Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 05-27-25_TUESDAY_8AM

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Congressman Cliff Bentz with a talk on the Big Beautiful Budget bill, the telephone townhall, what about the Oregon Health Plan and other Dem criticisms? Some open calls follow.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clouser Drilling.com. Congressman Cliff Benson Studio, and we're proud to have him in here and talk about the big, beautiful bill and some of the other issues that went on here. Congressman, welcome back. Always good to talk with you. Bill, it's great to be with you this morning.

That whole thing with the the telephone town hall, I was wondering how that was going to go. Of course, I ended up getting the call from your office. It was on my home phone at that point. I wasn't able to hang in. By the time I got home, I think it was over at that point. I had people write me that they thought that it actually went off really well. I was kind of questioning. I'm sorry to be I wasn't doubting when I was looking okay telephone town hall how could that could that be? Well I know the reason why you don't

really want to do the town halls in person is that you essentially have you know radicals that are trying to make sure that nothing really productive happens in them, unfortunately, but that's just the reality where we find ourselves, right? Right, right. So one of the, I did four live town halls and I suddenly realized after two days of that experience up in Baker City and La Grande and Pendleton and then Port Amoro, each a live town hall and usually we'd have a couple hundred people and we were having three times that amount

in different places. Yeah. And I realized that what was going on is there were people who were spreading absolute false things like misinformation or meta scare is the way I put it. And it was exactly what the Bill Clinton administration did all those years ago when Newt Ging Wension team were trying to reduce federal spending.

They're going to push grandma in the wheelchair off the cliff. Throw her under the train. I mean, every, so what you don't want to give people an opportunity to scare people. And that's what was happening over and over and over again. And so we shifted over to the telephone town hall approach. 13,000 people picked up. We focused on just these three counties, Jackson, Josephine, and Douglas. And then you could attend online. We had about 500 people online and we have, I don't know how many questions, I think it was like 700 questions that were that they call in and we have 12 people answering the phones and then those 12 people type up a summary and it goes to the

moderator. My right picks a question and asked me if it doesn't ask me the question they'll say well Bill Meyer is from Medford is on the phone Bill has a question then you would ask your question and live and then I would answer it and then we'd go to the next. So it's kind of like a zoom call without the video. That's correct and And you can do video, but this way we thought we'd probably get more participation. The people that do this for a living were astounded at the 13,000 number,

that we reached 13,000 people in this three county area. And I think a lot of it had to do with people who are very interested in what's going on. So, yeah, picked up. Yeah, interested in going on, not necessarily wanting to go in and just, you know, watch the protests going on, I guess is what… They wanted to hear what's happening and they wanted to hear someone logically, carefully explain it.

And that's, there's a lot going on, Bill. So I think that's why they're interested. Yeah. I had a listener who wrote me or who called me a little bit ago, realizing that she wasn't going to be able to hold on for when you were going to be here. And I think it was a reasonable question, and this has to do with the big, beautiful Bill. And I've been reading bits and pieces of it and reading analysis of it, talking with you and talking with others, and there are parts of it that... and what she was wondering about is,

what is the plan to actually save us from the debt? I mean, there's the deficit and the debt, and the debt and the deficit are not necessarily one in the same thing. And we're at 37, 38 trillion, and it doesn't appear to be, even with the big, beautiful bill, that much will change on that moving forward. Okay. So a great question, an excellent question, and I'm glad she asked it. Huge debate in our Republican conference of 220 of us over exactly that. And how much can we of us over exactly that. And how much can we reduce spending at the same time? How much can we extend the Trump tax cuts?

And so in an interesting juxtaposition of issues, we have this desire to reduce spending. And at the same time, we have the 10 years expiring since those tax cuts took place back in 2017. And so at the end of this year, if we don't extend those tax cuts, then there will be a dramatic increase in people's income taxes across this valley, across this United States, because all of those tax reductions that occurred back in 2017 for individuals go away. And even in the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, etc., the assumption is that

those were going away when they make the calculations, correct? Yes, so the key to your point, the key phrase to understand what's going on is baseline. That's what you hear the so-called baseline. And so in order to make any heads or tails of sense of this whole situation, you have to understand what the baseline is that you're operating from and measuring what you just said. Okay, what's the baseline? And so the baseline right now is that indeed, at the end of this year, everybody's taxes that are individuals, or partnerships, or S corporations, or past two entities, if we call them, and many more, will go up. That's your baseline.

Now that's looking at the law. There are others who say, no, no, you don't look at law. You look at policy and you use policy as the baseline, not the law. If you use policy, you look back at what Congress has actually done when it comes to these kinds of situations in the past. And you know what Congress has done?

