Syndrome is extremely rare. Hi. Friends dont have to be. This is joe. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox, support cspan as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Next, a discussion about the impact of Climate Change and possible solutions with fema administrator deanne criswell. She talks about why she believes Climate Change is the crisis of our generation. The virtual conversation runs over just 40 minutes. Hello. Welcome to Washington Post live. I am a National Environmental reporter. Were going to be discussing natural disasters, why they are becoming more frequent and more severe than in the past. And how the federal government is trying to prepare for more extreme weather events ahead. Later, we will hear from fema administrator deanne criswell. But first, i am joined today by two climate experts. The professor Michael Oppenheimer and the senior feller fellow, alice hill. Welcome to Washington Post live. Thank you. Michael milletts start with you lets start with you. More than 50 million americans are under severe heat alert, parts of texas have seen triple digit whether for many days in a row. Records are falling, can you explain why an event like this is so significant . White is the thing that scientists are telling us is likely to happen more often around the world . And what are the health risks and worries when we face events like this . The Greenhouse Gas primarily through fossil fuel burning building up in the atmosphere. The trump team, would otherwise trapped with escape space. Its a trend owing on for 150 years. Its accelerating because we are more those poor martha gases in the atmosphere. Dream a very slight extreme heat waves, the extra heat evaporates from the Ocean Surface and what goes up has to come down. You get more rainfall. Extreme levels of seawater at the coast, sea level is rising as the ocean water warms and is ice melts. That means extreme events that, events we rarely saw, if ever in the past are going to happen more frequently. Were not prepared to deal with that right now. Ellis, on the same line, this week alice on the same line, we have seen 40 Million People in the northeast on the Central Plains at risk of severe storms. Summertime there is bad weather, but as a nation, the number of really damaging storms, socalled billiondollar disasters has been rising sharply in recent years. What is your biggest concern when you look at the increased extreme weather and how it stretches to almost every part of the country . The biggest worry is, we are simply not prepared. Were seeing a climate that did not exist for before. Everything we built is built to the climate of the past. We routinely see infrastructure that is inadequate. The electric grid is a wonderful example. It routinely fails. Power outages are up. That leads to serious consequences for public health, people dependent on machines to thrive, or for the economy. Businesses close. Kids have to go home. There is no air conditioning. We are seeing that we simply dont have what we need for a climate worsened environment. Were sorely behind on the landuse choices, the Building Codes, the type of changes that would keep us much safer in a harder, more dangerous world hotter, more dangerous world. Lets go back to michael. The nonprofit, 1st street foundation, just released new data that finds Climate Change is fueling more devastating rain around parts of the country. Dataset to only and that is set to only worsen. One finding from the study found that, roughly 20 of the country, what was maybe one day what used to be a one and 100 year storm may happen every 25 years. You tweeted that the news was another way fema is behind on protecting americans. Can you talk through what you meant by that . The primary problem, is, fema does a good job most of the time on cleaning up after a disaster. Its a congressional mandate. With Climate Change, you have to plan in advance, i dont mean a day into a day or two in advance, i mean decades. Building a resilient society, to take your example, improving drainage systems around the country, particularly in urban areas takes decades. We cant afford to do it all at once in a year or two. That means we need a lot of planning. That has not been femas job in the past. The federal government as a whole has not been set up, until some initiatives in the Biden Administration, to deal with taking a long time in advance in terms of Climate Change. The climate has not been changing in significant way for a long time, then recently, in recent decades, the changes are due to the buildup of the Greenhouse Gases have become noticeable. We need a reorganization in the federal government and in the relationship between the federal government and the states. Most of the money to do things like build water supply systems, filled coastal defense, build dams, a lot of that comes from the federal government. The implementation in large measure is either in the army corps of engineers which has its own set of your these or at the state and local levels. They have a responsibility but not the money. The federal government has the money, but it has not had the mandate to think ahead. That is starting to change. Its not changing fast enough. We need more centralization of the responsibility for Climate Adaptation and resilient building. We need it fast. Speaking of adaptation and building of infrastructure, alice, i covered the 1st street report this week one thing that jumped out, the point being that the governments current precipitation estimates do not capture what is actually happening any longer as the Climate Changes, but also that this comes at a time when the nation is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into new infrastructure. We know that,noah is working on estimates that will fact or in Climate Change factor in Climate Change but those are years away. Do you worry that we are going to end up in this moment that we are in, building