July 25 phone call, fiona hill who was in a meeting between sondland and the ukrainians in the white house who have testified that they raised concerns about the president s conduct and people around the president s conduct regarding ukraine. Do you share any of those concerns . Do you think anything you have seen or heard so far from these fact witnesses is alarming and inappropriate . Rep. Walden the question is whether we deserve to have the president duly elected removed from office. That is the threshold of impeachment. When i went through the transcript, i was not happy. I probably would have done it differently. But no one said there is a crime, nobody who does this kind of law said there is a crime. I dont think it rises to the level of taking a president out of office, especially with an election coming up. Nor does it rise to the level of what nancy pelosi said earlier this year, which is she would not move forward on impeachment unless it was overwhelmming, compelling, and bipartisan. One of the great tragedies of this impeachment process we are being dragged through is it is highly partisan. It was not that way under clinton when it came to the rules of the rolled rules of the road or nixon. The minority had certain rights. The president had certain rights. Not given today. They set up a very partisan process which has done in the country a great disservice. Scott the president s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, travel traveled to ukraine to continue investigating joe biden, the thing being looked at in this impeachment probe. Do you think the president s attorney is being helpful . Rep. Walden i dont know what Rudy Giuliani is up to or not. I have been spending my time dealing with surprise medical billing, working on Prescription Drug bills. Watch of legislation, a bill dealing with robo calls. I have a limited bandwidth of watching what somebody else is doing. I have tried to focus on the things that my constituents want me to do, which is this kind of work that they really care about. Host when you are home, how often do people even bring up impeachment . As a second question what do , they want to talk to you about . Rep. Walden they do want to talk about robo calls. As soon as you mention it, they say, when a you going to do something about it . 54 billion last year nationwide. They are concerned about the cost of medicine. In my district, in the summer, they are concerned about forest fires. Thehern california and problems there. We got a little off in oregon this year but didnt have quite the horrible season. They care about impeachment. It is the polar side of the equation. People are either locked in here are locked in there. They either think the president is getting ram rotted or they ought to throw him out. There is a lot of passion and anger associated with both sides. The big block of American People say, whatever. We are going to have an election. Cant you all go back and solve the real World Problems that affect me and my family and my life . Scott you mentioned robo calls. This week the bill passed. You helped shepherded through the house of representatives. Only three no votes. Bill . Appens now with that and secondly what does it say , that there could be such an overwhelming vote and it looks like it is moving through the legislative process as we are also contending with impeachment, which is tearing washington apart . Rep. Walden some of us are trying to keep our focus on the ownat hand in our committees and is certainly on robo calls. This is something ive worked on for a long time. Greece and i let it go and a day later it turns out they left a voicemail and it was the Vice President of the United States trying to get a hold of me. Sometimes you should take calls. We want to get to where somebody calls you can trust it is something legitimate and not somebody that is being you off. We have read these horrible stories about people who have gotten suckered in thinking it is the fbi or the Social Security or some other agency and they throw away at a throw away at literally their life savings. It is awful. These are illegal scammers. Robo callers. These are people often working outside the United States. 50 billion calls in the United States last year alone. This is something we need to address and we can and we are. To your point, only three no votes. Have a hard time understanding why you would vote no on this. The senate is also in agreement. We have worked this out. Host how does this bill address them . Rep. Walden we empower the federal Communications Commission and the department of justice to go after the bad robo callers. We improve their ability to do that. We extend the statute of second, limitations out to four years from one. Some of these, the statutes had run out, so we give them more time. Third, we used Call Authentication and to block calls and do it at note charge to the consumer. The consumer still has the right to say dont lock them. I suppose there will be some who want to get them, but they can use that technology. If they dont use that technology to identify and block illegal calls, then the fcc has the authority to mandate that the phone company do that. We will protect consumers. This will not end them, by the way. I the bad operators will want to be clear. The bad operators willcontinue to Work Technology to get around this. Disorder like cybersecurity. You will always be at it but it should have a huge impact. Host who are the forces against it . Rep. Walden the robo callers who are scamming. They dont have much of a lobby. There is it. We wanted to make sure that the provisions we are putting in place could be implemented. They want to help. I met with a couple ceos who say, you give us the authority and we are ready to go. There have already been some agreements among the states attorneys general and the fcc to do some of what is in the bill on a voluntary basis. We make sure it is legal and authorized and mandated. And we build Better Communications and processes cases will get processed more likely. Nobody likes