#DefendDreamers

Trump’s sneak attack on Medicaid, the latest on the fight to protect Dreamers, an autistic candidate for office on people with mental illness holding elected office, and the “veteran class within the working class.” Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

With 122 Dreamers losing DACA protection every day as Congress continues to debate funding to keep the federal government open, Rebecca talks with Claudia Flores, immigration campaign manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a Dreamer herself. Next, following last week’s discussion about the national obsession with President Donald Trump’s mental health, Rebecca speaks with Reyma McCoy McDeid, an autistic candidate for office in Iowa, as part of a series of conversations with elected officials and candidates for office who live with mental illness and mental health disabilities. And finally, when you think of the face of poverty in America, is it a veteran’s face you see? Rebecca is joined by Will Fischer, director of government relations at VoteVets.org. But first, The Slevinator returns to unpack Trump’s new policy allowing states to take away people’s Medicaid if they can’t find work.

This week’s guests:

• Claudia Flores, Immigration Campaign Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund
• Reyma McCoy McDeid, Candidate for Iowa House District 38
• Will Fischer, Director of Government Relations at VoteVets.org

For more on this week’s topics:

• For more on Trump’s sneak attack on Medicaid, read Rebecca’s explainer at TalkPoverty and new analysis from the Center for American Progress finding that this cruel new policy puts a whopping 6.3 million Americans at risk of losing health insurance nationally.
• Visit www.dreamacttoolkit.org to tell your member of Congress we need a #DreamActNow.
• Learn more about Reyma McCoy McDeid’s campaign for Iowa House District 38 at www.runreymarun.com.

This program aired on January 12th, 2018

Transcript of show:

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas. On deck for this week I speak with a DREAMer about the uncertainty she and many others are facing as negotiations around DACA continue in congress. Next, following last week’s discussion around the national obsession with President Donald Trump’s mental health, I talk with an autistic candidate for office in a Illinois as a part of a series of conversations with elected officials and candidates for office who live with mental illness and mental health disabilities. And last but certainly not least a conversation about the veteran class within the working class. But first we haven’t had ‘In Case You Missed It’ in a while so it’s been much more “you missed it” than “in case you missed it” as Jeremy Slevin, the Slevinator likes to say. Slevs, we’ve missed you, welcome back.

JEREMY SLEVIN: Thank you, thank you for having me back.

VALLAS: So I wish it were for anything positive that we’re talking about but instead we’re talking about huge, huge news this week. Trump has officially overridden the American people’s wishes overridden what Congress is even able to do and decided to launch his own backdoor attack on Medicaid. Literally ending the program as we know it through an executive action that just made news this week. What is he doing? He’s calling it ‘work requirements’, unpack it for us, Slevs.

SLEVIN: Yes, I’ll do my best to unpack it although I’m speaking to a real expert so interrupt me at anytime.

VALLAS: And your boss, that’s why this dynamic is fun.

SLEVIN: It doesn’t get any more intimidating than this.

VALLAS: It’s the best, I get to be like ‘Hey Jeremy go dance’ and you have to do it.

SLEVIN: Exactly, that’s why I always laugh because I have to.

VALLAS: That’s why I love having you on this show. No seriously, seriously what’s in this poicy, what does it do?

SLEVIN: On a much more serious note the executive order which came down yesterday from CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, basically allows states to require people to work in exchange for health care through Medicaid. So it will take away health care for many people who don’t have a job or who have part time jobs because they put in an hours requirement which I think is about 31, 34 hours.

VALLAS: It’s not specified because they’re leaving it to the states and I think that’s a lot of what the confusion is here around this policy. Let me say this as your boss, you described it beautifully Jeremy, thank you so much. It was a letter to state Medicaid directors is the form that this guidance took. And so basically to cut through all the wonkery, as you said it is for the first time in the more than five decade history. It is the administration, the White House saying, “hey states you are now allowed to cut people off of their health insurance if they can’t find work”, which a lot of legal experts are saying it actually violates the Medicaid statutes and may be illegal so lawsuits will for sure follow. But in the meantime really important for folks to understand what this means and that this is not, as it has been described by a lot of folks in the media some technical change that isn’t going to have an huge impact.

