Summary
Republicans campaigns on fighting the vaccine requirements put in place by the Biden Administration. High COVID spreads spurs on record child hospitalization. One-on-one with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on COVID surges causing concerns as kids go back to school. Republican Strategist Ron Nehring discussed why the GOP effort to recall Gov. Newsom has failed. On Tuesday, Democrats Representatives Scott Peters of California, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Kathleen Rice of New York said they would oppose the party`s plan to lower drug prices. One-on-one with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the effort to get budget reconciliation passed.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: I got you. I got you. That is tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The governors of Florida and Texas are doing everything they can to undermine the life-saving requirements that I propose.
HAYES: The vaccine push continues in the White House, and so does the resistance.
JACKSON LAHMEYER (R-OK), SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: We will never comply, never, ever, ever.
HAYES: Tonight, the Senate candidate offering religious exemptions to anti- Vax supporters and the Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on fighting the virus in schools across America.
Then, why the recall disaster for Republicans could spell trouble beyond California? And Senator Bernie Sanders on the high stakes fight of the Biden budget, and why one House Democrat may stand between you and lower prescription drug prices when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. There is a minority of Americans though a sizable one in absolute terms, that is not just hesitant or unenthused, or a little skeptical to the vaccines, have questions that they are steadfastly opposed. And they`ve been highly mobilized and very loud in proportions greater than their actual numbers. And in this one instance has become a central point of a Republican primary challenge in the Senate.
Meet Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer. He`s young. He`s 29 years old. He runs an investment company and is a pastor of the Evangelical Church in Tulsa. That is him on the right standing next to Donald Trump`s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Lahmeyer has launched a primary challenge to replace incumbent Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, himself very, very, very conservative. Right now, it appears one of the central pillars of his campaign is to get people to defy the vaccine requirement. So, he is encouraging people to donate to his church in exchange for a COVID religious exemption.
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LAHMEYER: So, let`s say your employer is demanding that you take the vaccine because Joe Biden said if your business has more than 100 employees, you have to force him to take the vaccine, download that exemption form. Get your pastor to sign that exemption form. And if your pastor doesn`t have the courage to sign it, I`ll sign it for you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: According to the Washington Post, Lahmeyer said this week about 30,000 people have downloaded the religious exemption form he created. He says he is doing this because the former vice president, that means the current president, though he won`t call them that, has declared war on the freedoms of Americans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAHMEYER: I`m going to speak on behalf of the State of Oklahoma to the former vice president. And I`m going to say it so slow even he can understand it. We will never comply, never, ever, ever. And I dare you to come to the state of Oklahoma because we will never comply here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Some profound historical resonances there. Lahmeyer is yes, an extreme example here. But not that extreme when you serve a Republican Party politics. I mean, across the party, Republican politicians and positions high and low have blasted vaccine requirements while continuing to preach the gospel of individual choice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): As I have said all along, these vaccines are always voluntary, and never forced.
GOV. BRAD LITTLE (R-ID): Vaccine passports violate individual`s freedom to choose the vaccine.
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): At the end of the day, though, it is what somebody -- it`s about what your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn`t impact me or anyone else.
GOV. PETE RICKETTS (R-NE): Because vaccines work and they will help people. But it shouldn`t be a personal health care choice. This is not something that the government should mandate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Here`s the thing. This idea that it`s just a personal choice is not just wrong, it`s dangerous. Because let`s keep in mind, there`s an enormous population of people who have no choice one way or the other. And of course, I`m speaking not just to the immunocompromised, but also children under the age of 12 who cannot get vaccinated as of now.
President Biden came out today to tout the broad popularity of his new COVID vaccine requirements and also point out why it is so critical to follow that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We`re facing a lot of pushback especially from some of the Republican governors. The governors of Florida and Texas, they`re doing everything they can to undermine the life-saving requirements that I proposed.
This is the worst kind of politics, because it`s putting the lives of citizens of their states, especially children at risk. And I refuse to give into it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:00]
HAYES: So, let`s talk about children and COVID. Now, the first and important thing to remember is that we know based on data across the world, all the experience we know compared to adults, children are more commonly asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. Meaning, they are at much lower risk of severe health, illness, and hospitalization, and even death.
Thank God for that. That has been one of the through lines of this entire pandemic, one of the small silver linings that made it bearable. But the other thing is, the more community transmission taking place in a state or a city or a neighborhood, the more kids will contract the virus. That`s just the way the math works. And the more kids that get it, then a small percentage will get really severe cases and some tiny percentage will die.