robo calls or Surprise Medical Bills either. We are hearing there are very good negotiations going on. Of a deal coming up shortly between the four corners. You are one of the key negotiators in the house and senate. How close are you guys to a deal on Surprise Medical Bills . Rep. Walden i think we are very close to it. One out of five consumers who show up into an emergency room think you have good insurance, you end up getting a surprise medical bill. This is one that is simply not covered. We have instances of a woman giving birth to a child who had a complication. She said to us, we went through our insurance carefully. My husband and i made sure the doctor was covered, the hospital was covered, every piece of this. This child has a complication. The doctor says i have to take him to the neonatal intensive care unit. It is 50 feet down the hall or whatever it was. She said, of course, go. Then she gets a 50,000 bill a month later. The hospital had contracted out their neonatal intensive care unit. They were not part of the hospital. How do you know that as a consumer . We have insurances where emergency room practices are being bought out. Nobody covers them. Then they raise the cost by 96 . That is not right and not fair. If you play it by the rules, you should be covered. We will take the consumer out of that market. We will protect the consumer. We will make sure providers and hospitals can do their jobs. I didnt ask for this problem, we are going to solve it. We have a four corners agreement in principle. I would tell you we are very , close to the final wording. We have to make sure every word is what we all agreed upon. We are really close. This is a big 1 no president has moved forward more on this issue than donald trump. I was at the white house when he announced the initiative on this. I am pretty confident he will sign it. Scott is it your expectation that the Surprise Medical Bills will hitch a ride on the overall government funding package . Rep. Walden i think that is probably likely. It is hard to move standalone legislation at this point. I leave that to people with higher pay grade than i, the leaders of the house. What is the biggest Sticking Point right now . Rep. Walden there have been debates about how do you compensate the hospitals or providers . Everything behind the curtain. Our goal is, lets take the consumer out of that. You will not get stuck with a surprise bill if you have insurance coverage. We have been trying to figure is a fair reimbursement rate for the emergency room or hospital or doctor or lever is involved. How do you manage that . My own state of oregon has a plan. States have been doing that. We have tried to take the best of both where you an in network rate that has been negotiated. Use that and adjust for geography and complexity. Dispute,is still a have a dispute resolution process at the back and it arbitration. We are trying not to let costs explode. You can solve this by paying everyone everyone everything everyone wanted but that is not good. You want to maintain the networks and the affordability. We think we found that sweet spot. Host i wanted you to tell our viewers what four corners means. Some people outside of washington, d. C. Rep. Walden myself and Frank Pallone who is a democrat. We swapped roles after the election. And then our counterparts in the senate on the health committee. The four of us represent the four corners. Two democrats, two republicans, and as it turns out, the republican and democrat are in the minority and in the chairmanship. We all get together and have our teams and it is better bigger than that. But the four of us get together and negotiate it. If we can come to terms and get input from others that is called , a four corners deal. Host that is very bipartisan. Rep. Walden yes. Host for other issues like Prescription Drug prices, we are yet to see any big compromise. I am hearing that republicans have some legislation coming out next week. I wondered if you could talk about that. Rep. Walden every american wants us to do something on the high cost of drugs to bring them down. Most american say dont do it if it is at the expense of new cures. We all have people who are hopeful that the next new drug will save lives or reduce pain and suffering of a family member. We are seeing great evolution. We have invested in nih. You have sickle cell anemia and sma. You have these new drugs coming out. Cures matter. Price matters. Our legislation will address both. Tragically, right now, the democrats bill would be the equivalent of wiping out what we fund at the National Institutes of health, they would take out so much money out of the research and development and Venture Capital that would lead to these great cures. They would wipe out the equivalent of three decades. We do not think that is a good way. We had a bipartisan effort going into crackdown on bad behaviors of Drug Companies to keep generics out of market. We had a bill called the create act. The things we have identified as bad behavior by some. The Drug Companies kept competitors out of the market. And that brings prices down. We brought it together unanimously unfortunately,. Before they came to the house floor, and another committee they stuck in poison pills12. Pills on purpose that i would argue so republicans would vote no and there were policies they knew we would oppose. We working on modernizing Medicare Part d for seniors, which republicans led into thousand three. I was on the committee. It needs modernization, we all agree. We were doing great until the Speakers Office dropped hr three in our lap. All of those negotiations stopped. It became partisan. Our proposal, which we will unveil on monday, is all bipartisan work and ideas much , like when i led the effort on opioids. We had 60 different pieces of legislation. All bipartisan. Everyone that the opportunity to participate. We melded into one bill. That became hr 6 and it became law. We dealt with opioids. We want to blocking and stopping the bad behavior. For the First Time Ever in Medicare Part