SLEVIN: And I think a lot of people say oh, it’s just giving states flexibility. It’s not actually requiring anything. Well it’s important to know that ten states have already applied to do this, to take away people’s Medicaid, mainly conservative, Republican led states because it saves the states money, supposedly.

VALLAS: Well they’ve been chomping at the bit at this for ideological reasons.

SLEVIN: This is an ideological fight. And another important point which I think we can go into is that they say it exempts certain people, they say it doesn’t apply to people with disabilities, it says it doesn’t apply to people who are seeking substance abuse treatment but there are a lot of people with disabilities and a lot of people who have substance abuse issues and get Medicaid but may not be in treatment at the moment. It could jeopardize their health care.

VALLAS: And on the disability point because this is so important, so many folks in the media have actually been getting these facts wrong because the Trump announcement was so confusing in the language that they used. So I’m going to go hard wonk for a second here just to really make sure this is clear to a lot of folks who are following this. So the policy says that it applies to working age people who, working age adults who are not pregnant and who do not qualify for Medicaid on the basis of a disability. Now what does that mean and why does that mean people with disabilities across the board are not protected by this policy? Well it’s because the people who actually receive Medicaid on the basis of their disability which is a technical thing about the category of Medicaid you’re in. That’s just a really small slice of the people who receive Medicaid who have disabilities, chronic conditions, health problems of other kinds. And so all those folks, in the letter from CMS itself, it actually notes if you read the fine print that they’re aware as they’re releasing this policy that that’s not going to protect all the people with disabilities who receive Medicaid and so this is actually a huge assault on people who face real barriers to work who are not being given supportive services or other kinds of things that they need to be able to work but instead are being told screw you best of luck, bye bye to your Medicaid.

SLEVIN: And I want to walk through some of the other people who are being affected because as you’ve pointed out, this is based on the myth that the poor are this stagnant group who don’t want to work and what would really help them is making them work and learning the value of hard work.

VALLAS: A kick in the butt.

SLEVIN: And so here are the facts. 80% of people who receive Medicaid live in working families 60% are working themselves. So let that sink in. of the minority of people who are not working and receive Medicaid, over a third are facing serious health problems, another 30% are caregivers so they are doing labor that is unpaid. 15% were in schools, were students. I don’t think we should take away health care from students personally but others may disagree. Another 9% are retired, a lot of people are early retirees, they may not be on Medicare yet but they receive Medicaid. And 6%, a small minority but this is important to note were either unemployed or underemployed and looking for work. So the people this is affecting I don’t think in way are undeserving.

VALLAS: These are the freeloaders that Trump is trying to go after here. You heard it from Jeremy and we should give a shoutout to the Kaiser Family Foundation who crunched all those really, really helpful numbers about who receives Medicaid. That is who the Trump administration is worried is getting some kind of handout, that’s what this is all about. And another really important piece of evidence here about who is going to be hurt by this policy as states try to start to take it up, there was a study that came out of Michigan in December of last year that didn’t get nearly enough attention. That looked at that state’s Medicaid population and specifically the work status of Medicaid enrollees in Michigan and what they found was that the overwhelming majority of people who receive Medicaid in that state and who are not currently working are people with physical problems, mental health diagnoses or both. That is the overwhelming share of folks who are not working for one reason or another who could very very easily end up getting caught up in the red tape of this policy despite Trump making all kinds of really quite frankly BS assurances that that’s not who this policy is intended to target.

SLEVIN: And I think the other grand irony of imposing work requirements in order to get health care is that are you actually helping people get work? It’s not like you just say oh we need work requirements for people in Indianapolis where the Carrier plant just shut down. We’re going to require you to work on in exchange for Medicaid. You’re doing nothing to actually make sure people have jobs. You’re simultaneously passing a giant tax cut that will offshore thousands upon thousands of jobs and then requiring people to work in exchange for health care. The moral case for requiring people to work would imply that you need to actually help people get jobs and invest in jobs.

