Affordable care act. We wanted to start with the chairman of the Senate Health committee, lamar alexander. He has been holding a series of hearings. Here is the senator talking about the goal. [video clip] our goal is to come up with in a census consensus early next week. Hopefully we can have senator mcconnell an Agreement Congress can pass by the end of the month that will limit premium increases next year and begin to lower premiums after that and prevent insurers from leaving the market. That is our schedule. What happens if we dont succeed . Last year, or percent of american counties had one Insurance Company on the exchange. This year 36 have one insurer. Of counties half will have one or zero counties on the exchange. We have heard from state Insurance Commissioners that this monopoly in so many. Ounties drives up premiums without costsharing reductions, the Congressional Budget Office, the joint committee on taxation, and as our witnesses have said, premiums will increase 20 in
Last week, we heard the bad news that the Trump Administration plans to end the deferred action for Childhood Arrivals Program better known as a daca. Daca provides temporary legal status to immigrant students if they register with the government, pay a fee and have background checks. The young people who are protected under the program also known as dreamers came today and came to the United States as children. They grew up seeing the National Anthem and pledging allegiance to the american flag. Several years ago, i and another senator sent a letter to president obama asking him to establish this program. The president responded to our request and daca has been a huge success. Almost 800,000 dreamers have come forward and received daca protection and allow them to contribute more fully to the country as teachers, engineers, lawyers, students and even members of our military. Today, thousands of dreamers and family and friends are afraid because this administrations decision to rescind
Where we are right now in las vegas. What is freedom fest . Its the intellectual at the entertainment capital of the world. This is the most unique events in las vegas because usually las vegas is about entertainment and so forth. But we are renaissance gathering where we taught philosophy, history, science, technology, healthy living, music and dance. A liberal arts education. We have over 300 speakers, we have many authors. One of the subtitles is great ideas great books and great thinkers. We are one of the few organizations that has a conference where the center of our exhibit hall is a bookstore. We sell people hundreds of books and freedom fest. We are delighted to have book tv as part of the freedom fest. Host what political philosophy is behind freedom fest . Guest we are nonpartisan, we have a lot of wealthy investors here and its hard to pinpoint politically what investors are for example two years ago we had donald trump came at the last minute. He appears seven 11 on 2015.
The somewhat easier speech to give. It was plain for all to see that our union was not in a good state. Europe was better and worst by the very foundation. We only had two choices either come together around a positive european agenda, or each retreat into our own corners. Faced with this choice, i argued for unity. I proposed a positive agenda to help create, as i said last year, a europe that protects, a europe that empowers, a europe that defends. Over the past 12 months, European Parliament has helped bring this agenda to life. We continue to make progress with each passing day. Just last night you worked to find an agreement on instrument and doubling our European Investment capacity and you succeeded. Thank you for that. I also want to thank the 27 leaders of our Member States. This after my speech last year, they welcome my agenda at their summit. In doing so, they chose unity, they chose to rally around our common good. Together, we showed that you can deliver for citizens when
Alan bjerga of Bloomberg News. It is a 21 billion a year program. How many people does that reach and what is the amount of assistance at each one of the individual recipients in the program gets . It has gone from the 20 million level and its been 70 billion now. It affects 40 one million americans. That is about one out of every eight. During the recession at one point it was one out of seven. You have seen the number go down. The amount of money people get can very much vary. Some people get very small checks. It is based on what your income level is and what youre need may be at the time. Host what are you allowed to spend benefits on and what cant you spend it on . Spend it onannot cigarettes or alcohol or nonnutritious foods. You cannot spend it on hot meals. This is a subsidy for Grocery Store purchases. There are no other real restrictions on what you can get. That is different from some other different programs. Other than those things, you can buy what you want. Host you ment