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Host or Moderator (4:30)

Wow. Let's bring in Democratic Congressmember Suhas Subramaniam. Congressmember, first off, welcome to the Midas Touch Network, your first time appearing. You are a Congress member from Virginia's 10th. What do you make of that? I know your district is being impacted by these cuts.

Suhas Subramaniam (4:46)

Yeah. You know, she said a couple interesting things. She also said that Congress couldn't cut Medicaid, but that's exactly what they're trying to do right now. But you know, I represent a lot of federal workers and contractors and those are real jobs. They're real people with real families. So certainly the government does actually employ a lot of people, that many of them are veterans. But second, you know, aside from just that, I mean, you know, think of someone who's an employee at the irs. They actually generate revenue for the government. They can generate. They can make sure that taxes are collected to make sure waste, fraud and abuse is found and removed. And so a lot of the federal civil service actually saves taxpayers money in the long run. That's why a lot of these programs exist. They were authorized by Congress to do just that. So, you know, what she said is not true. It doesn't make any sense. And. But, you know, we shouldn't be surprised, right? What we should be surprised about is a good thing, which is what you were saying before. I think now even Republicans are starting to understand that Trump's agenda was really just about helping the most, the richest billionaires and richest corporations at the expense of kids who want to be fed and people who just want basic care on programs like Medicaid.

Host or Moderator (6:05)

You know, I'm hearing that Republican leadership, all the way up to MAGA Mike Johnson and Trump are telling the members of Congress, the Republicans, to stop doing their town halls because it was so humiliating. What happened then? MAGA Mike Johnson went on CNN about a night ago, and he was saying, you know, all of those people that you're seeing in these ruby red districts, he's like, they're not real people. This is all fake. Don't believe your eyes. Let me just show you a bit of what he said, then get your reaction to that. Let's play.

MAGA Mike Johnson (6:34)

Just asking, because as you know, your home state of Louisiana, about 80% of the Medicaid spending there is covered by the federal government. We've seen it in a lot of red states, of course, across the United States. It's not just a blue state issue, as you have seen through this. And we've seen the blowback that some Republicans in your caucus are getting when they go back home to their districts worried about these cuts or worried about what Doge is doing. Do you have concerns that that's anything that Democrats will be able to use to run against those Republicans?

Ryan Reynolds (7:03)

No, because the. No, I don't. Because the videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters in many of those places. These are Democrats who went to the events early and filled up the seats.

Suhas Subramaniam (7:12)

If you had.

Ryan Reynolds (7:13)

If the videos had argued.

MAGA Mike Johnson (7:14)

They were all protesters, though, Mr. Speaker, many acknowledged they were his constituents.

Ryan Reynolds (7:23)

One Republican acknowledge they were constituents. That's fantastic. Okay. But they.

Host or Moderator (7:28)

Yeah. What's your response to that?

Suhas Subramaniam (7:30)

We had one town hall in my district that we had room for about 150 people in the room. 500 people came and people left. Yeah. But a lot of people actually just stayed in the lobby of the building just to hear what we were saying and then came and Talked to me afterwards. We have one tonight where we decided to increase the capacity of the room to 650, got a new venue and 800 signups. We had to close signups. And these are all real people, not one of them is paid. And a few of them are even more than a few are Republicans actually who are really, really pissed off, to be honest. And so I think that that's, you know, he's got to say what he's got to say to cover his tracks, but he's not living in reality if that's what he actually thinks.

Host or Moderator (8:15)

I'll give you a little trip down memory memory lane. Although not so long ago when you were running for the 10th congressional district, you did an interview from W USA 9 and they were saying things about the economy then and we're not really, we're not talking about years ago, we're talking about months ago. This was the interview. This is how they were describing the economy then. Here, play this clip to ask you.

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Host or Moderator (8:51)

So that's where it was then. I just wanted to show that because in a matter of months this guy has like taken a sledgehammer, Trump's taken a sledgehammer to this economy and I think has destroyed it quicker than most people expected. I mean, prices are surging right now and he can try to distract with all of the posts that he's making, but the data's, the data.