It`s a numbers game. The more aggregate amount of illness that`s floating around, the more kids contracted, the more kids contracted, the more they get very sick. And that is exactly what is happening this summer in places in this country with low vaccination rates.
Last week, the New York Times looked at how COVID hospital admissions for children are spiking in states with low vaccination rates. That is a chart on the right of your screen. Those are the 10 least vaccinated states. And blue is adult hospital admissions which really spike up. But look at under 18, the red, OK, that`s going up too.
Now, compare that on the left your screen. Those are the 10 most vaccinated in states where you see a flat line. That`s what you want to see. And some of the worst examples of this are playing out Mississippi, a state with just over 49 percent of its eligible population vaccinated. That`s very low in the state rankings.
In the six weeks since the health department of the state of Mississippi began reporting COVID cases in public schools, over 20,000 pre-K through 12th-grade students have tested positive for the virus. Doctors in that state are now concerned COVID is to blame for a surge in pediatric diabetes. And last week, the state of Mississippi saw its seventh child die from the virus.
Now, again, for the parents that are watching this and are already freaked out enough, I want to keep you to keep in mind the math here. Seven children in Mississippi is one out of every 100,000 kids in the state, OK, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. But still, seven children are too many.
All this has unquestionably helped make it Mississippi the state with the now-highest per capita death toll from COVID in the country. And all this is happening while the state`s Republican Governor Tate Reeves is out here talking about the tyranny of vaccine requirements. And saying the reason that folks in Mississippi seem a little less scared of the virus is because, and I quote, "When you believe in eternal life, when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don`t have to be so scared of things."
Mississippi has become a cautionary tale of what the freedom of choice adds up to which is too many kids in hospitals, and also the highest death toll from COVID in the nation. And that is what is so maddening, so despicably callous about all this. From the very beginning, this virus has been a collective problem that requires collective solutions from all parts of society.
It`s the same logic for why we have vaccine requirements in all 50 states to attend schools, including some of the strictest in Mississippi which of course is now frowned upon with but tens of millions of schoolchildren unable to get the vaccine. There`s every reason to think that with proper precautions, and in places with high vaccination rates and low levels of transmission, in-person school can be safe. But there is a lot of concern, understandably.
I`m joined now by the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, who has a huge stake in the school reopening policy. Mr. Secretary, let me start with this question. One of the big provisions of the American rescue plan which was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden was money for schools to make them COVID safe, including $122 billion passed in March. It`s about $200 billion in total money that have gone to schools.
Do you have a number somewhere in the Department of Education? Is there a spreadsheet that exists where you can say how much of that has been spent and on what?
MIGUEL CARDONA, U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION: Thank you for having me, first of all. And I agree, our goal is to safely reopen schools and make sure children have an opportunity to learn with their friends, with their teachers where they learn best. The American rescue plan did provide funds for safe reopening. That was the goal of it.
And we`ve released two-thirds of the funds to all states and we`re holding back 1/3 for states that have not yet submitted a plan. We`re working daily with states to see how they`re spending their money to ensure that the strategies are being used to keep children safe. Some states are doing better than others.
[20:10:06]
HAYES: So, two-thirds has been released to states to spend. They present a plan to the Department of Education, and the Department of Education releases the money. Is that how it works?
CARDONA: Correct. The final third is released once we approve a plan that shows that they`re going to focus on equity and that they have stakeholder engagement, which we know is critically important.
HAYES: But I mean, I guess the question is like, do we know that it`s getting spent, right? Because at the end of the day, what you want is the classroom to be safe. And what we`ve seen with say, rental assistance, was tens of billions of dollars of rental assistance passed appropriated by Congress, given to the states, and 11 percent of it actually getting into the hands of renters.
And I got to say, as a public school parent, I`m a little like -- has the money flown through to the schools? Is the actual classroom better now?
CARDONA: They are. They are. I`m going on a tour next week where I`m going to be visiting classrooms, and we`re going to see what`s happening. We`re going to see better ventilation systems. We`re going to see how the American rescue plan funds have been used.
By and large, they have been. Unfortunately, in some places, they`re slow to release the money, They`re holding it. And we`re working hard to make sure that the money gets to the classrooms where it`s needed to provide for smaller class sizes, to provide more school counselors and social workers to meet the students where they are.
So, we`re working daily to make sure that the money does get released. But as you know, in some places, that`s a little bit easier than others.