d if you are a , senior, there would be a lifetime cap of 3100. That is the most you would ever pay. We would smooth out the payment. What does that mean . In january and get drugs, they may cost 3100. You do not have to write a check that day. You can do like what a lot of Utility Companies do, pay a monthly fee and then you are capped. Priceshings to bring down. We want the cures in our country and we want prices to come down. What is it about the democratic legislation that you think would limit research and development . Rep. Walden there is an analysis by the omb or im sorry, the congressional budget office, that says because the plan will take up to 1 trillion out of the health care world, you could see new drugs never come out of the pipeline. I dont know if one of those would have cured alzheimers or parkinsons or arthritis, they dont know either. Drugs, we eight to 15 are told, the council of economic advisers said industrywide it could be upwards of 100 new drugs would never be through the pipeline because you have reduction in r d. We know and countries that they want to model against, you see a reduction of r d at 10 to 15 when you have price controls. I want to get drug prices down. We did it in Medicare Part d effectively in 2003 by come creating competitive forces. When we reauthorized the fda, we modernized how they process drugs. They move more generics to market than any single year. That is over 1100 is the ultimate number. We believe in competition. They are going a different path. Their pan their plan likely violates laws. They can take revenue of a companies drug if they refused to agree to whatever the government told him. Scott at the beginning of the year, Prescription Drugs and infrastructure were the two areas people thought we could see bipartisan agreement and real movement. We have not seen that at all. Where did Prescription Drug prices go off of the rails . Rep. Walden that is a good question. It went off the rails not long after our committee passed out these first bills to reform and stop bad haters. They went to the rules committee and they tacked on these provisions that we had meant against and everyone knew it and that made it a partisan vote on the house floor. We continued on goodfaith negotiation with the medicare it and then all the sudden went to radio silence. That is when they dropped the bill hr 3 and said this will be the alternative and it has been partisan ever since. Over in the senate, they have worked on legislation. Our bill will take what we see as 90 of that bill and include that. I think youis can find Three Corners bipartisanship. The problem is in the Speakers Office. It should be. The high cost of drug and desires for care should never be a partisan issue. Susan are there other parts of health care that republicans want to look at . People talk about the high cost of medical care. Do you think there are other areas where there are possible partisanship in the future . Rep. Walden i think there can be bipartisanship in the future. If i had stayed on as chairman, the high cost of health care wouldve been my top priority. It remains mine as the Top Republican on the committee. We are doing work in this area. I think you need more transparency and President Trump was right about trying to demand more transparency in cost of health care. Consumers have more at stake today financially than probably any other time. Now they have insurance, it just has a 6,000 deductible. They have a right to know what that procedure costs so they can shop for the best price and quality. Right now, you are in the dark. You have no idea what anything costs. It is a most impossible to figure it out. You think about what you can do online in the internet age, shop for lowcost rental cars, hotels, amazon, anything you shop, you can shop for price and quality reviews. Show me where you can do that for health care . Susan does it seem to you like the next phase of Health Care Reform will not be an omnibus or a big bill . It will be piecemeal . Rather than another obamacare . Rep. Walden i think it should be. These need to be really well thought through, individual policy changes. That is really important. Otherwise you get bad policy and good policy and he gets mucked up. We did this to a certain extent. That was back to the opiod work in congress and we had 60 individual policies we worked through individually that would put them in one bill in the end. Maybe every bill we put in their already passed unanimously on the floor. It was close to that. We tried to take them one at a time. Functionally to get them to the process, we grouped them up afterwards. It is important to look at each individually. You touch other things. This is a complicated industry. We want to get it right because we want to make sure we are always putting the Patient First and build the process from there. That is what i have tried to do. The is the best interest of consumer . If i am a consumer, i want to know what the price is, i want access, quality. I want competition. When you have competition you have innovation and price choice. We dont have competition, then we have harder problems. Going forward, there is something we have to figure out. When we get to precision medicine, this incredible revolution in understanding the human genome. We will get down to where there is a solution that only works for you. How do we pay for that . I dont think we know how to do that yet as a country. We need to put our heads into it. It is not about republicans and democrats. We will have to have a policy that says, how do we pay for that . I met with a company this week who is in the final stages. They think they have an almost cure it for pancreatic cancer. That will be expensive. There are hundreds and millions of dollars invested in the research. They dont know yet but they are getting close. They think they have a cure for sickle cell. We have sma, i was with a young person in a wheelchair most of her life. Most of the time you died by 10 or 12. Alwaysuscular and i forget, it is skeletal Muscular Atrophy