Rep. Stevens Responds to Trump’s Disastrous Government Shutdown

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0:59Ben Meiselas:See terms. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you will never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. Mag and Mike Johnson is having an awful morning. His messaging is just all over the place. He's talking about rabble rousers, getting paid more money than pregnant women.

1:42Ben Meiselas:And somehow this is why he and Donald Trump want to shut the government down. I have no clue what he's even talking about here. Rabble rousers are getting paid, everybody. Did everybody know rabble rousers are getting paid? Play this clip. If you're a young, pregnant American citizen woman who shows up in an ER and you get treated and they pay the hospital less for treating you than some illegal rabble rouser who came in from some South American country to do us harm, that is wrong. The Republican Party stands for common sense. In the big, beautiful bill, we fixed that. And Chuck Schumer wants to unwind it.

2:14Ben Meiselas:And it is unconscionable to me that he's inflicting all this pain on American citizens so they can play games and try to appease the radical left base. That's what this is. It's like just literally playing Mad Libs or like cosplaying Donald Trump. I don't even know what are you even talking about? I mean, if you're a young pregnant woman, you're worried about rabble rousers getting reimbursed by hospitals so they don't want to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies and they don't want to protect people's medical. What am I missing here? I'm losing what the hell they're talking about. Americans are going to lose their health care and they're having these like bizarro conversations and creepy conversations.

2:56Ben Meiselas:We all know that earlier this morning, Donald Trump also posted that the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois, Pritzker, need to be arrested. So Mag and Mike was asked his thoughts, you know, do you think they should be arrested? Should the governor of Illinois be arrested? Now, a normal speaker would say, no, no, you don't arrest governors. But this is what this guy said. Here, play this clip. Thank you. Do you agree that the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois should be in prison? Should they be in prison? Should the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois be in prison?

3:35Ben Meiselas:I'm not the attorney general. I'm the speaker of the House, and I'm trying to manage the chaos here. I'm not following the day-to-day on that. I do know that they've resisted the introduction of or the offering of National Guard troops in Chicago, which is a terribly dangerous city and has been destroyed under in the process of being destroyed under liberal Democrat governance and their terrible policies. What kind of answer is that? Where are these people from? What world are you living in? These these states and cities are not in the process of being destroyed. they're freaking subsidizing your district they're subsidizing your state quite literally you are a taker district in a taker state that relies on these areas you're attacking to subsidize your very existence as a state it's just it's mind-boggling to me that he goes up there and this is what he's talking about in a shutdown so what about mtala what about the emergency medical treatment act because it seems that all the talking points are that people who show up in the emergency room now have to show their papers, no matter who you are, are you here lawfully or not?

4:41Ben Meiselas:And that's when the physician decides in an emergency room if they treat you. So, Maga Mike, that seems to be J.D. Vance's talking points and what you were saying before, because otherwise migrants are not allowed to get health care under Medicare, Medicaid, or Affordable Care Act extensions. Is that what you mean, Maga Mike? Here, play this clip. Speaker, John, a lot of the free health care for illegal aliens that you've been talking about is care provided in emergency rooms, which are required by federal law to care for anybody, even if they can't pay, even if they're not a citizen. Do you think that that law should be changed?

5:15Ben Meiselas:No, you're talking about EMTALA, which has been part of the law for most of my life. Emergency care is provided without question to anyone who comes in. If you're hemorrhaging and you show up in an emergency room, you get treated. That's something we all support. That's a very good law. We're in favor of it. You're cherry picking a tiny subset of the issues. Not cherry picking the issue. He's picking the cherry that you've been talking about every other day. What is going on here? And finally, should the MAGA Republicans use the nuclear option and just push forward this extremist Trump project 2025, take health care away from the American people agenda and have no filibuster in the Senate?

