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Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that helps democracy thrive.

It's Friday, December 5th, and I'm Cynthia Connolly, director of programing here at the City Club.

And so pleased to introduce today's forum featuring U.S.

Congressman Greg Landsman.

Congressman Landsman represents the first district of Ohio, which includes the city of Cincinnati, Warren County, and borders the state of Kentucky.

He is widely known for his work in child and family advocacy and bipartisan legislative efforts that support veterans housing affordability, public safety, and more.

Just two weeks ago, Congressman Landsman announced the Great American Comeback Plan.

It's a plan that aims to revitalize the American dream and unite the country around shared values of fairness, opportunity, democracy and hard work.

It comes as no surprise that this plan is born in Ohio's first district, which is home to one of the state's most diverse populations in terms of race, income, economic activity and, yes, political dynamics.

And we will hear more about this plan here shortly, including the transformative bills the congressman is proposing for the great American comeback and what it takes to get the job done.

Before joining the U.S.

House of Representatives in 2023.

The congressman served on the Cincinnati City Council for five years, where he led investments and public safety in core services.

He also served as the director of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

He currently serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including the Subcommittee on Health, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and the Subcommittee on Environment.

Before we begin, a quick reminder for our live stream and radio audience and ideas and public media.

If you have a question for the congressman during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text it to (330)541-5794.

Again, that's (330)541-5794, and city club staff will try to work it into the second half of the program.

Now members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me with a warm welcome for Congressman Greg Landsman.

That was very sweet.

Thank you.

Well good afternoon.

Cynthia, thank you so much for that.

And to the Cincinnati area, the Cleveland sincere sorry to the Cleveland City Club.

Thank you for hosting, having me and including me in what is this remarkable history?

And it's such an honor.

And thank you all for being here and for those watching at home.

Thank you.

I have been a member of Congress for only a few years, but I am convinced that the biggest issue we face in this country is that power and wealth has been concentrated so unprecedentedly and so dangerously at the top.

And the big issues that we face in this country stem from this.

The extreme concentration of wealth and power has given a small group of super elites, and think Elon Musk and these tech billionaires, the super wealthy.

The president is made by some reports, something like, several billion dollars earned made, over the course of the first ten months, 11 months of his presidency.

Half of his cabinet, they're making a lot of the big decisions, arguably, they're making most of the big decisions.

And there's a disconnect between them and us.

They're no longer connected to us the same way others were.

If they did really well, they still stayed in the community.

They were still part of who we are, and they shared our values and they knew who we were.

They cared about us.

And that's still true for some folks.

But it's increasingly true that a lot of folks at the top who have billions and billions of dollars don't know us.

They don't care about us.

So the decisions they're making, they benefit themselves at the expense of us.

And this is a crisis.

It has gotten worse, arguably over the last ten, 12 months.

But to be clear, these problems of extreme wealth and political concentration have been building for decades.

And here's the problem.

All that wealth and power comes from somewhere.

It's come from us.

It's come from you.

It's come from the folks that I represent back home.

And the reality now is that the American dream is out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.

The very promise of America is diminishing in such a severe and rapid way.

This is a moment of reckoning.

I came of age when the American Dream was very much a reality.

And when our politics, while not perfect, was still productive.

I grew up in a traditional American middle class household.

My parents were teachers.

They worked hard.

They didn't have a ton of money.

They didn't want for much, but they could buy a house and they could pay for their children's education, and they could retire with dignity.

When I started paying attention to politics in the 90s, most Americans seemed to believe in our shared values, including those folks at the top.

Liberty and opportunity.

Equality.

Fairness.

Truth and democracy.

Justice.

The rule of law.

And that hard work pays off.

We had leaders who we respected, some of whom we revered, people who work together across party lines and sometimes did very, very big things for the country rather than just for themselves.

But we've lost a lot of that, and I'm determined to be part of a generation of leaders that helps the country find its way back, back to these values, and to achieve something infinitely better than the current unacceptable status quo.

So I'm here today to talk about what I'm calling the Great American Comeback.