It's always extended them. And thus the extension means that there isn't quote really under this policy of always extending going to be an increase in taxes. Now this debate has been going on for a very long time and people will say, well, policy, who cares? You need to look at what the law is. So I can go into huge detail,

but I won't. I'll just say that if we don't extend these tax cuts, people's taxes will go up. And I would agree with you, but if the taxes did go up, would we have had a better time then on actually paying down or reducing the expansion of the actual government debt? What you have to do to get the right answer to that is you have to go to the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, and you say, hey, CBO, give us a score. Show us how much the deficit will be reduced if we allow taxes to essentially go up 40% at the end of this year.

And the short answer is not as much as you would think because it will damage the economy. It will slow the economy and thus the tax revenue coming in is reduced. And so this gets to be really- So that's what the CBO was saying then. Is saying. Taxes up, it would have caused problems.

All right. Yes sir. And so when it ends up happening, when you go to the CBO and ask for a score, they're always going to give you the most conservative possible score, particularly as to economic impact of the extension of the tax credits,

or tax policy, excuse me. So if we extend, and I hope we do, the tax policy that was put in place nine years ago, that will drive up the economy significantly. And for example, I'm just gonna use a couple. As Trump's tariffs kick in and people begin to bring manufacturing facilities as they already are back to the United States, our tax bill is designed

to facilitate exactly that by letting people write off the expenses that they incur in building the new plant and equipment in that first year. And that's in part of this bill, the big beautiful bill. It most assuredly is. Okay. All right. Let's talk on the critics side of this and believe me, we've seen this.

Ron Wyden, of course, is not a big fan of the big beautiful bill. I wouldn't expect him you know to be here is I think I know how I understand how they're calling putting work requirements on the Oregon health plan which is what Medicaid is anytime you hear Medicaid spending talked about this is viewed as a cut I looked at it as more of a right siding of it of in other words, people who shouldn't be on the Oregon Health Plan and can do it on their own should be quite capable of doing that. That's how I'm interpreting this. Ron Wyden tends to look at this as a cut though. How does Congress tend to look at this? Well, it certainly depends on what side of the aisle you're on. If you're on my side, you say, oh, wait a minute, you want free stuff and you're not

willing to even work at all. Well, that's kind of what I thought. Is it that simple? It's that, well, no, it's not. First of all, people have to understand that Medicaid from the Republican standpoint is an essential, necessary program. We have to have it. And one of the reasons it survives since 1965

is that because we recognize that certain people reach a certain age, usually it's older women whose husbands will pass away sooner than they, and they don't have any money. And you have to take care of them. We have to take care of them. We have to take care of them. And that meant Medicaid is one of those devices

that we used to do exactly that. And we have many people that fit into that space that were the focus of the Medicaid law when it was enacted back in 1965. That's called the original population. In addition to that, when you look at Medicaid as a program, there is the expansion population. About 60% of the people in Oregon that are on Medicaid are in the original population,

about 40% are in the expansion population. And now that 40% in the expansion population, that expansion happened relatively recently. Yeah, sure. It's called Obamacare. That's the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. The way that they implement it is by tacking it onto Medicaid. Okay. The problem with Medicaid is that doesn't this then end up attacking people who were

originally designed for the Oregon health plan and reducing the benefits for them ultimately? In a strange way, yes. Let me explain why. The amount that the federal government pays for the original population in Oregon is 60%. The state picks up 40%. For the expansion population, the people that were not the original focus, those who are the most vulnerable, that was not the focus. The focus is just on income on the expansion population, not disability or pregnancy or inability to work age. And that focus has, the Obama administration on the expansion population was to get every

state to adopt it, so rather than 60%, it's 90% of federal share. So the people who need the care less are getting 90% paid by the federal government, and the people who need the care most are getting 60% paid by the federal government. So there's a tendency, therefore, to try to shift more care to those that have a higher federal match.

Now, this gets really involved really really fast and I'm just thankful that I'm on the committee that's dealing with this I'm on the subcommittee and so at least I have a general understanding. Okay yes so the original people 60% coming from the feds 40% from the state correct 90% 10 yes something tells me then that 90 10 which was a recent expansion yes is an unsustainable part of the issue. Well let's put it this way, the people that are on the original population are absolutely, we need to take care of them.

