Congressman Mo Brooks called into Yellowhammer Radio to discuss his plan to completely repeal Obamacare. Yellowhammer Radio hosts, Andrea Tice and Scott Chambers weigh in on the options to replace Obamacare.
Scott Chambers:
Yellowhammer nation, welcome in. This is Yellow Hammer Radio SuperStation 101 WYDE. You can be a part of the program on this Friday edition of Yellow Hammer radio at (866)-551-9933. You can also tweet the program. Check us out on Twitter @yhnradio. So many good things to talk about today.
Andrea Tice, welcome into the program. How are you on this Friday?
Andrea Tice:
I am doing well. Doing well. No more dreams.
Scott Chambers:
Yeah, no more dreams. I had a weird dream last night, and it wrecked my day. I started the day off just really bad. I woke up not feeling well, and then I had this horrible nightmare that literally had me crying. It was …
Andrea Tice:
That’s a nightmare.
Scott Chambers:
It was a vivid nightmare, I’m not going to discuss it on the air, I did tell you about it off the air, and it was a doozie. It was a crazy dream. And so, I started my day, I was awful. A friend texted me, and then I couldn’t go back to sleep, and it just … I said a nice prayer. God is looking over us today. We’re going to have a fantastic show. I am ready to hit the ground running. And, let’s talk a little health-care, maybe.
Andrea Tice:
Sure.
Scott Chambers:
There’s a gentleman that has a one-line bill that is probably the most genius thing I have ever seen on repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Andrea Tice:
Simplicity in Washington D.C. is an actual work of art these days.
Scott Chambers:
Yes, it certainly is. And, ladies and gentlemen, joining us now, from Alabama’s Fifth District, none other than Congressman Mo Brooks. Welcome into Yellow Hammer Radio. How are you, Congressman?
Rep. Mo Brooks:
I’m doing fine. By the way, I have those similar nightmares. Mine’s about repealing Obamacare. What’s yours about?
Scott Chambers:
(laughs) Well, Andrea dreamed about a swimming pool the other night and we can’t figure that one out.
Andrea Tice:
Well, no. I think my co-host accurately interpreted that I’m over my head in politics with all of this healthcare stuff.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, the Republican welfare plan is my nightmare. It’s bait-and-switch. It’s horrible, but keep going.
Scott Chambers:
Amen, right? (laughs)
Andrea Tice:
So, you feel you’re in the deep end on that? I assume.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Oh, it’s just unbelievable that the Republican party is becoming what the Democrats have been for decades, just left-wing socialists on economic issues.
Scott Chambers:
That’s exactly what’s happening. Wow, I could not agree with you any more. This healthcare plan, to me personally, Congressman Brooks … I think it was a disaster. That’s what my thought process is on this plan. I thought it was a disaster.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, yes. Let me give you some examples. We were sent to Washington D.C. based on a couple of promises. Number one is: we were going to repeal Obamacare. Number two: as a result of that repeal, we were going to make healthcare costs, and in particular health insurance premiums, more affordable. Well, that’s been breached in a major way.
Under … I’m going to call her Ryancare care for lack of a simpler way to describe it. Ryancare, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, increases healthcare … excuse me, health insurance … premiums over the next two years by roughly 15 to 20 percent over and above the increases that would normally be expected under Obamacare.
Now, that’s what the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation are telling us as they conduct the financial examination of Ryancare. And that’s not what we told the American people that we were going to do. Now, in fairness, years three through ten, have all the underlying assumptions work out right, there might be a stabilization, perhaps even a decline in premiums after we’re been topped with another 15 to 20 percent in increases over and above Obamacare. And again, that’s assuming that those assumptions are accurate. Historically, they have not been.
Scott Chambers:
Our guest is Congressman Mo Brooks. And let me ask you, Congressman, that’s a lot of what-ifs, isn’t it? That’s a lot of what-ifs.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Yes. This repeal bill of the House leadership, that is somewhat of a bait-and-switch and somewhat deceptive in that it purports to be repeal but it incorporates into the replacement part the bulk of the cost drivers of Obamacare that make it cost-prohibitive for the average American family.
