Pod Save America - "CBO Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

Tommy and Jon discuss the ongoing efforts to ram Trumpcare through the Senate, and whether Obama did enough to respond to and deter Russian interference in our election. Then they discuss the impact of Trumpcare on West Virginia with Senator Joe Manchin.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today we have a special guest, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. We're going to talk to him about the Senate bill. His colleague, Senator Capito, who has not announced whether or not she is voting for this bill. But we're going to get to health care in a minute. Let's start with some housekeeping. So there's a new pod Save the People tomorrow. And also there was a special episode of Autumn Marie Cox's show with friends like these, where she went to a Trump rally and talked to them. Yeah, I highly recommend you listen to it. I listened over the weekend and she did a great job of just going and listening to people and trying to have a fact based conversation.

And I think it was remarkable. You'll pull your hair out when you hear this. But, you know, it was useful exercise to see where people are coming from. It was also really instructive to see, like, how much Fox News has just been internalized and regurgitated by so many people. So many of the things that you'll only see on, like, Tucker Carlson show are spouted back in these interviews. So it's worth listening. Check it out. Very cool. Very cool.

So very cool news channel. So before we get to health care, some breaking news this morning. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Trump Muslim ban case and the Supreme Court stayed the lower court injunctions against the ban in a kind of convoluted way, basically saying that the ban can stand for now with the exception of people who have, and this is the term they used, a bona fide relationship with people in the United States. You might be asking yourself, what does that mean? That's exactly what everybody else is asking. So there seems to be a lot of stuff going on here that people are just sort of parsing through. This is partially about the effect of having Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, which is an unfairness we can barely stomach, but also their desire to send a message to lower courts about injunctions and also a statement from the conservatives of the court, including Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas, starting to speak to their belief that on the merits, Trump will prevail. I mean, let's just also remember that this thing was sold to us as necessary because of some sort of urgent threat from refugees coming from overseas or from individuals in these countries. It was sold as a 120 day ban. We're on day like 155. So that threat, that urgency hasn't really panned out despite the Ninth Circuit's ruling and the

other efforts to slow this thing down. So these guys are full of shit is what I'm trying to say, but the Supreme Court's going to hear them out. Yeah. I mean, not much more to add on this for now. It's obviously deeply concerning that the Supreme Court seems to be hinting at a willingness to let this order stand. And we're about to see a crazy administrative nightmare as people try to prove that they have a relationship with someone in the U.S. in order to come here. These are the pits in your stomach we're going to feel for the entirety of the first term of the Trump administration, because we're reading about this news on the day. There's also rampant speculation about Justice Kennedy possibly stepping down or announcing

his retirement. And that would mean Trump gets to fill another seat. So that's speculation. No one has any idea. But it's just a reminder that we've got to get our asses in gear and win the midterms because this is serious business. And I am not allowing my stomach to experience the speculation of Anthony Kennedy stepping down. I am not. Experience the burrito downstairs. That was a delicious breakfast burrito. Thank you, Tommy.

You're welcome. So we're obviously going to keep an eye on that situation. But obviously the big story this week is health care. I have written in my- It's a much worse story. Just much worse. I have written in my outline, because John's not in charge of the outline while he's gone, CBO brother, where art thou?

I like that a lot. We are waiting for the CBO score. It is likely to come out today. By all accounts, it will show that millions, if not tens of millions, will lose coverage. There was a good story in Yahoo breaking this down. Gary Claxton, the director of the healthcare marketplace program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said 15 or more million will likely lose coverage. Also, a conservative analyst said, I'd expect coverage to be 18 to 20 million fewer than under Obamacare. He then went on to say why he doesn't agree with that number.

But of course he doesn't. He believes in the magic of whatever the hell. Trickle-down health care economics. So in anticipation of the CBO score coming out, the administration and its allies went out to defend the hell. Trickle-down healthcare economics. So, in anticipation of the CBO score coming out, the administration and its allies went out to defend the bill this weekend, and they told a series of lies that were absolutely gobsmacking.

So here are a few of them. And amazingly, Kellyanne Conway told George Stephanopoulos that there aren't Medicaid cuts in this bill, and that is the least egregious lie that was told this weekend. Right. Because they claim, oh, it's not a cut. It's just we're spending less than we otherwise would have spent. It's bullshit.

If you're expecting money to come next year and then you find out less money is coming, I think you'd feel as though your salary had been cut. We're also assuming that no more people will get sick and that prices won't go up on all the things we're paying for. Exactly. Tom Price, HHS secretary, told Dana Bash, we would not have individuals lose coverage. That's a lie. Pat Toomey told John Dickerson, the Senate bill will codify and make permit the Medicaid expansion, which is exactly the opposite of what it would do. It ends the Medicaid expansion. And he said no one loses coverage. Again, a lie. Sean Spicer in a briefing on Friday that was not on camera because they don't want to be on tape lying. And the White House Correspondents Association is unable to muster a response to what this administration is doing. But I digress. Spicer

said Trump is, quote, committed to making sure that no one who currently is in Medicaid in the Medicaid program is affected in any way, which is reflected in the Senate bill. And he's pleased with that. So every part of that is a lie. So here's why they're lying. A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Medicaid not only has an 84 percent approval rating among Democrats, it has a 76% approval rating among independents and a 61% approval rating among Republicans. And in the exact same poll, we discover that only 38% of people are aware that the GOP health care plans cut Medicaid because A, they've been lying about it. B, places like Fox News aren't telling the truth or simply not covering the facts.

