Fall out from Federal Immigration Enforcement in Minneapolis continues this week with
Minneapolis continues this week with six federal prosecutors there resigning over the assignment
to investigate the widow of the 37-year-old mother shot and killed by an ICE agent.
And Thursday was the last day of open enrollment for Marketplace Affordable Care Act plans
with early indications showing 1.4 million fewer in enrollees than last year.
But the U.S. House last week voted to extend those credits with 17 Republicans joining,
including Wisconsin 3rd Congressional Representative Derek Van Ordon.
To check where that measure goes in the Senate, we turn to Wisconsin's U.S. Senators Democrat
Tammy Baldwin and Republican Ron Johnson, who joins us now.
Senator, thanks very much for being here.
Thanks for having me on.
So what do you know about any compromise to be had on the extension of these ACA enhanced
credits?
Well, I appreciate you reporting it accurately.
We're talking about the enhanced credits for the supposedly 24 million people on these
changes.
More than 22 million will still get the Obamacare original subsidies, which were very generous.
The only people losing subsidies are people making over 400 percent of the poverty line.
That's about 1.6 million people.
And I'm actually working with a couple of Democrats' Senators to address those individuals
because they are facing unbelievably high premiums because of Obamacare.
It has so destroyed the individual market.
Some of these folks' close retirement are facing premiums of $36,000, $38,000 a year.
So I'd like to help them.
But again, I really have, there's no reason to extend the enhanced temporary pandemic
subsidies for people who still will retain the Obamacare subsidies.
What kind of traction is that getting your proposal to maintain credits for those at
400 percent above poverty?
Well, what I've been told is there are enough Democrats who will co-sponsor that, but right
now I think they're still holding out hope that they can extend all the subsidies.
I just believe that's dead on arrival here in the Senate.
We voted that down multiple times during the shutdown.
That's just not going to happen.
Well, were you surprised by the 17 Republicans in the House who voted to extend those enhanced
credits?
No, I think the issue has been so misreported.
It's been so misrepresented that I think there are people in very close districts who
were concerned about that misrepresentation.
They wanted to be showing their constituents that, no, they want to help them handle the
extremely high premiums.
But remember, the reason premiums are so high is because Obamacare is just flawed.
It's an awful structure.
It forced a very small percentage of the American population, those 24 million people on the
individual's changed to completely bear the cost of covering people with pre-existing
conditions.
So that's the reason why premiums sense that implementation of Obamacare have increased
at four times your aid inflation.
So again, it's completely failed.
And the only thing the subsidy is doing right now is they're masking that, it's certainly
helping people.
But what we ought to do is we ought to fix Obamacare, repair the damage done and transition
to a system that would actually work.
Like?
Well, the root cause of our health care financing system is the third-party payer system.
Somebody else is going to pay the cost of the procedures and the medical services.
All we pay for is insurance, it's way too high, or we pay our taxes.
So until you actually reintroduce consumerism, where consumers know what things cost and
they're concerned about what things cost.
But now doctors don't know, nurses don't know, patients don't know.
Building people know are the bean counters, so that's a completely flawed system.
You've removed all the benefits of a free market competitive system out of health care.
So you don't have lower costs, you don't have better quality, you don't have better
service.
So again, return consumerism, free market competition in there.
Now, providers aren't going to like it.
Right now, every incentive in our current health care system is to increase prices because
everybody's taking a percentage cut off it, they'd rather take a percent cut off something
cost $10,000 rather than five.
So it's about consumerism, that's the only solution.
On immigration enforcement, Minneapolis obviously continues to be a powder keg.
How does the president invoking the Insurrection Act, bringing in U.S. military help or hurt
what's going on there in your mind?
Well, what you ought to do is take a look at different states, those that are actually
cooperating with ICE as we try and, as the Trump administration tries to clean up this
enormous mess, like behind by Biden and Democrats who open up our borders versus those states
that are resisting, where local law enforcement actually holds illegal immigrants that have
committed crimes so that ICE can pick them up peacefully at the jails, you're not seeing
a problem.
Where you're seeing a problem is where you have insurgents like Governor Walls and the mayor
inciting people to resist and obstruct justice, and that led to the tragedy of that one woman's
let death.
Do you have concerns that Wisconsin will be similarly embroiled?
I would hope that Wisconsin county sheriffs and local officials would cooperate with ICE.
I think generally they do.
We do not have pockets of large immigration immigrants in the state of Wisconsin, so it's
not as big an issue here as it is with the Somali population and others in Minnesota
and some of these other big cities.
Do you feel like public benefits fraud in Minnesota justifies the Trump administration
to surge ICE there?
That's not why they're doing it.
They're two totally separate issues.
And yet that has been something that the president has spoken to.
Well, again, you have a large Somali population that now we're seeing evidence of how much
they're defrauding the federal government on a host of government programs.
Flying 700 million dollars of cash out of the Minneapolis airport, again, there's some
real problems there, but that's separate from the illegal immigrants and, quite honestly,
the sanctuary city, sanctuary states like Minneapolis and Minnesota, where you don't have local
officials working with ICE to peacefully turn over people that they've detained and
have committed crimes.
Other states that do it, you don't have these problems.
You stated this week that you do not want to see immigration enforcement action on farmers.
Do you have any assurances on that?
Just that, for example, President Trump was not happy with the rate, I think, the Hyundai
plant.
So people here that are working, contributing, that is not the people that ICE is primarily
going after.
Right now, they're going after the criminals.
Now, if you're associating yourself with people with committed crimes, if you get caught
up in those enforcement actions, I mean, if you come to this country, legally committed
to crime as well, but that's not who the Trump administration is targeting.
Do you support on the kind of world stage, do you support the administration's actions
in Venezuela, or threats against Iran, or even looking at Greenland?
Do you support that kind of foreign policy?
It was undeniably good that Maduro is no longer the illegitimate leader in destroying
Venezuela.
Now, what comes next?
I don't know.
If the moles could be replaced by the Iranian people, that would be a good thing for the
world.
They are a menace.
Greenland, from my standpoint, I'm not worried about a military invasion there.
I think it's appropriate for President Trump to understand and point out what a strategic,
how strategically important Greenland is.
I think there's probably more and more intelligence coming out to exactly what the Russian China
may be doing there.
And we need to make sure that Greenland is protected for NATO and for America and for
our own national security.
What do you think average Wisconsinites care most about right now?
Do you think it's the cost of living?
Sure.
It always has been, always will be.
And it's difficult to, once you've devalued the dollar to the extent we have over the decades,
a dollar held in 1998 is only about 51 cents.
As recently as 2019, that dollar's worth 80 cents.
And so the 40-high inflation incurred during the Biden administration that permanently devalued
the dollar.
So, you know, a lot of those prices, they're not going to go back down.
Now, there's certain commodities like energy, gasoline, you're noticing because we actually
are encouraging drilling and energy production.
Gasoline prices are going down.
You know, I think a more rational approach to bird flu is probably going down the price
of eggs.
So there are certain things we can address.
President Trump right now is, and I've had a briefing in terms of what he's doing to
make sure that European countries or other developed countries pay the same price we
pay for drugs so they don't free-load off of our innovation.
That will also help things in terms of farm super pricing.
All right.
Senator Ron Johnson, we leave it there.
Thanks very much for your time.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
We certainly ran through a lot of issues.
We did.
Take care.
Thanks.
Bye.