So, I don’t agree with that deception. That’s why I introduced a real simple, clean bill. It’s very, very short, and it just says, “Look, Obamacare, citing the public statute number, is hereby repealed. All laws repealed by Obamacare are reinstated.” Which would revert us back to the laws that we had in place in 2009. And, just for emphasis, in 2009, American had the best healthcare in the world at a much better price than what we’re paying now. That seems like, to me, a good place to go.
Scott Chambers:
It seems like a great place to go. I’ve been saying this and asking for this for a very long time, “Why can’t we repeal the darn thing?” Then, we can take a look at healthcare reform. I believe we needed healthcare reform. When Obamacare came out, that was just the wrong type of reform. Let’s go back to the way it was. That’s what Republicans have been saying all along, “We’re going to repeal it. Then we will come up with a replacement.” And this Ryancare plan, whatever you want to call it, did the exact opposite, and I was really disappointed.
With seven full years to come up with a plan, and that’s as good as Washington could do? That really bothered me, a hard-working American taxpaying citizen. It ticked me off, Congressman.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, it should. It is a despicable bill. It’s one of the worst public policy initiatives I’ve ever seen. And for it to come from House Republican leadership is definitely disappointing.
Andrea Tice:
Congre-
Rep. Mo Brooks:
We can do better than that. And there are plenty of things that we could do. But first, we have to understand the role of federal government vis a vis to states.
Andrea Tice:
Congressman Brooks …
Rep. Mo Brooks:
The simple solution … Go ahead.
Andrea Tice:
I wanted to say that you were one of the first to come out when this bill was being lined-up to be voted on and you called it an entitlement, which is nothing more than government-established programs that are entrenched. And you called it an entitlement, and you didn’t want to continue it, and I appreciate you calling it for what it is.
We now have Speaker Ryan coming out as of, I think yesterday, on CBS. He was talking in an interview and he said he didn’t want government to be involved in healthcare. How do you explain this discrepancy between him presenting something that essentially was a continuation of Obamacare and entitlements, but saying out publicly he doesn’t want government involved. It confused me.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
It is inexplicable, and it’s self-contradictory. You’ve got a number of different aspects of this bill, the bottom line being that it increases health insurance premiums 15 to 20 percent over and above Obamacare increases, and it does that over the next couple years.
But then, you’ve also got this huge new welfare program that the Republican party, now, will be responsible for. It costs, initially, the estimated costs are in the neighborhood of $35 billion a year, and basically what it does is it pays, directly or indirectly, insurance companies for the cost of health insurance.
So, you can imagine, the health insurance industry is in love with this bill because you’ve got a direct transfer of roughly $35 billion to the [coffers 00:07:06] of insurance companies, paid for out of the United States Treasury. And, of course, we taxpayers are going to have to come up with the money to pay for that ship.
So, what that does, when you start looking at the political dynamics of it and you play it out long-term, all of a sudden all these American voters who are self-sufficient, self-reliant, they pay their own way, they do things the right thing in America, they’re taking advantage of the opportunities this country has to offer. We’re turning them into welfare-dependence.
Scott Chambers:
Yup.
Andrea Tice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Rep. Mo Brooks:
But since they’re going to have the federal government paying anywhere from around $2500 on the low side, $2000, $2500 on the low side, to $14,000 of their health insurance cost. And once they become welfare-dependent, well, how do you think they’re going to vote in the general elections going forward? Are they going to vote for free-enterprise or are they going to vote for more welfare?
Scott Chambers:
Definitely more welfare.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
And I think that changes the political dynamics in a major way, and basically ends the Republican party as a functioning entity over the long-term.
Andrea Tice:
One of the things that the House Freedom Caucus did was hold the line on this, staying conservative, staying true to their convictions and their campaign promises, and you were among those, Congressman Brooks. Are you feeling any negative or positive feedback on that decision?
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, I’m getting mixed. In my district, I had about 1,800 people ask me to vote against Ryancare, and about 500 people ask me to vote for it. I thought that was noteworthy given that there was a huge media buy in my district. I don’t know the total dollar amount but it was radio, it was TV, and it was robocalls trying to tell people that it’s really between Mo Brooks and Donald Trump. Now that’s a false paradigm. It’s really between the American people and Washington and this legislation.