We need to take care of them. The people on the expansion population are younger and many times perfectly able-bodied. The only reason they're on Medicaid is because there's a height of their income, 138% of the poverty level, which if you run that out is around $16,000. That's the federal poverty level and then it goes up to 38% more. Well okay, but you're perfectly capable of working. What if you're not working? Why are we busy paying for you to be on Medicaid if you're perfectly capable of working. What if you're not working? Why are we busy paying for you to be on Medicaid

if you're perfectly able to work, but you choose not to? Now, one thing that was- So that's the change then? That's one change. All right. That's one change. Let me go through the impact of what we've done in the Great Big Beautiful bill.

It will affect about seven million people across the United States. A fraction of the total number of people on Medicaid. By the way, in my district, about 42%, 40%, 41% are on Medicaid. In my district. That's a lot. That's a lot on the Oregon health plan. That's a huge number.

But I attribute half of that, part of that, who knows how much, to the fact that we can't get back into the woods. We don't have the jobs we used to have, good jobs that don't require a college degree or something. But those jobs don't exist anymore, which is really, really sad. We need to have more employment opportunities for these people, and the big, beautiful bill has in it 20-year lease opportunities for managing forest.

So maybe that'll help us get back into the woods and provide better jobs and reduce the number of people who are on the expansion population. That's our hope. So I guess ultimately then, to answer the Democrats' criticism of this, and I'm sure it's going to be beat up a bit because it's over in the Senate now,

where this is gonna be looked, is who ends up being the so-called, who loses, I guess, in this particular situation, because that's what they're going to bring up. Okay, so we are focusing on waste, fraud, and abuse, and everything we've done fits under those definitions, within those definitions. And it had to in order to do this reconciliation deal, isn't that right? That's absolutely right. That's a very good point. The key when you look at the

seven million people is to ask yourself, well, who's in that group that's going to be affected by these changes? The first about 1.5 million people who don't have the benefit of documentation, they're here illegally. So those people shouldn't be on that program. The law doesn't allow it. And so the fact that we would step in and as they were expanded in, of course, illegal immigrants were expanded into this. It's a little more during the Biden administration. The doors were thrown open in the sense that people would go on to this program and no one would check to see if they were qualified, if they were eligible. And that lack of checking to see if they're eligible allowed the people to get on this program that should the law does

not allow it. So the fact that we would step in and say, we're going to enforce the law, that's a cut. That's not a cut. That's doing exactly what should because it's fraud for you to be on there. But the result of that will likely be though fewer expenditures needed for that if you're actually enforcing the law the way it's supposed to be. Both. Remember we share that expansion population 90%, 10%. That would reduce the number of people that are being paid for by in that fashion. Ah, but you know what's going on. Oregon is a sanctuary state. So the way the state of Oregon will tend to look at this, they will look sideways at this.

Okay, so there's two things that need to be said, and one's really complicated and the other one's almost as much. But when people are told you're no longer allowed, you're here illegally, the law does not cover you. You do not have Medicaid benefits. Where are they going to go? The ER. They're going to the ER room. That's right. Because the federal law says you will receive treatment if you present at the ER. The federal law says that. And TALA is the acronym for the federal law

that says you will. So when people say they fall out of coverage, that's not true because again, they will go to the ER. In fact, right now, many people who are on Medicaid, particularly in that expansion population of 40% of the people on Medicaid, go to the ER, even though they have Medicaid. You know why? They'll wait.

There's like a three-week wait to get to be seen by Medicaid-accepting physician or PA. Three weeks, three hours at the ER. So, yeah, so the wait is less, though. Is there a possibility that then ultimately we're going to be pushing closer to a, I don't want to advocate this, but a hospital collapse? Okay, let's talk about that.

The hospitals, I don't want any hospitals to collapse, period. And I did- No one does. I'm not saying that you were. Right. I'm just, forgive me for being so emphatic, but there's so many people that are saying, well, you're gonna cause,

by taking people who are on the program illegally, if you take them off Mr. Vance, the hospitals are going to collapse. You go, stop. If we're going to ignore the law, why don't we just let everybody on Medicaid? That we're not going to ignore the law. That's what we're doing when we go in and make sure

that those who are presenting a Medicaid card actually have the legal basis for doing so. Now, we know those people are gonna go to ER. Well, what are we doing to make sure the hospitals have the money to keep providing that care? And one of the things that the state of Oregon does in many other states is they engage in what's called the provider tax.

There's many, many words for it, but what happens is the state imposes a tax on the hospital. The hospital pays the tax to the state. The state points at the money to the federal government and goes, look, this hospital just paid us a hundred thousand dollars in tax. That's an expense. Send us a check for that 90%.