roads, bridges, and other infrastructure that might not be adequate for the climate of the future or for the present . There is a huge risk that we will take this once in a generation amount of money and spend it in a way where we dont build the bridge high enough for the floodwaters, the road does not have a wide enough Drainage Ditch for the precipitation that falls. We base our building practices in the u. S. On model Building Code. Those model Building Codes also rely on the calculations of pass rain that we have had. Those model Building Codes, even if they are the latest codes, do not yet reflect the future risk. In the u. S. , because of the way we are set up and the decisions of how and where building occurs rests with state or local government, more than half the state, 40 some states have a very low level of code to disaster resistance. Thats to the events that occurred in the past. Not events in the future. Were also seeing much Greater Development in coastal areas. 40 of our population lives in a county along the coast. That is only 10 of the landmass. But that area is vulnerable to more intense storms as well as sea level rise. We are seeing lots of people moving into this wildland urban interface, which faces much higher wildfire risk. They are also vulnerable. Then we will have infrastructure that is built to out low standards. We dont have good vulnerability standard assessments yet about what these future risks will look like, as we make the choices about where infrastructure should be placed. Should we be building a bridge there . That is a fundamental question lay the face of climate changing in the face of climate changing . But we dont have that information for communities to build off of. Maybe a wealthy community, but many communities do not have the access to it to make the wise choices with the dollars coming very quickly with a lot of pressure to spend them. Alice is speaking about different hazards. I want to go into that as well. As you know, Climate Change is not just affecting rain and hurricanes, but its supercharging any number of whether related disasters such as wildfires, drought, heat waves in parts of the country we are seeing this week. I wonder if you can talk about what you think the government about whether the government is prepared for the challenges, where would you prioritize to prepare for the challenges and our individual communities prepared are individual communities prepared . Given some of the uncertainties and lack of information alice cited, we have to act anyway. Having a fully built resilient country for what is going to happen in 2050 means we have to start now. We clearly dont have a fully resilient country for what is happening now. Have a long way to go. That means not waiting and planning the biggest most expensive things. It also means doing things that we can get in place cheaper, like preserving wetlands along the coast, maybe extending them. Or building up dunes that had been destroyed by various kinds of development. It means grappling with the most common cause of climate related mortality, which is heat related deaths. We privatized the business of dealing with extreme heat. We tell people, go out and buy an air conditioner. What happens if you can afford one . What happens if you dont have access to the very minor role that government plays in keeping people from extreme heat which are cooling centers . A lot are built in places where the most vulnerable populations, people who are poor, sick, people who have been disadvantaged various ways, do not have access because they would have the to drive a mile, they dont have a car they dont know a lot of people who can just come pick them up. We have to fix society and the way it is dealing with people who do not have the resources to help themselves. We have to start with these things which are quite obviously building cooling centers in the right place. Or fixing drainage systems. When you do that, think about the amount of rainfall you will have to accommodate in 30 years. You dont want to come back every five years. The first thing we do is look for the obvious. While we are doing that, we for the bigger things like surge. Barriers. Which we dont know if we need in some of our cities but we might and once you decide to build one, it takes a decade or more to get it done. We have a lot to do. Implement the easy and cheaper and effective stuff now. The stuff that can save lives at a relatively low cost, but be planning for the bigger stuff as you move into the future. Then there are probably some big angst big things in some places that we cannot wait for. The federal government has to help localities. Michael just mentioned the very real reality that a lot of times the most severe climate impacts fall on those least equipped to deal with it. I wonder if you have any more to add about how you think about whether the nation and how the nation ensures that the funding and the resources that do exist to adapt, to prepare for extreme weather disasters and to recover from them that it actually reaches the places needed, low income, minority, Rural Communities that may be do not have resources as larger cities. How should we think about that as a country . Well, it should be a priority. I believe the Biden Administration has put great emphasis on making sure that the federal aid available is reaching the most vulnerable. There has been some studies that show the past eight divided by fema has benefited richer, white people than it has benefited poor black people who tend to be, because of racial profiling and redlining, located in floodplains. We have many poor, marginalized communities who are physically at greater risk because of historical discrimination in the united states. The Biden Administration has been looking at how do we provide some kind of extra aid if those people want to relocate . Fema runs a bio program, 60,000 homes have been bought out to allow people to