And C, Mitch McConnell's plan to keep the bill under wraps has been pretty effective. So, Tommy, we're waiting for this CBO score today. We're going to keep an eye on it if it happens during the show. Do you think that the CBO score and the bill becoming public will get people more focused on this? I think it will. But I think our window is so small that it's going to take a Herculean effort to push back. I mean, we're in a place now where we're relying on a couple senators and we're relying on public pressure from the grassroots to swamp like, you know, the Koch brothers are talking about spending $300 million in the midterm elections

next year. So the donor class, I mean, I read a statistic today that 400 individuals who will get a tax cut under this bill are the equivalent of Medicaid expansion in like four or five states, including West Virginia, including West Virginia. So that those are the stakes of what we're talking about. We need these guys to to, you know, take a fairly politically courageous vote when it comes to political pressure from McConnell, from their big donors and listen to their constituents. And like, shit, I wish I thought that I knew how this was going to go, but I don't know anymore. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the John Cornyn today said that they are that they are closing the door on a delay in the vote. Now, that is worrying, because it's worrying because there's a chance it means they think they have the votes. It also may just mean they understand that if a bunch of their members, a bunch of these senators go home for the July 4th recess, they don't come back more excited to vote for this bill, in part because of what everybody's been doing to put the pressure on these people. So let's talk about where we are with the politics and with the vote. Remember, we need three. They need to get to 50-50

in the Senate so that Mike Pence could break the tie. So we need to pry off three Republicans because we've had unanimity among the Democrats. Four conservatives, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul said they were not ready to support the bill. Mike Lee on Friday said something very interesting in a Medium post, and he said this, far short of repeal, the Senate bill keeps the Democrats' broken system intact, just with less spending on the poor to pay for corporate bailouts and tax cuts. A cynic might say that the Senate bill is less a Republican health care bill than a caricature of a Republican health care bill. And yet, he does go on to say, after all that, for all that, I have not closed the door on voting for some version of it in the

end. Jonathan Swan and Axios, who has really been sort of running this story to ground, reported yesterday that a widely held view in McConnell world is that he doesn't start with 52 Republicans. He starts with 51. Many view Rand Paul as a lost cause and someone who is never gettable. Now, that could be posturing. That could be sending a signal that could be trying to kind of make the bill seem more endangered than it is. But regardless, Tommy, how quickly do you think these right wingers are going to fold? I mean, these stories are scary because I worry they will lull people into complacency. There's a lot of, you know, John Oliver did a good piece on this last night, like all the reporting is like the bill is on lifeency. There's a lot of, you know, John Oliver did a good piece on this last night.

Like all the reporting is like the bill is on life support. It's like, well, actually, they introduce something that they know can get changed slightly and allow these guys to take a win. And so they're already talking about carving out a special deal for Alaska that would change the way certain pricing occurred as a giveaway to those senators and get their votes. This happened under Obamacare. Ben Nelson cut a deal that was called the Cornhusker Kickback. Ultimately, it took weeks and months of political pressure to turn that from an asset to a liability for him. But that time just doesn't exist here. And that is what scares me and should scare everyone out there.

That we have basically four days. Four days. To revamp one-sixth of the economy. And the point that I think a lot of, look, there's a dynamic here and this is going to happen on any big piece of legislation. But look, we're trying to paint a picture here of just how damaging this bill would be. And we are backed by the facts. We are backed by the evidence. We're going to be backed by a CBO score. But another important thing to remember is this is a really complicated issue and it's a really complicated bill. And it was written in secret and it has just now hit the light of day. The reason we have a big process, the reason we have politics is it actually does matter that everybody gets a look at this because they might not have thought of everything.

They don't know the unintended consequences. Huge mistakes. Huge mistakes. Drafting errors for Obamacare wound up in the Supreme Court. Drafting errors. Look, the democratic process for passing Obamacare was incredibly intensive and public and scrutinized and all the rest. But even still, because because of the way the bill had to be passed because of the death of Ted Kennedy, we don't need to get into it. There were drafting mistakes that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. It is very likely that there are huge unintended consequences that would have effects on employer benefits, on premiums, on Medicaid and all the rest that we just don't even yet understand. And let's just hammer home the intended consequences, which are that Medicaid covers 74 million Americans. Four out of 10 American children are covered by Medicaid.