I recently released This Path Forward for America a unifying plan, much needed shared purpose to fix what's broken on our economy and to reclaim reclaim our wealth and power.

The plan is rooted in American history and the history of great American comebacks and meeting moments of crisis and reckoning with courage and fight, and a desire to build something infinitely better.

This is what makes our country so special.

When things get bad, we do fight back.

So let's start at the beginning.

For over a decade between independence and the signing of the Constitution, America really struggled under Articles of Confederation.

We were weak and vulnerable and in economic disarray.

And then this great American comeback to the Constitution, asserting our freedoms, directing the government to pursue justice and secure the blessings of liberty for everyone.

Now, 80 years later, a divided country, the horrors of slavery and a civil war that almost ripped the country into.

But then a great American comeback.

We abolished slavery, established due process, expanded the right to vote, unified the country, and set off the greatest expansion of economic might the world had ever known.

60 years later, a Great Depression, a world war threatening the very existence of this country from two sides of the globe, and then a great American comeback.

The triumph of the Greatest Generation over the greatest threat to democracy and sovereignty the world has ever known.

Today, 70 years later, we're facing another moment of crisis and reckoning.

The people, the place, and the promise of America are imperiled, imperiled by attacks on our democracy.

Partizan gerrymandering, voter suppression.

Dark money, big money, corruption, intentionally diminishing the power of American voters.

When you take that power from voters, where does it go?

Those that our country is imperiled by an affordability crisis.

People are working harder than ever, but it's not paying off.

It doesn't allow them to buy a home or pay for their children's education, or to retire with dignity imperiled by a public safety crisis.

The fear of gun violence, the crushing weight of assassinations, school shootings, every life cut short with no real national effort to keep people safe and imperiled by a crisis of international and national security.

We're antagonizing our allies and appeasing and empowering our enemies.

But we are Americans.

And the time has come for our great American comeback.

So where do we start?

Always.

Leadership.

We need a dedicated crew of leaders.

Leaders who will lift us up, not tear us down.

Leaders who will bring us together, not divide us.

Leaders that reject the failed rhetoric and policies of political extremism.

Leaders who will listen and learn.

Rather than making people feel ignored, dismissed and looked down upon.

Leaders who will take on our broken systems and upend the status quo.

Leaders who will bring us back to normal.

So that we can get big things done again.

Leaders who love this country and have the energy and the toughness and the courage and the common sense to take on the super elite who have rigged our economic and political systems again for themselves, not for us.

Leaders who reject chaos, corruption and cruelty.

To build our comeback, we also need a governing plan laying out our shared vision for the country.

We should start with a pledge to America, a blueprint similar to the contract for America in 1994.

Our pledge, though, would be built on ten concrete and unifying bills that will fix what's broken in our country.

Again, not the things that have transpired just in the last 10 to 12 months.

But what's been broken for decades.

I lay out these ten bills in detail on the Great American Comeback.

Take three of the bills, for example, each responding to some of the greatest challenges facing our country.

First, we have to fix our politics and our democracy and organize with the singular goal of returning power back to people.

The democracy for the people act with banned dark money would end voter suppression would eliminate Partizan gerrymandering once and for all.

The Fix our Government act would ban stock trading in Congress, established term limits, improve government services, implement reforms that actually get rid of waste, fraud and abuse and corruption of all kinds.

Next, we have to fix our economy and our tax code and reinvigorate the American dream.

The current tax code is broken and it's been broken for a long time.

This year, Republicans in Congress passed a bill that guts health care to pay for a massive tax cut for the super wealthy, amounting to the largest transfer of wealth from working folks to the richest Americans in our country's history.

This was not only incredibly cruel.

It worsened the existing crisis in our country.

More wealth and power stuck at the top.

And remember, the power and wealth came from somewhere.

Came from you.

The Reward Hard Work act would fix our broken economy and overhaul our tax code, requiring the super wealthy to pay all their taxes just like all of us.

I always ask every audience to raise their hand.

If you pay all your taxes, do you pay?

Raise your hand if you pay all your taxes.

Yeah, it's all we're asking.

It would set up a tax code to focus on hard work.