move out of floodplain, to a higher area. Recently, that program, 70 of the people took advantage of that program moved to higher ground. We dont want people to take the money and moved to someplace that is vulnerable to flooding. We need to look at, how do we help people who are already there who do not have the means to leave, leave. We need to think of insurance clauses going up. Were on the edge of a major disruption of property insurance availability. We see disruption in the Flood Insurance which is provided by the federal government. Rates increase to reflect the growing risk. Some people cannot afford those new premiums. How can we help those new people to be insured as they go forward, because they are sitting in an area that is more at risk than many others . It has to be a big focus. Unfortunately, it is going to be a huge cost. We talked about how much it will cost to transition to green energy. This cost to prepare the united states, including things like wildfire smoke spreading across the midwest and the northeast, something our models have not been talking about. Wildfire smoke from another nation. How do we get ready to have the proper filtration system, the places where people can be indoor safely and cover the Economic Loss that comes from people not going to sporting events, concerts getting counseled canceled. All the impacts we have not planned for or accounted for that we need to get busy for. Those impacts hit the most vulnerable the hardest because they dont have the resources to take care of reducing risk themselves. Im going to come back to you. This is probably the last question. I wanted to zoom out from the focus on the united states. You made the point early on that it comes back to the fact that we as a world continued to put Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere and that is worsening all of these problems. The two questions i have on that , there has been a lot of promises made to do more to cut Greenhouse Gases in recent years. Yet, the emissions continue to rise or at least plateau. What must change or what has to change that Scientists Say need to change . And what do you hope will . What do wealthy countries such as the u. S. Owe to other nations that are feeling the same kind of impact if not worse than what we are seeing in america, but did little to nothing to cause the problem . The basic bottom line is, if we dont rein in the gas emissions we will never adapt or get resilient fast enough or effectively enough to catch up with the Climate Change. Its going to run ahead of us. I cant imagine what the world looks like in the few decades if we sit here let it happen. You know, what is going on, is that most countries had made some serious commitments to reduce their greenhouse emissions and their contribution to warming. Theyre not living to the commitments fully. But a lot of countries are trying. On the good side, there is an Energy Revolution going on in the u. S. And elsewhere. Were are making a transition to less carbon intensive energy, less Energy Produced by coal burning that produces carbon dioxide. Were in a transition to driving electric cars that eventually will be powered with renewable energy. Hopefully entirely one of these days. Its not happening fast enough. Governments, now that they have taken the first steps, have to increase their level of ambition. Imagine what the world looks like if Climate Change runs away and we dont have any chance to catch up. Will be dealing with these events, not every hundred years or 10 years, but several times a year as it has been calculated for coastal flooding. Theres no choice. Im sure countries are realizing that, slowly. Were at a pivot point. We have an Energy Revolution going on on the one hand. On the other, we have countries lagging, and starting to reduce and increase their commitment and actions to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. Being an optimist in life, it has a good chance of coming together and producing and a slowing of the Climate Change. And avoiding the kinds of outcomes that we just will never be able to deal with effectively. That means saving lives in the long term and saving money. One report argued that for every dollar spent in advance, you save three or four dollars after the fact, after the disasters have happened. It pasted think about this now, from the point of view of adaptation and the view of cutting emissions as soon as possible. Ok. Well. I think we will have to leave it there for today. Michael, thank you very much, we appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. For those of you who are just joining us, welcome to Washington Post live. Im a National Environmental reporter for the post. I am joined by the fema administrator deanne criswell. Welcome to Washington Post live. Thanks. It is great to be here today. I want to start with some of your own words. I noticed you have repeatedly called Climate Change our number one threat, would you take a moment to explain what you mean when you say that . How is Climate Change complicating your job and the work of fema . I think that is a great way to start this conversation. This is truly what i think is the crisis of our generation. We continue to experience and observe an increase in the number of Severe Weather events that are impacting our nation. Its causing a more complex recovery. It is taking longer for us to be able to get in and assist these people and help them on this road to recovery. A few stats to share with you, we have had over the fast 5 past five years, more than 20 1 billion Severe Weather events. Every year for the last five years. In 2022, those 21 billion weather events have really cost us in recovery, a total of 175 billion so far. We have to start to think about what we are going to do to reduce the impact of these events, so we dont have these complicated recoveries. So we can make our nation more resilient. You mentioned the number of billion