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-- c-span powered by cable. >> families of u.s. service members killed on august 26, 2021 appear in a roundtable discussion before a house foreign affairs committee. watch live today at 1:00 eastern on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. host: our guests served in the u.s. senate from 2013 to 2019 as the democratic senator from north cota and she is now the founder of the -- heidi heitkamp. thanks for being on the show. talk about the project. what were those things that caused you to start at? guest: the name. i think a lot of people are surprised, they thought it would be like the rural america project. when we were thinking about this

issue and polarization in america we thought we think people fundamentally in america want the same things for our country. t the same things for their family. they are fundamentally good people. we always hear about the division in the country but we never hear about what unites us, about the good ideas out there. i said, i want to call it one country. we are not separated by our geography or race. we are americans and need to find that american identity. a lot of what we do -- i only say that one country was founded to introduce the democratic party to rural america because i think over the last 20 to 30 years that democrats have not really shown up, and as a result , they have been defined by their opposition. when you do that, you do not

look good in the eyes of the voter. we are particularly interested in health care and childcare. the farm program is part of a, but about a third of all counties in america --their major industry is the extraction of minerals. we talk about what that means as we transition to green energy. what can we do to enhance workforce challenges for those in transition? we like to think that we are a go to source for information about rural america and that we kind of set out a blueprint for those who want to reach out. maybe they live in des moines, that they want to go out into northern iowa and talk to farmers. what do they need to know to do that? how can they engage and be

respectful? we will see it in the next debate. i will tell you, pedro, great hopes and that we could make more progress than what we are seeing now. a reduction in the division between democrat and republican voting. i think it will take a while. it will also take different candidates to get out there and visit with people, and find out what they are concerned about. host: d.c. didn't get that idea of going out to areas that there may not be a lot of attention? guest: absolutely. candidates who do well in the midterms i candidates like federman, who went to every county, who connected in rural areas. the goal was to slide into the margins. i think the issue of roe v. wade

and the dobbs decision played a role in the amount of division, but i also think people understand that you cannot lose rural america like that and then make it up in the suburbs or in urban areas, especially in lower turnout elections. the virginia governor's election is a great example of where the strategy was once again to focus on just suburban and urban voters, and rural voters voted overwhelmingly. young kim got a greater percentage than what trump did. showing up is a big part of it, but do not show up empty-handed. understand, but also listen. preach, but also try to bring people together. we will see what happens.

i think any political scientists will tell you that democrats will not be a majority party, must address this political divide. host: how do you think president biden is doing reaching out to those areas? guest: jennifer, who has been tasked with leading the energy transformation has been out, willing to meet with workers, willing to have those conversations with state leaders. i think mitch was terrific for the infrastructure. he has been all over. does it resonate with the national media? probably not, but couldn't make a difference in states like ohio and montana? absolutely. it is just going to take a while. the other thing about rural america is its aging there is a

need to connect to older americans and the challenges of staying in their home. we think that is a huge area --a huge issue. we hear a lot about broadband. everybody is on the broadband train. the republicans --it is not a defining feature, but medicaid expansion is something that has saved rural hospitals in north dakota. those who have not expanded have seen their hospitals shut down. that is risky for a senior citizen or older american living in the community. host: if you want to ask her questions --rural voters, you can call in at (202) 748-8000.

all others can call in and (202) 748-8001. you can also give us a text at (202) 748-8003. on the health-care front, there is news coming out this morning of the administration unveiling drugs that will be subject to medicare price negotiation. what does this move mean to them? guest: this could be huge, especially for those people who do not have a supplement that is -- i imagine -- i have not seen the list yet, but i imagine it will be some of the drugs that are most used at the highest level and have the biggest cost differential, when you look at how long they have been on the market and what they are charging in medicaid and medicare. we have a debt crisis in this

country and it is being driven somewhat by our demographics, higher rates of people i going into retirement which means more stress on the social security system, but the looming challenge is health care. all of the republicans, if i can throw that out, who talk about where failed to vote for negotiation of health care should think about, if we continue on this path, how can we afford that in the future? yes, it will have an effect on consumers, but it will have an equal effect on our ability to continue to afford medicare and medicaid. i am an ash host: i imagine that we talk about inflation alive. what does it mean in the day in and day out? a lot of -- guest: a lot of inflation was

