time and more than any time in American history. | ||
| I think about you as the prosperity president. | ||
| We talk about Kevin wages going up. | ||
| We'll give her more than one minute. | ||
| Oh, no, I'm almost done. | ||
| No, she can speak as long as she wants. | ||
| I'm almost done. | ||
| The prosperity president and what's happening. | ||
| Think about you as the affordability president. | ||
| Everything is coming down. | ||
| Inflation is coming down. | ||
| The cost of groceries is coming down. | ||
| Fuel, housing, et cetera. | ||
| And, sir, today, in the last two weeks, you will go down in history as the greatest president for the health of this country in history. | ||
| Think about our new dietary guidelines from Bobby Kennedy and I, but with your leadership, putting real food back in the middle of our health care conversation. | ||
| Whole milk for healthy kids with those dairy farmers two days ago. | ||
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Northwest Corner Quality Care
00:03:41
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| We were in Pennsylvania talking about it yesterday. | ||
| And today, putting the patient and the doctor back in charge of health care with great leaders like Governor Pillen. | ||
| God bless you, your leadership, and all of our leaders. | ||
| Thank you so much, Sir. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And Terry and Andrew, thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here. | ||
| I hear you're just outstanding people and have really helped. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| You want to say something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, President Trump, and I would just echo everything that's been said here. | |
| Thank you very much for what you're doing. | ||
| I'm from the northwest corner of New Mexico. | ||
| We also work with the Navajo Nation. | ||
| And so we have a lot of rural areas in our state and in our county. | ||
| I'm also a county commissioner. | ||
| So I take as being a nurse practitioner, a county commissioner, with a heavy weight in order to see this happen. | ||
| And it will help produce accessibility, which is a huge thing. | ||
| People have to drive for miles in order to see a health care provider, workforce, quality care, and sustainability for our hospitals. | ||
| That's what we're looking at. | ||
| We meet next week in Santa Fe with our legislators. | ||
| And so that is, we're going to be addressing the licensure compact as well. | ||
| And they've got to clean up their elections in New Mexico. | ||
| We're working because those elections are so corrupt, it's incredible. | ||
| If they clean it up, we wouldn't buy a lot, but they are really corrupt elections. | ||
| So I think if you want to do this, you have to tell them to start working on that. | ||
| It's unbelievably one of the more corrupt states in terms of that. | ||
| But you uncorrupt it, so I appreciate you being here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Northwest Corner loves you. | |
| I know. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I know we have great love in New Mexico, but the elections are so corrupt. | ||
| Not much you can do about it. | ||
| We have that with numerous states. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Andrew, thank you very much. | ||
| You have anything to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, thank you for having me here today. | |
| It's an honor to be here to represent my community. | ||
| I'm from Northwest Georgia. | ||
| I grew up in West Virginia to represent my colleagues in my profession. | ||
| It's truly an honor. | ||
| This is so important to our patients to put the physician and the patient back together and take everything else out of the middle. | ||
| I practice in cardiology. | ||
| Having efficient, effective, high-quality care is so important. | ||
| And time is of the essence. | ||
| And patients need to be able to have close proximity to their doctors to get the care that they deserve. | ||
| Quality of care shouldn't matter about the zip code. | ||
| We should be able to do what we are best at and take care of our patients on an equal playing field. | ||
| And this certainly helps that. | ||
| I greatly appreciate all that you've done for the American people. | ||
| You are an inspiration to us. | ||
| You make us believe no problem is too big to solve. | ||
| I mean, you are a representative of that. | ||
| And I thank you for your leadership. | ||
| Thank you for this opportunity to be here. | ||
| And thank you for putting health care at the forefront. | ||
| It's so important to every patient and every family that we take care of. | ||
| Thank you very much, Andrew. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| Great job you both do. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| I've heard unbelievable things. | ||
| And doctors, in particular, thank you very much for being here. | ||
| We very much appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you, everybody. | ||
| It's a big story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| President Trump holding a roundtable discussion on rural health care. | ||
| Later this afternoon, he'll head to Florida to attend a dedication ceremony for a stretch of road between the airport and his Mar-a-Lago estate that's being renamed President Donald J. Trump Boulevard. | ||
|
A Conversation on Housing Affordability