dollar disasters as the government calls them and tracks them. I wanted to go deeper on that. If you look back over the last 40 years, the average number of the disasters, inflationadjusted, Something Like seven or eight on average per year. In the last five years, there has been more than 18 per year. These include massive events like Hurricane Ian from last fall. But also, lesserknown, but still destructive events all around the country. Flash floods, cold snaps, wildfires. What worries you about the trend and is fema and the federal government honestly equipped to deal with that many disasters, especially if that number continues to rise . I think the thing that worries me the most about this trend is the movement of people that we see happening across the nation. Covid19 really spurred an opportunity for many people to move into different areas. They moved from a lot of urban centers and into coastal areas, or rural areas. They have not experienced some of the threats that these communities are facing. What really worries me is that, as this trend continues to change, that we need to take the time now to educate people on what the risks are and where they live. The other part that worries me is the nature of the storms is continuing to change. We talk about Hurricane Ian. Hurricane ian hit in a similar spot of florida that hurricane charlie did. Hurricane charlie and ian were different storms. Hurricane charlie was primarily a wind event, but Hurricane Ian brought 19 feet of storm surge and extreme rain. These events are different than what we would have faced several years ago. And people have a misconception of what the risk is that they are going to face from these types of storms. We really do have our work cut out for us, making sure we are helping people across the nation understand what their unique risk is where they live. Now whether fema is equipped to respond at the rate we are going, it would be a challenge. We need to take the time to invest in a couple of different things. As far as the response rate, we planned our readiness cycle around the peak of hurricane season. We would make sure we have the staffing available for the short period of time in the summer. As you are seeing, our operational tempo is constant, yearround, and has been for the last several years. Were taking a step back in reevaluating how it is waiting to be structured in order to sustain a yearround operational tempo, instead of one that peeks at a certain point of the year and levels out. We have some work to do. We made progress but we have a ways to go in order to make sure we can continue to keep up with the level of events. We have to start investing. We have to invest in helping Communities Reduce the impacts from these events. If we continue on this rate, we are just going to continue to respond, recover, rinse and repeat. We have to stop that cycle. We have to reduce the impact, invest in mitigation, which means personal preparedness. Make sure that we are building resilience, even after a disaster, we are building the resilience as we building the community, so we can better absorb the shocks and structures the communities are experiencing. Followup on a few things. One early on was that, you mentioned the movement of americans in recent years. Just to quickly followup. Weve seen a large number of americans flock to places that are quite vulnerable to disasters. Whether it is on the edge of a fire prone area, coastal areas that are very susceptible to floods and hurricanes. Do you feel like it is part of femas role or the federal governments role to do more to discourage movement to certain areas or development in certain areas . How does that work . It is an interesting question. I get asked this question a lot. The question i get asked is, should we let people rebuild here . I often answer, well, where would you like them to rebuild . Whether it is in a coastal area experiencing hurricanes, or the urban interface where they are experiencing wildfires or in the midwest in tornado alley. There are places across this country we should encourage, as much as we can, not to rebuild. But we have to actually have a conversation about how we build. Even in areas like Fort Myers Beach. I saw homes that were built to a much higher standard, a much higher code that did not have the Significant Impact we saw another arts of Fort Myers Beach parts of Fort Myers Beach. Ive seen this in other places across the country. 40 of our counties across america have adopted modern Building Code. Thats something we at fema are focused on. We cant direct the adoption. We can try to incentivize. What we can do is educate. Thats something that our team husband working really hard on with our first ever Building Code strategy and how we will get out into communities, help them understand what this investment means. From a dollar standpoint, the Building Code investment every dollar invested in adopting Building Codes will save you 11 in recovery cost, more than mitigation returns on investments. It is important that we help educate communities about the value of Building Codes and how it will help them. As we see people moving to different areas and see the number and types of threats continue to increase. As we speak this afternoon, there is a crippling heat dome with temperatures near 120 that has affected millions of people in texas and other parts of the south. Heat waves, heat causes more death each year than any other weather event. Correct me if i am wrong, i think fema has never issued a major disaster declaration for a heat wave. Im wondering why that is. Maybe more importantly, do you think that is something we may see or should see, given what a threat this is your after year . Year after year . He is the number one natural hazard heat is the number one natural hazard in the u. S. Weve seen an increase in heat domes. I remember one of my first few weeks on the job in having a conversation with the governor