And workingclass americans is now that were in the steps by. We dont have to regurgitate all the facts about premium hikes i. The cost warm by these families and deductibles, its out of reach for everyday americans. Wel if this is nonsense of urgency that gives a reason for the senate tact, then, i dont know what will be. What will happen is we will end up propping up through government subsidy this exchange that is broken, centralizedan planning of our healthcarecompet system, not freemarket. We wont have competition that drives customer we wont give choice to patients. De, im disappointed quite frankly, but it just depends on what the definition of repeal without replaces. He get into the details of it and i can tell you whether it be satisfied but im disappointed. Host on twitter President Trumps edward let down by all of the democrats and a few republicans. Most republicans were loyal and worked very hard, we willhi return. Do you think those republican senators, susan collins, rand paul, and jerry moran to likely is a coming up, that they were not loyal and they let down President Trump and republicans question. Everybody has their reasons all of them speak for themselves. From my perspective we have the ball, the republicans. We have to be able to move the ball down the field and score points. We cant throw long cuts down on passes on every play. Frustrated by that. We have got to govern. E are we havent had the ball since world war ii except for two other times. Now, were in charge and we have to demonstrate we can leave. Leadership is making choices. Its except in the fact that legislation is not going to be perfect, but to let perfect be i the enemy of good is a problem. D it could be the demise of the Republican Leadership in the house and senate. W that would set us back. This is the window of opportunity in my opinion to right the ship. Healthcare is one of those tax reforms, the budget that weremyu talking about, so my frustration again is, lets not let perfect be the enemy of good. The house healthcare reform version was solid. It wasnt perfect. It did all the things that we can review the tape on it. But i think it gutted obama care and got us on the path to marketdriven patient centered care. Host just come back to something, this could be the demise of leadership in the house and senate, if the healthcare reform effort doesnt move forward, do you think the leadership in the house and senate are in trouble . Guest on thing, republicans and leadership, that is, our majority is in jeopardy. R forget whether Mitch Mcconnell is doing a good job leading in the senate or not, im saying,e we have midterm elections, and history is not kind to the midterm elections or new president. N the party of the new president. T some 32 on average seats that we loose on the house we have a 24 seat majority. So, we have to stave off and go against the historical logs here. We can beat them, but we have to deliver results. We have to deliver on ournot a i promises. There wasnt a bigger proble pr, the last election cycle and appealinrepealing obama care. This business of putting the ball it will do it in two years when we propped up and subsidize exchange market, its very frustrating obviously to read about this last night. S but i think whats in jeopardy as a conservative republicanan agenda. The midterms will come. Of this domino doesnt fall wewe dont get tax reform and other things i think its real problem. 20 host will talk about some of those issues. Democrats can call in, republicans and independents. Well talk about the budget process but walter has been hanging on for a while. Balti walters from baltimore, maryland, an independent. Caller thank you cspan. My problem with your guest today is that hes. They have lied to america concerning healthcare. The act is not feeling, the Affordable Care act. If you wanted to address the overpricing the medication, thank you. But if you want to give a tax bill which is what yourem healthcare and the Senate Health care bill, tax bill, fraud, im asking you sir, why is america regent are fine and being usou d against them when you and your colleagues, yes you have gone seven years lied to the American People as we pay for your health care bill. I want to cite one particular congressman from maryland who, before he was even sworn in ran down to the capital and demanded his healthcare be instated before he was even sworn in. I it now who is that. Caller i will call his name but he cannot deny 23 million, the senate bill. And repeal and dont replace will cost 49 million, putting us right back to where we were. When i address the problems ofca obama care sir in the budget trying to find nickels and dimes cutting peoples lives office what youre doing. Host walter we got your point. Just on the number, the repeal and delay which i believe you reference there, the repeal votl followed by a twoyear delay, the number, 32 million was the projected number people who would be uninsured by 2026. Thats from the Congressional Budget Office who score that legislation in 2015. Guest good morning walter, thank you for that input. Its right to start the day witn somebody call you when your fraud and liar. I think hes wrong unfortunately. I understand why his frustrated. Americans are frustrated because their Health Care System is collapsing in front of their eyes. This obama care at least the caller doesnt seem to put anyge responsibility on this government controlled Healthcare System, is driving costs up. I mean, we have mandated what kind of insurance you have to get. We mandated that you have to ges insurance. We mandated to the Insurance Companies how they can design Insurance Products for us. We have totally disrupted the market. There is no competition to speak of. When theres no competition youre going to have