On this “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” broadcast, moderated by Margaret Brennan:
- Reps. Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, and Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska
- Army Secretary Dan Driscoll
- Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana
- Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire
Click here to browse full transcripts from 2025 of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m Margaret Brennan in Washington.
And this week on Face the Nation: The shutdown is over, but the problems that led to the crisis persist, and politicians are scrambling to make prices affordable for Americans.
Affordability is the new buzzword in Washington, and President Trump is testing ideas to help consumers, including potential tariff dividends and 50-year mortgages. Those may be a tough sell, but Mr. Trump did move to help consumers by rolling back tariffs on some food imports, like bananas, beef and tomatoes.
(Begin VT)
DONALD TRUMP (President of the United States): There’s been a little bit of a rollback with some foods, like coffee as an example, where the prices of coffee were a little bit high. Now they will be on the low side in a very short period of time.
In terms of affordability, it’s not a good word for the Democrats. It’s a good word for us, because our prices are much lower and will soon be much, much lower.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: One price spike that can’t be fixed by easing tariffs, health care premiums, especially for those covered under Obamacare.
We will look for solutions for that fix and more with two members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, New York Democrat Tom Suozzi and Nebraska Republican Don Bacon, along with Dr. and Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
And as we move into a new era of warfare, what does our military need for readiness? We will talk with the secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll.
It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.
Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.
Although we’re all trying to put the pain of the shutdown behind us, the 43-day standoff on Capitol Hill exposed and amplified the need to address the rising cost of health care premiums. And our CBS News polling out today shows that two-thirds of Americans think their premiums will increase in the coming months.
We begin today with two members of the so-called House Problem Solvers Caucus, New York Democrat Tom Suozzi and Nebraska Republican Don Bacon.
Good morning. Good to have you here in a bipartisan conversation. You both recognize there’s a problem here.
Congressman Bacon, let me start with you.
One out of every five dollars in this country that is spent goes to health care. We know these COVID era tax credit subsidies for Obamacare will go away at the end of the month. That’s going to hit about 22 of the 24 million Americans who use that program. What can you do in the next six weeks to make costs go down in January?
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON (R-Nebraska): Well, we need a temporary extension of these tax credits to keep these prices down.
Republicans nor Democrats want to see premiums skyrocket. And they will if these expire with nothing in its place. That’s why I worked with Tom Suozzi and other Democrats and Republicans to find a compromise. We just don’t want to do a clean extension. Most Republicans don’t anyway.
So we think there needs to be some caps on income, and we want to assure all these credits go directly to lowering people’s premiums. And, right now, about a third of the money doesn’t make it to the premiums.
So those are some reforms that we would like to see. And if we can get those accomplished, then we can extend these tax credits and keep these – the prices lower. But we do need a longer-term fix. The Affordable Care Act is unaffordable. And I think we need to have this extension to give us time to work on something bigger and deeper and that will help lower costs overall.
But I’m proud to work with Tom Suozzi on this. And I appreciate his partnership.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman Suozzi, I understand this is a two-year proposed extension of those enhanced premium tax credits and an income cap that phases out for those making between $200,000 to $400,000.
But when you look at the breakdown, though, that’s a pretty small portion of the overall recipients of the tax credits. It’s like less than 10 percent. So what does this accomplish? How does this make it more affordable and fair?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI (D-New York): Well, it helps everybody else who makes under $200,000 dramatically.
And the number one concern people have in America is affordability. And health care affordability is right at the top of the list.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How much more affordable?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: So we need to do something to extend these premium tax credits.
It’ll save people thousands and thousands of dollars, literally $1,000 a month for some people. So it’ll be dramatically more affordable. The people who make above $400,000 are the teeny little percentage of people that are not – a very small group of people that would benefit from the existing tax credits.
Most of the people are below $200,000. That $200,000 to $400,000 is a way to taper it off, so there’s not a cliff.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And how much Democratic support do you have for this at this point?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: I think that Democrats are going to strongly back the idea of extending premium tax credits, so that we can keep people’s insurance affordable.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Even with these caps?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: So, we have got to come up with this compromise and – even with the caps, yes..
People – Democrats have always said that they want to direct the policy towards lower- and middle-income folks. People making under $400,000 a year is our – our bread-and-butter issues, that we want to try and make things affordable for those folks.
So – and that will be like literally 95 percent, 99 percent of the people that are affected right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman Bacon, sorry. Go ahead.
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: I was going to say, and Republicans, we pushed back on the thought of someone earning $600,000 getting all these tax credits.