of oregon about the heat domes she was experiencing and the impact on people. Within our authorities on the stafford act, we have never issued an emergency or major disaster declaration based on heat. A lot of that has to do with, what is it that we will actually provide in a monetary sense or bringing in the rest of the federal Government Support it . We do have a role in the heat conversation. That is through preparedness and mitigation funding. We can use mitigation funding to help these communities develop cooling centers to keep people safe. We can use mitigation funding to help support other operations to help harden infrastructure so they dont lose power. We also want to get out and educate the community. We want to get out and deliver the messages about what it is you need to do in the events that you are faced with one of those. Just because we dont have the authorities right now, within the stafford act, it does not mean we are sitting idly by. In fact, our region five administrator posted our first ever summit in chicago, to talk about what are the impacts and hazards of heat, what role fema can play so can understand what they are seeing so communities can understand what they are seeing. On Disaster Recovery and relief, that can exacerbate racial and social divide. There are studies in reporting that show that disaster aid does not always reach the marginalized or low income communities that suffer some of the worst impacts of a disaster. Im wondering, especially as extreme weather becomes more common and some of these events become more intense, how do you think about this problem and what are you when fema doing to prioritize equity when it comes to Disaster Recovery . This is something i think about every day. This was one of my priorities when i first came into the agency to serve in this role as the fema administrator. I took the time to reflect, as i was going to be nomination process, what with the areas i wanted to focus on . During my time as a local emergency manner whether it was in new york or in colorado, but also my time as a federal court navy officer, working with states and local jurisdictions, and understanding the diversity of the communities. Not just cities, but the neighborhoods within the citys, and the challenges that they face, and how do we make sure we understand what their barriers are to accessing the programs they are eligible for . We put it in my strategic plans, equity is one of our goals, to make sure we can give Emergency Services in an equitable way. Ive told my staff over and over again, figure out a way to get out of our own way. Look at our policies. What can we do within our authorities to make sure that we understand the barriers that people are having, adjust our policies that will help us get these services to communities for the things that theyre eligible for. Another area where focusing on, as we talked about the resilience, the policy piece this morning peace was more before, but before, we wanted communities to understand what they can do to harden themselves and make themselves more resilient. Its our brick program, rebuilding infrastructure in communities program. I directed the team to do direct Technical Assistance. I wanted them to find those communities that were the most under resourced and the most underserved, to be able to get in there and provide Technical Assistance to help them better understand what was in the realm of possibility to be able to increase the resilience. I want to give you one example. In eastwick, its the lowest lying neighborhood in the city of philadelphia. It has an incredibly long history of flooding. Eastwick is one of the communities that has been identified as an economically disadvantaged community. It made them eligible for this program, for direct Technical Assistance from fema. We pulled all of our resources, brought in our other federal partners to go in and work with the community to better understand what they needed to help improve their own resiliency. Its worked. This is exactly where i wanted to see the program go. We had this under resourced neighborhood. We sent in these Technical Resources to help them envision what was in the realm of possibility. They have most likely received 700,000 in mitigation funding to support some of those projects. We need to continue to do this. We are taking a placebased approach and focusing our efforts on the communities that need the help, instead of always being able to provide the assistance to those that have the greatest means. We are seeing progress already. We will see a lot more progress in the years to come. When you talk about helping communities, i wanted to mention that the 2021 infrastructure law , somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 billion for femas resilience in mitigation programs. Can you walk through some of the ways the money is being spent and how it will likely be spent . Is that enough to help the nation prepare for some of these changes coming, as far as extreme weather . Is it more like a beginning . Well, i will start with the last piece of that. Its not nearly enough. But it is one piece of the puzzle. The infrastructure law gave a funding to many federal agencies to help them prove the resiliency. Its the most funding in femas history to focus on reducing the impact through our mitigation program. This 7 billion will go a long way. Part of the money was going to the direct Technical Assistance, to go out there and help the most communities, the communities that most need a better understanding to apply for additional funding, whether from fema or other federal agencies, to help make sure they are more resilient to the shocks and stressors they are facing. It is also supporting programs, our flagship program, this is a Great Program because, not just through the bipartisan infrastructure law but through the investment and the enactment of this program itself, it raised the federal cost