Call Your Senator: Sen Gillibrand on Cheaper Meds, Aging in Place and China

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our monthly Call Your Senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. New Yorkers, call your senator. Onlookers from other states or even other countries. Hello, Portugal, you can call too, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Senator, we always appreciate it. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thank you, Brian. Good to be on your show.

Brian Lehrer: Let me start with President Biden's op-ed in the New York Times today proposing a plan to keep Medicare solvent for decades to come by raising the Medicare tax rate by 1.2%, little over 1% tax increase only on income over $400,000 a year. That would include capital gains from investments as well as salaries from jobs. That'll be part of his budget proposal about to be introduced. Would you vote for that tax hike?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I would. I think strengthening Medicare is one of our most important goals. I've been working on Medicare for all since I ran for Congress in 2006. One of the ideas that I had, which would also compliment what the president's trying to do, is letting people buy into Medicare at age 50 so that there'd be a way to buy in at a price you could afford some percentage of income, so you have earlier access.

We want to make sure that Medicare stays solvent for a long time. We also recently were able to get some drug cost caps put on for Medicare beneficiaries. We got a cap of 200-- excuse me, a cap of $2,000 for out-of-pocket costs for drugs, plus a $35 monthly cap for insulin. Strengthening Medicare, making medicines cheaper for our seniors are priorities of mine, so I will support the president's efforts.

Brian Lehrer: In his state of the Union address, as everybody saw, Biden mocked some Republicans for wanting to sunset Medicare and social security for seniors every five years and having to renew the programs. The Republicans who support that say it's out of concerns about the solvency. Of course, the Republicans booed at the State of the Union denying they are a threat to Medicare, but say they're more realistic than Democrats in dealing forth rightly with the fact that both programs have solvency issues looming in the not too distant future and something has to be done. Does Biden's proposal in any way acknowledge part of the Republican position?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think it's common knowledge that we need to invest in both Medicare and social security-- Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. That just by the nature of our population, we need to keep investing. One of the things that we've been working on is to strengthen social security by blowing the income cap on who actually buys into social security. This is a similar plan for Medicare that President Biden has proposed.

To be consistent with President Biden's promise not to raise taxes on people who earn below $400,000, you could create a donut hole and blow the cap and start the social security tax at $400,000 for all incomes, which today is not being taxed at all. That's a way for the very wealthy among us to pay their fair share to help these social safety nets that keep everyone safer.

If you don't have access to Medicare and you're an older American who doesn't have access to private health insurance, you won't get the healthcare you need to survive. You won't be able to stay safe and stay well, and that harms all families. The same with social security. If our seniors are dying in poverty, that harms everyone. This is something that should be a shared burden that we all invest in together.

Brian Lehrer: Just to be really clear, as Biden focuses on Medicare, I gather you have a bill, is that what you were just describing, to expand social security benefits and extend social security solvency to the end of this century by doing what you call lifting the cap?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, I think it extends the solvency for 75 years. It's a bill I've been working on for a long time and have a number of senators on that bill, but that would create solvency, and it's really simple. People who are earning above $400,000 would then pay their fair share. The bill also does some changes to the cost of living adjustments to actually reflect a new consumer price index for the elderly, reflecting what they actually buy. They don't necessarily go out and buy the big screen TVs or the laptops or the high-tech gadgets, but they're more focused on food and prescription drugs, healthcare. That formula would be a better cost of living adjustment for them.

Brian Lehrer: When you're talking about expanding Medicare, how about ruinous expenses that many seniors not poor enough for Medicaid face, like home health aids and dental coverage? Could those be included?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, our bill includes dental, hearing, and eyesight which aren't covered, which is absurd. In terms of home health aids, I have other legislation to change that dynamic. Our home health aids are underpaid. They're not even required to be paid the minimum wage, and so making sure they get a living wage, making sure we incentivize different providers to increase the amount of home health aids are available. It's part of a master plan on aging that I'm writing right now. It's one of the key proponents to let seniors age in place. The way to do that is to make sure we have more home health aids to meet their medical needs.

Brian Lehrer: We have another family health question. Interesting, two callers are calling with basically the same question, so I wonder if there's a little campaign out there. Let's see what it's about. Brittany in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Brittany, with Senator Gillibrand.

Brittany: Hi, Kirsten Gillibrand, thank you so much for taking my call. I wanted to tell you that so many of us are so excited to see you champion paid family medical leave at the federal level, and I wanted to ask you specifically if you are considering stillbirth mothers. Just for our context, I'm a mom who lost her baby during delivery at about 28 weeks.