10 million Americans with disabilities receive Medicaid. I mean, this is going to go after the most vulnerable people in our population. Ari Melber did an interview with a mother and her son who was on disability insurance that allowed her to care for him in the home, was on Medicaid. Everyone should watch it. Andy Slavitt, because like this is going to be devastating for people that have no voice. They have no lobbyists. They have no money. They have nothing but debt from health care problem. And a point that Rand Paul made, which is that he can't support this because it's too much like Obamacare light. It leaves so many of the regulations and it's not what he came to the Senate to do. In fairness to Rand Paul, there is some truth to that in in that this bill does two things far more than it reforms the healthcare system and far more than it reforms Obamacare. It is a tax cut bill and it is a Medicaid cut bill. The exchanges and all the rest, they fuck with them. They make them worse. They're going to make seniors pay a ton more

money. They're giving insurance companies the ability to put back in caps and all the rest. But ultimately, the biggest part of this bill is the cut to Medicaid and the tax cuts. So that's what we're fighting. So but one other point on that is just like, as much as it's made of the Medicaid cuts, one thing I mean, everyone listening, if you're young, and you're not sick, now, you will be someday, that's what happens in life. So you should try to have empathy for the individuals who are currently sick and worried about this. But this is going to harm coverage from employers. There's something called association health plans, which mean those plans don't comply with any rules. And you often don't know what you have

in your plan because states can waive protections or certain guidelines of what has to be in a healthcare plan. So basically, if you have cancer, you can say your health insurance company can offer you a policy, but it doesn't have to offer chemo or radiation. So what we could see is the slow whittling down of insurance to something that's not at all useful to people. Yeah. I mean, something Chris Hayes has talked about a lot is that a lot of what this bill seems to want to do is create a subprime insurance market. You know, all these conservatives talking about how, oh, these regulations that require certain benefits, they're what are raising premiums. And there is some truth to that because a lot of people had really low premiums and healthcare that didn't cover anything. It

had a yearly cap. It had a lifetime cap. I mean, do we really want to go back to a situation where a child is born and goes into neonatal care and hits their lifetime limit on their health insurance before they left the hospital for the very first time? I mean, that is what we're talking about. So let's talk about the senators that we do believe are reachable. Dean Heller of Nevada has already come out against the bill, and he did so pretty strongly. He stood next to Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, and said, this bill would mean a loss of coverage for millions of Americans and many Nevadans. I'm telling you right now, I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. It is pretty impressive that he went out there and said that.

It seems like a guy that's trying to lash himself to the mast so he doesn't have the ability to change his mind. Susan Collins of Maine said she is waiting for the CBO score. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she's going to crunch the numbers. Okay, you do that. You do that. You do that, Senator Murkowski. Get your calculator out. Let's do this.

She's going to crunch the numbers. Okay, you do that. You do that. You do that, Senator Murkowski. Put your calculator out. Let's do this. Both Collins and Murkowski have talked about their commitment to Planned Parenthood. Collins more strongly on that than Murkowski. We're going to ask Senator Manchin about Senator Capito, given how hard this bill hits West Virginia. Tommy, this is something you were ranting about this morning, which is Hugh Hewitt has an op-ed that basically says Republicans have to be for something, that they need to be for basically any compromise and they must vote for some kind of repeal, no matter what it is. Yeah. I mean, it's a sickness, I think, in the Trump era Republican Party, which is he says he calls it political insanity and beyond irresponsible to vote against a bill that we don't even know what the CBO score would be.

We don't even know the impact of it. And again, I mean, there was an NBC pullout this morning that said by a three to one margin, the American public holds a negative view of the HCA, the House bill. Sixteen percent of adults believe that it's a good idea. Forty eight percent said it's bad. Even Republican respondents are lukewarm about it. Thirty four percent view it positively. Seventeen said it's bad. Even Republican respondents are lukewarm about it. 34% view it positively. 17% view it negatively. So first of all, I think he's wrong, period, on the politics. But the idea that Hugh Hewitt and the establishment Trumpians want to push the party off a cliff

to vote for something before they even know what it is, is absurd to me. And meanwhile, Dean Heller has a million dollars being spent against him on TV ads by a Trump super PAC. Where the hell is our super PAC? What the fuck are we doing here? Where is priorities? We spent 15 million some odd dollars on John Ossoff race. I'd love to see two or three million getting pumped into Nevada bees. That should scare him and move voters. Yeah. I mean, the money that these people are putting behind repeal is pretty incredible. I mean, actually, right, the Koch brothers are putting money behind. And they've said this bill doesn't go far enough. That's the amazing thing.

Those pricks, those guys are disappointed because it doesn't do enough to dismantle Obamacare. They are opposed to it because there's still subsidies for poor to purchase insurance and because it doesn't do enough to get rid of insurance companies of coverage requirements. I mean, these guys are as devious and awful as you could ever imagine. So stepping back there, I was talking about this over the weekend and it's like there's been a lot of like, oh, these senators are under so much pressure. They're going to have to vote for they can't vote for it. And Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii made this point, which is predicting what happens this week is a fool's errand.

