- We're honored to be joined by United States Congressman, Dr.

Herb Conaway Jr.

who represents the Third Congressional District that is in Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem Counties.

Good to see you, Congressman.

- It's actually Burlington, Mercer, and Monmouth Counties.

- Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth.

My bad, I apologize, thank you.

Herb, first of all, great.

Thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it.

- Glad to do it.

- You are a physician, I believe, the first African American physician with voting privileges in Congress.

We've had you on as a former state legislator many times talking about healthcare issues.

You chaired the Assembly Health Committee, in the State Legislature.

So here's the question outta the box.

From your perspective, what is the most significant impact of the Trump administration healthcare policies on the citizens of New Jersey?

First talk, let's talk cuts, and then we'll talk vaccines.

Please, Doctor.

- Well, the cuts to healthcare for Americans is unlike anything we've ever seen in our country.

It's the largest cut to healthcare in our nation's history.

Medicaid will be cut by nearly a trillion dollars.

Medicare will be cut by $536 billion.

You're gonna see cuts upwards of 150 to $200 million to the tax credits, which help middle class people, working families, working persons by insurance, particularly impactful on small business.

I think we're gonna discuss that later.

In New Jersey, our costs are gonna go up by thousands of dollars.

- Costs for what, Doctor?

- Costs for people who currently use the exchange.

Thank you for allowing me to clarify.

Cuts to people who use the exchange for their insurance.

Because the Republican Party to a person in the House voted end those tax credits, again, these are for working people, middle class people, people will see increases this year, in the current period coming up starting January 1st, cost increases over a thousand dollars.

Families, even higher than that.

And many people, our surveys show will not be able to afford those increases.

42% of people will go forego insurance because they simply can't afford those costs.

- But I also wanna be clear, Congressman.

Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew is, in fact, supportive of what you just described.

What I mean is he's supportive of extending those tax credits, and he's also supportive of, frankly, not doing away with the Affordable Care Act, which many of his Republican colleagues have advocated, and the president has advocated that we, quote, do away with it.

I just wanna clarify that he is, go ahead.

- But he says that now.

But when it was time to vote on the big ugly bill, the big cruel bill, as I call it, Jeff Van Drew, in spite of signing a letter that said he would not vote to cut healthcare, in fact, did vote to cut healthcare.

Every Republican member of the Congress passed legislation, which did the things I described, nearly a trillion dollars outta Medicaid.

They voted to cut the tax credits for healthcare, and the budgetary policies will lead the cuts to Medicare of $536 billion.

Now, in the wake of the backlash, President Trump has floated the idea of maybe let's extend the tax cuts, tax credits rather.

There are 50 people in the Republican caucus as I understand it, who sit on the cusp of not being reelected because of this vote.

I don't know about Jeff's particular district.

He's singing a different tune now.

And I like, you know, Jeff Van Drew is a friend of mine as you know.

- I understand, but I'm gonna talk more policy than politics.

And by the way, the Congressman's talking about a 2026 midterm, if you will, election where the entire House, 435 members of the House of Representatives, including Congressman Conaway will be up for reelection.

That being said, I'm gonna get to childcare in a second, which is a healthcare issue, but I also wanna do this.

As we speak, you know, Congressman, as a former legislator and as a physician, you and I had this conversation a lot about the public health system.

There's significant distrust in the public health system.

You agree, there's distrust?

- Well, I think to the extent there's distrust in the healthcare system writ large, you know, there's certainly quite a lot of that engendered by a lot of misinformation in the media, by the way, social media in particular.

- Be more specific.

- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- Be more specific, Congressman.

- Well, you know, just take the question of vaccines.

There is a lot of misinformation on vaccines and, unfortunately, RFK Jr.

who now heads Health and Human Services.

- Health and Human Services.

- Health and Human Services is a big purveyor of misinformation with respect to vaccines.

And we have met with former officials of the CDC that came and met with their newly formed Democratic Doctors Caucus to give us inside information on what's going on there.

Many of them just couldn't stay there any longer watching so many irregular and irresponsible things being done to the American people at the behest of RFK Jr.

who runs- - Be more specific, Congressman.