At the heart of this bill, our affordability tax cuts fully paid for refundable tax breaks for working families, paid out monthly so that families can deal with the high cost of living to help them pay for housing and health care, food and other basic expenses.

We'd also end the trade wars immediately, lowering costs.

The next seven bills tackle housing, pursuing the largest federal investment in housing and infrastructure ever.

Getting America building again.

Health care, reversing the health care cuts.

Establishing a public option.

Expanding coverage and lowering costs.

Public safety pairing.

Hiring new cops with new laws to keep weapons out of the hands of violent people.

Education.

Finally investing in early childhood education.

Investing in teachers and classrooms and the trades.

Real border and immigration reform.

A bill protecting civil rights and codifying personal freedoms.

And finally, a bill to strengthen our national security and global leadership by investing in our allies and taking head on our foes and the enemies of freedom.

Together, these ten bills provide us with a foundation to build a coordinated national movement to rally the public and meet the moment.

This is a common sense plan to win back Americans and to lead our great American comeback.

That's the reason I decided to to take this on.

Not only do I believe in it, and I believe in our country, but my own experience in politics gives me the reason to believe that the great American comeback is possible.

It's not inevitable, but it's possible.

Years ago, when our kids were in preschool, they're now 14 and 15.

So we're raising teenagers.

Maybe this is why I'm dove headfirst into something so complicated.

But the kids were in preschool.

You could tell what a huge difference it made.

And I set out with others to make Cincinnati the first city in the country to provide two years of quality preschool for every kid.

It took us years of organizing, and it required us to take on the political elite.

But we got it on the ballot and it passed, and it passed by the large and largest margin of victory in the school district's history.

And now we're the only city in the country to provide two years of quality preschool, to change the lives of tens of thousands of children.

My first year in Congress, we took on the speaker of the House and forced to vote on what's called the Social Security Fairness Act.

This is for our retired teachers and police officers and firefighters and letter carriers.

They spent their entire careers serving us.

But before they served or during their service or after they worked in the private sector, and they earned money in the private sector, and they paid into Social security.

And Congress had for 25 years told them, they can't have that money.

I thought it was insane.

$20 billion a year being stolen from our retired teachers and police officers and firefighters.

There were 360 members of Congress who had told their constituents by signing on to the bill, that they were with them.

But the bill hadn't moved, so we forced the discharge petition.

They're now famous, right, because the Epstein files.

But they they are a tool to allow those of us who have been fed up with the way in which Congress is being led to say, we want to vote.

This is a democracy.

We want to vote.

And in two days, we had 218 signatures to force a vote on the Social Security Fairness Act, and it passed.

Now, millions of retired teachers, police officers, firefighters and letter carriers receive every single dollar that they earned, that they paid for.

And Social Security benefits.

And again, that's $20 billion a year, $20 billion a year.

Now, going back out to you, returning wealth and power back to you.

It has made a huge difference for folks.

The point is, when you believe in something, you bring people together.

You refuse to give up.

You can make big things happen.

It's been true for me and it's been true for our country.

And I believe it will be true for this great American comeback.

In 1942, in the middle of the world Second World War, widespread anxiety and fear.

Playwright Thornton Wilder warned, living his struggle, every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor's edge of danger and must be fought for.

Whether it's a field or a home or a country, this country is a good and excellent thing and we have to fight for it.

Fight for what makes America America.

For our shared values of freedom and democracy.

Hard work, fairness, opportunity, community and caring for one another.

The fact is, this country belongs to all of us, not just them.

The country belongs to all of us.

And the great American comeback is our way to remind all Americans of that fact.

As bad as things are, this is our moment.

And we must meet this moment with the kind of purpose and heart and focus that generations of Americans before us had when they fought back.

We won't give up on this place, the people, the promise of America.

And this gives us something to believe in, to hold on to.

To work together on the shared purpose that so many of us desperately need.

It's always what we do together that matters most.

And together we will lead our great American comeback.

Thank you all.

God bless you all and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

All right.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

For those just joining via our live stream or live radio broadcast on Ideas Stream, public Media 89.7.