artificially high costs a little to no choices. In some counties you have zero Insurance Products on the exchange. I dont know how thats fraud on the part of republicans were trying to rescue the system and transition it to one that is a free market and, actually of states the opportunity to run medicaid in a way that is sustainable. Medicaid today is unsustainable. It is also blown up an expansion beyond its intention when it was designed for the neediest, poorest and sickest people among us. Now i have folks 400 of poverty on it. You have an expansion of medicaid that is going to bankrupt that program and rob resources from the truly needy. Then he have a system on the other side, the nongovernment system where people dont have choice in the have an insurance card and can afford insurance or the healthcare. Host jackie is in florida, good morning. Caller hello. Why did you let those people gee up there and lost to theocrats. American people . Its not only the democrats, its the republicans, they live, theyve lied for seven years and the done nothing. Nothing. Think i do nothing. All they want is a single pay insurance. Ething. Host and what you want . Es caller i want them to do something. Guest you know what, i wish i could put an exclamation marks on the end of jackies last comment. He just wants us to do something. He may have some thoughts about different provisions in the healthcare reform bill, he probably has some thoughts about tax reform. Published thoughts about all kinds of legislative reform policies. But, he just wants us to doi hoe something. I hope every republican in the senate is listening and quite frankly every republican in congress. The American People and those who elected us expect us to do something and deliver results even if its not perfect. Single so i cannot agree more with that statement. He said something about ahink h singlepayer system. M. Host he say thats what democrats want, i think thatsar what were moving quickly towards in this obama care system but i will tell you that is a member of the Virginia Committee i see a singlepayer system every week as i preside where my committee, my subcommittee where we look ats, long lines, long wait times, not great access to care for veterans, packed theres a crisis were people have gotten sick and died waiting in line. Thats a singlepayer system i know about. We dont want to go there, we want to go the opposite direction and so i think he wasu right on. Also send us your questions on twitter we want to see those you mention doing something, the House Budget Committee is doing something tomorrow, the marking up the fiscal 2018 budget. About 622 billion in defense spending, 200 billion in mandatory spending cuts. Mostly from antipoverty programs like supplemental nutrition assistant programs and temporary assistance for needy families. Is this a budget youll begoingo supporting . Absolutely i will support itb i worked hard with my colleagues to get to these numbers. Again, lets dig in a little bit here. Food you mention cuts to programs. Food stands for example were supplemental nutrition as you referred to it. Most people notice food stamps. If youre going to have a responsible policy on safety net, where you dont track people and a life of poverty, where you want to incentivize them to be upwardly mobile and have better life and job and better quality life for their family. Then, you need have provisions for ablebodied people to work. D where you have seen mandatory work requirements for ablebodied individuals and states, you have seen the roles of food stamps reduce. Thats a good thing, because we want people to move up and out. So, i think those are responsible, i think theyre compassionate, and i think its right thing to do for all stakeholders involved, not just recipients but for taxpayers. Ac host if you throw and food stamps of the mandatory programy and you set yourself up for the argument they are cutting taxes for businesses and wealthy people while removingta eligibility for people in food stamps. Obviously, i think that throwing perspective. I think you have to get the economy growing. We have to incentivize the job creators who it seems we are esc antagonistic to special when you have the highest Corporate Income tax rate in the free world. Incentivize them to grow their business and create jobs. Thats what workingclass and middleclass americans want with than anything. Better an opportunity for a better job and better life for their family. Budget u the report yesterday that some of your colleagues in the conservative Freedom Caucus dont think 200 billion in cuts may not support this budget unless theres more cuts. You agree with them . Do you think though, board . Yes, we need to do more. We are 20 trillion in debt. Remember, dont let perfect get in the way of something good. Something that is a good solid step in the right direction. We have a lot of interest, a lot of perspectives, a lot of members in the Republican Party that represent a very differentp demographic and philosophical debt than i do from west texas. So doing nothing is unacceptable which is what were doing on healthcare. We should do more than 200 billing but we havent cut 200 billion out of mandatory, 70 of our budget is mandatory spending. Over the next ten years if we kept every policy the same today, 90 of the Expenditure Group would be a mandatory spending. De thats whats driving the debt. We havent cut even close to that in 20 years. You talk about making a down payment on a promise to the American People, talk about dealing with the threat to the future this company, my children and your viewers children and grandchildren . Vi this is the greatest threat. The National Debt crisis. We have got to start digging out of the whole before hand it to her children. So far that they cant climb