Nobody knows. Just light up the phones and social media. Just do everything you can. I think that's really important. I think something to remember, too, is that for a lot of these senators, they're human beings. And this is the biggest decision they'll have made in a long time. For someone like Capito in West Virginia, who's just gotten to the Senate, this is maybe the biggest decision she's ever made in her life.

And to say that you know what this person is going to do, I think, is a failure to understand how people work. So I think the pressure really works. I think the pressure is really effective. It already got us, Dean Heller, more strongly than anybody thought. Mike Pence gave a speech over the weekend where he said, we will repeal Obamacare, quote, by summer's end, sort of already conceding that they may not be able to do it this week. Donald Trump is tweeting excuses. So, you know, we're his heads. By the way, how great was it that he called the House bill mean and closed doors?

Paul Ryan went out and denied it and said he was misinterpreted. Then he was interviewed on Fox and Friends by one of the morons who might as well work for him. And he was like, yeah, I called it mean because, you know, I don't think it's that good. He just confirmed it. He was just so excited. He's so proud of his ability to name something that he doesn't realize when he should deny it. He loves branding. So on Monday, Senate Democrats are going to have

an all-night talk-a-thon to protest the bill. On Tuesday, there's a rally at 2 p.m. at the Capitol that will kick off continuous protests. MoveOn is calling it the people's filibuster. If you're in D.C., you should go check it out. There's also local protests, and that's especially important if you live in a state like Nevada, Alaska, Ohio, West Virginia,

where there may be a deciding vote. And if you want to make calls from home and get involved, as always, we remind you that we're working with Indivisible. Go to TrumpCare10.org slash crooked and you can call your senator. You can email their legislative assistants and staffers that work on this issue. We got to keep it up. Yeah, I just four years is a long time. It feels longer every day. But I sincerely believe that this will be the single most important vote and thing that we fight for during the Trump administration. And all of us should be calling our senators and members of Congress and everybody else we can put pressure on, but also call your friends who live in these states and ask them because all they can do, the worst thing that can happen is they say no. But if we don't if we don't fight on this we will never win on anything else and the fact that they've taken off the table the idea that this may extend to the resource it may be posturing uh but it may be that they know that either they're going to pass it this week or they won't pass it at all yeah so on that light note you know what tommy let's just take a break let's call it when we're back we're going to talk about some other

stuff hey don't go anywhere this is pod save america and there's more on the way Let's just take a break. When we're back, we're going to talk about some other stuff. Hey, don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Last week, the Washington Post threw its hat in the Pulitzer ring. Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entos bylined a piece called Inside Obama's Secret Stuggle to Punish Russia for Hacking Our Election. And it was the most comprehensive story written to date about not just what Russia did to intervene in our election, but the Obama administration's response. So it starts in August 2016, when the

White House is first briefed on this explosive intelligence. And it talks about how like this didn't get emailed over. It was like couriered over in an envelope that was for four individuals only that had to be returned. And that's when Obama started learning about what was going on. And at that point, it was clear hackers had penetrated the Democratic Party networks. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation to contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And over the over the next several months, the White House debated all these options for deterring or punishing Russia. They included cyber attacks on their infrastructure, releasing materials to embarrass Putin. And then in late December, ultimately, Obama approved a modest package that expelled 35 diplomats, closed some Russian facilities in the U.S.

There were some narrow economic sanctions. And then there were apparently some covert cyber measures that we just don't know much about. But, you know, part of the take home is that this is a partisan effort from the start. The White House briefed the House and the Senate leadership in September. At that meeting, Mitch McConnell voiced doubts about the accuracy of the intelligence because he's a CIA analyst, I guess. And he's Mitch McConnell, the stealth, the worst member of the Trump administration. I mean, just, Eddie, we'll get to it. No, you're right. The story is like a punch

in the face. Yeah. Tommy, keep going. Okay, cool. So they ultimately, they wanted to put up this big bipartisan statement. It got watered down, turned into a non-political DHS statement, whatever. In the article, Obama's defenders say that by August, the damage was done. WikiLeaks had the emails. Obama confronted Putin in September and likely prevented them from escalating these attacks and that the partisanship, the GOP response to we choked. Friend of the pod, Russia expert Obama, former Obama aide Mike McFaul said the punishment didn't fit the crime. The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price from the attack and that we should consider more action. So I guess my question for you, Lovett, or like one, did Obama and the Obama administration choke or did they respond as well as they could have given the nature of what happened and the time it takes to collect and confirm and deal with this sensitive stuff? Yeah, yeah. So first, I'll take the McConnell piece because I think it's actually important to what they were trying to do. So they were trying to muster a bipartisan response, not only because it would have been good politics, but because managing our elections is a bipartisan affair that goes on all across the government. We all should care. Between Republicans and Democrats, especially at the local level.