I'm Cynthia Connolly, director of programing here at the City Club.

Today we are joined by Congressman Greg Landsman, representing Ohio's first district, which is the Cincinnati area.

And we're learning all about his recently announced Great American Comeback Plan.

We welcome questions from everybody.

Everybody, City Club members, guests and those joining via a live stream or radio broadcast again at eight, nine, seven.

If you'd like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794.

One more time for our radio audience.

That's (330)541-5794.

And our City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

We have our first question.

Please.

Congressman, you touched on education a little bit, and you're well known for your work with Strive in Cincinnati and elsewhere.

Can you tell us a little bit about how that came together and what you learned and and how it spread, you know, beyond Cincinnati?

Sure.

So the strike partnership was, an effort where, folks from the community came together.

They looked at the set of outcomes.

The system, collectively, we were achieving or not achieving for our young people.

And said, we've got to do better.

And the only way to do better is to build a better system, right?

There are programs that help, but where I was one person said were program rich but system poor.

So let's build a better system.

And the way it worked was, these leaders of the early childhood education community came together with superintendents and K-12 leadership with the higher ed, and career training folks.

And they mapped out the trajectory from, birth really prenatally when brain development begins.

To, you know, graduating from college or career training.

And they realized that they needed to invest better together.

And the way to do that was to take on a few shared outcomes that they would all work on together.

And they chose school readiness rates so that they could invest in the things that were working to improve, access to, you know, prenatal care and, and given folks time to be home with their children, childcare, preschool, all the things that would help a child get ready for school when 90% of brain development has occurred, and then early grade level reading, third grade reading, third grade reading, being, a way of really sort of entering into the next chapter of education, if you can read by the time you finish third grade, you can then go and learn.

If you can't, you got to still get caught up.

And I think we need a national effort, by the way.

And this is in the education bill to get every kid caught up.

From Covid, and any number of other things, meaning we would invest and way more time for teachers and students, to be together so that we can get every single child caught up.

College, high school graduation, college graduation, all those things.

And then over the course of of of time, they invested in the things that they knew were working.

We did a lot of data work to see what was having the most impact on moving school readiness rates, third grade reading scores, high school graduation rates.

And, it was one of the reasons why we took on the preschool promise.

For me, it was personal because my two kids were going through it, and I saw how transformative it was.

But I was also in a position to help lead it, because I was working for an organization that had the data and had the, you know, the impetus, the maybe even the requirement to go lead on it.

We knew that two years of quality preschool was a game changer in terms of school readiness scores.

I saw it as a parent.

And so that was one of the reasons why we were able to sort of win that battle, to get it on the ballot and ultimately get it passed was because we had sort of built this infrastructure and group of folks that really believed in investing in things that work to improve outcomes for children.

And people all over the country started to see this as a way of doing business differently, organizing differently.

And it still works.

The idea works anywhere.

If you're trying to tackle something really big, you got to appreciate that the system is designed to produce the outcomes that you're getting.

So that's the system has produced this, a nice transition segue way back to the great American comeback.

What's at the heart of, what we have to change is the current system.

The current system is designed to move more and more money and wealth upstream.

That is what's happening.

That's why you're seeing such an enormous concentration of wealth.

Because the system is designed that way.

And so you have to redesign the system to make sure that people, you know, who work really hard and make a ton of money, that's great.

But they've got to participate in the same sort of tax system as the rest of us.

And and we have to make sure that, you know, wealth and power, stays, with everyday Americans because that's how you have ultimately justice and the American dream.

But also, it's the best way to have a an incredible economy.

You can't have an incredible economy if all of your spending is up here.

And everyone here is, you know, barely able to pay their bills.

That's not a robust economy.

That's a dying economy, that's economy that's being kept afloat a little bit, you know, by the spending at the top.

But I don't know, for those of you over the holidays, if you did any shopping, how many of you went Black Friday shopping?

No one.

You did.

We did.

But most Americans stayed away this year.

The vast majority of people said to folks that asked, yeah, we don't have that kind of cash.

That money is somewhere else.

All right.

Our next question is a text question that I'll read.

