The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Tanya Flanagan 0:19
Good morning and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tanya Flanagan, I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me here on the scoop, where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics and so much more. We promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started. Dave,

Tanya Flanagan 0:47
good morning Las Vegas, and thank you for waking up and joining me. Tanya Flanagan for another edition of the scoop right here in KU NV, 91.5 jazz and more. I want to optimize this 30 minutes this morning, because I have a very, very special guest, and I am super excited to have Congressman Steven Horsford in the studio this morning. Good morning, Congressman,

Steven Horsford 1:07
good morning. It's a delight to be with you and to be on the scoop.

Tanya Flanagan 1:11
Well, thank you. And I'm super excited when the show starts to come on. It always makes me smile. That lead in intro is just sort of bright and cheerful, and we're just sunshine. I like that about it, and it makes me really excited to be here. But I've always wanted to welcome you to the studio. It just hadn't always been the right time. There are different rules and regulations and reasons why we can or cannot have a person of your caliber and the studio, and so I am excited to have you here, and especially during a very crucial time in our country for a very important conversation. So thank you for the work that you do and the sacrifice that you make in that capacity to represent District Four. You are my congressman. So thank you.

Steven Horsford 1:56
I'm honored to do it. I'm honored to serve the fourth district, the people of the district. It's one of the largest congressional districts in the country, 50,000 square miles throughout the state of Nevada, North Las Vegas and the northwest part of Las Vegas, the historic west side, but also everything from Nellis Air Force Base to Creech Air Force Base and then central rural Nevada. So we go out to Pahrump and Tonopah and Hawthorne out to pioch and everywhere in between. So very honored to be here with you, and very interesting and challenging times, to say the least. But definitely wanted to have this opportunity to have the conversation. Thank

Tanya Flanagan 2:39
you, and thank you for the time today, our country is in kind of perilous times. I mean, we have not lost hope. We will never lose hope as a body of people, and as long as humanity, there's a thread of humanity that continues to weave its way through each one of us, connecting us. But I wanted to talk to you about where the government is on this Sunday morning, and we're in a shut down state, and each one of us either has a family member, maybe we are that person ourselves, or we know someone who is a federal employee, affected by the decisions being made. And so that's what we're talking about. And I think one of the questions is, what can what can the government do? What can you do? What can you not do? We hear about continuing resolution to create temporary appropriations until maybe tax credits and whatnot can be dealt with later. Why can't you do it?

Steven Horsford 3:36
Well, we can, we can. And I agree with nine and 10 Americans who agree that both parties really, quite frankly, have to come together and do what is necessary to open the government we're going into on this Sunday morning, what is now the start of week three of a government shutdown the first two weeks, unfortunately, the Republicans, who do control the House in the Senate, canceled votes in the house, so the House of Representatives has not been open in order to come to the table and to negotiate and compromise. How did we get here. This is over what is called a continuing resolution. It's really a budget, and sadly, it's only a budget through the end of November, before Thanksgiving, because the overall appropriations, there are 13 that fund the federal government, have not been passed through Congress by either the House or the Senate, and because of that, it's requiring this temporary budget measure to be passed. The issue is at the same time that there's not bipartisan agreement on the budget. There is this looming health care crisis that's out there with the enhanced premium tax credits, which here in Nevada, that's 104,000 people who are who receive their health care through Nevada Health Link and the marketplace, on top of cuts to Medicaid, another 200,000 people on top of the cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program, and taken together, those cuts, as well as impacts to Medicare, is really creating a lot of uncertainty for a lot of families when it comes to the largest expense outside of housing that families have to cover every month is the cost of health care, whether it's in co pays premiums, covering prescription drugs. We all have our different issues and backgrounds with health care, and whether you are a direct recipient of Medicaid or this enhanced premium tax credit or not. If these cuts go into effect the way they're proposed, it's going to affect everyone, because it affects our entire health care system here in Nevada and all over the country.