00:03:01
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|
unidentified
|
We'll bring you live coverage of that here on C-SPAN, scheduled to start at 3:15 p.m. Eastern. | |
| You can also watch on our free app, C-SPAN Now or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| A Conversation Now on Housing Affordability, Construction and Supply with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, other Democratic senators and housing advocates. | ||
| They also touched on veterans' housing and the cost of mortgage insurance. | ||
| The Center for American Progress is the host of this forum. | ||
| It's about two hours. | ||
| Well, good morning, everybody, and it is really great to be here. | ||
| I want to thank NERA and CAP for hosting this important. | ||
| Whoops, got my little cards here. | ||
| That's my schedule. | ||
| I wouldn't know where to go the rest of the day. | ||
| I want to thank NERA and CAP for hosting this great, important policy summit on the affordability crisis Americans face, focusing on housing. | ||
| CAP has been just a haven for thoughtful, innovative solutions for our nation's most difficult problems throughout the years I've been in the Senate. | ||
| When there's a sticky, difficult problem, CAP is one of the first places I always call. | ||
| And NERA has had great leadership, both on and off the hill. | ||
| She understands how the legislative process works. | ||
| She understands policy to a degree that very few others do. | ||
| And so, and CAP has been instrumental in helping shape the housing policy agenda we're rolling out today. | ||
| I also want to thank my colleagues who are going to participate later in the program, both of whom have been very active in housing, and those are Senator Schatz and Senator Duckworth, who you'll hear from later, and Jared Bernstein. | ||
| And today's panel of experts, thank you. | ||
| Jim Parrott from the Urban Institute, Bharat Ramamorty, who has been a true leader. | ||
| I've known him for years working on policy issues. | ||
| David Gonzalez-Rice with the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. | ||
| And Sean McGarvey, the president of the Building Trades. | ||
| A great leader. | ||
| He is always there, always fighting for working people and also fighting for the good of the American people. | ||
| He makes sure that we have working Americans get better pay, better benefits, and better representation in the workplace. | ||
| So thank you all for being on the panel. | ||
| I know everyone here looks forward to hearing from you. | ||
| So we meet right now at a moment of crisis for the American spirit. | ||
| Across the country, tens of millions of families, people living paycheck to paycheck, people clinging onto the middle class are asking them the same question from one end of the country to the other. | ||
|
A Piece of the Problem
00:11:55
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| Is America still a land of opportunity? | ||
| Does the promise of this country still deliver for me and my family? | ||
| And for too many Americans, the answer has become no. | ||
| And the reason is the cost of living is far too high. | ||
| And under Donald Trump, this crisis has gone from bad to worse. | ||
| Trump's tariffs have raised costs for automobiles, clothing, furniture, even coffee and groceries. | ||
| His Secretary of Agriculture says, just spend less. | ||
| It can cost around $3, the Secretary said, for a meal, for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing. | ||
| These people are not serious. | ||
| They almost sound like they never had to feed a family. | ||
| They never had to go to a supermarket. | ||
| It's just incredible. | ||
| Trump's big beautiful bill, meanwhile, raised health care costs, booted millions off insurance, and on January 1st, we saw tens of millions of Americans saw their premiums double on average because Donald Trump and Republicans let the ACA premium tax credits expire despite all of our efforts. | ||
| I'm sure last night there were tens of millions of American families sitting at the dinner table saying, how are we going to pay these bills? | ||
| Do I pay my whole health care bill and stop saving for my retirement? | ||
| Do I buy the new car or cut back on groceries? | ||
| These are the kinds of questions that vex average families more than just about anything else. | ||
| If you can't provide a decent life for yourself and your family, you don't think things are very good. | ||
| So this is just a crisis that has just become unmanageable for too many families. | ||
| Working Americans are anxious, they're worried sick, and then they're left wondering, who the hell is fighting for me with all of these problems? | ||
| Well, as we begin 2026, Senate Democrats have a message for the country. | ||
| We hear you. | ||
| We hear you loud and clear, and we're getting to work. | ||
| Every day, every week, every month this year, Democrats will put costs front and center in our agenda. | ||
| It will be our agenda now and on throughout 2026. | ||
| This spring and over the next three months and through 2026, Democrats will show precisely how a Senate Democratic majority will lower costs for everyday expenses. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We'll go issue by issue, spending weeks at a time, deliberately in depth, rolling out a battle plan for each front of the war of high costs. | ||