As an autism specialist, I'm very interested in helping Ohio discern and uphold best practice autism interventions.

Given your advocacy and support of families, and as a member of the Subcommittee on Health, can you share information you may have of any new initiatives to improve autism standards of care in our state or country?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, thank you for your advocacy and work.

I think there is a growing interest and, and, and this remains a bipartisan issue.

So, my hope is that this Congress will take up any number of pieces of legislation that would improve our work, around autism and helping kids, adults, who struggle, with autism.

And, yeah, that's I'm glad that we got the question.

I would love to work with this person.

So if you're listening or I'm if you're still listening, please reach out to our office.

We'd love to connect you.

There's a couple of bills and the issue, and I'm going to see if I can translate, transition every question back to the great American comeback.

But the the issue here is that we will pass a bill or we'll work on something in a bipartisan way in committee.

Okay.

Like the members.

And we did this this week.

We marked, passed, several bills.

Some were more important than the others.

One had to do with showerheads.

But, you know.

There's a big debate about the showerhead and water pressure.

In any event, but there were, I had a bill that got, marked up this week that we passed a bill that would help get broadband out to more places more quickly, less, expensively, by requiring the railroad companies when you're trying to lay broadband, you got to go over railroad, lines, track.

Sorry.

And the railroad companies use this as an even though it's like 30ft, they use it as an opportunity to, like, really go after these companies, these broadband companies, they delay the projects, they throw all these fees.

And so our bill just said, you can't do that anymore.

Like the, the, the 30ft.

That's the public right of way.

Right.

So if they're doing laying broadband they get to just go do it.

They have to coordinate with you.

We got to make sure people are safe, that they get to go and lay the broadband, and it will help speed up, no pun intended.

Broadband all over, all over the country.

We marked that up.

Now, here's the problem.

There was something like 700 bills in the last Congress that got marked, passed out of committee, most of which were bipartisan and never made it to the floor for a vote.

And then if you do get a vote in the House, the Senate doesn't take it up.

It's broken.

It's broken because the the group of us, the the majority of us, haven't taken our power back.

We're starting to I did with the discharge petition on the Social Security Fairness Act.

I'm going to do it again with a discharge petition suspending members pay during a shutdown.

The idea that members get paid during a shutdown is insane.

But the speaker's not going to put that on the floor.

So the issue is that will pass some autism related bills, and it it doesn't go anywhere because a small number of people are making all the decisions.

The speaker who really does follow the direction of the president and, and the majority leader, and it used to at least include the committee chairs and the ranking members.

This is what I mean by getting our power back.

And part of that is the money.

There's just so much money that flows into the leadership, and then that money goes to individual members, and people sort of just follow that system, even though it is completely and utterly broken.

Hi, Congressman, and thank you so much, Greg.

Greg, and thanks so much for your great America comeback plan for so long.

I believe there has been an outcry for the Democratic Party to have a plan.

I have two questions related to that.

What is the possibility?

Chance reality of the Democratic Party taking on this plan?

Is there a plan and would really like to know what you're hearing when you go home to your constituents about.

I've heard the term that the worm is turning, that things are changing now, that possibly there are leaks in the grip that the president has on the country, in the politics.

And just wondering if you're hearing that that is happening, and then what are the chances of the Democratic Party taking this great plan over as their plan?

The chances go up every time one of you, tweets about it or, posts about it.

So, feel free to share it.

And it really is a plan for the country.

I mean, I understand that, you know, I'm a Democrat.

And so my my hope is that my own caucus says this is the way to go.

I believe it's a unifying plan for the country.

And I think for independents and a lot of Republicans, they're looking for something similar.

And my hope is that, yes, it will be, something that that my colleagues get into, you know, I have shared it with them.

I worked on it with them.

I've got nothing but positive feedback.

A member of leadership.

I was walking to committee, yesterday, the day before, and a member of leadership just shouted out the great American comeback down the hallway.

So I was like, you know.

And that's good.

So, you know, you just you got to put it out there.

Keep building on it.

Every time we put this is our second edition of it, there will be a third and a fourth, and it will include feedback from everyone.

