Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-21-25_FRIDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Outdoor report is on with Greg Roberts from Rogue Weather dot com, Congressman Bentz in studio talking the executive orders, the spending, can we rein in activists judges and a lot more.

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clauser Drilling dot com. The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clauser Drilling dot com. That's 770 KMED. Here's Bill Myer.

Mr. Outdoors, he's the palate cleanser this morning after talking with State Senator Noel Robinson there for a while about the mental illness in Salem. There's a reason they called it. They're nicknamed it the Marble Nut House, a long time ago. Okay, but 12 after 7. Let's get outdoors. Let's get out there and do some hike. Well, I guess you can't hike on some of those trails. They're tumbling down because of heavy rain. Well, anyway, let's get to the good stuff here though. We have Greg Roberts from roguewather.com. Mr. Outdoors, the outdoor report is sponsored

by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Medford. Mr. Outdoors, good to have you on from Rogue Weather. And what are you thinking as we head into the weekend and spring looks to be springing and sprunging and breaking out next week to a certain extent? What's a you? Well, yeah, to a certain extent. And it's really pretty interesting because, you know, as soon as the groundhog saw his shadow with what we have going on, I said it's probably going to be end of April, beginning of May, before we see

spring really arrive and stay here. Now what's interesting is we're going to get these little teasing glimpses of spring, and one of those definitely develops starting Sunday and then reaches full flower on Tuesday, and then we start going back downhill. And I'm going to give you an example of how quick things can change here, because right now for Tuesday, abundance...well, this is for Medford, so basically Grants Pass as well. Abundant sunshine, a high of near 80, Medford's projecting at 81. 48 hours later on Thursday, mostly cloudy skies, showers expected, snow level around 3,000 feet, and the high of 55. Yeah, that's a

pretty big change in just a day or two, right? Yeah, and like I said, I think, you know, when we get these little breaks in the action and we get those teasing glimpses of spring, we better take them for all they're worth while we have them because I don't see a thing in the shorter long range, meaning up to a month out, or in the longer long range, up to 90 days out that tells me I'm wrong about what I'm saying about it's going to be end of April beginning of May before we really see a pattern walk in and hold where we're getting you know sunny skies for the most part and then the rain passing through will become, you know, far more of the two to three day event

instead of five, six, seven or longer day event. Okay. So, what is normal temperature or average temperature for this time of year? Right now in Medford, it's going to be, I'd have to look it up, I know for a fact yesterday was 60 degrees. Okay 60, is that about right normally? Yeah. On average? Yep. All right. And oh by the way the current records in Medford are now bumping up into the 80s. So to see 81 popping up next Tuesday isn't exactly a big surprise when you look back in history. And also, I would bet by the time we get to next Tuesday, 81

is probably not going to be a record high for the day. Okay. So it's just there, but it's just a little tease and then right back into cool, cool spring weather and wintery spring weather really. Well, honestly, we get right back to a pattern that looks far more like what we would expect to see in December and January than we're going to see in March. I mean, for example, things we normally expect to see in December and January from 6 p.m. Saturday night until 6 p.m. Sunday

over the weekend which triggered all of that massive flooding in Douglas County, Coos County, Josephine County, also over in Curry County. We were looking at rainfall totals in a 24-hour period, six to seven inches. That's serious. That's a bunch of water. That would be serious in December and January. We absolutely set some all-time March records for rainfall in a 24-hour period on some of those reporting stations where I was talking

about some of that got over here into Jackson County. We had the flood warnings going over here in Jackson County on Sunday. Sure and there was a member there's a woman in Central Point, rural Central Point, died and ended up drowning in that as a culvert got clogged she's trying to get it out and apparently from the reports that the water ended up filling in that. As a culvert got clogged, she was trying to get it out. Apparently from the reports that the water ended up filling her boots. Boy, just sad. I mean it's nothing to sneeze at or it's nothing to just think, ah, just water, right? It's a big deal. No, and especially the rate it was coming out of the sky over the weekend. That was