Tanya Flanagan 6:14
Congressman, we are in October. So in October, on the show, I always talk about breast cancer, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but we have so many people that aren't just breast cancer patients or just cancer patients, they are needing dialysis, just everything you talked about, three, five is it? Is that? Are we looking at 500,000 Nevada families? Are we looking at every Nevada family that would be affected in the healthcare space by what could happen if we do not get some resolution to what's going on in Washington?

Steven Horsford 6:50
Well, I believe everyone is will be affected, because everyone is touched by a healthcare system that is affected. When you make a trillion dollar cut to health care, you can't take a health a trillion dollars out of the health care system and not expect it to have reverberations and affecting everyone. And here's an example. You talked about breast cancer, okay, you know one of the areas that it's being cut is cancer research and the National Institutes of Health, on top of the cuts to Medicaid, on top of the cuts to the marketplace. I just talked to a group of constituents who have multiple sclerosis, who are on clinical trials, who are worried that if these cuts go into effect, the very treatment that they've been receiving that has extended their life, and the hope that they will get a cure vanishes. People who have diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, asthma, everyone knows someone, if you're not inflicted yourself with some type of health issue, and most, more than half of the people of the Fourth Congressional District are $500 away from an emergency that will cause them to go bankrupt. $500 Wow. And a medical emergency could very well be that thing that puts them over $500 that they don't have it extra in their savings. And again, whether that's not being able to see a doctor, whether that's having to pay the full cost of a prescription because you don't have coverage, whether that's you're just over the threshold to qualify for Medicaid, but your job isn't giving you the hours, and so you're not covered by your employer's insurance. Now look, we have a lot of things we need to be doing to improve our health care system. I'm not here to defend every part of our health care system, but what we can't do is make it harder for people and more expensive for people at a time when they're already struggling to get by,

Tanya Flanagan 9:06
because this economy that we are in right now, when we talk about economy, we talk about health care, we talk about food, we talk about housing. So housing, food, health are, like to me, three of the most basic things that everyone needs right? And if you don't have good health, you don't have anything. But if you can't, if you don't have food, you don't you're hungry, if you don't have anywhere to live. So we're looking at our food assistance programs too. Let's talk about that, and then maybe we can talk about housing, because I do want to talk

Steven Horsford 9:38
a little 100 billion dollar cut to the Nutrition Assistance Program, which primarily provides meals to needy children, to the disabled and the seniors. We have over 2000 seniors in Clark County who are on a waiting list for the Meals on Wheels program and. And there, in addition to the cuts that I just went over to healthcare, there's another $300 billion cuts to the nutrition assistance program. And then I just was notified that the women in Children program WIC will run out of money at the end of the month here in the state of Nevada, and our tribal governments, which received a direct appropriation have already run out of dollars. So we're talking about some of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities who are struggling, as you said, in this economy, and who were struggling before this economy, quite frankly, and now this is just making it harder for them.

Tanya Flanagan 10:40
I don't know if you can speculate on the why, because when someone does something, so when the folks across the aisle and the leader in charge, the head of the party, of the folks across the aisle, when they begin to put these things in place, if everything is being taken away. What do they feel they're giving