The reality of this kind of loss is a major maternal health issue. In the state of New York right now, this is not covered by paid family medical leave, which is currently being addressed at the state legislature. What it means is you pay into this as a taxpayer and then you don't get it if you have a still birth loss. As you're looking at the federal level and here at home in New York, I wonder what your thoughts are on stillbirth and paid family medical leave.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thank you for sharing your story. I'm very sorry to hear about your personal loss. That must be devastating and devastating for any expecting mother to have to go through. Our bill would cover those type of losses because it's covering both the life events of a new child, but also the life event of an illness or that kind of loss. We cover all life events. Even if your parent is sick or dying, if a spouse is sick or dying or a child is sick or dying, or yourself, those are all covered life events, and so you would be covered. I'm working very hard right now to try to draft a bipartisan version of our paid leave bill.

The Republican senators that I'm working with don't envision it in the same way we do as a universal benefit that everyone buys into like social security or Medicare, but maybe one where people can opt in, maybe one where states can opt in, maybe one where the lowest wage workers are at least covered. Those are the type of parameters we're talking about now to see if we can find a pathway to some version of paid leave, especially for states that have nothing. It's good that you're working with the state legislature to update our program to make sure it meets the needs of New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Brittany, thank you for your call. She was asking about your role as the senator introducing paid family and medical leave. Looks like our next caller, George in Manhattan, wants to ask about something pertaining to your role on the Senate Armed Services Committee. George in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

George: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Senator, I'm a constituent of yours. Just as a little background, I'm a septuagenarian, twice wounded, permanently disabled Vietnam veteran, who served there for 5 months in 18. From 18, I was wounded twice in that time [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: From age 18, is that what you're trying to say, from age 18?

George: I'm sorry. Yes. From age 18-- Within five months of age 18, I was wounded twice leading me to be in bed in St. Alban's Naval Hospital. I was in the Army, but anyway, for a year. I have a very strong feeling about the age of people who are deployed to combat. I read an eye-opening book in 2018 by Dr. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. She's the lab chief of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Cambridge University. The book was entitled The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. By the way, Senator, I sent you a copy of the book with a cover letter referencing the fact that being a mother of children of that. Then perhaps of current or future draft age, should there be a draft, I thought would grab your attention.

Brian Lehrer: George, forgive me. For time, and I want to get other callers on here with the Senator as well, are you asking for a bill that would ban sending people as young as 17 into combat?

George: Yes. The neuroscientists have long determined that the prefrontal cortex where we do our executive thinking, especially in crisis situation, does not complete maturation, whether for males or females until at least the mid-20s.

Brian Lehrer: George, forgive me, I'm going to leave it there. Senator, do we send anybody under 18 into combat now?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I'm not aware of that, but I do know the study that our caller is talking about. Thank you for your service and thank you for all the sacrifices you've made for our country. You are someone who inspires me to do hard work in the Armed Services Committee and in the Intelligence Committee on your behalf.

I know that study you're talking about. It talks about how teenagers' brains develop. As a mother of boys, I'm pretty aware that those brains are not fully formed until they're probably 25. They don't necessarily have the executive decision-making function that you're mentioning, but I'm not a scientist nor a doctor, so I don't know the specifics, but I do know what you're talking about. For service members, I think we've always put 18 as the age of enlistment because that's also the age you can vote.

It is something though that I'm going to think about and maybe look into to see, is there a difference between various MOS's and combat being unique? I'm definitely going to think about it. We are having recruitment troubles in all the services right now, so I don't think anyone is going to be interested in raising the age of enlistment because we still need as many of our best and brightest as we can have for our country's security, but I will look into that study and think about it more since you brought it up. Thank you so much again for your service.

Brian Lehrer: George, thank you indeed. Why is there a problem with recruitment right now?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: We've had hearings about that and it's not clear, but I do think there's a couple of effects that I have assessed. One is post COVID. I think COVID was a very difficult time for most people. I think a lot of people rethought their lives and what they want to do with their lives, and it's changed how people have created their future path. We also have been able to have very high retention rates, which is interesting. The people who have chosen this career are really invested in sticking with it.

I think there's also an issue about just the instability people are feeling and whether they want to add to that with multiple deployments, and changing their homes, and the challenges they have to families. One of the things that I've really focused on is making the quality of life higher for our service members. For example, I've done a round table in Staten Island where service members explain to me that they don't have enough food at the end of the month, and that they need better eligibility for food stamps.

Well, that's outrageous that we don't pay our service members enough to afford the food they need for their children and their families. I've also heard about the challenges of deployment when a service member gets deployed and their family has to deploy with them. We made a law change to say that if the family members were still in school or a spouse had a job that he or she couldn't leave, that they could either deploy later or earlier based on school years or jobs.