is the term. You lock up and die. She has been on this new drug for two weeks. I said, how is it doing . She shrugged. And i said what does that mean . She said, ive not been able to move my neck in 10 years. We have to figure out how to pay for. We have to have more cost transparency. The president is all in on that. The big powers are trying to prevent that and you have seen that. On the other side of the equation, we need to come together and figure out how to pay for it. There are good ideas out there. Host we have time for a few more questions. Scott you are the twoterm chairman for the house republicans. We have seen 21 republicans announced their retirement. Including this one. 21,t you are one of the which surprised a lot of us on capitol hill. Because you still had two more years as the Top Republican on energy and commerce. If you guys take back the majority and 2020, you would be chairman again. To me, and a lot of other people, which we wrote, that said you didnt believe you guys would take back the doherty in 2020. Was that the right analysis . Rep. Walden that is not the right analysis. I tried to say that in my statement. My father got elected to the legislature in 1970. I was in middle school. I have been involved in a campaign in one way or the other ever since. I love public service. I love dealing with these issues and bringing people together and working and i could continue doing that. I did not want to be one of those guys they carry out of here. I wanted to leave on my own terms. I dont think ive had an opponent that got more than 39 . I love people and the district and my wife has been supportive. We talk about it each time. After 30 years of being in Public Office and running for election, i am ready to go do something else. Usually, nobody who has a path in power gives it up voluntarily. I was ready. I said it was ok. There are great people coming from behind. Susan you sound like you spent a lot of time studying these issues. How much time do you spend on it, are you going to miss it . Are you thinking about staying somewhere in the Health Care Field . Rep. Walden i am a amateur radio operator. I chaired the telecom subcommittee. I love that whole sector as well. And then we have energy in the energy and commerce. I have been warned that will be the biggest withdrawal moment, the intensity of the issues, which is great fun and you work with a great staff and they are so smart. To get back to the underlying question i believe there is a , path back for republicans to take the majority of the house. It is narrow and winding and dangerous and without precedent in many respects. Retirements do not help. My district will likely send a republican back. Some of the others are even more publicans and some less. Some we have redistricting , issues going on like in north carolina. We have 31 districts. They voted for donald trump and elected a democrat. I believet election, the data shows 7 million trunk voters did not turn out and vote and we lost the house by a combined 150,000 votes. I will guarantee you those voters will turn out time. They will not be denied. Susan i will ask you a telecom related question. A brewing controversy in the house is the decision by the chairman of the intelligence metadata to use collected through subpoenaing phone records from rudy liani and one of his he used the data obtained from the Ranking Member of the committee, devin nunes, as well as a journalist. There is a lot of talk on capitol hill coming up about this. I wanted to get your opinion. Rep. Walden i am deeply troubled by it. Im not fully briefed up on it. The notion that i as a chairman of a committee, i had subpoena authority under my own signature. I did not have to consult beyond much with my democratic colleagues that i could do that or adam schiff to do that. Forget which party. If we start doing this where are , the limitations . Im still a citizen with Constitutional Rights and privileges. I was surprised the phone companies turned over that data the way they did. Susan why are you surprised by that . Rep. Walden i think it raises a whole host of questions about, what are our rights and limitations . They did not apparently notified the people for whom they were turning over the data. Are you criminally investigating devin nunes . What other metadata. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee set on that he has acquired . How did they get to those phone numbers . Where is it beyond that . Do they get your emails as well . Apparently, they can do that. Are we going to have Committee Chairs in congress snooping around reporters emails and phone calls in who you talk to and not and then releasing it . Under what terms and conditions . Susan should Congress Addresses . Rep. Walden i think so. Susan one of the thing we want to talk about is climate change. I want to know if you think it is a mistake that all republicans are not talking about this issue. Rep. Walden i sat down with my members on the committee and we had a thorough discussion about climate change. There was not a science denier among us. I am tired of the democrats telling me what i am for or against. Lets talk about how we deal with it. That is where i think you have seen a big change for republicans, as we are out there saying lets talk about innovation, conservation and adaptation and those themes. The democrats are still locked into what . Taxation. They are going to have a carbon tax, cap and trade schemes. It has been defeated. They are still locked in over there. The great reductions in carbon have occurred in the United States. We are back to 1990 levels. We may see another reduction. I is that russian mark and large measure because we have incentive in the natural gas world and developed fracking and Energy Switching from coal to natural gas. That is a lot of the reductions. Nuclear place of key role. When i chaired the Nuclear Committee we tried to advance , with nuclear technology. We have not had a revolution there in a long time. There were interesting ideas coming forth. Nuclear holds a huge