Steven Horsford 11:03
so I can answer. So because I'm a member of the Ways and Means Committee that dealt with the hearings on the they call it the one big, beautiful bill. I call it a betrayal of a bill that's hurting American families and middle class workers. So here was the choice. The choice was made to pass a bill to give tax credits to the very wealthy, to the super rich, to Jeff Bezos and, you know, Elon Musk's and billionaires. They, you know they are, they are verifiable billionaires and big corporations, those tax breaks were not paid for, meaning they didn't come up with a mechanism to pay for them, which added three and a half trillion dollars to the federal debt. We're already over 37 trillion. They just added another three and a half trillion to it, and then to try to justify some of their largesse to these tax breaks, the massive tax breaks to the ultra wealthy. They were like, well, we have to make cuts to these programs. They framed it in, we're going after waste, fraud and abuse. But the reality is, they're real people that are behind this. And I'm I'm talking about US citizens, people who are legally permissible to be here, people who have who are working, 97% of people who are on Medicaid, who are working. And so the choice was, give the tax breaks, massive tax breaks to the very wealthy. Don't pay for them, add more money to the federal debt, but then cut a trillion dollars in health care, $300 billion in nutrition assistance Head Start, and a whole lot of other programs that are also part of their scheme, and we're starting to see the effects of it. That was a choice. I used to actually say to my colleagues, just pass the bill to give the tax breaks to the wealthy. Why do you have to take health care away from people? At the same time, it was a choice. Now, to be clear, these cuts to health care affect all of us. It's not about a party, not about blue states or red states, not about rural America or urban cities. This is everyone's healthcare. I have two rural hospitals in Nevada that will close. I have in Pahrump, we do not have a birthing center in Pahrump, a rural community in Nye County, and those families who are expecting to give birth, have to travel over an hour to see an OB GYN specialist because they're inadequate services. In rural Nevada, I have other parts of my district where people already have to travel three and four hours to see a healthcare provider because there's not one close by. And here in Las Vegas and in North Las Vegas, I can't talk to a healthcare provider or Nourse who isn't preparing to reduce services to eliminate clinical care UMC, which is our only trauma, one hospital In the state of Nevada is preparing for cutbacks because they can't balance their budget based on these cuts that are now the law and are part of this debate with the government shutdown right now. So what we're trying to do, we've asked for three things, to cancel the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, to lower the cost on health care, on housing, on child care, on groceries, whether it's by rolling back some of these tariffs or having a more strategic approach to what we're doing with our trading partners and three to save health care, nothing more, nothing less. That's what's on the table, and that's what we're trying to get. For this administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to understand, and when they do, we will have the votes to reopen the government and to protect people and their health care.

Tanya Flanagan 15:14
I want to talk about how long you think that might take it. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but that's a lineup that sounds great, not necessarily easy to achieve, because we wouldn't be at the impasse that we're at right now. But you also mentioned the word tariffs, which is this new word, not a new thing, but a new word that's like a household conversation. It's every at every conference I go to. It's part of every conversation. It's in every news article,

Steven Horsford 15:47
because they're taxes, because they're taxes that American people pay, not some foreign government and

Tanya Flanagan 15:53
farmers. You know, there was an article the other day about the soybean situation in Argentina and China, the $12 million and now our farm, American farmers can't afford the tariffs on them to send it where they would export it to. Tariffs are not it? And then the President says, well, we'll have to take some of the money from the tariffs to alleviate some of the burden on the farmers. Money from what tariffs? What money from the tariffs are you going to was my question. Am I misunderstanding something? Because my thought process was, what money from the tariffs are you going to take to offer to the farmers to alleviate some of the burdens on them? If, on either side, no one wants to do the trading deal to pay the tariffs, to create the money that you would take to alleviate the frustration,

Steven Horsford 16:45
and the President just called on for 100% tariff on China, which to be clear, tariffs are a tool that, when used strategically, can protect us jobs, US businesses, particularly small businesses. And I'm not against utilizing the tool of a tariff in strategic ways. What we're currently experiencing with this administration is a lack of a strategy, quite frankly, when it comes in, comes to trade policy, and a very erratic one that is creating economic uncertainty for our US, economy for small businesses, for our farmers, and now the president is, quite frankly, feeling the pain of these erratic trade policies and tariff policies to where he's now proposing a bailout of US farmers. But the thing is, you're talking about taking it from tariffs that were paid in large part by US consumers, because we're the engine of a global economy. We're the we're the buyers of things everywhere, and so when those tariffs get charged to products and goods that we buy, they pass that tariff on to us.