probably one of the more amazing weather events I have seen here in my lifetime. That was one of those all-timer kind of things. And what was really interesting was I do a weather live over on the Rogue Weather page pretty much every day. I was in Clamma Falls for the final day of the Sportsman show over there and I had just talked about, you know, we do have a flood watch going because mostly the creeks and the urban flooding situation not so much for the main stem rivers. I had no more than concluded that on Sunday morning, then started

seeing the messaging coming out of Douglas County first, and then it started spreading everywhere. And then I'm sitting over there in Klamath during the show watching, you know, what's going on, and I'm like, oh man, this is turning into a major event. And you know, in terms of floods you just March is just not a month where we expect to see those kind of things happening here. All right. Hey speaking of the Klamath. It was definitely a very amazing all-timer kind of event. Speaking of the Klamath, do you know what the conditions are these days? Have you been able to

discern what's going on out there in the area where the dams are removed and there's all that clay and silt and everything else? Is it all just kind of being washed down or is it sort of sitting there right now? Have you talked to anybody that might know? I believe what's going on is some of that is washing out. We haven't had serious high-water, major volume flooding going on in the Klamathian this winter. We've had some high-water episodes, but how fast that's flushing all that out? No idea. What I was mainly hearing was people were asking me, well, okay, we have reports of salmon in the Klamath being seen as high up as, and then people were asking, do you think they've made it back into the lake, meaning right there at town, Klamath Lake? And I said, if they have, I certainly haven't seen any credible reports of that.

I said, in fact, I really haven't even heard any rumors of that to this point. I have my doubts about it. Where they've gotten, you know, I still, probably, you know, Greg, roughly six miles upstream from, um, Oh, just blank my anyway. It would be just short of the Oregon state line. I have my doubts that many of the fish made it up there naturally anyway. I think there was such a focus on wanting to have a good narrative, especially when you saw how much turbidity and dissolved solids were in that water and everything

else, that I believe that there were some people that, and I don't know who they would be, this is pure conjecture on my part, all right? But it just doesn't pass the smell test that these fish just naturally came up and that they bred with all of these these areas covered in that clay and silt and all the rest of it it's just impossible but I think there was a group here that had such a focus on wanting good news oh look the fish are back here and it got picked up uncritically everywhere I have my doubts about that. Especially in California, where you clearly have the tribes and the state of California so heavily invested in this. Would they quote-unquote taxi them up and place them in the river? Not a bunch, but enough to get the PR value out of it. Yeah, and then the News Watch 12 and

Kobe cameras are there, look, look! At least the... What are these truck tracks leading down to the river? I'll pay no attention to that. That was a scientific observation of the water. All right, so we'll see. Hey, before we take off here, Greg, alright, Congressman Bents is standing by and, you know, of course I'm always beginning the bum's rush when he comes in here, you know, it's that kind of thing. Right. I just wanted to make sure that there was a story that I was talking about the other

day and I don't know if anybody's asked you about this, but in fact I read it in the Klamath Herald and News and you were just over there, right? And it's talking about how the state of Oregon is cracking down on thermal imaging cameras, people using them in hunting. And apparently what the state made hunting with thermal imaging cameras illegal and that Oregon Hunters Association agrees with this. But what's happened is that the cameras have become really cheap. They used to be like two, thousand dollars for good right and now you can get them for a couple hundred bucks, right?