HAYES: The U.S. Department of Education, when you talk about some places usually than others is open civil rights inquiries into several states. Florida schools mask policy announced I think last week it`s opening an investigation in the Florida Department of Education for potentially violating the rights of students with disabilities by preventing school districts from requiring masks. What does such an investigation entail?
CARDONA: Well, we know all students deserve an opportunity for safe in- person learning. And in places where they`re choosing to not follow the guidance that protects children. We know some families, especially families of children with disabilities do not feel comfortable sending their children to school. They feel that they`re putting their children in harm`s way if they`re not following the protocols to keep our children safe.
As you said earlier, this is preventable. So, what we`re doing is we`re investigating to see if the rights of students are being violated because of the poor policy. We need to make it very clear, we`re going to stand by the students, and we`re going to stand by the educators that are trying to safely reopen schools. And in some places, it`s going to require an investigation from our office of civil rights.
HAYES: I have a question about data. And last year, I found this utterly maddening, which was that there just seemed to be no central school data repository. There were individuals -- a professor of economics at Brown, who was trying to collate it all together. Do we have central data? I mean, do -- is there central -- is somewhere in the federal government, whether it`s CDC or you, there is a database that is tracking school infections, how they`re moving, what the rates are in schools so that we know what`s going on.
CARDONA: Right, Chris. Data needs to drive the direction that we move. Data needs to drive where we`re focusing our efforts. And what we`ve done is since coming in, is developed data systems working closely with CDC to make sure we have real-time information. Right now, we have folks at the Department of Education working closely with states calling, tracking these data. And we are using data to determine that the strategies are working and where there are pockets of COVID spread, we`re noticing that the use of mitigation strategies is not consistent.
So, yes, we are developing those systems that did not exist before. But we do need those now to make sure that we`re focusing our attention on those districts in those states that need the most.
HAYES: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona who has a big job along with every educator in this country this fall. Thank you very much.
CARDONA: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: All right, they are still counting the vote in California. It`s a lot of votes to count but the Republican loss is presenting, its total, it`s an absolute defeat. And yet, as far as I can tell, there`s been next to zero reckoning from the Republican Party, no post mortem to see where they went so badly wrong. So, if they won`t do it, we`ll do it for them, next.
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[20:15:00]
HAYES: We are used to -- we are all used to the genre of election postmortems, particularly in elections where Democrats feel they should have won or that they worry they won by margins that were too narrow.
Most recently remember, this happened after the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won, OK. The entire universe discourse for weeks was what did Dems do wrong, why did they lose all those House seats? Why was it so close? It shouldn`t have been so close. Lots of hand wringing even after defeating an incumbent president which is hard to do.
But because Republicans are caught in the throes of this Trump cult and the big lie, you just never see any of that from them. I mean, this week we saw an enormous failure by the Republican Party in the recall election of the Governor of California Gavin Newsom. The party was completely repudiated in a very high-trend election by voters in the biggest state in the union. And it was just an embarrassing belly flop. I mean, it was like, called an hour after polls close.
And since they are not going to do the post mortem, we feel duty-bound to do it for them. Here with me now, Ron Nehring. He`s a Republican strategist, former chair of the California Republican Party. In this recall election, he was advising Kevin Faulconer, a moderate Republican candidate to replace Governor Newsom, who yes, you`re not misreading that statistically, they got under nine percent of the vote in the recall.
Ron, welcome.
RON NEHRING, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: So, what`s your postmortem if you`ve got to go in and give your PowerPoint about what went wrong here?
NEHRING: Yes, I think there are four things that you cannot do in a recall election. The first is don`t polarize the electorate when you`re in the minority. Second, don`t allow the alternative to become the issue. Number three, don`t activate your opponent`s base except on purpose. And number four, don`t suppress your own vote.
And I think those are four things that we saw occur during the course of the campaign, which of course, the yes on recall side became represented by Larry Elder, and all of those mistakes were made. And so, I think it`s important to recognize that, you know, success is a poor teacher, but failure is a much better teacher.
And it`s important to learn these lessons as we go forward about how you win in a state where Republicans were outnumbered by two to one. It`s not by polarizing the electorate. It`s not only by playing to your base, but you have to build a diverse coalition of people starting with your own base, but then deep into independence, and those Democrats reaching them on issues instead of bipartisan affiliation, in order to build a majority in order to win.
[20:20:18]
Gavin Newsom never -- just one more thing. Gavin Newsom never became more popular throughout the entire campaign, and we have the polling data to show that. He never came -- became more popular. But as Larry Elder became the issue, the yes on recall side started to slide and you got the result that we had.