Send us a check for 90% of that a hundred thousand. So a check rises up for 90,000. Now they have the hundred they took from the hospital, plus the thousand from the feds, and they turn back around, who do they hand it to? The hospital that paid the tax. Okay, so it's more or less a circular deal. Oh, I would call it a shell game.

But the point is, it's a funding mechanism that started like 20, 30 years ago, and everyone has become accustomed to it. And if you were to take that away, that would truly be damaging to the survival of our hospitals. But they're not. So they is me.

I'm in the committee meeting, subcommittee on healthcare, on energy and commerce, and we're sitting around the table, just we Republicans, in a meeting, many meetings like this, and the provider tax comes, what should we do? I raise my hand, I go, don't touch it. If you're going to touch it, it has to be phased in

over enough time to allow hospitals to acclimate. So are they touching it or are they over time? We froze it. We froze it, we froze it at 6%. And so those who are worried about the provider tax can stop worrying. It's been frozen, it's still there. All 6%. And so those who are worried about the provider tax can stop worrying. It's been frozen. It's still there. And so, and there are other things. Now, there are other things we're trying to do.

Here's one that I've been working on, and that is to try to figure out how in the world to get more nurses, more support staff. Because if you look at what a hospital spends its money on, or a nursing home, about 80% is labor. Do you know who has the highest paid nurses in the United States? It wouldn't be Oregon. No, it is Oregon. And so if you go up to Portland, you'll find that some nurses are being paid $200,000 a year

for real, and these are not traveling nurses. Now, I love nurses. They deserve lots of money for what they do. It's an incredibly challenging job. I'm glad I'm not a nurse. But the point of the matter is we need more of them because if you have a fraction of the number of nurses you've got, supplying a man being what it is,

they're gonna get paid a lot of money. So the question is, how do we get more nurses? And so I've been working on that in DC with any number of people that try to figure out how to do exactly that, including trying to help more training for nurses and all kinds of other things in that space so we can help drive down the cost that these hospitals have to pay. Is there any way that Congress could get involved?

This could be off in the weeds here, but the certificate of need laws make it very difficult sometimes to fill needs and restrict competition within that world. Is that ever talked about in Congress? Because these are state laws. Yes, it isn't talked about very much. I've heard, I'm very familiar with it because I used to be the lawyer for our hospital in our small town. So I'm for 18 years, I know how that works. I would just say that's probably not the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge we have right now, how do we get more people in those professions

doing that work? Because the demands, because of the baby boom generation, are huge and they're going to get bigger. And so how do we get more people in that space helping out? How do we make sure that the hospitals continue to have income? Now, the fact that we have hospitals saying if you reduce

any person who's now presenting with a Medicaid card, you're going to get for us these hospitals to close, I would just simply answer and say stop. We have to abide by the law and otherwise why bother? If we're not going to abide by the law, just throw the doors open, let everybody come in. So that's where we're going to be doing that and then we'll be doing our best to protect the hospitals. What are you most happy about in the big, beautiful bill? And what do you think, you know, how much of it do you think will survive the Senate? I guess that's the next question.

So it's 1,100 pages, 1,100 pages. I'm extremely familiar with about 500 of those 11, cause I was on the committees that created the legislation in them. I'll tell you right now, the secure rural schools money is in the bill. Okay. And that's extremely good news. It's three years.

It's last year, this year, next year. That's hugely important. Douglas County gets $6 million, I think, from that. This county, Jackson County, gets around 1.5. That's a great big deal. It's not the most important thing by any stretch, but it's certainly important for people around here. The tax piece of extending is huge. So if you're in any kind of a business,

you should scream with joy that we're going to be extending those tax provisions, because they're so, so, so important to small business. So that's huge. The fact that we included in the bill an increase in farmers support payments for the reference price for wheat, because as a terrorist kick in, other countries were retaliating against our wheat farmers. Why? Because every wheat state has two senators and they're trying to bring that political power or pressure pushed by it. So

that's in the bill. We have about 13 billion, I think, 13, someone in that neighborhood to improve our flight control operations. So that because as you know, So it all become Newark? So we don't all become Newark. So the point is that we have a bunch of things in the bill that we absolutely need. And I would say that our attempts to try to reduce spending are absolutely essential. We have about 1.5 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse provisions in the bill, reducing waste, fraud, and abuse. 1.5 trillion.

If you talk to any doctor, they'll tell you right now, they'll tell you right now that there is bloat in the Medicaid system. They will admit it. Even Democrats have told me this. Absolutely. So everybody knows, but But nobody wants to do anything about it because they're instantly going to be attacked. You want to throw grandma under the train or the bus or whatever off the cliff. So the point is, we are doing stuff that takes real, real courage. Your second part of your question was what's the Senate going to do? Well the Senate's going to do exactly what you see senators always do.