that kind of stuff and What are your overall thoughts about that? I don't like the I could see how you could use it for an observation But it sounds like ODF and W would not treat you well if you even if you were just observing Well, okay, there are two entirely different things. There's observing and then there's hunting. If they're doing it to remove the aspect of it for hunting, well, yeah, I get that point and I'm sure that's what Oregon Hunters Association is supporting because it's a pretty well known fact, whether most people have heard of this or not, the age old practice of spotlighting deer by poachers

disappeared a long time ago as technology made it far more possible to just go out with thermal imagers. And I think that's what they're trying to eliminate is the use of thermal imagery in the act of hunting or poaching because that's definitely happening. Now, can they totally eliminate it for doing it for all purposes? No, I don't think so. Because if there's nothing harmful happening, then how are you going to ban it? For example, thermal imagers are used extensively by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Wildlife Services, US Fish and Wildlife, or among other things, monitoring wolves. When I was on Jackson County Wolf

Committee, we helped purchase thermal imaging equipment, both handheld and able to be used from a drone, to better help them observe wolves. Taking it another step, thermal imagery is now extensively used by those out in the field looking to do Bigfoot research. I'm giving you just a couple examples right there of where thermal imagery is used, but it's not being used for any kind of harmful effect. So what they've got to do here is thread the needle to eliminate the illegal harmful practice use of it, and yet still allow the benign research use of it, including the benign research use that the state of Oregon and the federal government is

doing within the boundaries of the state of Oregon because you cannot create a situation that oh yeah okay it's fine for us we're the government but you you can't do that. Okay fair enough well you know I could see how maybe you're able to look off at a ridge way over there and say hey you know there seems to be a lot of birds inside that inside the brush over there. Let's go over there. But then, you know, when you're actually going in the hunting aspect of things, you know, you're just kind of looking at where there might be good prospects.

Maybe that's legal, but, you know, no, you don't put the thermal imaging camera on the guns as you're ready to actually do your hunt. I don't know, maybe you can prospect that way. It's thermal imaging scopes. It's not a camera. There are scopes out there you can get now that are full-on thermal. Okay, all right, very good. Hey Greg, appreciate the update. We'll have you back. If everything breaks, give me a call, all right? You're always welcome. Thanks for the call. For sure, will do. And Greg Roberts once again, and he says, rogueweather.com, rogueweather.com.

And every Friday we like to do the outdoor report sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Metford. Two dogs fabricating carries North Star flatbeds and trailers along the roads. So visit bestofsouthernoregon.com today. Nominations close Wednesday, April 2nd at 5 p.m. The Bill Myers show is on

used to talk one oh six three k m e d seven thirty one probably have congressman clif bents in studio sent down now are you do you know doing any town halls this weekend right now we're not okay all right well you're already dressed and uh... didn't get the memo from Senator Merkley? Apparently not. Okay. I was talking about this earlier this week, Congressman, and there seems to be a

bunch of politicians that when they come here and do town halls, they'll be wearing suits and coats and ties and things when they're up in Portland, and then they come down to Southern Oregon and they think they have to be slobs. I don't know what it is, but that's exactly what Senator Merkley did. He looked like he rolled out of the homelessness encampment in Grants Pass. I'm going like, hey, thanks for dressing up. Yeah, I think they're taking a lot of heat, Bill. By the way, thanks for inviting me to be on your show. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. I noticed that the Democrats are turning upon

their own and blaming them for not jumping in and stopping what they can't stand to see happen, which is the Trump agenda. They cannot stand it. They truly can't stand it. And so they're attacking Senator Merkley and Senator Wyden and saying, why aren't you doing something? Well, of course they're in the minority. So, you know, there's not much they can do. They did both vote against keeping the government open, which I thought, which means they voted to shut the government down, which I thought was a bad form for them

for a lot of reasons. You know, a lot of people, and even I sometimes get a little bit confused about this whole concept because the continuing resolution would appear to continue to spend a lot of money on bad things for a while. And I think this is why you looked at Congressman Massey as an example, always being the lone holdout on something like that, the conscience of the House, I suppose. And he took a lot of incoming from President Trump. What was the actual strategy

involved of the CR and why it matters and was important that it actually succeeded like it did last week? Right, the continuing resolution maintained the budget from last year up until September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year. So if you don't do that, then what the Democrats wanted to do is extend it for 30 days, then another 30 days, then another 30 days, and each time they get to hold Republicans hostage, each time, and demand something from them. This time they were demanding that we tell President Trump not to do what President Trump is doing. That's what they wanted. And so, oddly enough, we said no.