HAYES: Right. But the -- but here`s the thing. So, the recall setup, I think, is preposterous just to be clear, like the notion that Gavin Newsom could have gotten 49 percent of the vote and been replaced by someone who got 28 percent of the vote is nuts, right? Like, I -- and let me just say this, because the reason it applies is most elections aren`t recall elections, most elections are choices. They`re choices between two candidates. They`re not thumbs up, or thumbs down.
And so to your point of well, it changed when it became a choice between Gavin Newson or Larry elder, like, that`s because Larry Elder was going to be the guy who became Governor of California if the recall went through. Like, people were correct to view it as a choice between those two things, because Larry Elder would be the governor of California and voters did not want that.
NEHRING: Yes. It`s a common misconception in political circles that question one drives question two. That is yes or no one recall drives the choice for the replacement. It`s actually the opposite way around. And I --
HAYES: Yes, exactly.
NEHRING: So, in `03, Arnold Schwarzenegger was an acceptable alternative to the majority of California voters, and that`s why the recall passed. So, you have to win question two with someone who`s an acceptable alternative first, and that`s very, very clear, particularly in the state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one.
HAYES: But here`s the problem for the Republican Party as I see it. Like, I agree with you that Elder was bad news for the cause, right? The problem is what Republican voters want is Larry Elder and not Kevin Faulconer. Like, you seem like a pretty good political consultant, as far as I can tell.
Kevin Faulconer seems like a perfectly decent politician. He certainly has a resume that seems like plausible Republican governor of California if you`re going to elect someone who`s Republican. And he got a percent of the vote because the people that came out, they don`t want Kevin Faulconer. They got no interest in Kevin Faulconer. They want Larry Elder. That`s who Republicans want.
And I`m looking at the numbers, by overwhelming margins. Like, unless you can do something about that, I`m not sure what you can do about Republicans in a state like California.
NEHRING: Yes, you know, so there`s a number of factors that are unique to the recall election process that worked against us, one of which is that it was so short and it was -- it was made even shorter, right? Gavin Newsom signed a law that allowed the election to be moved up into September rather than November. That was for political purposes.
But ultimately, having such a short election cycle, gave -- really gave an opportunity to someone to come in who had a large base of pre-existing name ID particularly the biggest market in the state in Los Angeles. That was Larry Elder. He had never been vetted. And he wanted being vetted just as people were making their decision about who to vote for. And then all of these things come out, like, you know, saying strange things about discrimination against women in the workforce, legalizing narcotics, all these other strange things, you know, come about at that point in time.
So, this was a very short election cycle. When Kevin Faulkner got in, it was to run in 2022. So, he got in almost two years before election day. But that turned into a sprint with this recall, and that created a condition to favor a candidate like a Larry Elder.
HAYES: OK, but you know -- look, you work in Republican politics.
NEHRING: I do.
HAYES: Which, you know, I`m glad -- better than me. In a primary between Kevin Faulconer and Larry Elder among Republican primary voters, Kevin Faulconer loses. Like, he -- like, your party doesn`t want your dude. They don`t -- they don`t -- that`s not what they`re interested in. That`s not what sells. Like, I`m just telling you, man. It`s plain as day. Like, there could be -- sure, it could have been longer, he could have been vetted. It`s not what the Republican base wants. They want the Larry Elders of the world.
NEHRING: Well, look, we have to have a conversation within the Republican Party about whether or not we want to win or whether or not we just want to have arguments. And there`s a model out there in states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont, all three states, East Coast states, heavily Democratic.
HAYES: Yes.
NEHRING: In Massachusetts, Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one.
HAYES: Yes.
NEHRING: Maryland is overwhelmingly Democratic-run by Baltimore, and then the Washington D.C. suburbs. And yet Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, are consistently not only Republican governors in Democratic states, but they`re among the most popular governors in America.
We have a Republican governor in Bernie Sanders` own state of Vermont, so it can be done. But we have to have a conversation about what it really takes in order to win in the state that we live in, not the state of 1970, not the state which Ronald Reagan won for governor, but the state of California as it today which has an enormous suburban population, which is where the Republican brand, national Republican brand has really taken a beating, and a large Latino population.
And unless you have a candidate who`s going to win the suburbs and do very competitively in Latino community, we will not win a head-to-head race in California until that happens.
[20:25:20]
HAYES: I agree with that. There`s also -- you mentioned voter suppression on your -- suppressing your own vote, and I think that`s what it is referenced to. Now, I will say that Elder conceded to his credit, but you know, you had him talking about shenanigans. There`s all this nonsense. The ex-president`s spokesperson tweeting out about, you know, after it`s called two to one like obviously, it was a whooping. There was no like shenanigans that causes outcome.
