Next, Governor Kevin Stitt talks about covid19s response in his state of the state address. Governor stitt is in the middle of his if i remember in his first term of office and he spoke for 45 minutes. With the chief operating officer john budd and members of my cabinet. Mr. Chief justice, members of the 58th legislature, to my best friend, first lady sara stitt. To my six children and my parents that are with us today, and most importantly, to my fellow oklahomans. It is a great honor to stand before you and to partner with you to lead our state through unprecedented times. I respect the Constitutional Authority of both of these legislative bodies. Mr. Speaker, mr. Pro tem, members. Senate and the house, i stay here in your chamber today and pledge to work with you and to have the best and most productive session in state history. [applause] id also like to recognize each of the 15 new representatives and the eight new senators na who are just starting their service and i look forward
Leader Kevin Mccarthys briefing. You can watch live coverage of his news briefing also here on cspan 3. Joining us now on washington journal representative michael burgess. He is a republican of texas, serves on the Energy Subcommittee on health as the Ranking Member also serves on the rules committee. Representative burgess, thanks for your time today. Good morning, thanks for having me on. You also have the honor of being a medical doctor, so ill start there. From your view of medicine how would you address people who are concerned not only about in certain areas the United States rises in covid19 cases but at the same time reopenings and the starting of economies. How would you balance those two . Well, both are important stories, and people are correct to be concerned about numbers that appear to be going up. People are also concerned about the continuation for everyone having to stay closed in, shutin as the economy contracts the way it has. So at this point youre going to have to
Members of virginias allegation mark warner and congresswoman are holding a town hall discussion with voters in the two democrats original cosponsors of justice and policing act on police reform, they are expected to answer questions about that and to address concerns about covid19. It is a very fundamental issue. And mark has done it with great skill and on a bipartisan basis which is not easy to accomplish which shows a lot about senators gilson and ability to reach across the aisle to find Common Ground and its not easy. I applaud you mark for your leadership and as i said i look forward to being with you on a ticket this fall and i agree this is one of the most consequential elections in the last halfcentury. Where the country is is in really dire shape, we have three crises converging on us all at once. We have the worst pandemic in 100 years and in an odd way were back to 1918, we do not have a treatment for covid19. We dont have a vaccine for covid19. For racing against the cloc
He has the toughest reelection race of all Senate Republicans in 2018, but he jumped on board with this bill right away and introduced it to the senators. Also, former senator Rick Santorum from pennsylvania. He has taken a bit of credit for this bill, saying he is kind of comparing this to welfare reform in the 1990s, which was considered a big conservative win. He says he went to senator failedafter the senate to reveal the Affordable Care act in july and said, why did you do Something Like welfare reform fiasco welfare reform . Really, senator graham and cassidy are kind of the brain children behind the span behind this plan, and thats why it is called graham cassidy. What are you hearing from the states, from the executives themselves . Jennifer the republican governors are pretty split. We have seen some republican governors saying yes, we love the idea, give us control. We want that authority, we want those dollars, and we can do the system that is best for our states, but other
Bill cassidy of louisiana and bill graham. What is in this measure . This is the last ditch effort therying to repeal Affordable Care act. What it will do is change the existing system of the Affordable Care act into a block grant. Ttates would get a se amount of money. They would take those dollars and implement either a plane similar to the Affordable Care act, they could go singlepayer or a conservative route and undo some of the parts of the Affordable Care act. Particularly the Consumer Protection some folks like. These are the preexisting conditions, things like that. Governors would be able to undo those things and have this pot of money to implement their own system. We will take a look at some of the details offered up i senator graham on the senate floor. Medicaidraham we keep in place. We try to get more flexibility because indiana is a good example of what can happen if you give states flexibility. One thing i dont like, you can run to the emergency room and we pay a big bi