It would give the opposition party then more leverage then. Absolutely right, every 30 days. Yeah, every 30 days. So you have to take the medicine of, OK, we fund a lot of this stuff at the same level, but there was a purpose behind it. It wasn't just because of letting things stay on autopilot.

Keep in mind what's happening. President Trump is actually looking at the money that has been allocated in these budgets and he's choosing not to spend it in ways that are, in his opinion and frankly in many of our opinions, totally within his constitutional power. So there's much debate over how much he cannot, you know, can choose not to spend as opposed to having to spend it. What the Democrats were saying is if you extend this budget until September 30th, that's going to give President Trump and Mr. Musk an opportunity to not spend that money and they didn't want to give him that

opportunity. That was their argument. As if for some reason there is a law that you must spend the money rather than... Okay, well... There is a law. There was a law that was passed back in the 70s, but there's been much debate about whether or not that law was constitutional. Oh, is this the impoundment law? Yeah, exactly. Okay, all right. Exactly. I remember, you know, reading about that then. It's never been tested constitutionally. It has not, and some would say that it has, others will say it hasn't. It's going to be tested. There is something else going on behind the scenes and this of course involving

President Trump who sucks a lot of the news oxygen out of the room. That's just the way it is, you know, big guy, big personality, you know, just the way it goes. And when he ended up, of course, just ended up saying we're going to shut down the education department here yesterday. And then there was the issue with the illegal aliens, the Venezuelans being flown out of the country. And then we had a judge end up in a inferior court stopping this.

And of course, couldn't really stop it because the plane was already gone in international airspace, et cetera, et cetera. And so they're sitting there in the prison where they need to be. The point being there's some work to reign in the jurisdiction of judges right now and I was kind of wondering if there was something like that going on because there's an issue when inferior courts are able to when I say inferior they're not bad they're just lower level there's a problem when you have inferior judges

making decisions for the entire nation on something. Right, well, of course, that's an issue that's been on the table for quite a while. A long time. Darrell Issa on the Judiciary Committee on which I served until this term. I moved from Judiciary over to Energy and Commerce, but Darrell Issa is a good friend

and he's brought a bill to address this exact issue. It's not a new thing that just happened. This has been a bill that's been discussed for several years and that bill, I think, is going to be brought to the floor very soon. It would restrict a lower court's judge from expanding that injunction clear across the United States. And it's much more technical than I am making it right now, but the concept is, as you just said, not allowing a single judge to, with an injunction, stop the enforcement of a law across the United States. Instead, it would be limited to some space.

I don't remember if it was a district or something else. Yeah. Is there any talk within Congress about perhaps even stripping jurisdiction, period, from certain courts? Like, I don't know why the federal courts have much to say about foreign affairs in the first place. You know what I'm getting at here with it being constitutionally empowered under the executive? Right. So, great question. And one of the things about President Trump is that he pushes the envelope on executive authority. Definitely. And we're going to see a much clearer view, legal view of what is constitutional and what isn't because many of these issues will go to the Supreme Court. And he has appointed many of the members of the Supreme Court, so no one should fear an overly liberal take on these challenges because there

won't be. What we're gonna get is a, I think, a conservative view of this issue. It'll be extremely interesting because I'm anxious to preserve congressional power. I'm a member of Congress. Yeah, you don't want to give away all the Congress's power either. And it does appear though that in the past, Congress kind of gave away power to the administrative state, which is what everyone seems to be battling right now. And the Chevron deference, the Chevron doctrine issue, having decided the way it is, would seem to change some of that. Well, what happens when you do away with your bureaucrats making the decision is you push the decision