RFK Jr.

has said that all we're doing is raising questions about vaccines.

And the CDC as it is right now is gonna provide information that he argues is the kind of information that has been lacking on the CDC website about the questions about vaccines, whether we're talking about the MMR vaccine, whether we're talking about the hepatitis B vaccine, which obviously the federal policy was just changed as we do this program in the middle of December.

What exactly does he have wrong, Congressman?

- What he has wrong is that he is rehashing old tropes about vaccines that have been disproven by the scientific study, scientific method, over and over and over again.

Whether it's vaccines cause autism, which it doesn't, or that there's some issue with the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been given for decades now, and aimed at preventing and eliminating hepatitis B in this country, something which will significantly reduce the risk and the incidence of liver cancer in our nation.

So, you have a choice.

Either we do something important like eliminate the risk of liver cancer by immunizing people against hepatitis B, which is one of the significant drivers and causes of liver cancer, or we don't.

Nevermind all the other issues with liver disease and illness that come from a disease which is preventable through the use of vaccines.

And he's over and over again rehashing studies, and trying to stilt by packing the studies with people who are not rigorous in terms of the science.

I'm gonna put that in quotes that they're bringing once again to these settled issues.

And as people become concerned and skeptical, you know, they might decide to forgo vaccines.

- They have.

Congressman, respectfully, the statistics show because there are fewer people getting the vaccine, or vaccines.

- There are because of this misinformation right from the top.

The CDC should be a purveyor of truth.

And what we have is someone at the top of that administration who's made a lot of money bringing, you know, cases, you know, suggesting that there are harms created by vaccines that simply have not been shown after rigorous and decades-long science saying the exact opposite of what he's saying.

- Let me switch gears.

We're involved in a public awareness initiative around childcare, affordable, accessible, quality childcare.

Now, Congressman Conaway is, in fact, part of the Congressional Dads Caucus.

You admit this, Congressman?

- Yes, I do, I'm a dad.

I'm in the Dads Caucus as it turns out, yes.

- I'm in the Dads Caucus of those of us in the media, but yours is a more important caucus.

Let's be more specific.

The initiative we're involved in is called Start Strong NJ.

The website will be up, find out more.

There is legislation in Congress to expand the Childcare Access Act, offering a refundable tax credit of up to $5,000 to help launch new family childcare businesses.

Where is that, Congressman?

- Well, it's a bill that I sponsored.

It's the first bill that I introduced in the Congress.

I am in the minority, you know.

Quite frankly, it's tough sledding.

- Minority party, which means you do not control the agenda of what gets voted on.

Go ahead, Congressman.

- Correct.

And while I have worked in a bipartisan way and passed bills through the Congress, this one, we haven't been able to get that forward.

It's probably gonna take, you know, a Democratically led House to push this through, but we're gonna stick at it.

I've been involved in legislation as you know, for 25 years before coming here.

And sometimes it's taken me three legislatures to get initiatives through, but we keep at it and we prevail in getting some great things done for New Jerseyans.

We're gonna take that same effort and commitment to the national level here in the Congress.

- 30 seconds left.

You went from the State Legislature to United States Congress, from Trenton to Washington.

Is it what you thought it would be, Congressman?

- Well, you know, yes and no.

You don't realize the enormity of interest in Washington what goes on here until you're here.

I mean, people come here from all over the world.

I learned a lot about sugar beets.

I never thought I'd learn anything about.

That's just an example.

I thought I was gonna get a candy and it turned out I heard all about the sugar beet industry in the northwestern part of the country, but, you know, to me, service is what I have been doing my whole life as a physician, as a Air Force veteran, as a legislator.

This is a continuation of what I learned from my parents who was a teacher and a nurse.

And I'm very proud to do it, and continue to do the best for my country, and the people that I'm privileged to serve.

- You're listening to Doctor, United States Congressman, Herb Conaway from the Third Congressional District.

I'm gonna get this right.

The counties again are, Congressman?

- Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth.

- Thank you.

- Central New Jersey going strong.

- Yeah, that's the Congressman.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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