We all should care. the most sort of anti-democratic, vicious, un-American behavior we've ever seen from a leader of any party in our lifetime. And what is the rationale for someone handing you, the head of the CIA is briefing you on intelligence. You're like, nah, I don't buy it. I mean, I understand we should be skeptical of intelligence-based news reports that are unsourced, yada, yada, yada. But if you're Mitch McConnell, you can see or hear or be briefed on whatever you want. Yeah, so we can't let Mitch McConnell off the hook. I don't know whether the response was enough in the weeks preceding the election, if they should have rang the alarm more. They did talk about it and it was immediately politicized and made partisan. My overall feeling is everyone, President Obama, James Comey, the Clinton campaign, everyone was behaving as though Hillary Clinton would win.

Yes. And that this is something we could deal with after in a kind of measured response when the reins of power were handed over and there would have been serious adults at the table to talk about how to deal with this in the long term, how to prepare for the future, prevent future hacking of our democracy. how to deal with this in the long term, how to prepare for the future, prevent future hacking of our democracy. That's why I think it's so hard for us to look at this in hindsight, because we were all in the mentality that Hillary Clinton would win. I think Nate Silver made this point. That may be wrong, but I think it's a really smart point, which is that as human beings, we kind of only have two settings when it comes to odds, that either something feels 50-50 or it feels like one in a million. And we treated Trump winning like a one in a million when it really should have felt more like 50-50. And everybody inside the government was behaving in that way, too, that what Putin was doing was despicable, that it was helping the Republicans, that it was wrong, that it was an interference in our sacred democratic process.

But at the end of the day, Hillary would win and then we deal with it. And then now we're living in the aftermath. Yep. I have some thoughts on this. So I think it's hard to forget that this was happening in real time, right? We were gathering intelligence in real time, and not just any old intelligence. But if we had intelligence on Vladimir Putin's personal involvement or signing off on whatever occurred, that's about as sensitive as it gets. People could literally die if those sources or methods are burned. And they maybe already have. Yeah. And they could prevent us from being able to do it again. So that's something to be aware of. Cyber warfare is relatively new. There aren't

necessarily clear rules of the road. We have public policies about when we'll use nuclear weapons, when our rules of engagement for the military, this stuff is being figured out. So it's just a little more complicated. That said, I do think it's true that anything the Obama administration did before the election would be viewed as partisan period and politicized and would be maybe even not. It probably would be unhelpful. influenced consciously or not by political considerations and predictions that literally everyone got wrong. And so that aside, I'm still remain surprised that more was not done to punish Russia after the election. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we handed the reins over to Donald Trump, who has no interest in punishing Vladimir Putin for any of this behavior. And the thing that I'm frightened of, the thing that I can't stop thinking about is Vladimir Putin interfered with our election, unleashed a kind of torrent of hacking and assaults on our institutions when he thought that there was administration that would care. Yeah, yeah, right. And so The Washington Post did a big piece today

on all these European countries, how they've devoted years to countering Russian disinformation, piece today on all these European countries, how they've devoted years to countering Russian disinformation, hacking, trolling, setting up Sputnik and RT in their country. This is not new. I think what's new is the ability to use technology to sort of exacerbate it, to allow them to reach into our country from so far away. But experts say the best way to deal with these influence campaigns is to make them visible. And I worry that we've lost our best weapon against these attacks because we have a president and a partisan atmosphere that refuses to believe they ever occur. Oh, and then, yeah, you have the Sean Hannity's of the world saying, deep state, deep state, just sort of parroting Russia's propaganda line.

So, yeah, it's dark times, Tommy. It's dark out there. And to your point about Putin doing this with a president he thought would take a hard line against us, the AP reported today that Trump is pushing for a meeting with Putin next month in Germany. And not just like a pull aside at a conference, but like all the trappings, the bells and whistles of a full diplomatic meeting. And I don't understand how anyone could think that that's good politics, let alone good policy. There is no explanation for Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia that is not nefarious in

some way. There is no way to explain a man who has no principle whatsoever, no consistent policy view on anything, how he remains so steadfast in his view that he should never criticize Russia, that they should possibly be holding up a sanctions bill, even though the sanctions bill that they're holding up is mostly for show anyway, that he wants to meet with Vladimir Putin, that he won't seem to ask a single question to any of the national security officials that come to him about what we're doing to prevent a future attack. I mean, it is mind-boggling. And his story's all over the place, right? For a while, he denied it was a case. He said it could have been a fat guy in Jersey, a fat guy in a basement, fat people anywhere. It could have been China hacking the election. Let's not call that inconsistency. I think technically

it is possible that the basement was in New Jersey. That's good. That's a good point. But then, you know, once he read the Washington Post story, he decided to tweet out the choked line and said, why isn't everyone blaming Obama? He never made it past choked. He did not read that story. That story was really long. But I mean, I think the thing that baffles me is I think I don't think it's unfair to say that Donald Trump isn't deeply involved in the weeds of policy discussions. And he thinks a lot more about politics and optics. Pounding Russia and getting tough on them would probably pay significant political dividends for him. Right. I'm not sure what he's holding out for.