into the courts. It's okay. So pick your poison. The question now is how will that new Chevron doctrine be implemented? It's not the Chevron doctrine anymore, but the challenge for those of us in Congress is can we actually write the law better? Thus we don't have to defer to either the bureaucrats or the courts. Not leaving so much squishiness or subject to interpretation. And one would suggest well maybe fewer laws and fewer regulations might be the answer

and I would say yes, I agree. I wanted to shift gears, and then we'll get back to Trump and the executive orders and such. Want to talk about the challenges we're facing here in the state of Oregon. And of course, we have state laws being passed right now that are just horrendous, crushing Second Amendment issues, all sorts of various other things.

And yet we do have a Brunner court decision that says, hey, you can't ban commonly used arms, all these things, but it appears that in blue states, Brunner is getting ignored quite horribly, I think, in many cases. And you as an attorney, well, you were a water rights attorney, but still you went to the same law schools and studied this stuff. And what do you think, where do you think the long term for your own state and your own district is when the state itself is so hostile even to the Supreme Court actions these days and what could be done? Well the issue has to be taken to the Supreme Court in each time that the liberals in Salem decide

they're going to take away more rights, you have to take it up to the Supreme Court. You're not going to get any help from the Oregon Supreme Court. Oh, no. They're all Democrats. You're not going to get any help. And so these matters will have to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. And if they rule against Oregon, then Oregon must follow that law. And there are ways of making that happen. And many of them have to do with pointing at a state

and saying, you're not going to get federal help if you're going to be ignoring federal laws. And so seriously, there are many ways to say to a state, you have to follow the law. Has Pam Bondi turned her legal gaze to Oregon yet, especially given our sanctuary status and various other things? Or is this, are they going after bigger fish first? Well, I don't know.

We have reached out to set up an appointment between me and Attorney General Bondi. I haven't checked with my staff to see if that's happened. We reached out actually because I wanted some insight into who should be our next U.S. attorney. And I wanted to know what she was looking for. In fact, I talked to Jim Jordan about it last year. I said, Mr. Chair, I told Mr. Jim, let's talk to Pam, because at that time she'd been nominated, but not yet confirmed about what she wanted. I have not seen exactly what she's looking for in a US attorney, but at some point I need to know that

because we're getting close to that appointment date. Okay, I wanted to bring up something with President Trump's executive orders and even the executive order, which was just issued yesterday about dismantling the Department of Education would require a sign-off by Congress and that that's quite interesting. I think this is the first time I've heard something like that mentioned because there's been a lot of legal pushback against what are the limits of executive power like you

yourself have been talking about. I was reading a financial blogger who came up with something, an interesting idea and I don't know if this has been discussed or not but he was saying that many of Trump's executive orders can be bundled into a package and passed in Congress on a simple majority reconciliation vote in which you take a number of those executive orders that maybe the majority party thinks are well done and proper and instead of the president just doing it the Congress thing putting a stamp of approval then which would seem to get rid of the ability for legal challenges on some of that is there is that a possibility is that realistic or what would you say to that well okay first of all I wouldn't

get rid of legal challenges because anything we pass can be challenged legally no matter how we pass it. But it would seem that if Congress also put the same stamp of approval legislatively that would help. So yes, well first of all, you are correct that an executive order by itself is what we would call a pretty weak soup. But with President Trump, it's got far more going for it because he's very, very, very good at using an executive order as a foundation to talk about the need for something to get done. He's very good at it. And so he builds pressure and a push for congressional action.