There's a lot of challenges for service members in terms of just being good parents, and being good spouses, and being able to manage the life of being deployed around the globe. Those are things that I have worked out over the past 10 years as the chair or ranking of the personnel subcommittee.

Higher pay, better housing, the ability of spouses to work when deployed, the ability to get mental health support services when needed, these are the challenges that I have been working on to try to fix for a long time. Something as simple as having daycares on bases that open when your requirement to be at your post is. If you have to be at post by 5:00 AM and there's no daycare until 8:00 AM, well, that's a problem. Trying to fit service with families and lives has been one of my biggest goals.

Brian Lehrer: I saw an article, I don't know if it was your Staten Island event, but in the New York Post, about spouses that focused on spouses of service members stationed at Staten Island having trouble meeting their families' food needs, and therefore, going on SNAP benefits. I think the article focused on food stamps and saying, "This is outrageous that service members aren't getting paid a living wage to focus on their families."

Honestly, Senator, my reaction to that story was, "Well, yes, but what about everybody else who isn't paid a living wage enough to feed their families?" Do you know the numbers? What does a service member of the armed forces stationed on Staten Island get paid? I know it depends on rank and everything, but who are you focusing on? What's the income and how does it compare to the income of private sector jobs?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Some of our most junior service members are right around minimum wage salaries. The minimum wage is too low for any worker, it's not a living wage, and so if you're only making $30,000 a year or $35,000 a year, it's going to be very hard for you to be able to feed your family, afford your housing, be able to make a car payment. We have this challenge across the whole economy that our lowest wage workers are the ones who have very few benefits.

They don't have paid leave, for example. They don't have affordable daycare or universal pre-K. They may not have enough for food and rent. It also pushes on this issue of affordable housing, which we've worked on as well on the federal level to try to change how we address area median income. If the AMI rate is factoring in people who live in Westchester and in Manhattan, to everybody else, well, it's not going to reflect what affordability means for someone living in New York City.

These issues are universal. The challenge is, is when you've signed up for the military, you can't go out and get a new job. You're signed up for the military. You're stuck with what they give you, and that's a challenge. We have to advocate for them on the Armed Services Committee. It also doesn't mean, Brian, to your point, that we can't advocate for everybody else too, because the minimum wage is too low, it's not a living wage. That's why when you talk about the earlier question of home health aids, I think they still get paid below the minimum wage. These are challenges that we have to fix, and being aware of people's lives is the number one way to lift up their voices and tell people in Washington that we need to do better.

Brian Lehrer: Chris in Blue Hill, Maine, you're on WNYC with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi. Good morning, Brian, and good morning Senator. On February 14th, Brian, you aired a segment of the Brigid Bergin Show, on which the Senator was conversing, and she made the statement that China wants to start a world war with the US. I don't really know what a world war with the US means, but when she said that, it brought to mind exactly the moment almost 20 years ago when Colin Powell got up in front of the UN and with great confidence, the same confidence, stated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It occurs to me that for him, he was speaking against the backdrop of the 9/11 even though we know what he was saying was not true. In the senator's case--

Brian Lehrer: Which he later acknowledged, by the way, regarding Iraq and said he was misled-

Chris: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: -but go ahead.

Chris: Well, in this case, Senator Gillibrand is speaking against the backdrop of apparently a spy balloon. I just am curious why the senator would speculate on something like a World War. I know Senator, you are on the intelligence committee, so if there is something you know, that you would want to share with us, tell us why you think China wants to start a World War with us. I'd like to know. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Chris.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thank you for your question. That was a rather short interview, but I can give you much more context. The difference between me and Colin Powell and George Bush is they wanted to get into a war, and I'm trying to prevent a war. I have the exact opposite framework from which I state these concerns. Our approach towards China has always been as an economic competitor, an economic participant. For the past 30 years, we've continued our view of one China policy politically and diplomatically.

We've traditionally always seen China as benign and a developing country. That's changed, unfortunately, for the United States over the last decade and a half. China has spent enormous amount of resources doubling their military defense spending, really trying to create state of the art offensive weapons in both air, land, and sea, and space. The constellation of what China's putting forward as a projection of power is very worrisome to me personally.

She just made a speech where he-- it was probably his most aggressive rebuke to US policy, blaming what he termed a Washington-led campaign to suppress China for recent challenges facing his country. We know that China is watching everything that happens with regard to Ukraine and Russia. I don't want the United States to not have clear eyes about what China is doing and how they're posturing. They are considering, and this is something that is publicly available and have been for a long time, about whether or not they're going to invade Taiwan.