So when I listened to the Speaker – or Leader Thune, that was one of his big concerns on these. So that’s why I wanted to ensure that we had this in our framework.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But a tweak with a not permanent, just a two-year extension. Republicans haven’t really been proposing a lot of alternative Obamacare options here.
Do you think the entire system needs to be rebooted? And when will we see that plan?
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: Well, I do think Republicans and Democrats are going to have to sit down at the table and figure out, what can we really do besides just throw more money at this?
Right now, the premiums are just going up so much faster than inflation. It’s unsustainable. And – but we can’t do a Republican-only fix. It’s not going to work. You’re not going to get 60 votes in the Senate to do it.
And I know some folks propose that back in Congress: Let’s go up with our plan. Well, it can’t just be a Republican plan if we want to pass something. So we got to sit down with Democrats and figure out, what can we do? And there’s some good ideas out there.
So, for example, I have heard, if we can directly subsidize high-risk people and put them in a separate pool and just lower their premiums through subsidies, and then the – let’s call it the healthier folks, their premiums are going to go down significantly if we do that.
So there’s different concepts that we can do to – that can have an impact. But it’s going to have to be a bipartisan way forward. It’s not going to be a Republican-only bill, because you will never get it passed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
Congressman Suozzi, I mean, Aetna pulled out…
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: … of the Obamacare marketplace this year after CVS said they expected to lose as much as $400 million. Other big insurance companies have been pulling out.
If insurance companies themselves are having problems with Obamacare, do Democrats need to be more open to broader reforms of the Affordable Care Act?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: Yes, we absolutely should be looking at any kind of reform. I want to mend it, not end it.
You know that over the past decade that there have been over 70 attempts, mainly by the Republicans, not guys like Don Bacon, who’s a very reasonable guy, to try and get rid of Obamacare altogether. We think that’s a terrible idea.
But if people want to try and make it a better system to make health care more affordable in America and to get health care to more people, we should be doing that. That’s what the people want. That’s what reasonable people in Congress want. We should be working together to try and expand health care coverage, lower prices for everybody, and make health care more effective and less expensive for people.
Now, that’s not going to happen with everybody yelling and screaming at each other. Everybody who says “Why don’t you just?” doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. You cannot solve complicated problems in an environment of fear and anger. You need reasonable people to sit down and talk to each other and say, I think this, well, I think that…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: … and then work your way towards finding compromise. Very hard to do in this toxic environment.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: People like Don Bacon and other members of the Problem Solvers Caucus want to do that type of thing.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. Well, but private health care costs are also going up.
But on this topic of toxic environments here, Congressman Suozzi, Democrats, who won elections just a few days ago, credited their wins to this affordability issue and the message focused on that. Can you explain the focus this past week in the House by Democrats on the Jeffrey Epstein files?
Is this a tactic to distract from the failure to extract health care changes or is there something else going on here? I mean, does the speaker putting it to a vote end this issue?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: I think it’s a combination of factors, of people shining their lights on the most – the hot topic at the time.
Jeffrey Epstein, of course, is an important topic. I’m sure I will vote to release his files, but that’s not my priority.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: My priority is to focus on the things that the American people care about, affordability, immigration, taxes, crime, and health care. That’s what people are fighting about. That’s what they’re concerned about. That’s what we should be focused on in Congress.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Congressman Bacon, does the speaker putting this to a vote end the Epstein issue and get you back onto health care? I mean, the speaker said this is all a political exercise. Certainly, the families of the victims don’t think it is.
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: I think the speaker realizes the train has left the station on this. Let’s rip the Band-Aid off and get it done.
And I wish the president realized that. The more the White House pushes back on this, it’s – it just looks bad, right? I mean, it was – the attorney general came out and said, all these white binders, we’re going to release all this information, and then a month later said, oh, no, we’re not.
So it’s been a P.R. blunder from the beginning. And I think the speaker is right. This is going to happen, so let’s get it done and vote on it. And we got to realize it still has to go to the Senate. Then it has to go to the president for signature.
Meanwhile, our Oversight Committee is releasing thousands and thousands of pages of evidence concerning Epstein. So, for example, like 3,000 pages was released late last week. So the Oversight Committee, Republicans and Democrats, are putting out the data. They’re putting out subpoenas.
I think it’s already working, but, like Tom, when this comes on the floor, I’m going to vote yes on it. I want transparency.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well…
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: We want to protect the victims.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: But everything else should just be – should be open.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You also, Congressman Bacon, run the Cyber Subcommittee. I want to ask you about something significant this past week, that A.I. firm Anthropic said that Chinese state-sponsored hackers used their technology to automate break-ins and carry out the first cyber espionage operation largely using A.I.
