- [Voiceover] This is the Washington Week
Webcast Extra.
- Hello, and welcome.
I'm Ed Okeefe, filling in for Gwen Eiffel.
Joining me around the table, Alexis Simendinger
of Real Clear Politics,
Josh Green of Bloomberg Business Week,
Reid Wilson of The Hill, and Abby Phillip
of The Washington Post.
Abbey, I want to pick up with you.
We were talking a little bit during the broadcast
about the Clinton Foundation.
More broadly, I've thought for a while that this speaks
to the question of what to do about Bill,
in the event that she becomes president,
and he becomes the first First Dude, or First Man,
but also happens to be a former president.
Do they have any sense of what that will look like?
And are they prepared, going into the fall,
to face more questions about this,
should it come up, either from Trump or from other folks.
- Yeah, well, we learned this week that he's not
really good at baking cookies.
They had to submit their cookie recipes,
the sort of quadrennial spouse cookie recipe,
and he submitted Hillary Clinton's,
so that's off the table,
but they've talked a lot about putting him in charge
of the economy in some way or some form.
We know that's not going to be any kind of formal role,
but it's gonna be something that involves him
going around the country, and sort of talking
about economic development.
What it can't be is anything in any way, shape, or form,
involving the Clinton Foundation, and really,
the work that it does, because the problem for Bill Clinton
is that he is sort of the quintessential operator.
He brings this person in contact with that person,
and that is not an activity that he can really be
engaged in while she's president,
'cause it's always gonna raise questions
about undue influence from corporations
or foreign governments or so on and so forth.
- And, in fact, this September will be
the final Clinton Global Initiative
when he convenes people in New York, right?
- That's right, so even if the Clinton Foundation itself
survives her election, then CGI is not gonna happen,
and CGI was the main vehicle for those kinds of connections
to happen.
It's the place where he would sort of like put this person
in touch with that person, and you get sort of like
this great platform with the former president.
They recognized very clearly that that can no longer go on,
regardless of what happens, so we'll see what he does,
but they also have to be very careful with him.
He's not on the trail a whole lot these days,
part of that has to do with just sort of keeping him
out of the line of fire for Trump, and also,
preventing him making mistakes and gaffes.
He is getting up there in age, he can't be out there
as much as he would like to be, and perhaps,
as much as they might want him to.
- And to put a button on it, if it survives,
the current plan is for Chelsea Clinton to sort
of take over the foundation, right?
- That's the thing that is rumored to happen, but again,
I don't necessarily think that is nailed down,
partly because a lot of people have raised questions
about what's the difference between Chelsea Clinton
taking over, and Bill Clinton being in charge of it.
It just, the conflict of interest, and the potential there
remains.
- Important development this week that maybe was missed
amid misbehaving Olympic swimmers and staff shakeups
in presidential campaigns.
Some of the major healthcare companies in the country,
Alexis said, they're pulling out
of the healthcare exchanges, causing yet another blow
for Obamacare just a few months here before the election,
and right before open enrollment season begins.
- It is an important story because it not only deals
with the economic situation now, and what's happening
in the healthcare arena now under The Affordable Care Act,
but it also looks ahead to what might be necessary,
if we see Congress return in one complexion or another,
and what might happen legislatively, so in this case,
this was the biggest.
Aetna and Humana were talking about a merger,
and so Cigna and another healthcare company
were talking about a merger, and the Justice Department
is now opposing it, and saying that they're gonna file suit
against letting these two mergers go through.
The element of the insurers saying, "Look,
"we think that we're losing money on this,
"so we're gonna pull out of some of these exchanges,"
and we can talk about whether they were,
all of this is in line with they were being upset
about the Justice Department filing suit,
to prevent these mergers, but the truth is
that there are problems under The Affordable Care Act
that need to be addressed, and one of them is
that these exchanges, now remember,
only five percent of those are in short,
or in these exchanges, this is not all of America,
but that they're finding that these exchanges
are getting the sickest of patient and clients,
not the healthiest, and so one of the things
that's being talked about is,
should there be bigger subsidies,
should there be more outreach to get healthier people
into the exchanges, and what's gonna happen
to the competitiveness should there be a public option
in the way that for instance Secretary Clinton
has argued there should be.
Donald Trump says he'd pull out ACA by the roots,
The Affordable Care Act by the roots, and replace it,
but he hasn't said with what.
- And this is exactly the kind of,
not necessarily an October surprise, but the kind of thing
that rubs off potentially on the Clinton campaign,
because if she really is aligning herself so closely
with the president, she's inheriting his legacy,
she by extension could get blamed for all this.
- She's committed, though.
I would argue she is committed to saying
that she would work hard to improve The Affordable Care Act,
to work with Congress to make the changes,
to continue to make it work, and she has,
she's gone down that road so far,
that it would be hard for me to imagine
that she would reverse herself.
- Is there any sign Republicans in Congress
have been so recalcitrant about doing anything
but repealing The Affordable Care Act?
I think they voted 50 something times to remove it.
Is there any sign that they would be willing
to strike some kind of a deal to improve the law,
rather than just strike it off the books?