You have the ex-president`s person tweeting about this. Elder -- this is elder on Monday, appealed on Monday to his supporters to use an online forum to report fraud which claimed it had detected fraud in the results of the California recall election resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor. On Monday, when the link was live on Elder`s campaign site, the election hadn`t happened yet. No results had been released.
I mean, I guess the idea here, and I think that Ronna McDaniel thought this in Georgia, is that if you tell people it`s going to be rigged, not the greatest motivator for them to go out and vote.
NEHRING: No, absolutely not. This is the greatest self-owned in 20 years of California politics that I`ve ever seen in that Larry Elders Web site said that the election had been stolen and that Gavin Newsom had won. And it said that on Monday, the day before the election. And that`s just an extraordinary statement to make. It is the opposite of get out the vote. It is suppressing your own voters from turning out and voting because you`re telling them that the election has already been lost.
It`s monumental political malpractice to do that. And -- but this is what happens when you have a candidate who I don`t think was running for governor, I think was running to be an influencer.
HAYES: Well, Ron, you know, who`s the big winner of California`s recall election.
NEHRING: I think you`re going to tell me what your opinion is on that.
HAYES: The big winner is the political consultants of California who got handed a $300 million raise in an off year. So, I think -- I think everyone did all right in the end. I`m glad that we avoided catastrophe. Ron Nehring, thank you very much.
NEHRING: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, the three members of Congress who are standing in the way of lower drug prices and threatening to derail a key part of the Biden agenda. That`s next.
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[20:30:00]
HAYES: One of the key provisions of the proposed Biden reconciliation package is a plan to lower prescription drug prices. And it`s particularly important because it`s both wildly popular but also save the government money. And those savings help in the very complicated budgetary math that makes up the whole bill. So, if there`s no agreement on the drug provision, then that takes money away and it threatens the entire bill and thus the entire Biden agenda.
Last week, the administration endorsed for proposal that would allow the federal government to negotiate with drug makers directly to lower prices for prescription drugs, specifically Medicare. It`s something that most Americans are in favor of. In fact, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that nearly nine in 10 people favor allowing the federal government to negotiate for lower prices on medications, including three-fourths of Republicans.
But Republicans are not the real problem here, although they are all basically opposed to it. On Tuesday, three Democrats said they would oppose the party`s plan to lower drug prices. They are Scott Peters of California, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Kathleen Rice of New York.
Now, I want to single out Congresswoman Rice here just for a second, because this was her in a campaign at last October when she wanted people`s votes bragging about how she would take on the drug companies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In times of crisis, you see what really drives someone. For Kathleen Rice, it`s always been the health and safety of the Long Island she loves, meeting the moment of this pandemic by securing billions in aid for testing and treatment in New York, taking on the drug and insurance giants to lower costs and restore coverage to those hit hardest by the downturn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes, that was her campaign promise to take on drug and insurance giants. And now that she`s been elected, she`s instead doing the opposite. She`s doing what the drug giants want by blocking a proposal of her own party that would lower the cost of prescription drugs, which is perhaps why as Dave Dayen writes in the American prospect, activists are concentrating all their attention on Rice in attempting to persuade her to flip and support the drug price reform.
And the aforementioned executive editor of the American Prospect Dave Dayen joins me now. First, let`s just talk about the proposal itself. I mean, it is a version of the much often discussed, right, Medicare negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to use their purchase power to bring down prescription drug prices.
DAVID DAYEN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: That`s right. And this is something that Democrats actually started fighting for in 2006. This was in the 2006 proposal to take back Congress. So, for 15 years, we`ve heard about this. In 2019, there was a bill called H.R.3 that is essentially what`s in the reconciliation bill. And it was passed by virtually every Democrat in Congress including Schrader, Peters, and Rice. They all voted for this bill two years ago.
And it was -- it was actually a compromise between progressive elements and Speaker Pelosi on how many drugs would be covered and how it would go about. And it was a considered compromise that we spent all of 2019 on, these members voted for then. And Scott Peters a few months ago was quite honest about it. He said, I only voted for that because I knew it wasn`t going to pass.
So, presumably now that he knows that this actually has a chance of becoming law, now, he wants to put the brakes on.