It hit like 30 different companies. What can you tell us about the scope and the targets of this attack?
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: I can’t say much more than what was just released, other than I can say this.
China has replaced Russia as most formidable cyber threat. They have much higher technology. They are using A.I., which gives you a lot more capability in finding weaknesses in your adversaries’ cyber defenses.
What concerns me more than anything, while China is attacking us every single day and Russia, we have had no commander in charge of Cyber Command for over eight months. The White House or the president fired the Cyber Command commander over eight months ago and has not replaced him.
Also, the top two positions at the National Security Agency, the top two are vacant for over eight months. And we have been cutting CISA, which is the agency that protects our private sector, our businesses, our infrastructure, and we have cut it by about a third.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: And so our cyber capabilities are going backwards. We don’t – we’re rudderless in a time where China is attacking us every day. And that’s something that really concerns me.
And I have been pushing the White House to deal with this and to confront the cyber threat.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. Well, we will continue following that important story.
Congressmen, thank you for trying to be problem solvers with us today.
REPRESENTATIVE DON BACON: Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Face the Nation will be back in a minute. Stay with us.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to turn now to some of the challenges faced by the U.S. military.
And we’re joined by the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.
Good morning. Thank you for being here.
DANIEL DRISCOLL (U.S. Secretary of the Army): Thank you so much for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: A lot to get to with you.
Just quickly on news of day, the president did say he sort of made up his mind on Venezuela. I know this is the Marines, this is the Navy that are deployed. But does the Venezuelan army pose any kind of threat to the U.S. if action is taken?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: I think that the president and secretary of war have spent a lot of time thinking about, what is the best thing they can do for the American people?
And I can speak from the Army’s perspective, which is, we have a lot of training in that part of the world. We’re reactivating our jungle school in Panama. We would be ready to act on whatever the president and secwar needed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But no orders beyond these exercises at this point?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: I – we don’t talk about those kinds of things, but we would be ready if asked.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. OK.
I do want to ask you about what has been happening with this shutdown. The government’s now funded through January 30. You did get from Congress full- year funding for Veterans Affairs and military construction, a few other measures in this short-term bill.
But in – we have seen the shutdown hit military bases and hit military families, costly, $400 million or more in emergency loans from USAA. How do you insulate the force so that the next shutdown doesn’t hit these families the way it did this time?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: I think the shutdown is indicative of one of the bigger problems that we have a nation have had.
And so if you look back for the last 30 or 40 years, one of the reasons we’ve had such bad outcomes, when we spend the American taxpayers’ hard- earned dollars, and we go buy things that our soldiers will need to fight, when we build things where our soldiers and their families will live, we are such a bad customer, because when you’re on the other side of the deal with us and you have to deal with shutdowns – I mean, this shutdown will take months and months for us to get back and going on these projects.
And this is part of the calcification of our system that, under President Trump, we are uniquely able to try to go after a lot of these things and actually get our Army and their families living in better areas, and get our soldiers ready for the modern fight. And the shutdown does not help.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about the modern fight.
Tom Cotton, who is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told our Olivia Gazis here at CBS that the threat to military sites and large civilian gatherings is severe and growing. He cited gaps in law enforcement authorities. Some of them lapsed during the shutdown, I understand.
And he’s talking about trying to close enforcement gaps when it comes to drones. What authorizations do you need?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: So, under Secretary of War Hegseth, the United States Army has been put in charge of the counterdrone threat for the Pentagon.
And then we are working hand in fist – or hand in glove with the broader law enforcement agencies. We just last week had a meeting right outside the White House, where what we are trying to do, because this problem is different from nearly anything we’ve faced in a long time. It is a flying IED.
And so this IED…
MARGARET BRENNAN: IED, the explosive.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: IED, improvised explosive device. They’re cheap. You can 3-D print them at home, and they cross borders incredibly quickly.
And so what you basically need is a digital layer to exchange information and exchange sensing and allow the closest person on the ground or the closest effector on the ground to be able to take out a drone. And Senator Cotton is right. I mean, this is the threat of humanity’s lifetime.
What’s occurring in Ukraine, what’s happening in Russia, if you look at the speed and scale of the devastation that can come from drones, we as a federal government have got to lead on it. But I’m really optimistic. This is actually something we are doing right. We are partnering with both federal law enforcement.