Suhas Subramaniam (9:15)

Yeah. Someone wants to describe the economy to me and the President's relationship to it as like a baseball manager and a baseball team where, you know, the manager can set the lineup but they can't always hit, you can't always catch. And, but in this case, you know, this president has actually given us a lot of self inflicted wounds. You talk about the tariffs for instance, and the threat of tariffs. Now private sector and the markets don't really want to make big investments right now. They're afraid of actually moving on, investing in the United States. A lot of businesses come to a standstill here in Virginia. A lot of government contractors spend, you know, hundreds of thousands of millions trying to implement government contracts and now they've been canceled overnight and they're never going to work with the government again. And you know, they're trying to figure out where they are in this economy. But you know, a lot of the disruption that's happened has directly led to this. And now you talk about getting rid of federal civil servants, scientists, you know, workers who are very essential to our government's operations. And so if you fire the person, for instance, involved in crop safety and health at the USDA, well, yeah, you know, you saved $100,000 maybe in the short term, but it's going to cost us millions over the next five years as we see damage to our crops. And that's just one example. You spread that across hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants and you end up in a really bad position. So I think this is different than when we had struggles under previous presidents and that this is actually self inflicted and caused directly by the president and his administration.

Host or Moderator (10:53)

Now, this is the first year that you've been in Congress. What I hear from the American people, they don't like process answers of we can't do things simply because we're in the minority and we can't hold the hearings. I think people are looking for fighters right now who are going to stand up because people are pissed. Now, you've been a very outspoken freshman member of Congress. You haven't hesitated to call out Trump and Musk in no uncertain terms. You've been utilizing all digital platforms as, you know, being innovative in Congress. So the question I always get asked is, all of this is great, Ben. You know, Congressmember Subramaniam is great. What can we do? What do you want us to do? Where do you want us to go? Help. Help lead us. Because I think this is a time where people just want to say, please help us and please tell us we're ready to do what you want us to do to stand up to a lot of these atrocities taking place.

Suhas Subramaniam (11:59)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, first I'll say, you know, I come from the state legislature and where no one really paid attention to what we did. So coming to Congress, when I saw I had the opportunity to speak on the floor whenever I wanted to, like, I've taken advantage of that and I think some of my colleagues are starting to as well. I think we in Congress do have a megaphone and we've encouraged each other to use that as much as we can. So even if we don't call the hearings, well, we can go on the House floor and call out the hypocrisy, call out the bad stuff that's happening and bring attention to it. And I've also tried to be on different social media platforms because we have to find people where they are. Right. Everyone's not in front of their TV at 6 o'clock listening to Dan Rather anymore. Things have changed. They listen to you. They listen to a lot of other mediums. And so we're trying to get out there as much as possible. In Virginia, we have elections every year. And so I've told people, now is the time. Sign up with our campaign, sign up with any campaign, and certainly the governor's campaign here, because we have a chance to send a message to the United States and to voters across the country right now. And then there's special elections as well, too, so you can get involved that way. And third, you know, especially if they're going to ignore court orders or, you know, really ignore the will of Congress and the American people and continue to break the law, like, let's take to the streets. Let's do whatever we can. You know, I know the rallies don't feel like they make a difference. I know showing up to the Republican town halls doesn't feel like it makes a difference. But let's keep putting the pressure. There's three Republicans that won. Districts like Kamala Harris won. Let's start there, and let's go all the way out to these vulnerable Republicans. All we need is three people on any issue to stop it from happening. And certainly we should use all the leverage we can as members of Congress. But this, we cannot put the pressure without you, the people, we, the people, working together and doing everything we can every day to make sure that this administration and all the Republicans in Congress know that we mean business.

Host or Moderator (14:09)

Congressman Suez of Romanya, great to have you on the show. We hope you come back soon. And, you know, I'm glad you just said, hey, we're, we're ready to protest and we're ready to be by, you know, you're ready to be by the people side when that happens. And it is happening now. We're seeing it grow.

Suhas Subramaniam (14:25)

Absolutely. Thank you so much, everybody.

Host or Moderator (14:27)

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