key. Licensing because in my part of the world hydroelectric power is huge. It reduces emissions and zero Carbon Emissions and there are all kinds of ideas to do smallscale hydro and existing dams or irrigation lines. We know there is an opportunity to do carbon sequestering. Credit in the past bill we passed is saying you get this much if you use it and put it in the ground and get more oil and gas and you get a bigger tax credit if you put carbon in the ground and keep it there. Then we are looking at innovation in this space we are. Having an innovation showcase. Some of these are like forestry reform. My part of the world, you want to talk about emissions . You want to talk about air quality . We need to better manage our federal forest. We have new technology on how to use the wood. We are looking at nuclear, forestry. Advanced battery development. Some of our labs america should are doing phenomenal things. Lead on innovation. We do not have to punish our economy. On paris, those countries are not even close to meeting their goals that they set it is all. Voluntary in europe. But they are having riots when they raise Energy Prices in france. They had to move out of china in part over Energy Issues but they did have to move it. I dont think you have to punish consumers to improve the environment. I dont think you have to stagnate the American Economy to invest in innovation. Susan we need more time with you. Newsmakers. Think you host thank you very much for being this weeks newsmaker. We are back with our reporters. Scott, the congressman was talking about legislation that is moving on capitol hill. The prospect for the Surprise Medical Bills can you talk about , it and what you are hearing . Scott i thought it was very interesting to hear him say on the record that they are very close to a four corner deal. As we move toward the end of the year, as democrats are focusing on impeachment, keeping the government open, that funding bill is the last train leaving the station before christmas. They may load that up with a bunch of must pass bills. It is interesting to hear him say that Surprise Medical Bills, which all americans are interested in, is something that could hitch a ride on the government funding bill. Host it does not seem like Prescription Drugs will get bipartisan support. Scott i dont think so. That is because democrats are moving in one direction. It sounds like republicans on monday will be unveiling their own plan. This is a response to nancy pelosi and the democrats. The president had been pretty engaged on this issue in the past, but sort of has backed away. It looks like we are moving in a partisan direction on Prescription Drugs. Host you had a question at the end about metadata being captured from a member of congress and a reporters conversation. Tell us the background on this and what you heard from the congressman. Susan the background is it is , very unusual for the two parties to go after each other through the Ethics Committee or through some other means to embarrass each other or make allegations. They tend to have this detente where they treat each other professionally and they do not attack each other like this. In this report that came out, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee put out a 300page report on the impeachment investigation. It included some of the metadata from subpoenaing a man indicted for funneling money into a campaign. That data included calls to the Ranking Member of the committee, the Top Republican devin nunes. , they obtained that metadata and they printed it in the report for everyone to see. It also included calls from Rudy Giuliani. They have the Ranking Member as well as the reporter making and taking calls from these individuals. They were public he put out there. Republicans are saying that they believe shift has thousands of pages of data he has collected through this method. This is concerning to mr. Walton. It is important with his role. The data was collected from at t. They did not get it from the individuals. One of them may have turned over some records but at t turned over records. Walden said he thought that was unusual. There is not clear rule about whether or not the Telecommunications Companies have to turn over this data. There is a lot of debate over that. Now you have Congress Angry about it. Republicans are asking about it. The majority leader and the minority whip got into a debate on the house floor. Steve scalise is accusing the democrats of spying on the republicans. That is a big word to use. It is a big accusation. It has really started something on capitol hill. You might see the partisanship really elevated and ratcheted host ratcheted up. Host a story to watch, for sure. Thank you both. Today, joe biden is joined by john kerry, the former secretary of state at a campaign event. Ats is mr. Carrie posey first swing through New Hampshire since he endorsed this to bidens campaign. Live coverage begins at 11 15 a. M. Eastern on cspan. For campaign 2020 this weekend, live in iowa with the democratic candidates. Today at 1 00 p. M. Eastern, senator Bernie Sanders speaks with supporters at Simpson College in indianola. Fromcampaign 2020 coverage iowa this weekend on cspan. Watched any time cspan. Org and listen on the go with the free cspan radio app. People in this book were outraged by family separation and Sexual Assault of women. This period provides a really crucial precursor to another moment. Holly jackson talks about her book american radicals, watch on cspan. On friday, president ial candidate Pete Buttigieg spoke in iowa. The state holds its caucuses on monday, february 3. Monday, february 3. Hello. So i am the cochair of the Democratic Party and we are the volunteers who have the exciting challenge of running the caucuses. So i just want to see a show of hands, how many of you are planning to caucus . Whoa. That is both inspiring and terrifying. Because we are going to have to handle all of you when you come in. So the second show of hands i
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