In a couple of weeks, we’re having the Sheriff’s Association come. We were just at the NYPD. We’re including all of the different law enforcement agencies, thinking about the borders and the ports and the upcoming NFL games and Olympics and World Cup.
Like, this is something we as a nation can lead on. And so, under President Trump’s leadership, we are moving fast at this problem.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And this is about radar jamming of drones to take them out, not exploding them?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: So you – the problem with the drone fight is, you need all sorts of layered defense. One solution does not work. If you just try to jam them, if you look at what’s happening in Ukraine, people have started to hardwire drones.
And so you can’t do R.F. jamming on a hardwired drone. And so there are things like net guns that are coming back. We’re using all sorts of solutions and tools, and it makes it even more complicated when you’re by an airport and you’re doing it in your own homeland. You just have different authorities.
And so a lot of this is a human problem of communication, command and control and having a layered set of solutions that you can use for any given problem.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you’re talking about here at the homeland, things like the U.S. hosting the Olympics, the World Cup, even just the Super Bowl games that are coming up.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Should there be restrictions in this country on who is able to own and operate drones?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: I’m pretty optimistic that we will be able to figure out a solution where we will know what is in the sky at every moment across our country all at once.
And so if you think of the president’s…
MARGARET BRENNAN: But we’re not there yet.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: We’re not there yet.
But under the president’s Golden Dome, I would think about this like a golden mini dome, where, if you took one of the sites for the World Cup, we are heavily focused on being able to see everything in the area, have all of the interceptors we will need, have all of the training for all of the different forces that will have to be able to act.
And so to your specific question, I think we are trying to design a system so that Americans are able to fly drones, so that commercial companies like Amazon – like, the future of delivery, in a lot of ways, is commercial drones. And so we will just have to deconflict the skies, working with the FAA.
But this is a big topic. I check in with Secretary of War Hegseth on this almost weekly.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So when we last saw the president of Ukraine, Zelenskyy, at the White House, he brought up to President Trump, on camera, we’ve got great drones we want to sell to the United States or provide to the United States.
You referred to Ukraine as the only Silicon Valley of warfare right now. What do you mean by that? Are they really ahead of the United States on innovation?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: I think, if you look at what’s happening, Operation Spider’s Web in Russia, the Ukrainians used probably a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of drones and took out almost $10 billion worth of equipment in Russia.
And Russia’s in that fight. And so I think what is amazing about our country is, we are able to recognize where we need to innovate quickly. And what we’re doing for drones, completely differently, I think, than we have done as an army in probably 50 or 60 years, is, we are welcoming in American industry.
So we just did an A.I. war game where we invited 15 of the top CEOs in the nation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: They were worth probably $18 trillion in enterprise value. And we said, how do you – can you please help us? What do you have in your tech innovation pipeline to help us with data in contested environments? How do we do logistics 6,000 miles away if we’re facing an enemy who’s trying to contest us?
And we are working with them, no joke, daily to basically take their innovation and apply it to this problem.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But what I heard you saying there is, you look at the battlefield in Ukraine as kind of like a test lab for where warfare is going.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: Yes. Yes. Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Can you convince some of your fellow Republicans that there is value in that fight, in terms of, you know, those who are so isolationist they don’t want to be involved in Ukraine, even financially?
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: Well, I don’t think I have talked to a single person who has said we shouldn’t be learning from what’s occurring in Ukraine. All of our equipment, all of the exquisite features we will need are definitionally going to come – the data set that the Ukrainians are getting for their generative A.I. models of when they have drones and they’re flying and they’re learning and they’re doing counterdrone, and they’re taking all of this information from their sensors and trying to figure out what’s going on.
There’s not a single person I know that doesn’t think that is an incredible treasure trove of information for future warfare. I think a lot of the questions are, how do we actually execute on the president’s agenda of peace in that part of the world?
Where – I have not been to the White House where it has not come up that we just want peace, so that the American industrial base can thrive everywhere.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: And we have to focus on that part of the world unnecessarily right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you’re at the Department of War.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you announced that the Army wants to buy a million drones over the next two to three years. Navy, Marines, Air Force, they will obviously be very involved in any war in the Pacific, but you’ve got to defend those American bases.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So how do you think of the threat from China there? Because I have read that you think they’re ahead of America.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: So we’re working on something with Congress called SkyFoundry.
And basically the idea is to, again, do it right from the beginning. What the Army has historically gotten wrong in the last couple of decades is, we’re either all in or all out, meaning we either use our organic industrial base and we make the drones ourselves, or we say, this is too complicated for us, we’re going to have private industry do it.