So you can go online and, to wherever it's sitting and offer feedback.

And we're sort of building it, you know, with the country in terms of, the feedback back at home.

Yes.

People are, fed up.

This may have been the sort of thing that, you know, the last 10 to 12 months, as I said, like the problems we've been facing have been, you know, issues building for decades.

But I think the, the chaos and the level of corruption and cruelty of the last 10 to 12 months really has, gotten to people.

And there is an anger, there's a sense of betrayal.

And, you know, I've got a lot of farmers in my district who are really struggling.

The tariffs have hurt them more than probably anyone else.

I mean, they're like small businesses in the sense that they can't absorb, absorb that kind of price increase.

But for farmers, it's it's twofold.

You know, the the number of markets where they can sell their grain or what, you know, has has shrunk, because of the, the, tariffs and the, in the trade war aspect of this.

And then on top of the fact that, you know, they have fewer places to sell, and that means that the the price of what they're selling goes down.

The the cost is going up for fuel and fertilizer.

All of the inputs have gone up.

Last year there was a big drought.

So they took on a low.

And this is where it gets very grim.

Most of my farmers, most farmers took on some some, some debt.

And that's not something they do easily, lightly.

And now they have to pay that back in the middle of this economic mess.

And they are terrified.

And these are fourth, fifth generation farmers who for the first time are looking at whether or not they're going to survive.

So they're mad.

And there are small businesses who are mad, their families who are mad.

I mean, everyone is frustrated.

I will tell you, though, it does not translate into, well, now we're all going to become Democrats or whatever they I mean, it's immediately funny, right?

Because the distrust in both political parties is at a it's got to be at a historic high.

It's just people are mad.

They're frustrated with the elites.

And I'm one of those people.

I'm frustrated.

I'm mad.

I get so irritated, seeing, you know, really good people making really silly decisions because that's where the herd is going.

So, they are frustrated, but they're looking not just for, you know, a, a party, but they're looking for a kind of leader, somebody who's very much a part of their lives when the government shutdown took place, the Republicans stayed united.

And the Democrats, including you, gave in and got the government back started without getting any, results out of it.

So for six weeks or five weeks, it was a destructive move that came back to haunt us.

How come the Republicans are able to unite?

And if you go back to the first term, they wouldn't let a Democratic or elected president to appoint a Supreme Court justice.

And we can't seem to even do any minimal amount of work, as a group because we can't stay united.

Yeah.

I mean, one, I wasn't one of the people who backed down.

But there were some that did, and I think they did.

Frustratingly, because it was frustrating for a lot of us who stayed pretty dug in on the health care fight.

The health care fight is the big one for for me, that's why I joined Energy and Commerce and sit on the health committee.

The health care crisis is very real, and I'll come back to that.

But I want to answer your question.

The the the the it's not unity.

I wouldn't say I it looks like unity.

It looks like there and yes, you could say that it's a kind of unity, but it is people who are they are very angry.

Within the Republican Conference, they're very frustrated.

You're starting to see a lot of that.

They're feeling a little bit more emboldened to take on their leaders.

After the election a couple of weeks ago.

But it's it's more sort of a loyalty, a fealty.

They're I mean, they're, they're they really are sort of, following the leader because they believe that person has all this power.

But once they start to see that that power is diminishing, which you're starting to see, I think you'll see more and more of them breaking out.

It won't be fast enough.

It won't be sufficient in terms of the accountability we need, the push back that we need.

But for us, you know, the argument was, look, we want to resolve this issue of the health care crisis that that our constituents are facing, that their constituents are facing.

I've got 32,000 people in my district that rely on the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

And so I wasn't going to I wasn't going to back down.

I, I was just at a press conference with, a group of Republicans and Democrats because we put forward yesterday a plan that would get 300 votes in the House, over 60 votes in the Senate, two year extension of the Affordable Care Act, subsidies with some reforms.

We just need the vote.

We need the bill.

I mean, I'm sorry we needed a bill on the floor.

And one of the, Republicans from Florida said she had a 130,000 constituents that rely on the Affordable Care Act subsidy.