[20:35:05]
HAYES: Yes, it`s a really good point that this is -- there was already like horse-trading and compromise that happened here. Like, this was what the party came to consensus on. It`s the -- Biden is proposing it, Speaker Pelosi, all Democrats have been down the line except for these three. And they are on the Energy and Commerce Committee. And they`re flipping their votes at the last minute surprising everyone, meant that it didn`t make it into the bill out of the committee.
DAYEN: That`s right. I mean, it made it into the Ways and Means Committee, which also has jurisdiction over this, and they could put it in later. But really, what they`re saying these three members is if drug price reform goes in, we`re not going to support this bill. And of course, three members is enough to potentially if, they get one more, hold up the entire bill in the House.
And the thing is, Chris, there`s a stereotype of like the swing district House member who has a lot of conservative constituents and just has to trim their sails and vote against the party every so often. And that`s actually a fake picture of what goes on in Washington. The frontline members in tough districts very much support this bill.
Peters and rice are in safe Democratic seats. These are not swing district Democrats. They`re corporate Democrats who have sold out their constituents for campaign dollars or for the promise of future job or just because they hear more from lobbyists about how lower drug company profits will stifle innovation, which isn`t true. Then they hear from a single mother who has to skip medications to keep her family fed.
HAYES: This is such an important point. I mean, the thing polls at 90 percent. It`s very popular. Here`s a letter in July, a group of Democrats in swing seats saying we write today to urge the next reconciliation bill brought before Congress include giving Medicare the authority and the tools to effectively negotiate prescription drug prices. So you already have swings Do state frontline members on -- swing seat frontline members on board.
And then, here`s the other thing. This is Peters and Rice, with their explanation. I want to read from it because it actually is not substantive. It`s totally procedural. We must Garner bipartisan, bicameral support with buy-in from a majority of Americans and stakeholders in the public and private sectors. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it`s that we all truly must be in this together.
DAYEN: Yes, I mean, I guess that sounds better than we want to protect drug company profits, and so we don`t want to hit them too hard. I mean, what Rice and Schrader and Peters would say is that we have our own bill. We have our own idea out to make this stuff cheaper. But their bill only allows negotiation with Medicare on off patent drugs, drugs that still have a patent -- that don`t have a patent monopoly anymore.
HAYES: Wow.
DAYEN: That`s the (AUDIO GAP). This would not affect the ability for drug companies to charge whatever they want with no competition for a period of year.
HAYES: All right, Dave Dayen, this was excellent and illuminating. And thank you for making time tonight.
DAYEN: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, you know what I keep thinking of when I hear people talking about the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here it comes. Television`s most exciting hour of fantastic prizes, fabulous, sixty-minute Price Is Right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Why that keeps running through my head next.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: All right, the Price Is Right first premiered on NBC way back in 1956. And while the network, host may have changed, many of the games are still the same these many decades later. They still do Plinko. We have to slide the disc down the board for various amounts of cash. And Cliffhangers, of course, with a little lederhosen guy climbed the mountain every time a contestant gets the prize of something wrong. And if the mountain climber falls off the cliff, you lose, which is a little sad.
But to win the Prize Is Right, knowing the price of the merchandise is crucial. And I have been thinking about the race game. This is the one where contestants have to put the right four price tags on the four different products all within 45 seconds. If they match all four prices correctly, they win them all. If they don`t, they lose. But before you can start the game, you need to know the prices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, Karen, I started to say there are some prizes in your future that are $695, $880, $975, and $799. That sounds interesting, doesn`t it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It could be.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean it could be?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: No, no, no, Bob, Karen is exactly right. It could be interesting. Part of the prizes any good, it`s impossible to know unless you know what the prices are. The price itself means nothing. $800 worth of printer paper would be pretty lousy. $700 for a brand new Corvette would be amazing. But if it`s $700 for a bucket of clams, it`s a rip-off. So, what was Karen playing for?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let`s find out. I think it is, isn`t it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A new washer dryer, a bumper pool table, and handsome secretary.
HAYES: Handsome secretary. Sadly, Karen never to get her hands on the handsome secretary or the bumper pool table and the -- and the price was wrong and she lost. But thinking back to this game made me think about what`s happening in Congress right now.
You have heard there`s a budget reconciliation bill. Democrats are working on this big plan that would invest in things like climate and clean energy, childcare, immigration, jobs, infrastructure. But what`s in the bill is not what anyone is talking about. As far as I can tell, both sides Republican and Democrat for or against, all they want to talk about is the price tag.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER DOOCY, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Bernie Sanders is pitching a reconciliation package that`s up to $6 billion to include some of the President`s other priorities --
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Trillion.