We are not doing that with drones, because, if you look at – Ukraine is manufacturing four million a year. China, I think, is at 12 to 14 million drones a year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Wow.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: And we as a nation will have to have our private sector able to help us.
And so what we are going to do is, we are going to invest in things like sensors and brushless motors and circuit boards and a lot of the components that are really hard for the private sector to get right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY DANIEL DRISCOLL: The United States Army is going to build those on our bases and empower the private sector to purchase from us. And so we will make drones, our private partners will make drones, and we will catch up and surpass the Chinese incredibly quickly.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary, thank you for your time.
And I do want to make the point that you are taking questions. And that is unusual these days, since the Pentagon has restricted access to reporters. And we think it’s important here that the American people hear about their own security as well as the military’s three million or more employees. So thank you.
We’ll be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Trump administration has launched another immigration enforcement operation, this time in Charlotte, North Carolina, a blue city with one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the country.
The operation, called Charlotte’s Web by the Department of Homeland Security, started Saturday. Federal agents from the CBP, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, have been seen making arrests, questioning gardeners, patrolling a Home Depot parking lot, and smashing windows.
Trump administration officials tell our immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez that New Orleans is the next Border Patrol operation planned for this month.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to “FACE THE NATION.”
On Friday, we spoke with the chairman of one of the Senate committees responsible for crafting health care legislation. Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, who is also a doctor.
We began by showing him what the president is thinking of for a health care fix.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (President Of The United States): I’m calling today for insurance companies not to be paid, but for the money, this massive amount of money, to be paid directly to the people of our country, so that they can buy their own health care, which will be far better and far less expensive than the disaster known as Obamacare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARGARET BRENNAN: So are you, Senator, coordinating with the White House on this proposal?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): So, we’re absolutely in communication with the White House and with the administration, because there’s a lot of stuff that you have to work out to do that.
But let me give a little meat on the bones of what the president’s speaking about. If you look at an Obamacare policy now, there’s a $6,000 deductible. Democrats are fighting to lower the premiums. You lower a premium on something which has a $6,000 deductible, it’s basically a catastrophic policy.
Now, I like to speak to the cost of being insured, not just the cost of the health insurance. The president is proposing that we take the $26 billion that would be going to insurance companies if we just do a straight out extension. And, by the way, 20 percent of that $26 billion, 20 percent will go for profit and administration overhead. Give it directly to the American people in an account in which 100 percent of the money is used for them to purchase health care on their own terms.
Now – now, that makes them an informed consumer. It also helps address the need to have coverage for that deductible. And if they get that policy with a higher deductible, they can actually lower their premium. It’s a sweet spot. Lower premiums help with the deductible, making the patience the informed consumer. The president and I are united. We should all be united about that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the president’ economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, was on this program last Sunday. He said the president was just brainstorming, things aren’t formally put together among Republica senators yet.
But I just want to clarify what you are coordinating with the president on here because, is it to buy your own insurance policy which is kind of complicated, or is it, to use this flexible spending account you’ve talked about for related health care needs, like a – are there restrictions on how you can use that money?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: So, first, there’s two types of premium tax credits. There’s the baseline premium tax credit, which was part of Obamacare. That would stay in effect and people would still buy a policy, for example, they get in a car wreck, something disastrous, they need somebody negotiating on their behalf with all the providers. That stays the same.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: What we’re talking about, and the shutdown was over, the enhanced premium tax credits. Policies have become so expensive under Obamacare that under Joe Biden Democrats passed another subsidy on top of the first subsidy. That’s what we’re fighting about. And what Republicans are saying, and I’d like to hope Democrats will too.
Hey, wait a second, if we can have lower premiums and help people with their deductible, by giving the money directly to the patient, by the way, 20 percent doesn’t go for insurance company profit and overhead, 100 percent goes for health care, why don’t we unite Republicans and Democrats in doing that? That’s where the president is. You’ve got to figure some things out, but we’re a lot farther along than you might imagine.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, do you want it fix Obamacare, or do you want to eliminate Obamacare?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: First, you have to, like, we’re going into 2026. That’s like a month and a half from now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: And so you’ve got to work with what you have.
But on the other hand, Obamacare was a top-heavy – administratively heavy type system in which a lot of money is – a lot of money and responsibility is taken from individuals and given to insurance companies as one example.