I would say though that the reconciliation device is extremely narrow because you have to take it through. Senator Byrd had developed a series of tests that any idea, concept included in the reconciliation bill must pass and it's called the birdbath oddly enough. And there is a Senate parliamentarian is the one that administers the birdbath. She decides if that which you've decided to put in the bill fits within the parameters developed years ago by Senator Byrd. I didn't realize that. I met a lot of people didn't. No, they don't. So would have to pass. So the Byrd rule would have to be satisfied first before. So the odds of then getting a whole bunch of or numerous executive orders then combined

in that say, hey we agree with this, let's make this legislatively. So it has to be about money. That's the whole idea of reconciliation. You're reconciling the budget, the budget, not a whole bunch of policy bills. So if it's all about policy, it's not going to be in there. So saying, hey, we're going to secure the border with Isyana Yiannick. No, it doesn't matter. However, we're going to spend money on the border, then all of a sudden you have... Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, and it gets, and you can imagine that if you want to talk about the envelope being pushed, go back to when the Democrats used this device to pass a bunch of IRA and other things like that. Go back and look at what they did.

And now everybody has the highest respect for the Senate parliamentarian. She's been at it since 2012. And I mean it, the highest respect. You better, because she's the one making the call. Now people can say, well, you can change her out. Yeah, who is the Senate parliamentarian? Well, honestly, I'm not in the Senate, so I don't know her name,

but I certainly know her reputation. It's a very good reputation. I just want to assure you of that. The challenge is there's much debate, much discussion about what can go into the reconciliation bill that's happening. I'm going to guess about every day so you can get some sort of a call.

We can get some sort of a call on what we can include in the bill and what we can't. All right. We'll take it back then to how we think Oregon is going to look like, how you believe the district will look like in your opinion with a smaller, let's say, because President Trump can reduce the Department of Education, he can reduce a lot of things legally within his authority so that it effectively is closed even if it is not closed. Would it be better if Congress were to sign off on it and just say, hey, we're effectively going to close it? So, so Bill, the one of the things that's extraordinarily frustrating in this whole exercise is, and I'm going to steer around for a moment, the Department of Education,

just talk about all the rest of the efforts to try to slim down government. And what happens is almost never do you see the stage set with the total number of people in the department, the total budget of the department, and then a comparison of how many people are actually being removed from that department. You just, you hardly see it. The one that I use is the Veterans Affairs.

Because if you listen, you'd think that the Veterans Affairs Department- Affairs have been gutted. That's the word over and over again. The actual number of people working for the Department of Veterans Affairs is close to half a million. Half a million?

Yes, half a million. Really? Yes. 500,000 people working in the Department of Veterans Affairs. That's like 10,000 in every state, if you were to average it, but some have way more than Affairs. That's like 10,000 in every state if you were to average it, but some have way more than that. It's a lot.

And the budget, there are 18 million veterans, a little more than that. And the budget each year for that amounts to about $20,000 per veteran. Now, obviously, that's not getting spent on some veterans, getting nothing spent on them and others a lot more. But the point is, how many people do you think have been taken out to gut the

department right now? Today? As of today? Well, let's see, if there are 500,000 working there, I would say a couple thousand. 2000. About 2200. I got it right. That's one half of 1%. Is that gutting the department? One half of 1%. No, it's kind of a rounding error. Under the Biden administration, they added about 50,000 people to the, at that point, 450,000 people working for the department. They added 50,000 more during the last four years. Part of that had to do with the PAC Act, an excellent act necessary. I will just say that if you have half a million people working for the department, probably somewhere in there somebody

is probably not necessary. That means the department needs to look at their situation carefully, and that's exactly what they're doing now, looking at the situation carefully and trying to figure out how to further reduce that huge number. But keep in mind, mission is of critical importance.

