On Sunday, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" about the Republicans' proposed budget and President Biden's mental acuity during his presidency.
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00:00It's now to discuss Democratic Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina.
00:04Congressman, always good to have you on.
00:05So you heard Treasury Secretary Besant just trying to defend the Republican House member's spending bill.
00:12What's your reaction?
00:16Well, thank you very much for having me, Jake.
00:18You know, this spending bill is terrible, and I think the American people know that.
00:25There is nothing wrong with us bringing the government in balance, but there is a problem when that balance comes on the back of working men and women, and that's what is happening here.
00:40When you put forth a budget asking for top lines just in energy commerce long being somewhere around $860 million cut, that's a problem, because that's where Medicaid is, that's where Medicare is, that's where people get most of their medicine from.
01:00That is a bad deal.
01:02And so I think that when President Trump indicated that we ought to be raising taxes on the wealthy, he got our attention, but then he retreated from that almost immediately.
01:19And so what we see happening in that committee is that those people on the other side, those Republicans who refuse to go along, they want more cuts.
01:29Some of them would like to see the elimination of Medicaid, and they want to see the privatization of Social Security and Medicare.
01:40And so that is what we are faced with, and Democrats are almost on the side of the American people on that.
01:46So one of the key components Republicans are pushing in this legislation is adding work requirements for able-bodied recipients of Medicaid.
01:54According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, most Americans support that, 62%.
01:59What do you think?
02:03Most Americans do support that, and most Democrats support that, and then we do have that in many states.
02:10We have left that kind of thing up to the states, and it's been improved time and time again.
02:15And so every time people get into this discussion, you have folks talking about people getting something for nothing.
02:24Well, let me tell you something.
02:25Medicaid.
02:27The bulk of Medicaid is not necessarily people who are unemployed, people who are disabled, people who need nursing home care.
02:39The bulk of Medicaid is in nursing home care.
02:41So what happens to those nursing homes when you take all this money out of Medicaid?
02:46So this is not about working men and women.
02:49This is about this country showing what kind of country you are and taking care of senior citizens, our parents and our grandparents, who are in need of nursing home care.
03:00That's what's in Medicaid.
03:03Let's turn to the debate going on within the Democratic Party right now.