I’m a doctor. I worked for 20 years in a hospital for the uninsured. I found that if you give the patient the power, good things happen. That’s supported, by the way, by the medical literature. If the patient is engaged in her health care and the health care of her family, she’s going to be a wise shopper, wise for her health and wise for her pocketbook. We need to have a new model. And that model is to engage the patient in her own health care. Doing so is good for her and good for us all.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK, but you said we – we need to work with what we have. That is, as you just said, you have a short amount of time before the – the end of the year. Do you think you need to extend the health care tax subsidies that are currently in place until you figure out all the rest of this complicated policy making?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Let me back you up a little bit, Margaret, to say, everybody assumes it’s easy just to extend the premium tax credits. The enhanced premium tax credits. It’s not that easy. Fifty percent of the states did not plan on them being extended, and they don’t have rates as if they were to be extended. So, that means if we pass this mid-December, they’ve got to recalculate rates in time for, wait a second, by that time we’re already into 2026. It’s not an easy matter.
And, by the way, did I mention, the policies that people want to lower their premiums for have $6,000 deductibles? It is basically something for insurance companies to make money off of, and for the individual to wade through $6,000 of debt before they can finally access it.
Now, the kind of proposal I am proposing, Republicans are, and I hope Democrats will join, is let’s take that money, and we have a mechanism to do so.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: We giving it to the patient. By giving her that money, she can choose a bronze level plan, with is to say lower premiums. So, now her premiums are down, but she has money in an account to help with the deductible. And I think we can figure that out about as easily we can figure out what we would do if we just did a straight out extension.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you want to do all this, though, by the second week of December, when the Democrats have been promised they’ll have a vote on an ACA bill of their choice?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Yes. And I tell my Democratic colleagues, first, let’s not be Democrats and Republicans. Let’s be Americans representing all of Americans. Let’s recognize what you’re doing just gives money to insurance companies. But we can do it better with lower premiums and with money in accounts to pay deductibles. And then why don’t we come together?
There’s going to be a Democratic bill and a Republican bill and both fail. Let’s do an American bill where the American people benefit.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: And let’s work together, collaborate, to lower those premiums and to help them with that first dollar coverage and the – and the deductible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, we looked and there are about 293,000 Louisianans, your state, enrolled in Obamacare currently. Six weeks from now, those expanded tax credits that you’ve been talking about will go away for individuals making $62,000 or above. Individuals making less than that amount will see their tax credits shrink.
So, are you telling those hundreds of thousands in Louisiana that that tax credit is going away no matter what? That they should make plans for higher prices?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: No. I’m telling them that we are working to make it work better for them. And they would tell you, by the way, wait a second, I got a $6,000 deductible. That does not work for me.
Margaret, I’m a doctor. I would talk to people when they’d come to see me, and they would tell me, I can’t afford that, my deductible is too high. That’s reality. And that reality is being lost in this discussion.
We’ve got to do something about sky-high deductible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Maybe you can afford the premium. You can’t afford the policy. Let’s lower the cost of having health insurance, focusing by not just on the premium, but the deductible, and I think we can do both.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, even in the private market, health care costs have gone up about six to nine percent when you look at the projections.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Oh, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But I want to ask you about your oversight rule. Secretary Kennedy has this hand-picked panel of vaccine advisers, you know them at ACIP, they’re going to meet in a few days and potentially vote on changing the hepatitis b vaccine schedule for infants. That same vaccine advisory group is also considering the safety of vaccine ingredients, like aluminum, which would impact a number of childhood shots. This should matter for American parents.
Are you comfortable with what they are about to put to a vote?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: I’m very concerned about this. As it turns out, my medical practice focused on hepatitis b. And so, we know that because of a recommended dose at birth of hepatitis b vaccine, recommended not mandated, the number of children born contracting hepatitis b at birth or shortly thereafter has decreased from about 20,000 20 years ago to like 200 now. That’s 20 – effectively a clerical error. We have decreased the incidents of chronic hepatitis b by 20,000 people over the last two decades with this kind of recommendation.
And by the way, if you’re infected at birth, you’re more likely – you’re 95 percent likely to become a chronic carrier. The vaccine is safe. It has been established. And these ingredients they’re speaking of have been shown to be safe. This is policy by people who don’t understand the epidemiology of hepatitis b or who’ve grown comfortable with the fact that we’ve been so successful with our recommendation that now the incident of hepatitis b is so low, they feel like we can rest on our laurels.