driven by different things. supply chain inability to get inputs for your business, never mind what happens at the grocery story for rural america. everything is more expensive in rural america. it costs more to go to church because you are 20 miles out. inflation is particularly difficult on rural americans, especially aging americans living on fixed income. it does not get talked about a lot that they increased dramatically during a time of high inflation. was it enough to cover cost? we will see. inflation is one of those things that i think the administration has tried hard to address. you see what the fed has done

and i think, if you had to balance this, the increase in interest rates has also had an effect on rural america as small business is rely on leverage. those increased cost of money have had an effect. not only has inflation affected rural america, but higher interest rates has had a dramatic host: the previous to guest also laid blame on the biden administration for spending backed into inflation. guest: they have no problem with that spending where it was being done in the republican administration. 25% of our debt which driven up by republicans. you have nick and hubie speaking

truth to power on the debate stage -- nikki haley speaking truth to power on the debate stage. this was part of it. coming out of the pandemic, we had disrupted supply chains, people thought it would be transitory. that was naive. good economists were saying don't say is transitory because there is going to be some challenges. what you had was a lot of people who have not been shopping. they had been getting this extra money, a lot of it was federal money, saving it up until the -- until there was pent-up demand. you had a perfect storm of pent-up demand with low supply. it is no more complicated than 101. i would like the other folks to explain why other countries going to the same thing have not expensed the same successes in reducing the amount of inflation and growing their economy. by then's -- biden's economic

message is not yahoo, we are scoring -- we are soaring to the skies. he has done a good job seeing how this affects everyday americans and addressing those challenges on top of trying to move the economy to a non-carbon-based economy. those are two difficult challenges to meet at the same time. host: heidi heitkamp joining us for this. we will start with ken from south carolina. good morning, you were on with our guest. caller: good morning. how are you? guest: i am good. caller: i have a couple of quick questions. do you recall when obamacare first came out in 2009 what doesn't in -- 2009 or 2010? $30 million went down the tubes because they could not get

everything online. $30 million was wasted right out of the gate. we were talking about expanding medicaid. do you believe illegal aliens should be able to get medicaid if they are in this country illegally? i am not talking about people actually in line trying to do the right thing. but should illegal aliens be able to get medicaid? i know in a lot of states they are. how much money does that cost the american taxpayers? when you're talking about biden trying to do the right thing, do you know how much money he printed during the pandemic and put out on the streets for pandemic unemployment i could have drawn but i didn't because i felt like it was wrong? he put almost $1 trillion of worthless money on the street.

when you talk about he was trying to do the right thing, i did not see it that way. the american taxpayer will it up paying for all of this in the end. host: thank you for the call. guest: i want to talk about obamacare. it was not in 2010, it was rolled out in 2013. i was in the senate when this happened. it was very injurious to people's attitudes about obamacare. if obamacare was such a failure, it got, everybody acknowledged it it was fixed -- acknowledged it. it was fixed. the states that refused to do their own exchange went on the federal exchange and that system has worked pretty well. in minnesota, they have insurance that is incredibly

popular with democrats and conservatives. they basically say do you need health care and can you afford it and 80 private sector -- and can you afford it in the private sector? that ability to get preventative care will bend the health care cost. it is very enlightening that on the debate stage last week, not one person said i'm going to repeal obama care. for rule america, obamacare has been a godsend. expanding medicaid so that more people can have health insurance is critical. i want to say this, we do not deny health care to anybody who is sick. if someone shows up at the hospital and has a broken leg, we will fix it.

when that person doesn't have insurance, we also pay for it in terms of our risk mitigation. this idea that somehow providing health insurance is a burden in many ways actually reduces our cost. we hopefully intervene at an earlier stage. we hopefully keep people healthier and we are building out system that understands that preventative care is essential to reducing health care cost. for many people, when i was in office, 80% of those people suffering from opioid addictions were on medicaid. without medicaid they would not have gotten treatment. i am unabashedly supportive of the direction obama took. when you talk about undocumented individuals coming in, if a

child is sick and comes to a hospital, are you going to deny them or ask for their papers? if their papers are not in order, just say good luck? that is not the america we want to live in. do we need to fix our immigration system? absolutely. do we need to secure the border and prevent people who would not otherwise come in to this country, prevent them from coming? this solutions to this are so complicated. in the early years of my senate term, we passed conference if immigration reform. paul ryan in the house would not take it up. we would be a lot further along had to done something systematic. i cannot remember his last point, but basically printing money. i once took a group of students

-- i was working at harvard -- we took students to the trump white house with a solution of what we were going to do to get social security secured for 75 years. they had a great plan, it was balanced. in terms of also investing the trust fund differently, growing the trust fund differently. it was a really nuanced plan. we were in the trump white house told by trump economic officials when we presented what i thought was a sophisticated plan, why don't you just debt fund it? let's not pretend anyone has innocent hands. this is a problem that needs to be addressed. i serve on the committee for responsible federal budget looking at working with people who are looking at working with a balanced budget amendment.

a lot of people who have been in government for a long time right now are seeing this and trying to sound the alarm. i agree with the sentiment. i disagree with the attitude that somehow there is one side that is really good on this and one-sided that is really bad on this. it is equal opportunity failure. host: is your from jessica -- let's hear from jessica who joins us for wichita, kansas. caller: how are you? host: you are on with our guest. caller: i want to say couple of things. i have mild autism. i agree a little bit with the last caller saying that the things we are -- the way things are with medicare and medicaid are a bit ridiculous.

i think we should do what canada is doing with universal health care. yes, you end up getting more taxes, but i think it is worth it in the end. another thing -- i would like to say a few things guarding mr. donald trump. that man should have gone to prison a long time ago with all he has done with jeffrey epstein, what have you. -- he tries to overturn our democracy. i just can't stand how people are so infatuated with this man that they are still to this day following him. he betrayed our country.

he tried to sell documents regarding our activities for intelligence and all other. host: i am not sure about that last part but senator, if you want to respond to that. guest: every american today should be concerned about our democracy. my land has been energy, child protection and child rights, indigenous rights. these are things i am comfortable with. i never thought when people asked me when i left what do you want to do, i made a mental note and said i want to defend democracy. a lot of work i'm doing is talking about those challenges. one country was designed to begin the process of ending or mitigating polarization.

we can't are the violent extremism, people feeling like they have a mandate somehow to basically kill people who don't feel they have the same color skin as they do. you see it in the anger of people across the country. how do you fix that? you fix that by building community. the top-down does matter. we need a uniter leaving our country. -- leading our. the previous administration, you could argue that is not a uniter. universal health care, when you look at the strategy of the federal government which is providing basic tenet, keeping the system of employer-provided health care but saying there are to be gaps in that, i want to make a point about obamacare

because it does not get talked enough about. it gives a lot of people a lot of freedom. the harvard business school publishes a review and they basically said obama care has led to a growth in entrepreneurship because people take jobs to get the health insurance. if health insurance were affordable someplace else, they could take the risk of starting their own business. there are benefits to universal health care. the big benefit is when everyone is insured and everyone is in the system and we are doing the right thing in terms of preventative care, we can end the curve. we can look at what we can do to reduce costs. we spend way too much money health care and as a lot of experts note, we spend a lot of money and get a low result. these are stomach problems that needs to be fixed. they want to be fixed until we

get everybody into a system where they are looking at preventing disease. a great friend of mine, former surgeon general from the bush administration, he now lives in arizona. he once told me when we were campaigning, his experience, 70% of all health care costs were related to chronic disease, most of which was preventable. we have got to get a different model of health care but we want to do it until we get everybody getting health care on the front end. that is what obamacare seeks to do. host: rural residents, 202-748-8000. all others, 202-748-8001. the previous line is where sean is calling from in north carolina. caller: thank you for taking my call. joe biden is a rockstar. nobody has done more for rural

america than joe biden. we have so many jobs that can't be filled. we have so many jobs paying higher wages just because the rich want to run up everything and cause inflation because they're not getting their tax break. obamacare, everybody around here love the affordable care act. but when you attach obama's name on it, they look down. the real reason is they are having success with their affordable care. so many of my republican friends around here love the affordable care act. they just don't want to admit it. as for your -- as for joe biden, go joe! host: okay that is from south:.