Think about all the Republicans that would be relieved and happy and gratified to see him turn on Russia. It would be the smartest thing he could do. It's not like the Republican base loves Russia. They're sort of baffled by this. They're like, I don't want to think Fox. Anyway. I'll think whatever I think. Yeah, he get McCain back.

He get Graham back. He get the whole band back. But he won't. It's almost as if he's compromised in some way. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. All right, guys. When we come back, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. This is Pod Save America.

Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. coming your way. Joining us on the pod today, we have West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Senator Manchin, thank you for coming on Pod Save America. Well, thank you all for having me, both of you. I appreciate it. So let's jump into this health care fight. West Virginia is among the states that has most benefited from the Medicaid expansion. It's a 59% increase in enrollment. Just how badly would this Senate bill hurt West Virginia, and what are you hearing from your constituents about it? Well, there's not one demographic. Not one demographic in the state of West Virginia won't be affected. Not one. We have an older population, and you know that. If not, they're won't be affected. Not one. We have an older population,

and you know that. If not, they're going to be paying five to one. The insurance companies can charge them almost five times the premium of a younger person if they're up to 64 years of age. We have an awful lot of elderly in nursing homes which can be affected with Medicaid. It just hits every opiate. First time we're getting treatment for opiate addiction. Opioid, first time we're getting treatment for opiate addiction. So anything and everything that we have ever done in every aspect of our economy is going to be affected. The rural hospitals, rural clinics, all of these things. When I was governor, you know, we had to always sit down with the hospitals because they had to give so much care away, so much charity care. We called it disproportionate share, and we'd help them every year just to make ends meet. so much charity care. We call it disproportionate share, and we'd help them every year just to make ends meet. Now with the Medicaid Affordable Care Act, it's helped them have more stable finances,

and it's worked out very well for them, but it's going to be very difficult. So I'm just begging them. I said, you know what? Why don't you sit and talk to us? Why don't you work with us? I wasn't here in 2010 when it was passed. I'm understanding that basically it went through the normal process. It went through all of the hearings. It went through markups. It went through amendments, and even Republican amendments were adopted. But then still yet we couldn't get one Republican to vote for it back in 2010. The Republicans have doubled down, made it even worse,

to where they haven't even asked the Democrats. They haven't even put the appearance up that they wanted to be bipartisan. And I just think it's wrong. And I'm hoping it doesn't pass so we can sit down and hopefully craft a good piece of legislation. Sir, you talked about the stakes for West Virginia. You also talked about the process and how poor it has been in terms of bipartisanship. When the merits are so clear about the harm this would do to West Virginia, why do you think that the politics aren't a no-brainer for anyone representing your state to vote against? I've been thinking about that. To both of you, John, Tommy, to both of you, I've been thinking very hard about what's driving this train.

I've come to the conclusion it's taxes. It's basically the tax rebate. Both bills, they have a little different variations i'm understanding of both bills they try to make them a little smoother if you will but make no mistake about it both bills removed all of the taxes right the way we've paid for it and it's the first tax i think that some of the super wealthy have never been able to uh circumvent yeah i don't i don't know i don't know what's driving i've just never seen anything like this I think that some of the super wealthy have never been able to circumvent. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know what's driving. I've just never seen anything like this. And I have not heard a person that was in dire need because of their income overturned, $50,000, paying 3%. And if they don't get that 3% they're done. I haven't heard anyone come to me and say that. But I guess some of the top end,'re really one one tenth of one presenters are really upset about it so i guess that's the base of the hardcore republican party yeah i mean there was a

statistic that came out this morning that said just the tax cut for the 400 wealthiest families in america would be enough to pay for the medicaid expansion in four states including west virginia alaska arkansas west virginia let me give you Let me give you another number. Out of all the tax, okay, the tax, 11,000 people would get a tax rebate about $5,000. That's our top income earners in West Virginia, 11,000. Over 900,000 wouldn't be affected by any tax rebate or any taxes whatsoever. But all 900,000 will be affected because they have some family member that's

benefiting from the plan. It's just unbelievable. Senator, your colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, has not yet taken a position on the bill. She is one of the Republicans that we believe whose vote is up for grabs. Have you spoken to her about this bill? Does she understand just how harmful this bill would be for West Virginia? We've spoken about it. We sure have. And I told her how difficult it is. My goodness, that's a big coming from the state that we come from and knowing our dynamics, our demographics. There's no way that Mitch and leadership should be holding Shelley as hard as they're probably holding her. I know they're working on her, but there might be some things she believes that we just have a difference of opinion on. And we've gotten along very good being bipartisan.