Scott Chambers:
Absolutely.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
But, nonetheless, even though … and I suspect that the insurance companies were behind the financing of these media buys, I don’t know that. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to ascertain who really was putting the money into it. But the bottom line is this: despite all those calls, all that radio, all that TV, trying to make it look like that I was on the opposite side of Donald Trump, it was something like 77 percent of the people in my district that contacted my office, out of over 2000 that contacted my office, wanted me to vote “no” on this legislation rather than “yes”.
And so, it was comforting to know that, people in my district at least, were starting to understand better about how bad this piece of legislation is, both short-term, with its adverse effect on insurance premiums, and then long-term, with its adverse effect on whether we’re going to continue to be country that is based on principles of liberty and freedom.
Scott Chambers:
Our guest is U.S. representative Mo Brooks from Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District. And, Congressman, I never once saw this as Mo Brooks versus Donald Trump. What you just said makes perfect sense. I saw this as Mo Brooks looking out for his constituency. That’s the way I took it.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, it’s also our country. Although my constituency is a sub-part of that. But this, legislation is really bad for our country long-term. There are no free rides, and I use that as an example. The initial welfare program was Obamacare, right? Okay? And, the CBO estimated that it would cost, all of its component parts, around $800 billion over a ten-year period of time.
They had to revise their estimates a short while ago to increase the cost to over $2 trillion over that ten-year period of time. Which means that the CBO was off by a factor of 2.5, that the actual cost was about 2.5 times more than what was estimated. And you can bet your bottom dollar that, if the Republican welfare plan were passed, that they also would be off because the CBO cannot adjust their numbers based on political dynamics. That’s not something they can take into account when they’re doing their scoring.
But, if we make every campaign about who’s going to give me more healthcare, welfare, you can bet your bottom dollar again that the costs are going to go up because politicians are going to react and promise more free stuff that we don’t have the money to pay for.
Andrea Tice:
Congressman Brooks, you stood up and voted against the Ryancare bill, and then you turned around offered a solution, a two-page solution, which, we’ve often said on the show, in and of itself is a work of art that, in D.C., you could put it down to two-pages. So, where does that stand in committee and in the process of bringing that to a floor-vote?
Rep. Mo Brooks:
The only way we’re going to have a floor-vote is this way … the House leadership does not favor a repeal of Obamacare, as you and I and the American people understand the word repeal. Okay?
Andrea Tice:
Right.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
They, then, will have to be pushed aside for this to come to the House floor for a vote. And the bill number, for your audience, is HR-1718.
Andrea Tice:
1718.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
First thing to do is to get a bunch of co-sponsors so that the House leadership starts to take notice. The second thing to do is to file a discharge petition that forces it past the committee structure and straight to the House floor for a vote. So, I’m hopeful that, when we get to the point in time where I can file a discharge petition, that we will slowly but surely get the signatures on that petition.
I can’t do it right now. Under House rules, I have to wait 30 legislative days. In calendar days, that translates into some time in late May, or June, just depending on how many days we’re in session. But, when that time comes, if we’ve not addressed the repeal of Obamacare to the satisfaction of the American people, then I’m going to file that discharge petition. And at that point, it will be up to the American people to decide if they really want a repeal of Obamacare.
If they do, they contact their congressman, they get enough congressmen to sign that discharge petition, we have a House floor vote, and boom, we repeal it.
Andrea Tice:
All right. Well, we’re putting the word out there for people here in Alabama to contact their congressman and get the word out where they want them to stand on that petition, and hopefully we see some movement on that.
Scott Chambers:
You know, I think the majority of Alabamians, they think that the plan, the first plan that was presented and Ryan was pushing, they looked at it and said, “This is a bunch of garbage.” They don’t want that. You look at what Mo Brooks has presented, this is genius. That’s what we’ve all been saying all along, “Repeal the darn thing.”
Andrea Tice:
It’s the first step. It’s the most logical.