Tanya Flanagan 18:01
So very true. I mean, I'm sure consumers are seeing that. You'll see on some sites when you go on to look for something that you need. My

Steven Horsford 18:07
daughter talked to me about this. She tried to buy a dress, and she said, Dave, but

Tanya Flanagan 18:11
it shows you the tariff that's being added to the to the purchase. And you're like, because the companies are feeling this, need to be transparent, right? Well, let me make a statement by being transparent on my website that here's the tariff, but I don't want to digress down. I mean, there's so much to talk about

Steven Horsford 18:33
this. It does, but the cost of health care, it's driving up the cost of pharmaceuticals. It's driving up the cost of medical supplies, everything, the supplies we need to build housing, everything. Let's talk about housing. Let's talk about housing.

Tanya Flanagan 18:49
The shutdown and what it's doing to housing to cost, or just what's going on with housing in general, in our country, it's I was in a talk the other week, the median price of a house in Nevada, the hourly wage you'd have to earn to be able to afford it, $57.22 a two household income may not be earning that much money, which means they can't afford the house at the median price Right now,

Steven Horsford 19:16
50% of my constituents in District Four spend more than 35% and some of them spend closer to 50% of their monthly budget on rent. And that is not sustainable. When you add the cost of health care, the cost of child care, which is about 20% the cost of groceries that are going up the cost of energy. It's why the middle class is feeling like they're working harder and harder and not getting anywhere. And in fact, they're falling behind in Southern Nevada and North Las Vegas in particular. As you know, we have a real problem with these corporate speculation. Owners that are really hedge funds outside of our state, one that's based in Texas and another one that's based in New York, that are the largest residential property owners here in our community. Dave come in, they bought these price these properties up paid cash. They've priced out veterans, first time home buyers, families who are trying to move to a larger home. And even when they move the houses to the rental market, they charge higher rents. They don't maintain the properties at the same level which affects everybody else's property, and they even evict people at a higher rate. And what's even worse, assuming woman, is that they actually target certain communities, meaning they're not buying these homes up in the suburbs. They're buying them in largely middle class neighborhoods, predominantly black and predominantly Latino and predominantly women who are the head of household in those communities. That's in part why I've developed a Housing Strategy at the federal level to crack down on these corporate speculators to increase transparency for renters, and to really address the root causes of these problems so that we can restore the American Dream. Home ownership should be attainable. Should be attainable, and it's how you build wealth for a family. It's how you save up enough to start a business or to put your kid through college, or to take a vacation at the end of the year. And now, not only is it not attainable to have a home, whether or not you can even afford the home, is causing you to be what they call it home poor. You got a home, but you can't really afford to live in it.

Tanya Flanagan 22:01
House for what we used to call house for it. And I'm glad you went down the path, because I wanted to not we're getting towards the end of the show talk about some of the solutions that are out there. But I also want to make sure any spaces that you want people to be able to access information, websites, social media, anything of that nature that you'd like to share, I like to make sure we do that at a point where it doesn't rush out like it's coming from a fire hose.

Steven Horsford 22:25
Look, I love these conversations, and what I don't want to leave people with is just the problem and not the hope. There are solutions, there are ideas, and I'm always open to hear other ways to improve on our policy, and the best way to do that, quite frankly, is to listen, to learn from constituents, and to lift up their priorities. And so one of the ways that people can do that is by visiting our website@horsford.house.gov there's updated information on everything from health care to housing to our priorities around workforce development and training, but also there's a portal where you can share your story. And right now, when families and workers who are being affected by the shutdown are there's a lot of anxiety, yes, and sometimes the best way to get through this anxiety is to share with others and to know that you're in community with others, so that you're not alone. And so one of the things we've done is created a portal for people to share their story on our website@horsford.house.gov you can also visit any one of our social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, at and that's at rep Horsford. At rep Horsford, and you can always give me a call to my district office at 702-963-9360,

Tanya Flanagan 23:56
go ahead and share it one more time, just so people were getting that pinned ready. They're