| No matter where you live in America, no matter where you live, if you're Republican, Democrat, independent, or not political at all, we know that we know, you should know we are hearing you. | ||
| In a few weeks, we'll present a plan to the American people for how to lower their grocery costs. | ||
| A few weeks later, we'll unveil a vision on how to lower electricity and energy costs. | ||
| We'll present a plan that will help parents afford child care and help families afford health care. | ||
| Lowering costs will be our North Star now and for all of 2026. | ||
| And when Senate Democrats win the majority, the first thing we're going to do is get to work to enact these policies to lower the cost of living. | ||
| Today, we begin this effort by focusing on housing. | ||
| No matter where you live in America, no matter if you're Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, everyone worries about costs, and everyone worries about housing affordability. | ||
| Owning a home means building wealth, building a future. | ||
| It's one of the most important parts of the American dream, if not the most important. | ||
| Young families, when they own a home and pay that mortgage each month, they know they're building equity, they're building a future, they have something they can leave for their children. | ||
| But as we all know, over the last few decades, the American dream of owning a home has become more of a mirage. | ||
| It was a very realizable dream years ago. | ||
| And most people, even at the lower income levels, thought, I can afford a home. | ||
| They don't think so anymore. | ||
| And that's devastating to them. | ||
| The median price of a home, Neera pointed some of these out in her good intro, has increased by 55% since COVID. | ||
| Rent is up by a third. | ||
| And as Neera mentioned, I think of this all the time. | ||
| The average first-time homebuyer is 40 years old. | ||
| 40 years old before you can buy a home. | ||
| That's a record high. | ||
| That's a devastating statistic that should shake up everyone in a position of power at the federal, state, or local levels. | ||
| The statistic is just so confounding and deeply troubling. | ||
| And when the rent or the mortgage is too high, you can't afford much else. | ||
| It squeezes every other aspect of your life. | ||
| If you can reduce the cost of your housing, on the converse, you have room to afford many things you need daily. | ||
| And right now, America is short millions of housing units, driving up costs everywhere. | ||
| Now, this crisis did not happen overnight. | ||
| It wasn't always this way. | ||
| Nearly a century ago, FDR instituted the nation's first ever laws to help Americans afford housing. | ||
| And he declared, FDR did, quote, the right of every family is to a decent home. | ||
| The GI Bill after World War II made low-interest loans available to millions and millions of Americans, of American veterans. | ||
| The Great Society saw the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. | ||
| Section 8 vouchers brought rental assistance to millions of low-income families. | ||
| Fair housing laws ensured affordable housing while fighting discrimination. | ||
| The history is clear, my friends. | ||
| When the federal government leads on housing policy, Americans are better off. | ||
| But we know this began to change in the 1980s. | ||
| The Reagan administration shifted its focus from serving working Americans to helping business interests increase their bottom lines. | ||
| The federal government's ambitious housing policy ossified and shrunk. | ||
| Now, I want to be very clear that both parties ignored decades-long housing, the decades-long housing crisis, a truth we Democrats must confront and own. | ||
| But under Donald Trump, our housing crisis and the affordability crisis in general has reached a boiling point. | ||
| Trump tried to cut tens of billions of dollars to help people with rental assistance, help prevent homelessness, help enforce fair housing, help build affordable housing. | ||
| He just cut and cut and cut, with, my view, little even thought as to the consequences. | ||
| His tariffs have raised housing construction costs, as Neera mentioned, by $17,500 a home. | ||
| $17,500, an increase in the cost of your home because of Donald Trump's tariffs. | ||
| And now he's launching a criminal investigation against the chair of the Federal Reserve, a brazen attempt to cannibalize the Fed's independence. | ||
| The decision will cause chaos in the housing markets. | ||
| And that increases costs. | ||
| Because when there's chaos and politization at the Fed, interest rates are more likely to go higher and stay higher. | ||
| The lenders hold on tight and they say, we better not take any risks. | ||
| We better pad our balance sheets with higher costs because we don't know what's going to come next. | ||
| Then he's launching a criminal investigation. | ||
| Trump is against the chair of the Federal Reserve, a brazen attempt to cannibalize the Fed's independence. | ||
| This decision could cause chaos in the housing markets as well. | ||
| And, sorry, cap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well. | ||
| That protects against predatory corporate behavior and targets renters and homebuyers. | ||
| He's made this absurd proposal of a 50-year mortgage, which is just inane and unserious. | ||
| The minute he came out with it, just sort of popped into his head as lots of very bad things do. | ||
| But unlike many other people, there's no filter. | ||
| And out it comes with deadly consequences in many cases. | ||
| But anyway, it was ridiculed immediately by the left, by the right, by the center. | ||
| Here's another one that just kills me. | ||
| They've been trying this for years, but he's giving it a renewed push, the privatization of Fannie and Freddie. | ||
| It's so obvious that'll raise costs for working families if you privatize Fannie and Freddie. | ||
| But they're proposing it. | ||
| Ironically, the only decent idea Donald Trump has floated recently on housing is one he stole from Democrats, calling for an end to institutional investors gobbling up homes and crowding out individual families. | ||
| Democrats think we should pursue this idea, and in fact, we tried to get it done last year. | ||
| We had an amendment to the reconciliation bill, which we all voted for, and they all voted against. | ||
| And this is Donald Trump's Achilles heel, even when he tries to do something good. | ||
| He tries to sound like a populist, but in reality, he's a posture. | ||
| He never does anything to follow through. | ||
| Pops out of his mouth one day, and then he's on something else the next day. | ||
| Trump, if you care about preventing these institutional inventors from gobbling up homes, get the Republican senators and the Republican House members to join us in voting for it. | ||
| Don't just posture. | ||
| He thinks when he throws out these populist-sounding things, he can persuade people he's on their side. | ||
| But he never lifts a finger or picks up a phone to get the Republicans to Congress to act. | ||
| Here's a case in point, a recent one. | ||
| House Republicans blocked progress on real and necessary housing legislation, namely the Road to Housing Act, which Elizabeth Warrens worked so hard on and includes so many good bills that Senate Democrats have fought for over the years. | ||
|
Opportunity Starts at Home
00:15:56
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| But even though it passed bipartisan in the Senate, Donald Trump didn't lift a finger to stop House Republicans from axing the road to housing. | ||
| Well, the American people have had enough. | ||
| What the American people want isn't rocket science. | ||
| They simply want lower costs, an ability to live a decent life and feel positive about the future. | ||
| The American people, simply put, want opportunity. | ||
| And Democrats believe that when it comes to creating opportunity, opportunity must start at home. | ||
| So that's why I'm calling our housing agenda opportunity starts at home. | ||
| When Donald Trump spends billions in taxpayer dollars on foreign wars, Democrats will focus on investing here at home and lower costs for the American people here at home. | ||
| And what does that mean practically when it comes to housing? | ||
| A Democratic majority will tackle the housing affordability crisis by working to do these things. | ||
| To reduce rent, to boost home ownership, to stop predatory corporations, to supercharge construction, and to provide housing security for all Americans. | ||
| This is how we create opportunity. | ||
| This is how we'll lower housing costs for the American people. | ||
| So let me go a little bit through each. | ||
| Rental relief. | ||
| The Democratic majority will fight to deliver real, robust rental relief for every tenant in need. | ||
| Because when it comes to lowering costs, rental relief is one of the best short-term fixes on the table. | ||
| Republicans aren't even talking about rental relief at all. | ||
| But we Democrats actually delivered on rental relief in the past, as Anira mentioned. | ||
| When I was majority leader in the depths of the COVID crisis, Democrats entered into the law robust expansion for rental assistance and emergency housing vouchers. | ||
| We saved millions from eviction. | ||
| We gave people the space and means to find their footing. | ||
| And there's still that crisis going on, not all at once because of COVID, but every day in every part of America. | ||
| And the same types of relief are needed. | ||
| Democrats have also fought long and hard to expand Section 8 vouchers to reduce rental costs. | ||
| And we'll focus on expanding necessary rental relief to even more Americans who need help with the crushing cost of rent. | ||
| Second, boosting home ownership. | ||
| Democrats will expand the promise of home ownership for every American looking to buy a home. | ||
| We'll help with down payment assistance, critical for the first-time and first-generation buyers. | ||
| We'll lower the cost of mortgage insurance. | ||
| I don't know why that hasn't been done. | ||
| So essential in these days when down payment costs so much. | ||
| We'll expand access to portable and assumable mortgages as well. | ||
| They should be portable, they should be assumable, much more easily than now. | ||
| We'll reform homeowners' insurance, which is now at a crisis level and so important for people who can't afford that down payment. | ||
| And that's especially true on our coasts and in communities prone to wildfires. | ||
| Homeowners' insurance is vital and the cost is going through the roof so that people can't sell their homes, people can't buy their homes. | ||
| It's so important to reform. | ||
| Now these are just some of the ideas on the table that a Democratic majority will push to make homeownership easier, less expensive, more sustainable. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Third, predatory companies. | ||
| Democrats will hit back at predatory institutions that are guilty of raising prices, abusing tenants, shutting millions of working and middle-class families out of the housing market. | ||
| Even though some of our Republicans don't get it, corporations are not people, and they shouldn't be allowed to gobble up entire neighborhoods so easily and turn them into profit machines. | ||
| A Democratic majority would work to put a stop on this poisonous trend. | ||
| As I said, even Donald Trump says he likes this idea. | ||
| Too bad he'll never get it done. | ||
| The Republicans in the House and Senate will not do it. | ||
| We have to get the majority to do these things. | ||
| Democrats will also crack down on companies that artificially raise prices by using price-fixing algorithms to help landlords collude with each other and figure out how they can squeeze the maximum rent out of each individual in each individual case. | ||
| It's using technology for a very bad purpose. | ||
| And one of my favorites, which I've delivered on for years, I used to do Sunday press conferences on this. | ||
| It's one of my favorite policies. | ||
| It's ending junk fees, in this case, rental junk fees that prey upon families already struggling to keep up with the rent. | ||
| Fourth, build more housing. | ||
| We have to build more housing, plain and simple, no ands, ifs, or buts. | ||
| A Democratic majority will launch a national effort, a nationwide mission to build housing to reduce costs in every state, every community, every neighborhood in need. | ||
| We'll work with anyone, Democrats, Republicans, federal, state, local leaders, labor leaders, developers, faith leaders, anyone to get it done. | ||
| And a good start, again, is for the Republican House to pass the Road to Housing Act. | ||
| The Senate's done its job due to thanks to the leadership of Elizabeth Warren. | ||
| And now the House and Donald Trump must do theirs and get the road to housing over the finish line. | ||
| But we have to do more. | ||
| Elizabeth and everyone else say that's just the first step. | ||
| There's a lot more that must be done. | ||
| We must cut unnecessary tape, red tape, and encourage local zoning reform by providing incentives and disincentives, carrots and sticks, for localities to reform outdated rules to wipe away rules that get in the way of building housing. | ||
| Senator Schatz has been a great leader on this, and we'll have more to say about it. | ||
| We have so many talented people in our caucus, and my job is to take those ideas and blend them and weave them into one strong program that we can all support. | ||
| And Schatz has been great on this issue. | ||
| We'll also expand the Housing Trust Fund to create new middle class and create a new middle class housing emergency fund to invest in public housing. | ||
| Senators Warren and Wernock are working at Warnock are working on this already. | ||
| And we'll work to get Fannie and Freddie to provide a national secondary market for construction loans to finance multifamily housing. | ||
| Making construction loans cheaper makes housing more available and more affordable to many. | ||
| I also have legislation I'm working on with Senator Duckworth to empower HUD to invoke the DPA, the Defense Production Act, guaranteeing the purchase of housing materials in short supply and scaling production of modular and manufactured housing. | ||
| This is something Senator Slotkin has also called for. | ||
| But again, the DPA, when there was a national emergency, a war, we used the DPA. | ||
| We have a national emergency in housing. | ||
| Use the same thing, the same basic policy tool. | ||
| We also want to create a new ARPA home program, which will provide new thinking and new innovation to bring housing costs down. | ||
| DARPA did it for defense. | ||
| We can do it for housing with a housing ARPA. | ||
| So this is just one of the many pieces of legislation we've worked on, and we've benefited from CAPS knowledge and insight because they helped create these ideas. | ||
| Separately, We're also going to work to expand something that's been something I've long championed, even when I was in the House, and that is the low-income housing tax credit, LITEC. | ||
| Maria Cantwell's done great work on this as well. | ||
| And we know this works. | ||
| So, now, as we talk about increasing construction, every single one of us must be clear about something else that's important. | ||
| Democrats will reject the false choice between building more housing and paying our construction workers a decent wage. | ||
| We will not abandon organized labor like Donald Trump. | ||
| We will empower them by ensuring they receive good pay, safety on the job, and with legislation to train a new generation of trades workers to build America, including housing. | ||
| Finally, housing security for all. | ||
| We must ensure financial security and opportunity for all communities. | ||
| That means we need some targeted investments to end homelessness, to provide quality housing for veterans and for seniors, to rebuild communities that have been left behind, and we will enforce fair housing laws to deliver fair and affordable housing to all Americans. | ||
| Now, these are just some of the things that Democrats will push to lower housing costs for the American people. | ||
| As you can see, we've thought this through. | ||
| We have a broad and comprehensive program that can really work. | ||
| So, this is what our Opportunity Starts at Home agenda looks like. | ||
| As I've mentioned before, because I'm so passionate about this, in the weeks and months to come, you'll hear from Senate Democrats on our plan to lower other costs as well. | ||
| Food costs, energy costs, the cost of groceries, health care, child care, and so many other things that Americans pay for every day. | ||
| The point is this, folks. | ||
| Republicans had their chance to show Americans they're serious about solving the housing crisis, and they have failed. | ||
| They have failed. | ||
| So, we Democrats will offer what the American people desperately need, a way forward. | ||
| That's what our Opportunity Starts at Home agenda does. | ||
| It shows the way forward to revive our nation's housing policy. | ||
| The dream of owning a home might seem like a mirage now, but there's no good reason it cannot turn into a new oasis of future prosperity. | ||
| Democrats are ready to get to work. | ||
| We want to deliver on the vision of the right of every family to a decent home. | ||
| We have the right ideas, we have the right proposals, and once we get the majority, we can start bringing these ideas to life. | ||
| I welcome your involvement in making this happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Got all these papers all over the place. | ||
| Don't people get one of those books? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think I need to turn the pages. | |
| Thank you so much, Senator Schumer, for the really robust agenda. | ||
| And we're really grateful again for you announcing the start of the Senate of Democrats' affordability agenda. | ||
| And opportunity at home really is opportunity starts at home, really does encapsulate it. | ||
| I guess I'll just start off on a general question, which is in some of the research we've done, we've done polling on housing before, and we found that CAP, in our data, three out of four Americans, three out of every four Americans, 75% of Americans think housing affordability is a top concern. | ||
| You are outlining a broad and robust agenda. | ||
| I think one of the things that's really surprising for people to hear is how much the current administration's policies are adding to that burden, not just with tariffs, but with the uncertainty created by Jerome, the attacks on the independence of the Fed and a strategy that is inflationary instead of addressing lowering costs. | ||
| So just how do you see, how are Republicans in the Senate on this? | ||
| How are they reining in the administration in any way? | ||
| And how do you see driving this contract? | ||
| Well, let's start out with this. | ||
| I mean, on this issue, which is so, so dominant, when you, you know, if you go to your local barber shop or local supermarket or local church or religious organization, this is what people talk about. | ||
| The older people talk about their children not able to buy a home. | ||
| The children talk about, you know, the kids talk about their inability and how much they want to do it and how it's become so out of reach. | ||
| And this is not just true in blue-blue areas. | ||
| This is true across the country. | ||
| Upstate New York has the third largest rural population in America. | ||
| I'm up there a lot. | ||
| As you know, I visit every county every year. | ||
| And this is what people are talking about. | ||
| And it amazes me, Neera, how the administration is just in a bubble about this. | ||
| When VOTE just cuts these programs that have helped at least prevent the or sharpen the slope of prices going up, of preventing the slope of prices going up, they don't even know what they're doing. | ||
| They just say we got to cut. | ||
| So you'd think, in reference to the second part of your question, that the Republican senators who should be in touch with their people, the Republican Congress members who should be in touch with their people, would say we've got to do something about this. | ||
| But mum is the word. | ||
| This Congress, Senate and House, Republican, have just let the executive branch dominate. | ||
| And when the executive branch is in this bubble and has no understanding of what average Americans are going through on housing and everywhere else, they just, they're supine. | ||
| They do nothing. | ||
| Now, it is a good news, you know, that on Elizabeth's, she worked very hard on her bill, on her proposal. | ||
| And we did get the Republicans to go along. | ||
| But there wasn't real enthusiasm. | ||
| You didn't hear many floor speeches about it. | ||
| And no one's putting pressure on Johnson in the House to move it forward, even though it got such bipartisan support in the Senate. | ||
| I'm going to ask one more question, and then we have time for just one or two audience questions. | ||
| So get your questions ready. | ||
| You talked a lot about a variety of proposals. | ||
| And I guess I just want you to talk a little bit about housing supply. | ||
| I completely think agree with you that it's crucial that as we're building more, we have high labor standards, that this is an opportunity to also create jobs, create jobs that are always here because the houses are here. | ||
| So in terms of housing supply, how do you see that, the centrality of that to addressing the process? | ||
|
Federal Role in Housing
00:05:53