We want to make sure we protect our veterans. So that's why we're approaching these things so carefully. If you look at each one of these situations, and I'm gonna leave the Department of Education to the side for a moment, you'll see the same type of an approach, an initial, we're going to address this, people running around with their hair on fire,

usually on the Democrat side of the aisle, and then a probably a bit of an overreach, I would say in some instances, because I know when they when the the Department of Energy decided to reduce the number of people working for Bonneville, they had to go back and rehire a bunch. And that was a good thing, because many of those people absolutely are necessary that were rehired to run the agency. But at this particular point, you asked about the Department of Education, and I just want to say it's a challenging space and one where I think the president recognizes he's going to have to

get congressional help if he wants to do away with the department. He also knows that much of what the department does has to be maintained because there is money flowing through. He says, get it to the states. The question is getting it to the states correctly to maintain Title I and those other programs. So many of those programs are then going to be farmed out or transferred to different agencies then to accomplish the same goal? So I don't know what the ultimate design will be. I do know that the chair of the Education Labor Committee is a very close friend of

mine and I know he is very competent and they've been working on these issues for at least design will be. I do know that the chair of the Education Labor Committee is a very close friend of mine and I know he is very competent and they've been working on these issues for at least the last couple of years. Congressman Cliff Bents with me this morning. Congressman, I wanted to shift here with another program that we hear people hair on fire news reporting here in the state of Oregon and it has to do with Medicaid. Medicaid is Oregon health plan. A lot of people are on the Oregon health plan and I know it was expanded greatly,

especially during the, uh, the COVID time. What are the real numbers being talked about or do we, do you have any news that you can bring to this? Because, uh, you know, then you'll have the people running out, don't take my healthcare away. And I mean, you, you, you, you get it, it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. And people should know that I believe that the Medicaid program is essential,

important and necessary. People need to understand that. It is essential, important and necessary. The question is, how do we protect the program? Because under the Biden administration, it increased 9% every year for four years, 9% every year for four years. That's a big growth. That would be huge. And it's running around 660 billion a year now. Um,

and it's going up. So the question is, how in the world do we make sure we can continue to afford this necessary program? And along with other entitlement programs, what I fault the Democrats at more than anything else is this meta scare, this fear tactic that they're using to scare people. And people do get scared when they hear that they might be losing Social Security, which we all know has to be protected. Medicare, which we know has to be protected, Medicaid, which we know has to be protected, and we have Democrats running around because they have nothing better to

do apparently than try to scare the heck out of people that are dependent on these programs. Everybody should know, and I'm quoting now the chair of Energy and Commerce on which I sit that's in charge of trying to address these issues, the program Medicaid will not be spending less money looking into the future than spending today. Okay. Now, if you continue to add more people under the program, then the amount of money available per recipient could be a problem. And a big problem that I hear about, though, is that Medicare and Medicaid, Oregon Health Plan, doesn't pay enough for the doctors and the hospital reimbursements are very, very low. And so, you know, it's a, this is a tough deal.

How do you even work with that kind of a situation? But you are touching upon the complexity of a really important issue and one that I'm happy now that I'm on energy and commerce. I'm on, you know, three sub subcommittees there. One is energy, happy to be on it. One is healthcare, happy to be on it. And one is commerce and I'm happy to be on it. There's six subcommittees on three of them.

I am on three of them. They are complex, complex issues and you have to look at them very carefully and then you have to get help. And I've reached out to former governor John Kitzhaber, reached out to him two months ago. He was the one that designed Oregon's Medicaid plan. You know, you know why he did it 12 years ago?

Cause he realized Oregon couldn't afford it. Oregon has to pay 10% of the expansion population and 30% of the others, the original population. That number is huge for Oregon. That a fraction of the program, but still huge. He knew it and he realized that something had to be done. So he put together the Oregon health plan and he basically capped the amount that people could use.

And he also capped the increase each year to about three this year, I think it's 3.4, 3.6%. I can't remember. He capped the increase, year to about three this year. I think it's 3.4 or 3.6%, I can't remember. He capped the increase, not 9%, like the Biden's administration did each year for the last four years. This is John Kitzhaber, the governor. Understanding this 12 years ago, he knew this.

And so I realized I needed to reach out to somebody that was an expert in this space, and he's been very, very kind with his time and is helping me try to understand what best we can do. So realistically, given the fact that the government's still borrowing a buck for every two that it spends, right?