Steven Horsford 24:00
ready. My website is horseford.house.gov, and you can also go to any of our social media platforms. And it's at rep Horsford, R, E, P, H, O, R, S, F, O, R, D, and our district office, where our team is always available to take your calls, is 702-963-9360,

Tanya Flanagan 24:24
thank you. We are getting into the last few minutes of the show, but what I wanted to talk about really briefly, if we can get it in, with regard to the government shutdown, because there's pockets of people, veterans, seniors, families, single moms. It's different government work with federal workers, right? Is there a space is the is information available that targets the populations, like, if I went to XYZ website, I can see what it says about government, federal workers, or passports or um. The airport travel like just those, those basic things that people do every day that are affected by the government not being open.

Steven Horsford 25:10
Yes, so I have a special page on my website dealing specifically with the shutdown. Who's affected, from our TSA workers and our air traffic controllers to the folks over at Hoover Dam as well as our national parks. But we also have the VA hospital in our district the Southern Nevada VA, which healthcare services for the VA are not affected. We pre fund the VA health what is affected are the claim side, where people could see delay and being able to submit claims or get calls back, because those workers are furloughed and they may not have all of their services. So yes, in every section on the page, it says, is this is your is my Medicare check affected? Is my Social Security check affected? No, you will still receive your payment if there's an error and you need to talk to someone that's where you may experience an impact, you can call my office, and we can work through that issue with you to the extent possible, but we do up date that on a regular basis, based on the questions that we're getting. And look, the last government shutdown lasted 35 days. It unfortunately was in 2019 when Donald Trump was the President and Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. Here we are, all these years, again, again, but in a we that also cost the economy $8 billion and whether it's our military that are affected and their family, we're trying right now to push for them to be paid. Today was paid the pay period for a lot of our federal workers, some of them will not receive their full pay, and that is a huge hardship. I just met with a group of TSA workers who still have to go to work, but were not paid a full salary, but yet, they still have cost for their rent. They still have to find places for their kids, for child care. One of them shared the fact that their mom has cancer and they're caring for their mom at the same time as their child, and she's like, I got to go to work because ultimately I have to get paid. So one is, thank you to our federal workers and those who provide civil service. Because of them, we are able to make sure constituents receive the benefits that they are entitled to from their government. I do say this often, I actually don't work for the federal government. I work for 750,000 people here in Nevada who elect me to do a job, and that is to make sure that their federal government is accountable to them. And we're going to continue to do that. We got to get it reopened, and that starts with Speaker Johnson calling the Congress back into session so that we can do our job of coming together, working together, finding a compromise, and pushing a bipartisan approach that meets the needs of people while saving health care, lowering the cost and canceling the cuts.

Tanya Flanagan 28:20
And there's no one group of people who are affected by this. We are all affected. And I thank you for everything that you are doing to try to find solutions, to push for solutions. Thank you for spending some time here on there's so much that we could folks talk about and address we are at the end of the show. Just want to say thank you for stopping by. I hope to have you back again at some point to talk about a variety of things. Hopefully things will be better by then.

Steven Horsford 28:53
Will always be better. And as we say, This too shall pass. So let's continue to work together. My motto right now is, let's show up. Let's stand up, let's speak up, and let's continue to save healthcare, because it's worth fighting for

Tanya Flanagan 29:08
absolutely folks, thank you for tuning in to another edition of the scoop with me. Tonya Flanagan, it's been a pleasure to have Congressman Steven Horsford representing District Four of the state of Nevada on the show today. Stay safe, stay well, and stay in the fight until next time. I want to thank you for tuning into the scoop with me. Tonya Flanagan, and I want to invite you to get social with me. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle, T, a n, y, A F, l, a n, a G, A N. You can also find me on Instagram at Tonya almonds Flanagan, and if you have a thought, an opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tonya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in. Stay safe and have a great week. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai