00:00Thank you Senator Grassley. Senator Whitehouse is next. Thanks very much. Mr.
00:05Switzer welcome. Dan Sullivan senator from Alaska and I have been working
00:11together on ocean plastic waste problems. One of our bills attracted the
00:20president's attention and we went up to the Trump Oval Office for a bill signing
00:25and he was excited enough about it that he called in the press not just a bill
00:30signing and did a long riff about how important it is to our coasts that all
00:36the ocean plastic waste that's being dumped very often through Asian rivers
00:41into the ocean and then it winds up on our shores that that was a problem that
00:47we should be solving. Obviously Dan and I both agree that is a problem that we
00:52should be solving. One very useful solution to that would be to put a trade
00:58penalty or consequence of some kind on these Asian countries that don't invest
01:04adequately in their own waste management systems which would seem also to be good
01:10for American companies that provide waste management equipment and advice and
01:14support. So I would ask you to consider that as you're looking at trade policy
01:19with Asia. At the moment they're getting away free there are no consequences for
01:24them from that. It's not even counted in our list of trade concerns and yet it was
01:30enough to aggravate President Trump in this meeting. Would you comment on that?
01:35Thank you Senator and I appreciate the time that we spent together during this
01:39process and your comments I think are well taken and I agree completely. I have a
01:45very long history of actually working on these very specific issues. I was the
01:50environment, science, technology, and health minister counselor in embassy Beijing from
01:532015 to 2018. I have visited the settling ponds for instance in Inner Mongolia where
01:59they process rare earths. You know one of the ways that they are able to flood
02:04markets with products that are below market value or below the cost of
02:09production is because they do not internalize the environmental costs. It's an
02:13unrecognized subsidy in my opinion and it is a priority of the USTR to begin to
02:21implement better environmental safeguards within our trade agreements, the US, China,
02:26Mexico trade agreement. Let me jump to that then because that's a perfect segue to
02:31my second point which is that with respect to carbon pollution we are at a
02:40disadvantage with respect to China which has become the world's greatest polluter.
02:43It gives financial advantage to Chinese firms that don't have to invest in
02:50appropriate environmental safeguards and protections and scrubbers and so forth
02:54versus us. So I gather you would agree that we suffer both an economic and an
03:02environmental harm when we allow offshoring based on the fake advantages of
03:09one country not meeting up to its environmental responsibilities the way
03:14that we do. Yes I would agree Senator again that's why you know the USMCA had
03:22environmental safeguards built into the trade agreement. Ambassador Greer has said
03:26many times we want to build these similar sort of high quality environmental
03:30safeguards into other trade agreements as we continue to move forward with our
03:34discussions about providing more reciprocal trade environment labor
03:38standards. These are other aspects of reciprocity that we intend to try to build
03:42Senator Cassidy and Senator Graham have a bill on the Republican side. I've got a
03:47matching bill on the Democrat side. We're in conversation constantly about
03:52trying to reconcile the two and we've asked the Trade Representative, Jameson Greer, to
03:57participate in those discussions and he's promised that he will once this flurry of
04:02tariff activity that must have you pretty overburdened over there is through. So I look forward to making good on that pledge. The last thing
04:11that I will mention since we have HHS here, I know, Mr. Stewart, it's not really going to be your problem. You're a general
04:19general counsel, but I cannot let anybody from HHS come through without once again pointing out how damned infuriating it is to me
04:28that hospitals in Connecticut, our neighboring state, I'm from Rhode Island, in case you didn't know, and Massachusetts, the other neighboring state, get paid about 20% more than my hospitals. If a president is visiting Martha's Vineyard and gets hurt, they fly over St. Anne's Hospital in Fall River to the better, higher quality of the city.
04:49quality emergency department of Rhode Island Hospital. But if they'd stopped in Fall River, they'd get paid 20 cents on the dollar more. That is indefensible. HHS has never defended it. The organization is just too damned lazy and disinterested to fix this problem, but is very, very, very real in my home state. So it probably isn't general counsel business, but you're here from HHS and you're going to hear this from me every chance I get to make this case.
05:16There is no defense for this discrepancy. We are one regional health care market and we are getting clobbered as a result of a completely unfair payment discrepancy that your organization doesn't even bother to defend. It just maintains it. So excuse my rant, but you hope you can understand how very irritating and unfair this is.
05:38Well, I want to thank you for the opportunity to meet with you and to talk about those issues. And I can guarantee it 100%. I'll be available to you to talk about that issue, other issues, whenever you want to talk about those things. And I'll take them very seriously.
05:54Appreciate it. Look forward to that conversation. As you know, we talked about the end of life program in Rhode Island as well and hope to follow up with that. But my time has expired. I thank the ranking member for his courtesy.