share. Under our legacy program, which is the predisaster mitigation program, fema had a federal share limit, a cap of 5 million. We could do a lot with 5 million, but were talking about the type of projects that need to happen. That barely scratches the surface. Through the brick program, we have a federal cap, a federal share cap of 50 million. We can really work with these communities to help them think about systemwide projects, and not just these smaller projects they have been limited to before because of the federal cost share. The additional funding coming to the bipartisan infrastructure law has given us opportunity to go out and help these communities with these larger system based, communitywide projects that will have a broader impact on the whole neighborhood. We have other programs, that this funding is helping. Our flood mitigation program, assisting with buyouts, and helping move to safer neighborhoods. We have had over 60,000 families that have benefited from this program. We moved them into higher ground, into a safer area. Also, being able to use our Swift Current initiative program, which is taking the funding, and taking the opportunities that arrive after a disaster to get in the ugly get in there quickly and help them make a decision. The longer you wait from a disaster to implementing the buyout program, the harder it is to get people to want to move. But if you get in there right away we can help them get to safer ground on a much more expeditious manner. Those are a couple of ways to help. I wanted to add one more thing which i think is a big support. It is the storm Revolving Loan fund. This is the first ever Revolving Loan fund fema has had. The bipartisan infrastructure law funded it. It gave us the funding to provide lowinterest loans or no interest loans to communities, to help with some of these projects. What we find in many, back to the equity conversation, many communities cannot cover the cost share. This Revolving Loan fund will help with a piece of it and get these projects into reality and make a difference. I think we may only have a minute. I wanted to ask a question about the National Flood interest program. I know the details can get complex, but that is an Important Program of for reauthorization. Its been around for more than half a century, to help people avoid catastrophic losses from flood and discouraging Flood Development development in floodplains. Fema has gotten criticism from folks on capitol hill about rates and in certain districts. Although the idea is that some of the rates are reflecting the true lists. But there is a drop of people having flood policies in recent years. I want to ask, what are the ways congress should amend or reform that program . How do you think about the role has to play Going Forward . Especially in an era when we see more flooding and fewer people with Flood Insurance . The Flood Insurance program is such an incredible resource, such an incredible tool for us to help communities have that level of ability to protect themselves, and more quickly recover from the number one threat we face which is flooding events across the u. S. We did recently update the program with our risk rating 2. 0. It reflects the true risk of a persons home. While we do hear about those rates going up significantly. There are some of them. 20 of our policyholders have seen an immediate reduction in their rate. Its those people we are really targeting our efforts on to say, hey, this is not mandatory in your area. Rates have come down to better reflect your rates. This is an incredible resource to help protect you and your family. We continue to work with congress on whether we do it to the reauthorization or other matters to help also understand the fact that even though some of these rates are going up, mostly it is for those that have higher value homes and highrisk areas. We know that there are those that are kind of in the middle there in this highrisk area that it may not be a highvalue home but the rates are below their means. Where working with congress to find out how we can implement an affordability plan and framework to make sure everyone who Needs Insurance has the opportunity to just purchase it. That is something we are working on. I have more questions but unfortunately that is all the time we have for today. Administrator, thank you for the time. This is a great conversation. I appreciate you making the opportunity to make it happen. Thanks to all of you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to washingtonpostlive. Com to find more information about all of our of coming programs all of our of coming programs. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more, including cox. Syndrome is extremely rare friends dont have to be. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox, support cspan as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving book tv, every sunday on cspan2 features leading authors discussing their lest nonfiction books. Theth of the end of history and the last man returns to book tvs inductor to cause about politics, internationaaffairs and liberalism and then Bethany Brookshire explores it was human and animal relationships. Watch book tv every sunday on cspan2 and find a full schedule on your program guide. Listening to programs through cspan radio app, play cspan radio app and listen to washington journal daily at 7 00 p. M. Is 10. Important congressional hearings and other Public Affairs throughout the day. Just tell you is much bigger play cspan radio app. Seas, powered by cable. Class president outlining his Economic Policy and his attempt to boost middleclass wages. And then a discussion on bipartisanship and working on dividegovernment. President biden outlined his economic plan to boost middleclass growth during his address in chicago. He talked about his wage growth and signaled what he caught a break from trickle down economic policies. This is about 40 minutes