out. Host will let you talk to joe. When you talk aboutthe fa healthcare, lets start with fact. The fact of the matter is on the three dozen countries Economic Development which means basically the capitalist countries in the world, the United States has the has a larger chair of gdp onon healthcare expenditure, yet it has healthcare indicators at the bottom of the barrel of the three dozen Richest Companies inich means as a failure. Obama care to call it, the afford will care basically give way to the insurance company. Like what we need, shame on us for not having is a singlepayer system which delivers qualityheh healthcare at the lowest possible price the most efficient way. The congressman belongs to a party who lives on fraud and of failed system, hes a free market fundamentalist that wants to cut taxes for the rich and step on the four. I respect your perspective on you can also argue that the outcomes for people on andcaid are not any better in some cases, they are worse than those w not any better and in some cases ive seen studies say they are worse than those uninsured. In terms of healthcare outcomes that you mentioned, there is a reason people come to this country for the most complicated procedures in the most serious procedures. Theres a reason why we produce some of the most innovative therapies in healthcare and technology. They come from the United States. They come from a freemarket economy and the more government we put on the backs of our innovators and job creators in healthcare providers, the less incentivized they are to come up with new ways to heal and the less incentivized they areah to actually deliver high quality of service. Thats whats happening in the single singlepayer system at the va. They are good doctors and nurses but the system is broken. These guys get paid whether they do a good job or not. A good job is access to quality care and whether they get access to quality care, they get paid. What is the incentive . N they have to get up every day and say im going to go give the best care i possibly can because in the private sector, if you dont, youre out of business. I respectfully and radically disagree. To baltimore maryland. Christina, independent. Yes, i have two questions for the congressman. The first question is how many townhall meetings has he had for his constituents to gauge where they are in respect to healthcare, and the second question is, i see the congressman is speaking about Different Things that are wrong with obamacare. Why couldnt they have just i fixed those issues that were wrong with obamacare and move on and concentrate on other t things instead of give away, all this money, give it to Insurance Companies and take poor people off the system. Ive had hundreds of meetings in my district. Ive had townhalls appear and Facebook Live where we take questions. When we had this Resistance Organization that was hijacking townhalls, and in my opinion detracting from genuine concern from people who want access to their member of congress and their representative, it was very unfortunate. I actually called a Democrat Party chair in my largest Population Center of my district where im from and i invited him and everybody out there for a mock townhallt where they had a cut out of me and a bunch of resistance. E. We knew what was going on. You h was a conversation you had with him. It was a great conversation. It was one that we didnt have cameras in their so people could do any political stance. On about i think it was a very honest and earnest discussion aboutt healthcare and any number of issues we are dealing with. We had mostly disagreementsly but they could hear directly from me and i could hear from them. Is that what you mean byas cameras leading to political stance. You watch the news were people are getting up and screaming at the and things that become highlight reels on cnn and i just dont think its been very productive. I do think when we sat down in groups of small groups and we didnt have the media, i think weve had great, honest, candid conversation. Ive learned from that. We found some Common Ground on agriculture, on Google Energy and other things. It wasnt that we were at odds on everything but that was a more productive venue to have that dialogue. People think you have had townhall to engage your citizens and your constituents , and i reject that. I also have town halls around my district. Weve done a lot of Different Things to engage. I forgot the second part of the question but thats the answer to the first. The question was about working to fix obamacare rather than replace it. Im not to work to put lipstick on a pig. Im in a try to transform the system into one that i think will work longterm. I dont think obama intended for it to turn out this way, as much as i regret that nancy pelosi and the democrats rammed this through without a single republican vote, they didnt even read the bill. We forget that. I dont think they intendede for the outcome to be what it is today, this collapse of the Healthcare System, but thats whats happening. I fundamentally disagree with the approach and i dont want any more topdown, onesizefitsall government solution. They cost us more and they dont serve the people they are intended to serve. A question from twitter. How do you assure that the tax cuts result in job creation. This seems to be the link that has been missing. I think if you look back at reagans reform that are similar to what we are trying to accomplish which is lets roll back the trillions ofd dollars in costs and burden and regulations that we put on this economy and on our job creation. By the way there disproportionately felt by our Small Businesses, community banks, family farms. These are the folks i represent in rural west texas. When you do that and you have Regulatory