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Trump Takes the Affordability Fight Nationwide: Obamacare Fraud, Minnesota Scandal, SCOTUS Preview
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President Trump takes the affordability fight on the road. As we prepare for a very busy week in Washington. We have the latest on the Minnesota fraud scandal and a few new villains involved in that case. We're also going to talk about some major Supreme Court cases being argued this week. All of that and so much more today on 10 Minute Drill. Everybody get up. Get up.
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The story of America is the story of an adventure. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears. We are a nation under God and I believe God intended for us to be free.
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Over the weekend, President Trump announced that he would be taking his affordability pitch on the road. Maximizing domestic farm production is a big part of how we will make America affordable again and bring down grocery prices for American families. Now, I believe that Republicans have three very important things they need to do on this affordability fight. First is what President Trump is doing right now. Set the record straight. Republicans have to continue to remind people whose policies drove costs to where they are. I think the message is that we inherited a train wreck from the Biden administration. Out of control inflation, an enormous regulatory state, real wage growth hadn't kept up. That was Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick who won his election in 2024 largely on an affordability pitch. That Democrats and Joe Biden had driven up costs to IGN exorbitant, exorbitant highs in order to push things like their green transition and things like that. And now Dave McCormick is out there also like President Trump, trying to balance the need to highlight Democrats role in driving up costs, but also to show that we are actively working on solutions that will fix the problems the Democrats left behind. Number two thing that Republicans need to do is bookmark the wins. They can point to inflation numbers that are significantly better than than what Joe Biden left behind. But they also have to make sure, particularly in this new year, that as people experience certain things that came from Republican efforts, for example, as they see better tax returns, something that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has been talking about for months, or as people see the benefits of an increased child tax credit, of no tax on tips and things like that, that they associate that benefit with Republicans and their work so far in Congress. Cuz there are numerous things that Republicans have done that have gotten swept under the rug in part cause it's been a pretty news year, but also because the media and Democrats have worked so hard to frame all those victories as defeats and negative outcomes. But the third thing that Republicans really, really need to do in this affordability fight is one that we've talked about in the last few weeks, which is show creativity on policy and solutions. When we talk about health care, things like price transparency appeal to voters, appeal to normal people. When it comes to things like utilities continuing to highlight energy supply, the fact that gas prices are the lowest they've been in about four years as of last weekend all across the country except in the state of California gives Republicans a very easy argument to make. But again, we have now had two years in power and voters expect us to show creativity in coming up with solutions.
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Now on that issue of affordability, we've talked quite a bit about health care. This week the Senate will vote on the Democrats proposal to extend those pandemic Obamacare premium subsidies. Now that was the primary topic of the government shutdown with Democrats saying we need to extend these for years or permanently. Even as Republicans are pointing out these are pretty bad policy from the no cap on income which is allowing people making 5, $600,000 a year to get taxpayer funded subsidies to the fact that now we are seeing so much fraud. This just last week from Wall Street Journal editorial board, Obamacare is a mecca for fraud. Federal auditors at the Government Accountability Office show how easy it is for the ineligible to set up. Now again, as we read this and highlight this problem, remember Democrats right now are demanding an extension to this program without any fixes or adjustments whatsoever. 6.4 million people this year were improperly enrolled in subsidized Obamacare plans costing taxpayers $27 billion. We also found that about 40% of enrollees in plans fully subsidized by the government filed no medical claims. So you'll remember during the government shutdown there was this heated moment on the Senate floor where Chuck Schumer was saying we have simple demands extend these tax credits. And Bernie Moreno, senator from Ohio came to the floor and said wait a sec, is this the exact same extension you guys just did? And Schumer said yes, of course. And Moreno said, so you don't have any fixes to it? No income caps to prevent people making millions of dollars a year from getting these subsidies. And Schumer said no caps, no changes. And Republicans were able to say Democrats are demanding really bad policy be extended with no fixes. That is where we still are right now. So that same Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno has a proposal with Susan Collins which is an extension of these pandemic tax credits, but with some changes. This from Punchbowl's Andrew Desiderio News GOP Senators Bernie Moreno and Susan Collins team up on new health care plan that extends Obamacare subsidies for two years with income caps and other reforms comes as our struggle to coalesce around a proposal ahead of vote on Dem's three year clean extension. That clean extension just means no fixes or reforms, even as Democrats know just how terrible and toxic this program is. And you'll remember we highlighted an exchange from Hakeem Jeffries and Becky Quick on CNBC where she pushed him on saying if you really wanted these pandemic subsidies to be extended, you would look for a compromise. But you don't want them extended. You want this to fail. You want those subsidies to go up so you can hammer Republicans into the midterms. And you'll remember Hakeem's umbrage at that suggestion. If you want to get something that has actually done, you need to do something that will have bipartisan. You can ask me the question. You can ask me the question. I'll provide the answer. I'll ask the question. Instead of going back, I'll provide the answer. No, no, I'm providing an answer. In order to provide context, Republicans have repeated we know how bad this is. We also now have seen a billion dollar health care fraud issue in Minnesota. And at the same time, Democrats are fighting against any effort to, to cut fraud, waste and abuse.