It's not- It's about a third, but that's okay. Okay, but still, it's a pretty big thing. We're gonna have to tighten up some eligibility in some form, aren't we? Isn't that realistically what's going to have to tighten up some eligibility in some form, aren't we? Isn't that realistically what's going to have to happen? So if the challenge for us is… Unless you have unlimited resources and we don't.

And we don't. Okay. When we tighten up eligibility, there are many existing elements of the program that need to be looked at carefully. One is your eligibility. If you're not eligible, you shouldn't be on the program. Another one is, are you working? If you can, are you working?

Because if we have never instituted a work requirement for Medicaid, well, what the heck? If you're, the normal example is you're a 28 year old sitting at home playing video games and you aren't making hardly any money, thus you qualify for Medicaid. Well, what you're perfectly capable of working, why aren't you?

So having a work requirement may well be something that's adopted. It hasn't been yet. All that's been done is we have a target and we're trying to figure out how in the world to reach it. Okay, yeah. I know there's a lot of complexity going on here. And I know here it is where I'm shooting the breeze on a quick talk radio

program segment here. And what is probably the least understood challenge that I think that that Congress is working through right now that maybe doesn't get much report in your opinion, because of, well, you know, as we know, Trump sucks up the oxygen. And so a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes really. Well, you know as we know Trump sucks up the oxygen and so a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes really well I Think the the thing that doesn't get the attention it truly deserves is how difficult it is to get our 220 but currently 218 Republicans in Congress to all vote for the same thing because we can only lose one vote and

That's generally Tom Massey, good friend on judiciary with me for four years. But he, he, he can almost always find a reason to vote no. Everybody can find a reason to vote no, Bill. Sure. But sometimes when you're trying to keep this whole thing going and you're in the majority, you kind of have to vote yes. If you're going to move an agenda forward, you kind of have to vote for it. And that's something that I think the Democrats were more successful at. They were spending money, Bill, like there's no tomorrow.

Why would they vote against taking trillions of dollars and shoveling it out to people? Hey, we're spending more money. Happy days are here. Exactly. And Bill, I want to say one of the worst things about that practice is it's really hard to reverse. It's really hard. Once people have been getting free money to go to them, I'm sorry, we're gonna turn off the spigot. Oh my goodness. People get really mad and there's a thousand arguments why they make why you should not.

And one of the problems with the government is most of these expenditures have a good reason, right? It's hard to find a really bad reason that although there were a bunch during the COVID space where money was being dumped out of helicopters. But the point is, when you're going in and trying to stop this, it's hard. Congress and Benz, we appreciate you coming in here. Looking forward to seeing you at the Lincoln day dinner on Saturday.

And imagine you'd be talking about this or I don't know, maybe you'll talk about children's shows or something else. Get away from politics. Oh, I think that we're not going to get away from politics. Bill, thank you for this opportunity. All right. Thank you, Congressman. Seven fifty seven at KMED 993 KBXG. American Industrial Door is at the home show this weekend and is ready to talk to

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Call today to get an estimate tomorrow. 541-941-3736, CCB number 250730. News Talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Meyers Show. Got some local financial news going on here. 730. on the left coast. Okay. And we'll have that coming up after news. We're also going to check in with the Kim Commando digital update a little bit later this hour, just a little bit later, a little bit later before we wrap up their great diner 62 question here. I'm looking at this and it has to do with back in the day in which a president actually ordered loyalty checks of federal employees. It's a great bit of history that we're going to look back on. And more, gosh, you almost wish you could do a little bit of that today right now. It seems like there are so many people working in the federal government that don't really seem to like the country.

It could be just me. But we'll dig into that, get you a $20 gift certificate too. If you end up being the winner. You can go out there and get the clam chowder or the big pancakes or the big burgers, whatever. Just great food. Over at Diner 62. That'll be all coming up before 9.