DOOCY: Sorry, $6 trillion. It`s a lot more money that way.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): The budget committee reached a landmark of agreement on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution.
[20:45:05]
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): He will not have my vote on 3.5 and Chuck knows that.
SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): Well, the $3.5 trillion number is a shocking figure.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We are marking at 3.5.
REP. DEVIN NUNES (R-CA): 3.5 trillion dollar left-wing spending orgy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, how do you know that it`s not 3.5?
MANCHIN: It`s going to be at one, one and a half. We don`t know where it`s going to be.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, you think ballpark one, one and a half.
MANCHIN: It`s not -- it`s not going to be at three and a half, I can assure you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What are we talking about? What are we talking about? We just keep hearing these numbers over and over again, 3.5 trillion, I hear two trillion, 1.5 trillion, you want one trillion. It feels like all we`re doing is talking to these big yellow price tags that Karen slapped in the washing machine, the bumper pool table. No one is talking about the prizes or how good they are. No one is talking about the actual provisions in the bill and what they would do and why should they want them pass them or not pass them.
Now, to be clear, here`s the reason that we`re in this weird part of the discourse. Senate Democrats are currently trapped with a filibuster which there are not enough votes to get rid of. So, to get around the filibuster to pass anything with less than 60 votes and a sheer majority, they have to use the arcane process called reconciliation. That means Democrats have one shot to basically pass their entire domestic agenda by a civil majority vote, which means this bill has everything in it.
We just talked about the prescription drug thing. That`s in this bill. But it means you can`t call it the clean energy bill or the immigration reform bill, or whatever else is in it because it`s just the omnibus Democratic agenda bill. And I think, to be honest, some Democrats want to emphasize the big price tag on the bill because it shows how big and bold and consequential the legislation is.
And they`re repeating this number $3.5 trillion to signal the scope of the ambition here. And then you get moderates like Joe Manchin complaining, well, that numbers too high, I want to spend less, just one or two trillion. But again, those numbers tell you literally nothing, nothing. What are you actually leaving in or taking out the bill in that case? What would it do or wouldn`t do?
The price tag of a thing tells you nothing about the value of the thing. It`s just a number. I feel like that is the conversation that is not happening on this bill. Luckily for us, we`re ending our show with a little showcase showdown of our own and Senator Bernie Sanders is about to come on down and be the next contestant after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:50:00]
HAYES: What Price is right? Right now, the Democrats reconciliation package is perhaps best known to the American public to the extent they know about it by the $3.5 trillion price tag. Some say it should be less, other said it should be more, but the cost of the bill tells us nothing about its actual value or what it could do for this country.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He is the architect of the Democrats` reconciliation bill and he joins me now. All right, Senator, I think you were all in this situation because of reconciliation and because of the way that you move things through. But let`s just start with this. If I said to you like, what is this bill, not what`s the laundry list of things in it, but like, conceptually, the Democrats are going to pass an X bill. What is the X?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): The X bill is saying, finally, for the first time in the modern history of this country, that the United States government is going to stand up and address the long neglected issues facing working people, and that we`re going to fund it by demanding that the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.
And the President that I think many of us in Congress deserve credit because what we are doing is taking a hard look at the reality of life for working families, what`s going on with the children, what`s going on with the elderly, what`s going on in healthcare, and very significantly, understanding that if we do not get a handle on transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, the planet that we`re going to leave our kids and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.
So, this is a big deal. And I got to tell you, Chris, we are taking on the entire ruling class of America, the entire oligarchy. You take on the pharmaceutical industry because they don`t want us to lower the cost of prescription drugs. They`re taken on the healthcare industry that don`t want us to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids, and eyeglasses.
We`re taking on the fossil fuel industry, obviously, because they want to continue to make profits by destroying the planet. So, this is a huge deal. It is a monumental moment in modern American history whether or not we can show the American people that we can address their long-standing problems, improve life, and have the courage to take on incredibly wealthy and powerful forces for spending millions of dollars against us right now.
HAYES: You mentioned the pharmaceutical industry, and I want to follow up on a conversation we just had about those three Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee who voted against Medicare drug price negotiation plan as proposed. That`s Scott Peters of California, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Kathleen Rice of New York. They say, hey, look, we need -- we need a bipartisan, bicameral solution. What do you think of that?
SANDERS: Yes. I think it`s totally absurd. I mean, you know, you have a Republican Party which is a right-wing extremist party right now which is owned by the pharmaceutical industry. The polling out there is just unbelievable, whether you`re Republican or Democrat, overwhelming majority of the American people understand that the pharmaceutical industry is ripping us off in an unconscionable way.