5:58Ben Meiselas:Here, let's play this clip. Could you go nuclear and blow that all up and end the filibuster once and for all and allow everything for only majority party vote, 51 votes in the Senate? I mean, is it possible? Yes. Is it is it wise? You can have a lot of people who would tell you it's not. I mean, on the Republican side, I would be deeply concerned if the Democrats had a bare majority in the Senate right now. A Marxist ideology taken over the Democrat Party. Do I want them to have no safeguards and no stumbling blocks or hurdles at all in the way of turning us into a communist country? I don't think that's a great idea.

6:35Ben Meiselas:That's me. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they always say. And there are some safeguards in the process that were built in a long, long time ago to prevent one party just running roughshod. Marxist agenda, rabble rousers. What is he talking about to help me make sense of it? It's bringing Congresswoman Haley Stevens. Congresswoman Stevens is also running for the Senate seat in Michigan. We'll talk about that because you heard him over there talk about ending the filibuster in the Senate. But first, when you see him there giving a press conference like that and saying these things while he's sent all of his MAGA Republican members to go on a paid vacation while you're there in D.C.

7:18Ben Meiselas:working, what's your response, Congresswoman? Yeah, we're ready to stand up for the health care of the people of this country. And certainly, I'm fighting for the pocketbooks of Michiganders. And I will tell you, I was actually at the dentist office talking to my hygienist who has a 10-month-old. And she was talking about the actual bill that she had from giving birth the$16 ,000 that it cost her to just have a baby and how she was going to pay that bill and how she probably wasn't going to. And so why aren't we having a more realistic conversation about what is happening to the pocketbooks of everyday Michiganders.

8:05That's what I'm fighting for. That's what I want to see get done here. Not more tax cuts for billionaires and falsehoods being spouted, just actual real common sense. What is taking place for working Michiganders?

8:23Ben Meiselas:So just tell us, you know, what the what this really means in dollars and cents, because, you know, you have Republicans out there changing like whatever their messaging is. It seems every day. One day they're blaming migrants. Another day they're blaming transgender people. Another day they're posting about sombreros. Another day, Donald Trump and Maga Mike and Thune, they're just like threatening, you better sign this or else we're firing all government employees and the Democrat agencies, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. We're going to go after people. I don't even know what they're even talking about.

8:58Ben Meiselas:And then, you know, but like this is about I mean, I've been posting a lot of this data. It's like someone and someone who's on an Affordable Care Act plan who's, you know, paying 300 to 400 dollars a month. They're going to pay two thousand dollars a month to go bankrupt, like very soon, like imminent bankruptcy while Donald Trump's showing photos about how gold his Oval Office is. So like this is a real human issue. This isn't some abstraction. No, and there's$1.3 trillion of credit card debt in this country. There are people who are putting grocery bills on credit cards and then paying interest on them.

9:35We are in an affordability crisis. Coffee is up 20%. Beef is up 16%. Bacon is up over 10%. Give me a break. And now we're going to see the health care costs skyrocket. I'll give you some more numbers, Ben. We've got a family of four at$125 ,000 a year. They're going to see their health care costs go up about$7 ,700 a year. That is not chump change. That is paying for kids' sports games. That is, you know, buying the snacks that you need to feed growing kids. Look, this is not acceptable. And yet, what did we get? billionaires getting a tax cut and all this gamesmanship. And look, it's a really simple proposition that we're all, you know, offering here.

10:24Protect the pocketbooks of people. You know, look, we've got Republicans right now who are trying to introduce legislation yet again to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. That is not a solution right now. That is not going to work. This is about keeping costs low, avoiding a health care crisis that we are tumbling into. I've been hearing this for months. I mean, we are at a boiling point. Employers had had to let employees know what was going to be covered, what wasn't, what costs were going to go up back in August when this tax bill was passed. So, look, you know, just come to the table, negotiate in some respects.

11:04You know, it was reported that, you know, the president certainly wanted to do so. and now it's just blustering and bulls in the China shop going every which way. And many of us, myself included, are staying laser focused on what we are hearing from the people. We are so proud to represent what I am hearing from the people of Michigan who I fight for each and every single day. Yeah.