I mean, it's just remark, I have 32,000.

That's a lot.

Almost a third of her district is on the Affordable Care Act's, you know, act.

And, and they received these subsidies, we assumed based on history that when you offer a clear pathway out of a situation like that, if you say, look, if you want our votes, you've got to work with us on resolving this health care crisis.

Obviously, we're not going to get everything we want.

We want you to reverse all of the cuts to Medicaid, the trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid.

We want you to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

And the assumption was that the president of the United States, like every other president, would get involved and would negotiate.

And the negotiations weren't complicated.

And they had one meeting, and that meeting was historic in the sense that it almost went the right way.

So by all accounts, I'm just imagine it's in the Oval Office.

You've got Schumer, you've got yeah.

Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, John Thune, the speaker I think JD Vance came in at one point, popped in anyway and said, look, you know, these Affordable Care Act subsidies, it's 22 million Americans.

It's a big deal.

And we got to extend them at least for a year or two.

And the president was immediately interested.

And had that just been the trajectory, it would have all been done.

We would have gotten a deal before the shutdown.

But as the president was asking questions about how these Affordable Care Act subsidies work, very intrigued.

The speaker said, Mr.

President, we can't do that.

We don't have the votes.

And and we can't be worrying about, he said.

We can't be worrying about something.

I can't remember the word, but it was something like not significant, something so insignificant, so arbitrary, as if health care was arbitrary.

Can you imagine anything being less arbitrary than health care?

So the assumption was that they would negotiate like every other time, and they just never did.

In fact, the speaker of the House shut the House of Representatives down for six weeks.

That is insane.

Meaning that you couldn't walk on to the floor.

And so six weeks later, there were, what, six senators?

Six, 6 or 8 senators, who decided enough's enough, they're not going to negotiate.

And they, you know, tried after 60 votes, something like that, some ridiculous amount of votes.

They decided that it was it was time.

My worry is that we're going to end up right back where we were, and at the end of January in the next couple of weeks.

I mean, one of the reasons why I'm going to force a discharge petition on the pay issue is to remind these members not to screw around with the shutdown if they don't get paid, like they need to sign this discharge petition, like they they need to appreciate that, that the American people hate the fact that during a shutdown, that the only people that get paid or are members of Congress, I suspended my pay.

And.

That I they're we are more unified.

There were eight that felt like, when it comes to food assistance and air travel, we can't we can't keep this this this guy is willing to make as many people hurt as humanly possible in order to win this political fight.

And they made a decision to end that pain.

And I understand that.

I do, I didn't vote that way, but I do understand why they did it.

And I think the key is to get this ACA, resolution done.

Now, and what we proposed yesterday would do that and it would avoid another shutdown.

But, in terms of us being unified around health care, there is there's about as and then I'll transition this one back to the great American comeback so that I'm three for three.

But they had something we had something to work on for the first time.

We were working on a resolution to the health care crisis that they had created $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, the ACA subsidies, expiring.

And we still have that.

I mean, that's what we're working on now.

And so you start you're starting to see a more unified, you know, collaborative, caucus.

And I think what you're going to see is, the opposite on the other side, that, that that's sort of hanging on to the Almighty, all powerful Trump is starting to, you're starting to see people slowly and not in big numbers, but you are starting to see people let go.

We're standing in the middle of Playhouse Square.

So we really appreciate your reference to the great playwright Thornton Wilder here in our town.

Appreciate that.

Yeah.

Of course.

My question is, can you talk about how Ohio is informing your great American comeback as a mostly red state with a lot of blue urban hubs?

Do you think that, the Buckeye State as a whole can find a common denominator as you found with with strive?

So is there a great Ohio comeback?

Yeah.

In the midst of the great America.

Yeah.

I mean, look, Ohio is, more purple than red, in my opinion.

And, you know, I think you'll see that in this election with, Sherrod.

But, you know, you know, it would be very close.

I think you'll win.

But that's not what we're here to talk about.

But it'll be close.

Meaning that it's still very purple.

And, and the same is true for the governor's race.

I think you see a very close governor's race.

So.