All those people in the House, they don't know what they're doing. We're going to come in, we're going to fix the bill. Our speaker has gone to the Senate, had lunch with all the Republicans the other day and he said don't change the bill. So we'll see what happens. Okay. A final question I have for you. AI cannot be touched for 10 years for any kind of state regulation in the big beautiful bill. And 10

years is an awful long time to say no to anybody being able to touch something. I mean, you know, a lot of weird stuff can happen in 10 years. And AI is one of those things where I see the potential for good and I also see the potential for not so good. What do you think about that? Well, I'm on the subcommittee that deals with AI, so I'm pretty familiar with the concept. The idea is that we would put 500 million into studying how in the world to make sure that AI is managed appropriately. Because even the tech bros are not real, many of them are not real happy without some guidelines

on it. Yeah, I would just say, AI has been compared to the creation of fire. It's been compared to the creation of the wheel. It's been compared to all of these things that prompt mankind to take a huge leap forward. The challenge has been how in the world do we properly manage it without squelching it. If you have 50 states, each one imposing a different type of control feature, you've got trouble. The person that is in charge of bringing the moratorium for 10 years has said clear as a bell we do not want this moratorium to last 10 years. This is a means of trying to create a

space of time where the federal government can get in there and try to figure out what in the world to do. This is to stop the state governments from creating a patchwork. Incredible patchwork. All right, very good. Nicely said. Congressman, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming in. I know you're going to turn into a pumpkin pretty soon and so will I if I don't. So, but it's a good talking as always. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming in. I know you're going to turn into a pumpkin pretty soon, and so will I if I don't. But it's good talking, as always. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Cliff Bentz, it is 854.

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Myers show on 1063 KMED. I appreciate you being here. 856. Man, just out of time really, but we'll grab a quick call or two here before we wrap this morning. Hi, I'm Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Hello, Lynn. Welcome. Hey, Bill. This is like a boulder in my shoe. First of all, I think Cliff is doing a great job and I listened to the town hall, although I'm irritated because they didn't take my question and they let other people in who had state issues that had nothing to do with Cliff. And that's another story. But the problem is, and I thought he understood that maybe Cliff doesn't understand the difference between deficit and debt. The deficit is what you borrow every single year and that gets added to the debt.

And they keep adding to the debt every single year and there's no plan to reduce it much less pay it off. And it's like we've jumped off a 100 story building and we're having a wonderful time the first 98 floors down. And then at some point it's all going to collapse because we won't be able to sell our treasuries and you want to talk about Medicare and Medicaid and social security checks stopping. It's going to be pretty bad. And it's worrisome to me that there's, well, first of all, there's no public appetite for

this but there's no attempt to educate the public either. And so I'm just super frustrated with the Republicans. They keep raising the debt ceiling and we're just continuing on the same path to utter destruction and I don't know what to do about it. Yeah, I don't either. And you know, I don't know if they do either, frankly, anyone. Because Democrats don't have a plan for this too. I think it's a lot of it is extend and you play that and you pray that you can

get more, that means you get more economic activity to grow your way out of the crises. I think that's part of it, okay? Feel your pain and frustration, understand it, and let me grab another call. Like I said, I don't have a lot of time left here, but we'll try to squeeze in in the last minute or so. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello, this is Mike. Hey Mike, what's on your mind? I agree with everything that last caller said, and also the caller earlier, Tom, you know, default position should be not to trust anymore because once you get, you know, what's that I was saying? You get lied to me once, shame on you, lied to me twice, shame on me. So, but my thing this morning was to bring up these visas, they want to bring in these foreign workers that are on work visas. And the thing

about that, especially when you're talking about AI, the 10-year ban, these people can be deported if they don't go along with the thing. So that's like a stupid thing to do in the first place. They're not even going to be citizens, if they don't go along with the thing. So that's like a stupid thing to do in the first place. They're not even going to be citizens, so they'll be able to hold that over them. And they'll just go along with whatever AI wants to do, and I think that's dangerous. I appreciate your opinion, and thank you for making it. Okay, take care. Yep.

All right. 20 seconds, and then we're going to have town hall news and Mark Lee Van Camp and Robbins are going to be joining us and of course 99.3 the jukebox and Wheels Up Wednesday. We'll have a little more time for calls. Like I say, we're a little guest heavy this last hour and we'll try to do some more of that. But please email your comments to bill at Bill Myers Show.com. Take care and we'll catch you Wednesday.