11:27Ben Meiselas:I mean, it's like in fifth grade, I think I took my first government course or learned a little bit about how the system works. And you learn, you know what, in our system, when there's multiple political parties and you don't live in a dictatorship, the parties speak to each other and they compromise and they come up with solutions unless, you know, Republicans had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and they don't have to do anything. Maybe it's a different story, but where you require compromise, you speak. And by the way, even if you had a filibuster proof, whatever, you would still in an American system that we were the champions of in the world say, wow, this other group, this other political party still represents millions and tens of millions.

12:15Ben Meiselas:So how do we make sure we're helping America as a country? And right now you have the exact opposite. I mean, it seems that for Trump and MAGA, the enemy is the liberal and their friend is Vladimir Putin. Yeah, no, it's very troubling. And I would say that this seems to only happen under Donald Trump's leadership. Chaos, confusion. It is no surprise that this is the way government works. They're bragging that they've got this mandate, this stronghold. then why can't they open the government? Why can't they make sure military personnel get paid? This is what we get with Donald Trump's leadership.

13:03This is also why I have introduced legislation called No Tariffs on Groceries Act, because 55 tariff announcements in the first hundred days and still going are contributing to those rising costs, and they're impacting people. And that's a common sense proposal around blanket tariffs. We are not getting these solutions from his administration. And, you know, it's it's a darn shame.

13:30Ben Meiselas:And let's talk about the Senate race right now, running for Senate from state of Michigan. Talk to us about that, you know, and talk to us, you know, right now it's in a primary. When is the primary? And talk to us about kind of your pitch to the voters that sets you aside from the other candidates. Yeah, well, look, my life's work has been defined by putting up my hand for Michigan in very tough, uncertain moments. And this is the most courageous thing I could think to do in this moment, which is pushback on Trump's selected Senate candidate. That is Mike Rogers, who has really just made his campaign platform very clear.

14:14You know, he wants to rubber stamp Donald Trump and the threats to people's pocketbooks and their benefit checks. I served as chief of staff on President Obama's U.S. auto rescue. I was the person from Michigan on the team taking those phone calls during a great recession from Michiganders who were worried about their jobs, worried about losing everything they had ever worked for. And now it is eerily similar to that great recession period, except for in this moment, we are seeing a billionaire with a chainsaw, you know, slashing through our federal agencies. I was recently named one of Michigan's most effective lawmakers, our most effective Democratic lawmaker in the chamber.

14:57I've delivered real results for the people of Michigan. And right now, I am pushing back. I have introduced legislation to remove the tariffs on groceries. I have introduced legislation to stand up to Trump's abuses of power, particularly with deploying the military on fellow Americans. That's legislation I put forward in earlier this year, very presciently. And I'm also leading the effort to impeach RFK because enough is enough. So I'm campaigning as I am governing and I am showing people how I will deliver for Michigan and stand up to this chaos, this confusion, and also deliver real results from us.

15:37I certainly am going to use Michigan as my North Star, unlike Mike Rogers, who just wants to clink his martini glasses, rub elbows and bobble along the Potomac.

15:49Ben Meiselas:Where could people learn more about your campaign, Congresswoman? Well, that is very generous if you've been, you know, I've got a website, Haley4MI.com. I invite people to get involved. This is an unprecedented campaign. There's a reason why every single poll shows I'm the only Democrat capable of beating Mike Rogers, and that is because of the magic that I have with independents, the results that I deliver on, the way in which I speak the manufacturing language of my state, really understanding what drives us forward. I'm a daughter of small business owners. I grew up around a lot of dirt, grease, and grime because it was a landscape business that my parents were running.

16:29And so I'm running with a whole lot of Michigan heart and dedication to the people who deserve the best champion in the United States Senate.

16:39Ben Meiselas:Congresswoman Stevens, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing all that information and we hope you come back. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.

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