So the point is that I, you know, I think Ohio is still very much, you know, a bellwether, interesting state to look at when it comes to where the country is now.

Why does it feel different?

Partizan gerrymandering, the reason why things got really out of control here.

And there's a supermajority in the, legislature for Republicans is because of Partizan gerrymandering.

They they drew the map to increase their numbers.

And in almost like 95, 96% of the time, whatever the politicians did with the maps, that's what happened.

So the politicians in this state decided elections and they started those are they decided those elections for the last decade or more.

And as a result, they took the congressional representative, representation, which was pretty even.

And they they went from 10 to 5.

And then in the most recent redistricting, Partizan gerrymandering, they are desperately trying to go from 10 to 5 to 12 to 3.

Now that that didn't mean the voters changed.

It is they changed the map.

Politicians are deciding.

I mean, how undemocratic and awful is that?

It's also ground zero for voter suppression.

Ohio has this absurd, driver's license law.

I mean, I don't think people realize that a lot of people don't have a driver's license.

Or it's expired, or the name on your driver's license is different because you got married, or you go to vote and you forgot your driver's license.

Either way, that plus purging it, just purging hundreds of thousands of voters.

And there are specific kind of voters.

They're predominantly black voters.

And the driver's license stuff doesn't.

It has nothing to do with folks who are here.

Undocumented.

Undocumented people aren't trying to register to vote.

They're not trying to vote.

They're not trying to get, you know, expelled.

It mostly hurts black voters, Latino voters.

Those are not their voters.

So between voter suppression and Partizan gerrymandering, they have we now have a legislature that represents about 30% of Ohio.

And they are in the majority, and nothing will happen to them until you end Partizan gerrymandering.

So part of the great American comeback is the democracy for America.

You know, for the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would end Partizan gerrymandering and ban dark money and and voters suppression in Ohio.

The Great American Comeback is a constitutional amendment to end Partizan gerrymandering in the state.

And that's just fair.

And that means that voters decide, and some of them will pick Republicans, and some of them will pick Democrats, and maybe some of them pick somebody else.

But they get to decide, because the map was built by an independent commission.

I mean, think about this at this point.

Like you could just throw the Ohio map in ChatGPT and say, give me a fair map.

And ChatGPT would be like, here you go.

Cuyahoga County has been plagued with the opioid crisis for several almost a decade or more.

And there's a lot of barriers to treatment, to addiction treatment as well as non-opioid treatment for pain.

Can you talk about some of the work that you're doing on accessing care?

So thank you very much.

I've, got a bill, that would allow would require the VA to offer to their patients the Non-Addictive FDA approved pain relief options, the fact that it requires an act of Congress to get the VA, a public entity to say, in addition to these addictive, possibly dangerous pain relief, options, we are going to also give you a list of non addictive options.

And, you know, that Bill will be one of these bills.

Sorry.

Just it's going to be one of these bills that will pass out of committee.

You pass that of Veterans Affairs.

I'm surprised they didn't haven't taken it up yet.

We had a meeting on it yesterday and I, I thought they had marked it up already, but it will it will just sit there.

And it is incredibly frustrating because that's, that's that's like day one stuff.

I mean, you know, it'll get 400 votes in the House.

Just put it on the floor.

We, we sit there for four days.

We sit there for 3 to 4 days and we'll vote five times.

Eight bills.

I mean, can you imagine if that was like your that was considered success, you know, that kind of productivity?

In any event, that to me is part of the answer is you have to flood.

Excuse me, flood the market with these new FDA approved non-addictive pain relief options.

And, you know, some of that will happen naturally.

Some of that will require us to act.

Know.

Okay, let's quick.

An hour goes fast.

Thank you once again to, Congressman Congressman Landsman or Greg, for joining us at the City Club today.

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And coming up at the City Club on Tuesday or Wednesday, rather December 10th.

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Then on Friday, December 12th, we will talk all about AI in education and in this instance, how leaders can explore its role in accelerating innovation across learning environments and how to design a school of the future.

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Thank you.

Thank you once again to Greg and to our members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly and this forum is adjourned.

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