health reform bills failed to make it through congress, and the final blow delivered with the mavic, john mccain, with thumbs down. and then in december, the elimination of the individual mandate. and then 2017 is the year we started paying attention to the opioid addiction. on october 26th, president trump declared the problem a public health emergency. no part of our society, not young or old, rich or poor, urban or rural has been spared this plague of drug addiction. less than a week later the president s commission issued a report on combating drug addiction in the opioid crisis, and among the 56 recommendations, more access to treatment, better electronic
from this weekend. dean heller voted for that repeal effort. and it s a way to say if the replacement part is too difficult to come together let s take care of the first step and repeal. if you repealed it, come back with a replacement effort that could be more bipartisan. that s one of the things that republican at least the trump white house and folks who are allied with them sort of like about this. they can do the repeal part, keep a big part of the promise to the voters. do the repeal in one step and then maybe include these democratic voters as they try to get to the repeal part. but there s a host of political problems with going about it that way. lots of political problems. but interesting there s movement. we ll continue to cover it. thank you so much for being with us. garrett haake at the white house. we re not used to seeing him at the capitol. those protesting the republicans health reform bills are taking to the streets all across the country. health care workers
like when this was going through the house. this is about negotiations inside the republican party. inside the republican caucus. democrats are not part of this. they are not playing ball with each other, frankly. right now, we have senators fanning out across the capital, reading the document, to figure out what is in it. let s go to the house floor. tensions are flairing there. ranking democrat on the senate finance committee, my colleague, distinguished senator from texas, he knows that i know something about writing bipartisan health reform bills. i have written them. they become law. i have not once, not once, been asked to be part of any bipartisan effort with respect to this legislation. i think, colleagues, it s real clear what is going on here.
the president obama s proposal that would provide teammate to small businesses that are ad tax relief to small businesses that are adding employees to their payroll, it s additional to add employees. the president s proposal helps in that direction. the spir bill that we reauthorized under president obama s leadership will help small companies in the the tech fields. yes, i think this are and particularly helping them with the regulatory issues. you know, we removed that 1099 reporting requirement. the smaller companies particularly said that would have been overly burdensome on the health reform bills for under ten. there s no additional burdens under the affordable care act. yet they can take advantage of credits if they do provide benefit for their employee. we are mindful of the small companies. so senator, i want to ask you we re asking a lot of people on the show and in the country over the next couple of months, do you feel small businesses are pert off now than they w
would provide tax relief to small businesses that are adding employees to the payroll, look, it s very difficult for a small company to add additional employees. and the t president s proposal helps in that direction. so the bill that we authorize under president obama s leadership will help small companies that are in the tech fields. so yes, particularly in helping them with the regulatory issues. we are moved that 1099 reporting requirement. the smaller companies particularly said that would have been overly burdensome on the health reform bills for under 10. there s no additional burdens in the affordable care act. so, senator, i want to ask you what we re asking a lot of people on the show and in the country over the next couple of months, which is do you feel small businesses are better off