- That would depend on who's in the White House,
and what has happened in the Senate.
It's unlikely that the House would flip to Democrats,
but Reid would know better about whether we're gonna be
in a wave election, but if Congress changes
in a really dramatic way, and we end up
with a Democratic Senate, I could see that there might
be some long-range efforts to make some adjustments.
- To Ed's point, though, how many times have we seen
a big deal like this happen about The Affordable Care Act
that then gets overshadowed by something else?
At the very beginning when open enrollment started,
the first 16 days, when everything was such a disaster,
the government was shut down, because Ted Cruz
and the Republicans.
- Well, the narrative, though, also includes positives,
which is that there are millions more people
who are insured, and also, the cost of healthcare,
healthcare costs overall have stayed muted,
so the insurance companies want to be in this market.
They just want healthier people in that marketplace,
so I think the skirmishing is gonna continue.
- Fun fact, next month, Americans can start voting
for president in some places, but there's one
big battleground state that might not be able
to start voting early, as they were expecting to,
North Carolina, and I know there's been some developments
there this week, right?
- Well, Edward, about 80, what is it, 84 days out
from the election, and yet, there are still some states
in which we don't actually know the rules
under which the elections will be operated,
because of ongoing litigation over things
like voter identification laws, in states like Texas
and Wisconsin, and most notably, in North Carolina.
The North Carolina voter ID law, and a big part
of what they're litigating down there,
doesn't just have to do with voter ID.
It has to do with whether or not you can cast a ballot
in a precinct that's not yours,
when early voting is supposed to start,
whether or not you can pre-register to vote.
That is, if you're 17 years of old, you sign up,
and then you'll be registered when you turn 18,
and one piece of this that a lot of people
are talking about right now is when early voting
will actually be able to start.
They have to under the new law,
they have to open this early voting
for a specific number of hours over x number of days.
They're arguing, the court has blocked part of that,
saying, essentially, that it would unduly burden
some voters who are more likely to vote early.
There's a difference, early voting tends to be
more Democratic heavy.
Absentee voting, that is, you get your ballot
in the mail and you send it back tends to be
more Republican heavy in some southern states,
so this very clearly has an impact on who has access
to the polls at times when they're comfortable
and able to go and vote, and it is the latest front
in voting wars that are happening across the country.
- Remind us where else.
- Texas and Wisconsin are still fighting
over their own voter ID laws,
but on the other hand,
you've got sort of the conservative legislatures
that have passed these measures.
On the other hand, there are liberal legislatures
that have passed, measures that automatically register
people to vote in states like California,
and, excuse me, Illinois, where the governor
just vetoed that legislation, so the voting wars
are bipartisan.
We are the only major Western democracy
that does not have centralized federalized election rules,
and that's really playing out in the states.
- We know that the Clinton campaign
is aggressively organized around early voting,
and around some of these rules, but do you get any sense
on the Republican side that they understand
how they're gonna work around the kind of changing landscape
this fall?
- Well, one of the really fascinating things
that we've seen is the lawsuits
that the Clinton campaign's general council, Mark Elias,
is advancing in a lot of these states:
Virginia and Arizona, they're talking about
some different parts of election law,
really represents a new approach to The Voting Rights Act,
which was struck down by the Supreme Court
a couple years ago, and now, instead of the onus
being on some states to prove
that their election law changes are not going to be a burden
to specific populations.
Now, the onus is on those specific populations
to prove that they have been burdened by the changes,
so both sides are sort of still feeling out
this legal territory, and it's not something
that's gonna end with the 2016 campaign.
- And the North Carolina case is so important,
because you have not only competitive presidential race,
but now, increasingly, a competitive senate race,
and governors race.
Right, exactly.
Remember that show about nothing?
Seinfeld?
Well, guess what, there's a connection
to the Donald Trump campaign now.
As we mentioned, you, Josh, wrote this great profile
of Stephen Bannon last fall, and tucked in there
his word that he actually made a little bank,
if you will, off of Seinfeld, right?
- Bannon was a pretty rich Goldman Sachs investment banker,
started his own boutique firm in Hollywood,
and a lot of what he did
was to orchestrate media mergers,
and a lot of his money, I found out,
comes from, there was a deal he put together
between Castle Rock Pictures, which owned Seinfeld,
and Ted Turner, who we all know, and when it got
to the table, as Bannon tells it,
Turner was a little short of cash, and in lieu
of his ordinary fee, Bannon accepted residuals
to five Castle Rock Shows, including Seinfeld,
which was then only in its third season.
It was considered to be the runt of the litter.
Ben told me that they didn't project a lot of earnings
going forward from that show, but as we all know,
it turned out to be one of the all-time classics,
and that is the money that helped kind of fuel
the rise of Bannon, and now, Donald Trump.
- And, yada yada yada, the rest is history.
(laughing)
Well, look, we gotta go, but stay online all week long,
and check out the news you need to know
on the Washington Week website.
That's of course at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek
and that's all for this edition
of the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
I'm Ed Okeefe.
Take care.
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