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Last week we talked extensively about this bombshell Minnesota fraud scandal and the role of Keith Ellison. And we went through some of that recorded audio of him going to these people who were at that point about to be investigated for millions and millions of dollars in fraud and he told them that he would help quash this investigation. Well, over the weekend he was interviewed by Anderson Cooper and asked this is there any, is there something you wish you had done differently?
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No, we, we are, we're glad that we took the action that we did. Now in another interview, he was also asked about this and his biggest concern wasn't that there was a billion dollars in fraud. It was that it would be politicized. We can't do it on a partisan basis. We got to do it together. We can't use incidents like this to score a political point. Watching that, you might think that Keith is still on the take, getting some political support from the people that he's continuing to try and run cover for by suggesting that investigations into this massive fraud that took a billion dollars from the taxpayers who are his constituents, is something being politicized. But here's Kim Strasser from the Wall Street Journal on this overall issue. Lessons from Minnesota Republicans have an opportunity to run against an out of control welfare state The Minnesota story in which Somali fraudsters built taxpayers out of more than $1 billion, has many ugly storylines to choose from. It's a parable of failed assimilation and the need for policies that heat the melting pot. It's another warning of identity politics, of fraudsters using minority owned status to cash in and crying racism to evade scrutiny. It's a scandal of politicians who look the other way, more eager to win votes than to enforce the law. Speaking of using identity politics to cover up terrible things, here's Ilhan Omar. Well, I want to say, you know, this also has an impact on Somalis because we are also taxpayers in Minnesota who will think of the poor members of the Somali community who didn't cash in on a billion dollars in fraud and send some of it back home to terrorist organizations like Al Shabaab. But she wasn't done there. She also wanted to use a little bit of from Margaret Brennan to shift the conversation, and we'll show you how that works. What do you make of this argument of failure to assimilate and sort of ruining America? How do you understand this? I mean, when I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric, it reminds me, yes, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people. Now Margaret Brennan is giving Ilhan an out there by saying, instead of getting into the nuts and bolts of this fraud and how it happened, I want to respond to Stephen Miller about it, which gives Ilhan the opportunity, instead of engaging on the substance, to talk about Stephen Miller and call him a Nazi when Stephen Miller is saying things that people across the board have acknowledged is a problem in this fraud. For example, the New York Times quoted a Dr. Samatar, a Somali American professor, who said that Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country's civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country's dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread. Now, both Kim Strassel and Stephen Miller talked about the sort of broken assimilation piece of this, but I also think it's really notable that Ilhan Omar wants to go back to everyone talking about that issue as a white supremacist. When you have a Somali American professor pointing to the fact that stealing from a broken government is a part of their culture that they brought here. Now, I hope our government isn't as broken as the government of Somalia, but with cases like this, we are seeing greater and greater problems. And Minnesota is going to be a giant case study in needing to cut fraud, waste and abuse.