Scott Chambers:
Exactly. Congressman Mo Brooks is our guest, from Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District. Congressman, I want to ask you, what do you make of President Donald Trump and his tweets going after the Conservative Freedom Caucus?
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Well, in a way, it establishes that we are a force to be reckoned with in Washington D.C. We’ve hit the radar screen. In previous years, previous sessions of Congress, the Freedom Caucus was not that notable. We were the ones pushing for border security. We were the ones pushing against unfair trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We were the ones pushing for smaller federal government. Quite frankly, we were the ones that constitute some of the few conservatives left in the United States Congress. And now we’re in the radar screen.
It’s somewhat paradoxical that Donald Trump is coming after us because, if you look at the overall membership of the House Freedom Caucus, that’s probably where 80 to 90 percent of his congressional support came from. The establishment Republicans were the ones who were attacking Donald Trump, even when he was our nominee.
Andrea Tice:
I know.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Or, on the other hand, they weren’t willing to help him. And so, now, Donald Trump … I think he’s getting bad advice. I wish that he would support what we’re trying to do because when we get to those trade issues, when we get to border security, you go down a long list of issues where it looks like we are perfectly in line with Donald Trump.
And, I hope that he does not unnecessarily alienate some of our members by the kind of personal targeting. And it really shouldn’t be personal targeting. You’ve either got a good bill or a bad bill. And we should be talking about public policy and how to improve a bill, and by way of background Ryancare has only 17 percent approval from the American people.
It’s opposed by the Harris Foundation. It’s opposed by Freedomworks. It’s opposed by Club for Growth. Last night on TV I was watching Sean Hannity. He was against it. Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was against it, and has been talking about our killing this bill, assuming that it’s dead, our killing this bill has helped save the Republican party.
You also had Laura Ingraham who’s opposed to it. Virtually all of the conservative think tanks have come out against this legislation once they figure out what it does and how it breaches our promises to the American people.
Scott Chambers:
Absolutely. Representative Mike Rogers … changing the subject for just a moment … Representative Mike Rogers has introduced a bill to fund construction of the wall. And, I noticed on your Twitter yesterday, you sent a tweet out saying you fully support President Trump’s effort to build that wall, and have Mexico pay for it, and then Rogers, the bill that he’s introduced is to tax illegal immigrants. Tell us a little bit about that because you’ve signed on as a co-sponsor.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
I’m very, very thankful that Mike Rogers has introduced this bill. This is a sign of real strong leadership by Congressman Rogers with respect to our border-security issue. And, basically, there are wire-transfers and other transfers of money from illegal aliens in America to people back in their home countries, usually Mexico but not always.
And what Mike Rogers wants to do is to put a tax on those transfers of funds. I think the amount is in two percent but you’re testing my memory in that regard. It might be a little bit more, might be a little bit less. But that’s one way to come up with the money to pay for the wall without it burdening American citizens.
It’s one way for Donald Trump to keep his promise to make Mexico pay for it, and I’m very thankful that Congressman Mike Rogers from Alabama has taken a leadership role in this. And I’m happy to have the opportunity to co-sponsor and help him get it passed.
Scott Chambers:
Well, I’m certainly glad that you’ve co-sponsored that. I think it’s fantastic. Here in Alabama, sir, we definitely want that wall. You know that (laughs). There’s no question.
Andrea Tice:
I’m actually excited and impressed that two Alabama Congressmen have made initiatives in resolving this problem, Obamacare and the wall, and it speaks well of our state. So, keep up the good work, Congressman.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
Will do. And thank you so much for the opportunity to be on your show and also for what you all do to help the American people better understand what they need to understand in order for our republic to go in the right direction.
Scott Chambers:
Absolutely. Congressman Mo Brooks from Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District. Appreciate you being with us here on Yellow Hammer Radio. I look forward to talking to you again very soon, sir.
Rep. Mo Brooks:
My pleasure. Y’all have a good one.
Scott Chambers:
You too.
Andrea Tice:
You too.
Scott Chambers:
Congressman Mo Brooks with us here on Yellow Hammer Radio. A short break, we’re right back for this Friday edition.
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