Reform and you have healthcare reform or entitlement reform in you rain in the spending and get control of your budget and operate like every other american like you actually have limited resources, not a money tree in washington, and then you provide tax relief where we are now paying the highest Corporate Income tax in the industrial world. When you do those things, you see the economy grow significantly. We are at 2 annual gdp growth. Thats being kind. We can do much better, but we have to free up these job creators to expand opportunity for people who want to work and who can work and want a better life and thats what this is about. Its not about all these things are here with respect to tax cuts for the rich. This is about giving middle and working for class families opportunity. Here in washington d. C. , mark is a democrat. Good morning. N. Caller good morning congressman. I wanted to make a couple comments. W one was about what you were saying, about four 100 of Poverty Level are getting medicaid. Th i dont know where youre getting that from, i think in syria that might be true but i dont know of anyone, theres something about federal guidelines and they dont really understand. But let me tell you a story of a real person that i know and is typical. Have a friend who works three jobs all parttime but the employer doesnt want to provide Health Insurance anymore. Shes working three jobs, she makes around 16 or 17000. Shes in a state with medicaid expansion. She was eligible for medicaid until that time. Then she got a letter saying you are now off of medicaid, you must go on obamacare and it was probably 50 she went over the limit and then she went to the marketplace and got obamacare. Were running out of time so i want you to get your question and i want the congressman to be able to answer. The question is,. Gu i think there are examples of preexisting conditions which is something, im not an antigovernment republican, im a limited government republican. And the government has a role to play but its very limited. Eit its not expansive, its not the centerpiece to the Healthcare System which is what it is under obamacare, but the limited role would ber with respect to those who are high risk and preexisting conditions, and those folks, you can say they have opportunity, but when your premiums are that high, just like in obamacare, they cant afford it. They need some support and so whether its a state highrisk pool, we made provisions for that in the house bill. Im not sure exactly what their doing in the senate that i think there are cases you can pull out that are specific in a small pool of folks. Thats maybe seven or 10 , maybe ten or 15 of the entire population. What i would say is there are people who are over four 100 poverty, and i think wisconsin, california, you can look at other states, but it was intended to be one 100 poverty and below in terms of medicaid, it was expanded to 130 and then went way above that. Basically the Obama Administration wanted to get the number of folks with insurance up so high that they just said, they opened up the floodgates and said the federal government will pay one 100 if you will get them on the medicaid role and they blew way past that. I believe there are people over four 100 and ill get to the datas you can talk about it later. One more call. We only have a minute or two. Hi sam. Caller hello, good morning. You talked about how employers, job creators should be given the chance to push the economy, and i wanted to get your comment on why there are so many employed people working for these job creators like big corporations who are refusing to offer them any type of medical benefit. Let me just say im for reducing the rates we pay inintd taxes, not just on companies but Small Businesses for the majority of our jobs are create created, and also foror families and individuals. I want to simplify the code and lower rates for everybody we could keep more of yourour money. One of the things the house bill was trying to address, youve got governmentsponsored insurance with the va and youve got employer sponsored. Id, they get a tax benefit for doing that. Then youve got the individual out there whos not part of the company, thats what those tax credits, if you dont qualify and youre not below a certain Poverty Level, we were trying to provide parity with those individuals. I think its a competitive market out there. I think most companies, to compete, as part of their compensation package, they have to offer healthcare. Where they dont thats where the tax credit was supposed to help. And then Association Health plan so you can band together with more people for greater purchase power and overall bring the cost down. Thats what everybody wants to do. I admit, thats the goal, having more choice and more competition will do that. Not government dictating and driving processes. Host we have the agriculture and better and Fair Committee guest. Thank you. Thank you. Washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that are important to you. We will continue the conversation on the federal budget. Tom reed from new york will join us to talk about that and efforts to boost manufacturing. Democratic congressman ryan from the Budget Proposal committee. Also joining us, we will look at the future of nafta and the trumps administration. Past president ial administrations have pursued to tax reform. The confirmation hearing nominee for tax policy. The house in Preparation Committee works on Homeland Security spending bill. As congress turned their attention to tax reform, treasury secretary testified at a Senate Hearing about the challenges in crafting sweeping tax policy. Members of the george w. Bush and Obama Administration spoke at the Senate Finance committee hearing. It runs two hours ten minutes