I’m a doctor. I have seen people die from vaccine-preventable disease. I want people to be healthy. I want to make America healthy. And you don’t start by stopping recommendations that have made us substantially healthier.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the president of the United States also told American women not to take Tylenol or give it to their kids. This is based on a theory that it causes autism somehow. And he also, in a social media post, the same one, called for the measles, mumps, and rubella shot to be broken up into three different shots. That was then endorsed by the acting CDC director.
Are you concerned by this kind of suggestive linkage at the top of the CDC and from the White House?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Again, I’m a doctor, and so I’m going to go where the evidence takes me. And the best evidence is a study out of Sweden with two million children that found no – no causality, no association, if you will, between taking Tylenol in pregnancy and getting autism. And, of course, that concerns me, because there’s going to be a mama out there, again, I’m a doctor, I talk to – I talk to patients in a – in a room. And her child has autism. She took Tylenol for a high fever during pregnancy and now blames herself. That’s just the way mamas think. And that’s wrong. We don’t want her to think that.
The best evidence, that there is no relationship. By the way, if you have a high fever during pregnancy, that may be a risk for autism. Now, of course, if you’re pregnant, talk to your physician before you take anything. But point being, the best evidence is that there’s no relationship between the two. And I don’t want women putting themselves on a guilt trip when the best evidence shows not.
By the way, the president has spoken out strongly in favor of immunizations in other cases. And I noted when he got his physical, he got the flu and covid shots. So, the president has demonstrated that he believes in immunization.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that’s why clarifying these statements, I think, is important, since you interpret them differently.
I wonder, do you regret your confirmation vote for Secretary Kennedy?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: I smile because every reporter asks me that. You live life forward.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, because these questions run right into a pledge that you extracted from him not to tinker with some of the structures that were set in place to have oversight of these vaccines and this process.
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Yes, so you live life forward. Again, you just do. Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day. And I’ll credit the secretary. He’s brought attention to things like ultra processed food that has frankly never received this sort of attention before. And people praise him for that. So, he and I have publicly disagreed on some matters, but I strongly agree with him on others. And so – so, that’s how I’ll answer your question.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That sounds like yes.
Is – if this is your final year in office, sir, will you make overhauling health care your top priority?
SENATOR BILL CASSIDY: Well, I sure hope it’s not my final year in office. But I have been thinking about health care for 30 years, because when I worked in a public hospital for the uninsured, I saw the burden it could be on middle income families who have middle income but couldn’t afford the insurance or couldn’t afford the health care. And so, it’s been my priority for 30 years. And I will continue to do that.
And if there is a silver lining – if there’s a silver lining in the shutdown we just had, the silver lining is now we are focused on, how do we make health care more affordable for the American people? That should be our goal, not to be partisan one way or the other. How do we make it more affordable for fellow Americans? If we can accomplish that, I will feel like I have done my job.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator, thank you for your time.
And we’ll be right back.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
Good morning to you, Senator.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN (D-NH): Good morning. Nice to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you have spent a good part of the past year trying to get legislation through to extend those Obamacare tax credit subsidies. Last Sunday you crossed the aisle. You agreed to reopen the government, end the shutdown without a guaranteed extension, but with a promise to have some kind of vote on an ACA bill of Democrats own choosing.
Do you have consensus among Democrats that this needs to be a vote simply to extend the tax credits as they stand now, or are you open to a broader reform of Obamacare?
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: From the beginning this shutdown, I have had two goals, one is to get the government up and running again to end the suffering that too many Americans were experiencing because they lost food assistance or they weren’t getting paid, federal employees, and the second was to address the high cost of premium – health insurance that people are looking at because insurance companies are setting rates based on the fact that those premium tax credits are not – are supposed to go away at the end of this year.
I think people are now very aware of the fact that they are going to see huge rate increases, double for so many people, and an unaffordable cost of health insurance if those premium tax credits go away. And what I think we need to do, and these are conversations that we need to have, is we need to work with our Republican colleagues to try and get a bill that can be supported, that can get through both houses of Congress where we’ve been talking to our Republicans, Senator Cassidy, throughout the shutdown about what we might be able to agree to. We’ve been talking to House members on both sides of the aisle. And so now we need to work together.
I agree with Senator Cassidy, this should be a bill that is not partisan, but it should be a bill to extend those premium tax credits because, as everybody has talked about, there is real urgency to get this done. And if we don’t address it, then people are going to see huge rate increases.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: So, we can work together. We can extend the credits, but we probably can’t implement significant reforms that Senator Cassidy was talking about in the time frame that we’ve got. So, we need to look, both in the short-term and in the long-term for how we address the cost of health care.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK, so that’s an important point there. So, the $26 billion or so that he talks about as the cost for extension of these that he wants to redirect into these cash accounts, these flexible accounts, you’re saying, you can’t get that done in six weeks’ time?