We try to work and we try to show the rest of the Senate, if you will, in a bipartisan way that, you know, you can be a Democrat, Republican, try to work together. But this one here was pretty clear to me from the get-go. And I haven't, I mean, you know, she's going to make up her own mind and I respect that, but I know she's having a lot of difficulties with it, and I know that she's been working on it very hard to come up with her decision. And I'm going to talk to her again this afternoon, and hopefully we can all be on the same page and sit down and work together.

Senator, the 2016 presidential election was gross in almost every respect, but one good thing that came out of it was a bipartisan consensus to tackle the opioid crisis. I read that the bill only includes $2 billion for 2018 to fight the opioid crisis. Senators Portman and Capito had requested $45 billion over 10 years prior to the bill. Can you talk about what this would mean for West Virginia's ability to help people who are struggling with addiction? Well, let me tell you, you know, this addiction, when I was governor, I was so involved in watching what it was doing to our community and to the people in West Virginia. Some of the beautiful little towns I knew growing up were just devastated, and they were nothing but a shell themselves.

So I started working on it very early. When I first got here, I couldn't believe that Vicodin and Lortab, two of the most prescribed opiates, were still Schedule 3. Doctors were prescribing it like it was M&M's. In 90 days, you just called in, got a refill. My goodness, they just kept it rolling. So we got that rescheduled to Schedule 2. That took a lot of pills off the market.

Been working with the FDA and everybody else, but unless a person realizes and comes to the realization that an addiction is an illness and an illness needs treatment, like any other medical need, a lot of people are still in denial. They don't believe it is. It's a criminal act and put everybody in prison. Well, we've tried that for 20 years and never cured a soul. And now the people that commit violent crimes, sexual crimes because of drugs, and those who are dealing should be put away. But those who are using and get addicted because they had an injury and the doctor overprescribed

them, and before you know it, their lives are upside down and ruined, we can maybe save them. So I would need treatment centers in every area of West Virginia. We didn't have them. And I introduced a bill called Lifeboat. Lifeboat would make the pharmaceutical manufacturers who are making all these drugs pay one penny per milligram. One penny per milligram the manufacturers pay, pharmaceutical manufacturers, for treatment centers around the country. That's $1.5 to $2 billion every year.

But we need a slug of money to get these things up and running. So I'm understanding that might be a carrot that they throw to Shelley and to Rob Portman to get them to vote for it, and they can go home and say, we got this much. But it's too devastating. I mean, I'm going to fight and continue to fight for the opiate funding that we need, and it has to be done. They can't just talk about it. And they all say, we're going to fight this fight, and they won't put any money

towards it. And so when they kept saying, well, the budget's so tight, I said, well, here's a way to do it. Just sign up. Nobody had a problem signing up for alcohol tax and for tobacco tax, but they won't sign up for opiate tax and make the manufacturers pay. So do you believe that that is a kind of fig leaf onto this bill that might be able to get the votes of people like Senator Capito? Because ultimately, even if there's an increase in a fund for opioid treatment, you're still talking about a bill that's a massive cut to benefits and an $800 billion tax cut for the wealthy. Well, I'm understanding that might, I've heard that rumor that that might be the bone they throw in order

to get some votes, whether it be Shelley's or whether it be Rob's or whoever's. But that doesn't do anything for the elderly. It doesn't do anything for personnel. It doesn't do anything for those working poor, Medicaid, and all the different things that we've done to bring people into the fold. Here's the one thing that I've said. I'm willing to sit down. I know the private market's messed up.

You can't. You've got to have more products I know the private market's messed up. You can't. You've got to have more products, and the product and the market's got to match up to where the consumer will be able to have a little bit of choice. That's not working. I haven't found a 26-year-old yet that's bought the product. So we've got to change that, the private sector. We've got to take care of people with preexisting conditions

and the serious illnesses, which is using quite a lot of the medical dollars that we have. And we think there's a pathway forward for that. Also, with the expansion that we did in Medicaid, we never gave one word of instructions to how to use it. I can tell you the people in West Virginia that never had health care before and were not on Medicaid, their only form of delivery for health care was go to the emergency room. That's all they had, the emergency room. Those who were still working but didn't have insurance at their workplace had to file a workers' comp claim in order to get any type of coverage. And that's the most expensive form of delivery of health care. So I've said,

can't we just instruct and educate people how they can use their health care, their newfound health care, much more efficiently and effectively for them and for us? Wouldn't that be a little bit more humane than just saying, I'm sorry, two or three years you're off? Or if you want it, you've got to pay this. Well, if I could do that, they'd have been paying for it. Senator, I want to come back to this opioid issue because you've talked a lot about treatment. I think you've been forward leaning on this given how much West Virginia has been affected. But you are also the only Democrat to vote for Jeff Sessions when he was nominated to be attorney general. And Jeff Sessions is the most radical anti-treatment,

anti-reform person on the drug issue that we had in the Senate. He is now outside of the mainstream on this issue at the Justice Department. Don't you believe that that vote has empowered somebody who is actively going to hurt your state? Well, first of all, it only took 51 votes to get Jeff confirmed because of a nuclear option, which Harry pulled against my desire and wishes, but he did it anyway. So that wasn't the case. The thing I've always said, I've been an executive myself. There's a lot of people that I brought into my administration. I'm sure that people didn't know him or didn't like him.

