we ve made some strides. included in it are some major changes to medicaid that would begin to bend the cost curve but we do have some changes that we d like to make. our goal isn t just to pass something, it s to pass something which long term is the right thing to do. we d like to be able to provide insurance coverage for as many people as possible, but we d also like to make sure we re not simply dumping things on states, whether they did not expand or if they did expand. and part of that is equalizing what each state could expect to receive in terms of federal participation in the medicaid program over a longer period of time. that s no easy to do or it would have been done already. i want to read you a critique from the health care bill. you re going to assume it s coming from somebody from the left but it comes from a conservative columnist from the post. he writes let s be clear, the investment tax and medicare surcharge on obamacare are a drag on economic growth but if
allowed obamacare to be successful, i think there s a very large group of republicans and democrats that will come together and make other very substantial changes over a period of several months. for right now i think politically they d love to see us twist and squirm for a while. and you don t want to call their bluff? no, i think it in this particular case they ve made it very clear that as part of their conditions, we re not going to be able to repeal a lot of what s in obamacare. you haven t opened the door. when you made the decision to do reconciliation, that s shutting the door. that wasn t an invitation to work with you. not necessarily. what it is is it says we re going to get it done. a lot of what obamacare did was through reconciliation as well. but that doesn t mean that we can t and once again, you can pass reconciliation with 75 votes but you only need 51. so if there was an interest in putting something together, i think that would still be available, i think
you said something about when we have this big trade fight that all ag policy is local. you said the midwesterners, the weak guys don t want to see nafta change but the florida guys do. you have 15 seconds. the florida guys strawberries, oranges, tomatoes, et cetera have lost a lot of market to mexico because it s cheaper to produce food over there and they can produce it year round. in the midwest do no harm. don t touch anything that will mess up what we re already sending down there. you would have assumed florida was the free trade state and the midwest that powered donald trump would be the anti-nafta and it s economically the other way around. thank you. we ll be right back.
welcome back. time for the lid. panel is back. all right. i m still pretty fired up about the white house yesterday. they complain about fake news and sarah huckabee sanders utter the phrase, i don t know whether it s accurate or not, but take a look. talk about undermining every argument they ever tried to make in media criticism. i don t think truth or accuracy is something that is particularly meaningful to this white house. that was on display yesterday. what i think is sad about this is i think those white house briefings have become useless. i would be going. i d put a tape recorder. there are no facts that come out and the exchange between reporters and the white house, they don t happen at those
or he wants the issue in 2018? folks, welcome to washington where the idea of bipartisan ends up dividing the two parties. joining me now is senator mike rounds, republican from south dakota and former governor. i think that matters because governors have been weighing in a lot. welcome back to the show. thank you for the opportunity. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said make some changes. we re hear they re hoping to make the changes fast enough so the bill gets sent over to the congressional budget office before you guys leave town this week. can this be just tinkered with in order to win over either the skeptical conservatives or skeptical moderates? is it a small tinkering here or do you need to do something bigger? we know now the plan in its current form would reduce premiums by about 30% over the current projected law by 2020.