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: No, you can’t.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: And, again, there’s real urgency to do this. There’s some good, bipartisan legislation that has come out of committee in the Senate that I think we should take up, things that would expedite approval of generic drugs and biosimilars, that would address PBM reform, which is a huge cost increase for health care. But that’s a longer term issue. Right now we need to address what people are facing in terms of those high rate increases because of the threats that these premium tax credits are going to end.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Just to put a fine point on it. When we heard the congressmen at the top of the program talking about, you know, caps on income and restrictions on who can benefit from those tax credits, can you get your fellow Democrats, who, by the way, are pretty angry at each other, angry at you as well, about this decision to reopen the government, can you get everyone on board, or can you at least get to 60 votes to be able to extend those subsidies with tweaks?
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: Well, first of all, we need to put the shutdown behind us, end the circular firing squad, and remember why we’re in this situation. We’re in this situation because Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have refused to address the cost of health care and are trying to throw people off their health care. Can we get to consensus? Well, we need to if we’re going to get a bipartisan bill out of the Congress.
I think we’ve seen and heard from health insurance companies that implementing significant changes in the first year is going to be really difficult to do, almost impossible. But we ought to be able to agree on some changes, like capping the income of people who receive those premium tax credits. Right now 94 percent of people who get the credits earn under $200,000 a year. And the average income for a single recipient is about a little over $30,000 a year. So, most people who are getting these tax credits are not in that high income level.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: And so we should be able to agree on that. We should be able to agree that we don’t want any fraud and abuse in the program.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: That’s something Republicans and Democrats believe in. So, let’s focus on what we can agree to. Let’s look at what we can get done in the time frame we have, and recognize there is real urgency to get these premium tax credits extended.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you’re going to have this vote around the second week of December, but premiums are already notified out.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: They are already sort of baked in here for – certainly for Americans who buy government health care. Is it too late to extend open enrollment? I mean Senator Cassidy was saying, like, ship has sailed here.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: No, we could actually decide that we were willing, as part of this legislation, to extend open enrollment. Obviously, we need support from the administration. But insurance companies, in meeting with the insurance industry, they’ve indicated that while it would be difficult, they could address some of the challenges around not getting agreement until December. Again, that’s why there’s urgency to get this done.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about another matter. Survivors of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as some of the families of those survivors, wrote a letter to lawmakers supporting the release of Justice Department internal communications in regard to his case. In that letter they said, “there was no middle ground here. There was no hiding behind party affiliation. We will remember your decision at the ballot box.”
You know this House vote is set to come up this week. Should there be a vote in the Senate? And would you support it to see the release of these documents?
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: Absolutely. We need to release the documents. The American people need to see what’s in them. And if President Trump says there’s nothing there that he’s concerned about, then why doesn’t he support release of the documents?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we will see if the Republican leader in the Senate takes up your proposal there. There has not been a commitment to have that kind of vote.
But on Venezuela, since you are ranking member on Senator Foreign Relations, I want to make sure I ask you, the president has said he has sort of made up his mind on what to do about Venezuela. You were one of the very few senators who have received briefings within the past few weeks from Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth regarding the strikes that are being carried out on these small, fast-moving boats. Is there a clear end game here? And is your understanding that ousting Nicolas Maduro from power is part of the administration’s plan?
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: I don’t think it’s clear what the end game is for this administration with respect to Venezuela. They are relying on a legal opinion – excuse me, in terms of the boat strikes that they have not released. They have finally made it available to members of Congress, but they haven’t released it to the public. They are escalating in a way that – – talking about a land strike through special operations that puts at risk our men and women in the military. We have so much fire power now in the Caribbean, the Gerald R. Ford has been taken from the Red Sea so that now we don’t have any fire power really in the Middle East as we look at the threats there. We don’t have what we need, I think, in the Indo-Pacific, or in Europe. And so, what the president has done here is to put at risk other parts of the world and Americans in other parts of the world for this fascination on trying to get rid of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, who clearly is a bad character.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: He’s been involved in drug –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: Illegal drugs. But he is not a threat to the United States of America.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN: And what the president is doing is raising real questions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Shaheen, thank you for your time this morning.
We’ll be back in a moment.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s it for us today. Thank you for watching. Until next week. For “FACE THE NATION,” I’m Margaret Brennan.
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