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The Supreme Court's very busy term rolls on this week. First, yesterday hearing oral arguments in a case called Trump v. Slaughter, which is about the president's authority to fire FTC commissioners. First we go to the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Independent agencies are politically corrosive and the Supreme Court can reverse its 1935 error in Humphrey's executor. Now, one dynamic President Trump has faced from the beginning of his administration, whether it was with Doge trying to trim down executive departments or his own ability to fire members of the executive branch, Democrats have argued that there's a sort of shadowy fourth branch of government within the sort of bureaucracy that isn't controlled by the executive who runs the executive branch. Justice Gorsuch poked some holes in their arguments today. So even some quintessentially executive functions, in your view, are not vested in the president of the United States? Yeah, I would not say that. I would not put it in this. I would not say that they're not. Yes, I would. I would say they're not. I would have to say yes to that based on what you've just given. They're not constitutionally committed to the person of the president. Another case that they're hearing oral arguments on today is NRC versus fec, which is about campaign finance again. Wall Street Journal Editorial board How the Supreme Court can improve American politics. The justices take up spending limits on candidate coordination with political parties. The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that by removing arbitrary limits on First Amendment expression through political spending, we actually improve our political system and take out the incredible power that special interests have had to control things up to this point.
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Other major issues the Supreme Court is dealing with this term include things like the president's tariffs or, as they announced over the weekend, birthright citizenship, in which they will consider arguments about whether birthright citizenship in the United States is still following along with what the founders intended or if the program has shifted, allowing so many problems like birth tourism where people come to the United States to give birth hoping that child will be a US Citizen. A number of countries around the world ended birthright citizenship a long time ago to avoid problems like that. And those are the questions that the justices will consider this term.
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For our you can't make it up segment today, we're actually tying in that affordability issue. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego has released a plan that he says is about affordability, but it's actually not. Let's look at that. Fostering American energy, innovation and Affordability. Now, when you scroll down to page three, it is a giant glamour shot of Ruben now, those of you who have followed Ruben Gallego in his career know that he is a perpetually angry, very small person. So having this many glamour shots in his environmental fixing guide is funny. But I also think if you're printing a guide for helping the environment that you know people are gonna print out, how many full page portraits and glamour shots of yourself do you actually want? But let's read a tiny bit of it. In Arizona, specifically, Republicans budget bill raises families utility bills by more than $110 per year and jeopardizes 134 projects in Arizona representing more than 69,000 potential new jobs and 58 billion in capital investment. Now, once again, this is Democrats trying to say we reshape the entire economy, including in our own states, to get rid of reliable energy supply, to focus on wind and solar. Now in Arizona, they went very hard after solar creating new capacity. And as soon as Republicans got in power and ended so much of the subsidies that were propping up that entire industry, suddenly a lot of Democrat states and states with Democrat governors like Arizona were kind of left holding the bag. But the other reason that Rubin is doing this is to appease his donors who became very friendly with him when Democrats had the power to dole out billions of dollars to wind and solar companies. Ruben Gallego took $137,000 from the renewable energy industry in 2024. And guess who else he took money from? You may remember a little company that we've talked about called First Solar, the company that gave millions of dollars to the Biden campaign, buying themselves access both to Chuck Schumer to get secret intelligence about the negotiations about the inflation Reduction Act. Also were given the opportunity to be involved in the rulemaking process where those tax credits for solar companies were written. We literally have the White House logs on that that were written in the Associated Press, not conservative right wing outlets, but the Associated Press, where investors from First Solar went from being millionaires to literally billionaires because of our tax dollars. Guess who they've given money to? Ruben Gallego. And so when Democrats release reports like this saying Republicans are driving up utility bills and hurting people, you have to remember the larger dynamics here. The goal of their green transition was to cut off all alternatives to wind and solar so that the only thing you could do was put solar panels on your house or get a wind turbine to try and power your tv. So now that those things are not being propped up by taxpayers, Democrats have to say Republicans are destroying electricity and driving up utility bills. It's sort of like if you lit a house on fire, cut off all the water supply to put it out, and then stood next to the house trying to sell DNC branded water bottles to try and put it out. That's what Democrats are doing right now. It's absurd. But at least we've got Rubin's glamour shots. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us on 10 Minute Drill. Please leave us a review. Tell your friends, like, subscribe. Have a great day.