Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Nicole Maliatakis, Republican from New York, is with us in studio in Washington, and it's great to have you back on Bloomberg TV and radio.
Good to be with you.
Is this a Republican or a conservative concept, the idea of capping interest rates on credit cards? Is it something that you're comfortable with?
Well, I think in general, a lot of Republican members, including myself, have expressed concerns with any type of price controls, right? That's not something that we generally believe in. We applaud the president for trying to address this issue of affordability. And quite frankly, 29% is a little bit ridiculous, right?
I mean, you know, I can go to a loan shark down the block in my district and basically get a better deal. You don't have loan sharks in your district. No, no, of course we don't. I'm just joking. Defend us, Staten Islanders.
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Chapter 2: What is Congresswoman Malliotakis's stance on capping credit card interest rates?
But the reality is that how can we address this? I actually was speaking to somebody who represents a credit union the other day, and they're capped at 18%. How about that? So maybe 18% should be more of what we're looking at for one year to kind of bring it in par.
But I think this is going to be a real big discussion on Capitol Hill because I can tell you, I was a member of the Main Street Caucus, which is more center-right members of our conference. A lot of them have expressed... concerns about this in our last meeting, which took place on Monday.
And so I do believe that this is really, really going to be something that he's going to get a lot of opposition to on the Hill.
This falls into the whole affordability category. You can come at this from a lot of different ways, whether it's housing, whether it's pharmaceuticals. Obamacare subsidies is one that we have been talking about a lot. And as the Senate prepares to go home today, There are some saying that this Bernie Moreno bill is going nowhere, that it's time for a new plan, open enrollment is closing.
Where are we in this debate?
Yeah, look, I think that the president just a little while ago came out with his great health care plan, and we're currently reviewing that. It does hit on a lot of the points. I mean, I think one of the big issues where we see some opportunity is pharmaceuticals, right? He's proposed his most favored nation. He wants Americans to pay the same price that many other countries are paying.
Why are we subsidizing the research and on top of it paying the highest prices? So he has a point with that, but I think the bigger issue is PBM reform, if we want to rein in those PBMs that are those middlemen between the insurance companies and the pharmacies. In some cases, there's vertical integration where the insurance company is the PBM and the pharmacy.
That is, I think, a real problem because we're seeing them put small mom-and-pop pharmacies out of business. They're dictating what their competitors are making. And they have no transparency in terms of what's going on in the middle in between phase and how much they're profiting.
So in fact, our committee next week, Ways and Means, is going to be having these health insurance executives that do also own these PBMs. come before us. And the questions are, it's going to be interesting, especially when we, when we asked them, you know, about the 230% increase in profits, uh, and, and the premiums increasing at the same time, despite those taxpayer subsidies.
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Chapter 3: How does affordability relate to housing and pharmaceuticals?
They're working hard. They're paying taxes. And you know what? They lose their legal status and then they lose their job. And unfortunately, we need to figure out a system that improves that and also gives more employers opportunities to hire foreign workers for jobs that they cannot fill with Americans.
Well, that was a comprehensive answer. And I only have a minute left. I want to just see your thought on that. The discord over these ICE raids impacting the budget for DHS, could this hold up funding at the end of the month?
Quite frankly, I think the Democrats are playing politics here with this. I think that, first of all, we just gave billions of dollars to our ICE to be able to carry out these deportations in the reconciliation bill. Were you going to see some impact? if they choose to take this route. Coast Guard, for example, is going to get hurt. These are serious other federal law enforcement.
They're the ones that are going to get impacted. Counterterrorism, cybersecurity, our coastline, those are the areas we're going to see some impact if they don't work with us to get the job done and fund the government.