You may recall, I`ve made two trips to Canada with people from Vermont and people from the Midwest. We bought insulin and other prescription drugs for 1/10 of the price that the drug companies are selling the same product here in the United States of America. Thousands of people die every year because they can`t afford the medicine that they need.
The question is whether we have the guts to stand up with what is an incredibly powerful lobby? Do you know how much money these guys in the pharmaceutical industry have spent over the last 20 years on lobbying and campaign contributions?
HAYES: I don`t.
SANDERS: $4.5 billion. Do you know how many lobbyists they have on Capitol Hill right now twisting arms? They got 1200 lobbyists. That`s two -- more than two per member of Congress. So, this is -- they don`t lose. They have owned the Congress forever. And whether or not we can stand up to them and defeat them and finally do what the American people want, lower the cost of prescription drugs is something we have got to do.
[20:55:55]
HAYES: I am loath to get back into the price conversation, but I do want to make this point, and I want to -- I want to play you what the President said and I think it`s clarifying to follow up on that. So, I want to say play what President Biden said today and then -- and then ask you a clarifying question. Take a listen for a second.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: My Republican friends are attacking my plan saying it`s big spending. Let me remind you. This are the same folks who just four years ago passed the Trump tax cut totaling almost $2 trillion in tax cuts, a giant giveaway to the largest corporations in the top one percent. And listen to this. Almost none of that $2 trillion tax cut was paid for. It just ballooned the federal deficit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, so here`s part of the thing that has been driving me nuts about the discourse on this bill. The cost is just one part of the ledger of the bill, right? I`m not crazy here. It`s -- there`s a cost part, and then there`s a revenue raiser`s part. And people only talk about the cost part. Like, there are -- right, that the you couldn`t pass it the reconciliation if we`re just going to charge it to the deficit, right? I mean, have I lost the plot here?
SANDERS: You could. Actually, you could, but we`re not going to do that. I mean, what we intend -- look, the bill is still being worked on.
HAYES: Interesting.
SANDERS: The bill is still being worked on.
HAYES: Maybe we get rid of all -- you get rid of all these tax raises that the oligarchs don`t like and passes thing and charge it and come back the next day.
SANDERS: All right, but what we want to do is, in fact, pay for it. We -- I -- you know, if I had my druthers, I would pay for every nickel of it by demanding as the president just said, that we end the absurdity of large corporations making billions and in a given year, pay nothing in federal income taxes.
Some of the wealthiest people in this country, Elon Musk, I think, Jeff Bezos, in a given year, do not pay a nickel in federal income tax. Anyone think that that is vaguely sane? It is not. So, what we can do in one way or another or in a variety of ways, raise the revenue that we need to pay for this.
And by the way, Chris, your point about, you know, taking a look at what we are trying to do. The evidence is overwhelming that when you invest in childcare, when you invest in education, when you invest in children, you get that investment back many times over. And in terms of climate, what are we supposed to say? How do you deal with this issue?
How much is too much? When you`re talking about saving the planet? How much? And if the planet goes down in 50 years, well, gee whiz, how much should we have spent or not spent? You know, it`s pretty crazy stuff. And what even -- every economist understands economic output is going to decline precipitously because of climate, not to mention the huge amounts of money was spent trying to repair the damages of storms and floods.
So, the President, in my view, again, I said this before, deserves credit. For with no margin in the Senate, 50-50, three-vote margin in the House, he understands, I understand. I think the majority of the American people understand because what we are doing is enormously popular. The American rescue plan was popular, this is popular. The American people want us to address the crises facing working people and have the guts finally to stand up to the big money interest of the United States Congress.
HAYES: You named the most difficult part of this, which is a unanimous vote. And unanimity is tough. You come -- you`ve come out of the, you know, some universe of old left unanimous consensus groups, you know, in a basement trying to get 12 people to agree on something. It`s not easy.
SANDERS: It is very difficult. And I hope people appreciate that. I mean, if we had 60 or 70 votes, you know, it would make life a lot easier. We got zero votes. He got 50 votes in the Senate. And Nancy Pelosi has three-vote margin in the House. So, this is really, really tough. And it`s going to be a lot of debate and discussion going on, trust me. But at the end of the day, I think we`re going to do what the American people want and pass the most consequential piece of legislation in a very long time.
HAYES: Senator Bernie Sanders, we will have you back again as this goes forward. That is ALL IN for tonight. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.