The United States has always stated a one China policy, and we've had strategic ambiguity about what we would do in that situation. The way to avoid having a war that could involve other countries is to show strength by alliances. Making sure that we work with our allies around the globe to show that we are all on the same side and on the side of supporting democracies and on the side of supporting independence.

That we believe that economic investment is a better way to run global politics not military actions. My goal is to make sure people are aware that China is not our friend right now. The way they're making investments are not with an eye towards peace. They're an eye towards war, and they're not defensive weapons, they're offensive weapons. They are specifically geared towards what they want to do with regard to Taiwan. These are our concerns --

Brian Lehrer: I guess the caller is asking in the context of all that, and I saw the breaking news alerts this morning on that speech today by Xi Jinping that you just made reference to, which is being characterized as his most direct criticism yet of the United States and saying, "Western countries," this is a quote, "Led by the United States have implemented all around containment and encirclement and suppression of China, which is brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country's development." I guess the question is, the caller seems to be worried that your language escalates rather than deescalates. How do you deescalate?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: No, my language is intended for people to wake up and to understand when we're talking about issues related to China's ability and the Chinese government, not the Chinese people, but the Chinese government's ability to spy on this country, to spy on our allies, to spy through its digital yuan, to spy through spy satellites, to spy through spies that are in the United States right now, to spy through technology through Huawei and through TikTok, that they need to be aware that this is not benign anymore.

This is no longer a benign developing country. This is a peer or near peer, certainly one of the biggest economies in the world, but also one of the biggest investors in military capabilities. I don't remember the question I was asked in the other interview, but my purpose in answering the question directly was we need to be very aware of China's goals and make judgments based on those goals because they're not friendly.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcom and WNJO 90.3, Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. Just a few minutes left with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and her monthly Call Your Senator segment. Cece in Brooklyn is calling her Senator. You're on WNYC. Hello, Cece.

Cece: Hi. Hi, Senator. I wanted to ask you, because you're running for reelection next year, which is very important. One of your campaign emails mentioned that Republicans are winning more races across New York. What I wanted to know is how is your campaign going to craft a narrative that will pull in Republicans as well as Democrats?

Brian Lehrer: Senator, go for it.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Most people in New York state actually care about a lot of the same things. They care about their kids, so they want stronger public schools. They care about their health and wellbeing, so they want affordable, accessible, high quality healthcare. They care about being able to have a job that pays for their bills, whether it's food or heat or rent. They care about public safety. They care about a community where their kids can walk to work-- excuse me, their kids can walk to school, where they themselves can get off the subway and walk to work and not be worried about being attacked and not be worried about being unsafe.

I've worked on all of these issues over the last 14 years that I've been in public life. I have specific successes in each of them. Public safety, for example, one of the first bills that I wrote was in response to a young girl getting killed in Brooklyn because of a stray bullet. I wrote an anti-gun trafficking bill, which is really important to New York because something like 90% of the weapons used in crimes come from out of state, and almost all of them are illegal.

To give of law enforcement the tools they need to crack down on trafficking to get these illegal guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals, well, we just signed that law. President Biden just signed that bill into law last year, and with it was a lot of money for mental health, for violence disruptor programs. Already, the ATF has prosecuted four traffickers and gotten 50 weapons off the streets of Brooklyn since that law has been made. In addition, I've been meeting with not-for-profits across the state to talk about their applications for mental health violence disruption money.

Whether you're creating afterschool programming so kids don't join gangs, whether you're creating summer school programs, whether you're creating programs for that lonely kid in a high school class to not become a shooter and to push back on the toxic nature of a lot of our social media platforms and giving them more opportunities to do things with other kids as opposed to going down rabbit holes online. Those are all eligible to apply for federal money. Billions of dollars we've made available.

Focusing on healthcare, education, jobs and public safety is a message that I believe is going to resonate with all New Yorkers, Democrats and Republicans because those are the kitchen table issues that every family I've met with over the last several years have been focused on. I have a really robust record on those issues of getting things done, but also a big agenda for getting more things done to help them more.

Brian Lehrer: Last question and we'll stay on reelection politics. The caller was concerned about potential threats to your seat from Republicans. Gothamist had a quote from Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez who said she considers you progressive and doing an incredible job. On the question of whether she would necessarily endorse you for reelection, if you were primaried by a young Latina, maybe more progressive like AOC, Velazquez said, "We would have to listen to everyone and see what their vision is for the state." Are you concerned about a primary challenge coming from the left?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Not particularly, but if I am challenged on the left or the right, I will run a very strong campaign on my record and my vision for the state. We look forward to that campaign.

Brian Lehrer: Senator, we always appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. Take care.

 

 

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