|
||
| I think it's important. | ||
| It's important for us at the federal level to address this issue and do it ourselves. | ||
| But it's also important in our proposals, as you see, we decided to increase the funding that goes to localities because not one size fits all. | ||
| And letting the localities decide the better way to increase housing supply, but giving them some of the resources to do it makes a great deal of sense. | ||
| And we all know there are all kinds of zoning and other problems, which I think has broad acceptance now in the Democratic caucus, from the most liberal to the most moderate people, that we have to do something. | ||
| So, and we've worked with you on this, we propose both carrots and sticks. | ||
| You get more money if you undo some of these restrictive laws, but you get less money if you don't undo some of these restrictive laws. | ||
| And we think that'll have a real effect on increasing housing supply in the areas where zoning and other rules have stood in the way. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Audience questions. | ||
| Now, just on the audience questions, please have a question, make it brief. | ||
| I will enforce that. | ||
| And if you can identify yourself, that would be great. | ||
| There's a question in the back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| That helps with the mask. | ||
| Hi, my name is Sarah. | ||
| I'm a commercial building owner in a small town in Washington State who's explored trying to convert buildings to affordable housing while meeting commercial needs in the Main Street. | ||
| But most federal grants and incentives for low-income housing make it very difficult to do mixed use. | ||
| In your policy proposals, are there any improvements that you could see for helping small towns maintain their Main Street while implementing low-income housing? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yes, there are. | ||
| And this is something we're giving a great deal of thought to, not just in small towns but across the country. | ||
| When there is a amount of commercial space that's needed is declining, we need incentives, federal tax incentives and local financial incentives to allow some of that commercial space, whether it be a small storefront in a small town, and we have lots of those in New York, or a larger office building in one of the bigger cities, to convert that. | ||
| Senator Stabenow had a great proposal before she left on doing that, and Senator Klobuchar and people in the Ag Committee are looking at that right now. | ||
| So it's a very important thing to do. | ||
| We also have asked our ARPA to come up with other ideas that will make it easier to move on the path to that kind of conversion. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Other questions? | ||
| There's a question right here. | ||
| It's coming. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I'm one of your classmates. | ||
| My name is Eddie Aitches. | ||
| Eddie Aitches, we're in law school together. | ||
| Wow, you look a little different. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So do you. | |
| Mr., in law school in those days, it was Mr. Aitches. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| So I worked on. | ||
| Were you from the Bronx or something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I was from Rome. | |
| And you met my parents, actually, in Rome, New York. | ||
| You were in the United States. | ||
| He was from New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I wanted to ask you about, I worked at HUD. | ||
| I started as a political in the Carter administration. | ||
| I worked 38 years, 20 of which president of the union. | ||
| HUD's been completely decimated, especially fair housing and all these other things. | ||
| Turner, when he was appointed, at least promised that he'd work and keep the programs. | ||
| And then when Doge came in, that was the end. | ||
| And I wanted to know what you can do about bringing HUD back. | ||
| A lot of people took the fork in the road. | ||
| Yeah, if you look at the budget actually we're working on right now, and we'll have the T HUD budget, you know, transportation and HUD budget, we restore most of the cuts and even go higher than previous years on many of the programs that Doge slashed. | ||
| When I met our nominee for HUD Secretary, then he was nominee, talked a nice game, but he doesn't seem to have the clout to make those views prevail over the Doge people, over the cut, cut, cut people. | ||
| But we have worked really hard in the budget and gotten bipartisan support to increase these amounts and undo a lot of the cuts, which are essential, Mr. Righteous. | ||
| Can I ask a follow-up question on just that point about HUD? | ||
| I mean, I think it's not been a secret that HUD has not received funding, it should over many years. | ||
| I guess as we think to the future, we now live in a time where the president has a lot of authority to change how agencies run. | ||
| And I think we can think afresh about some of these agencies. | ||
| You know, I think HUD has not often been considered a place that is really responsible for affordable housing for the whole country. | ||
| It is seen as something that's organized for some cities, et cetera, but not really responsible for making sure the dream of home ownership, for example, is available to all Americans. | ||
| How do you see changing that mission? | ||