I said, if they meet all the criteria, if they go through the background check and they go through an ethics probe and we do a financial disclosure on them, if a person passes that, what do you like? If I fail, they fail with me. So I was pretty indifferent to President Trump putting his team together, unless the person just wasn't qualified in that profession. And I didn't think Betsy DeVos was. I thought Tom Price had breached some things I thought were unethical,

and I thought Mick Mulvaney would destroy the budget, which, you know, but on Jeff, he had the credentials, and I thought, well, you know, that's their guy. With that, let me tell you this. It's put me in a position that I can call Jeff, and I said, Jeff, listen, it's not political. I think what you're doing is wrong, and I've done that on the Flynn investigation. There's no way he should have been even contemplating staying on a Flynn investigation. And he got off. And I'm the only Democrat that can make a phone call now, and they can said that there's a potential for getting your vote. So I guess my question is, when did you hire Sean? Were you worried about his lack of credibility

after lying for all these months? Or was that, you know, could you look past that for his experience? Well, maybe, you know, I got excited when I heard that, because my condition for voting was repairing the bill we have. And maybe they finally saw the light. They came around and we were going to put a bipartisan group of senators together and repair the Affordable Care Act. So I'm thinking maybe something's going on here they haven't told me about. That's the only condition I can think of. Other than that, I think Sean might have been just a little optimistic and maybe a little delusional on that. I don't know. So I'm just, I'm hearing no chance in hell. That's sort of what I want to walk away from this on. Well, here's the thing. They've got me if they want to sit down and start repairing it tonight. Look at the private market. Look at how we educate

people to use it more wisely. Looking at how we can get people healthier. Let's look how we can change this economy and get more of a working. I don't have a good workforce in West Virginia. I'm down below 50% of the adults working that should be working that aren't working. That's the first time in my life. So I want to get people back on the road to recovery. I got another bill, two guys on this opiate thing. Speaking of that, we've got people that have felonies because most of them commit larceny. And they got felonies and they can't get a job. And they might have good skills. A lot of them do. So I have this bill called Second Chance. And they got felonies and they can't get a job. And they might have good skills. A lot of them do. So I have this bill called Second Chance. If they go through a one-year treatment and they go through one year of mentoring, that gives them the right to take

the people, their sponsors, and go back to their arresting officers and go back to their sentencing judge and hopefully get an expungement. Get that felony off their back and go back into the workforce. There's got to be some compassion somewhere. So, Senator, just to clarify this here, obviously there's a lot of things that we could do to make our health care system work better. There are things that we could do to fix Obamacare. President Obama says that. All Democrats say that. But just to be clear here, this bill has to be taken off the table,

that this bill, $800 billion in cuts to taxes and massive cuts to Medicaid, that this bill is a non-starter and you think that we should start over? Things can be repaired. They don't want to repair them. How in the world? I guess the difference between a Democrat and a Republican would say the first thing you do, no matter what, is you repeal $600 billion of taxes and you take away $800 billion of services to the poorest.

That's the difference between who I am and I guess who they are. I just can't do that. There's just a lot of people going to be harmed. And just thinking you're going to expand, put this off for three years, and then rather than a downward slide, they're going to let you go on a nice, even glide until you hit the cliff, and then you're going to be, boom, right off the cliff in three years. I'm just hoping. Okay, Senator Joe Manchin, thank you for joining us.

Keep calling, though. Don't forget to call. Like me and call and let me know how you feel. That's all you can do. Thank you, Senator. Okay, I think you guys are good at that, too. We're trying. Okay, guys. Thank you, sir.

Thanks a lot. Thank you both. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us. Happy to be on with you anytime are good at that, too. We're trying. Okay, guys. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot. Thank you both. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us. Happy to be on with you anytime, okay? Thanks, sir. That's it for Ponce of America. Thanks to our guest, Senator Manchin. I think it was a good conversation.

What do you think, Tommy? I'm pretty depressed right now. Make some phone calls, everybody. Let's go kill this god-awful bill. He believed that Senator Capito is someone who would understand how bad this bill is. The question is whether or not she succumbs to the pressure from the other side to vote for it. Yeah. He seemed to pretty sincerely believe that.

Yeah. Hard not to if you live in West Virginia, a state that will be decimated by this bill. Okay. Thanks for joining. John will be back on Thursday, so no need to tweet him anything positive or negative anymore. I think he will be back on Thursday so no need to tweet him anything positive or negative anymore I think he'll be back

and you know I love the outro the music's going we're having a good time trying to make the best of a bad situation politics wise

end of show bye you