VALLAS: It’s exactly right. Work requirement policies are not just cruel they’re actively counterproductive. We have all kinds of evidence telling us this because of the nation’s preeminent experiment with work requirements called TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. So the TL;DR version, we’ll have links in the Off Kilter syllabus this week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Urban Institute and others have done really good work helping us understand what we already know but the short version is work requirements don’t help anyone work, what they do is make it harder for people to actually work because taking away someone’s health care doesn’t help them find work, spoiler, right the common sense there is there in spades and yet apparently not in the Trump White House but we’re running short on time here Slevs, I think what folks need to know is what they can be doing in this moment this is obviously not legislation so it makes it a much harder and different animal for folks who are looking to get involved and to fight back. What can people do if they want to raise their voices and say look we said no to cuts to Medicaid last year all 2017 when Trump was trying to take Medicaid and no he’s coming through the back door. What can I do to stop this?

SLEVIN: We just launched a petition, we’re recording on Friday it should be up today so you’ll be able to access it by the time this is live, it’s called Hands Off Medicaid, you can go there, you can add your name to tell CMS to reverse this decision. We are going to hand deliver if we get 15,000 petitions we’re going to hand deliver those petitions to CMS, the administrator is named Seema Verma, we are going to do everything we can just like net neutrality was done by the administration that doesn’t mean that people can’t reverse it if they raise their voices. So handsoffmedicaid.org, additionally if you have a story and you are personally affected by Medicaid or a similar program and know that work requirements don’t work go to handsoff.org, I know they are similar sites, that’s by design. Share your story there. We want to lift up as many stories as possible.

VALLAS: Lots more to come on this front. This is not the only attack that we’re expecting in the form of puppies and rainbows language like promoting work and community engagement so we’ll continue to keep you posted on this show and elsewhere. Jeremy, thanks for keeping us up to speed on what’s going on so that we don’t miss it and on weeks when you’re not here, just so you know we miss you.

SLEVIN: You miss it!

VALLAS: Don’t go away short break and then more Off Kilter.

[MUSIC]

Welcome back to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. With 122 DREAMers losing DACA protection every single day as congress continues to debate funding to keep the federal government open, I talk with Claudia Flores Immigration Campaign Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and a DREAMer herself. Claudia, thanks so much for joining the show.

CLAUDIA FLORES: Thank you, so happy to be here.

VALLAS: So bring us up to speed. There’s been a lot going on in the last several weeks, even the last several days on this. Where do things stand currently?

FLORES: Well as you may know earlier last year in September President Trump decided to end the DACA program which was a government program that provided temporary protection from deportation for young immigrants who arrived to this country as children. As a result of that program people were able to access work permits, people were able to continue their education and contibute to the community where they’ve lived pretty much most of their lives. The average age of entry for DACA beneficiaries is under 7 years old so we’re talking people who have grown up in this country so Trump ended the program in September and gave DREAMers a very abrupt deadline of one month in case of those whose permits were set to expire between September and March. And as a result of that he basically kicked the can down to congress. And now we’re stuck in this crisis where everyday DREAMers are losing their DACA status and congress has not found a way to resolve this crisis.

VALLAS: Now a lot of people have said this will be a crisis in March but actually 122 people are losing DACA protection every single day between now and then. You yourself are a DACA beneficiary, would love to hear a little bit about your story and how it feels in this moment with so much uncertainty around these issues and these protections.

FLORES: Well the program is on a rolling basis and I think that is what has created some confusion and frankly I think that’s why the administration decided to do this sort of 6 month deadline to confuse the American public under this notion that people can actually wait until March. So people like myself, depending on where our work permits would be expiring, in my case it’s just a few months from now, have to be watching the news pretty constantly. There is a lot of uncertainty, there is a lot of confusion. But there is also a lot of opportunity and I think if there is one thing for folks who are listening that I would really like to underscore is the fact that people like myself have grown up in this country pretty much all of our lives. This is a country that we call home. I went to high school here, went to college, upon graduating from college it was actually the day before my college graduation that President Obama announced DACA so you can imagine just the emotions that went behind that. That meant the ability for me to use my talents in a way that would actually contribute to the economy but also being able to access jobs that would match the training that I had at the time.

VALLAS: Literally the day before your graduation.

FLORES: The day before my graduation and I think from the mental health impact that this has but also in terms of planning for your future in my case I was graduating from college and I was looking at jobs and I couldn’t get past the application process because I didn’t have a form of identification, Social Security Number and just I think a lot of things I would say some Americans may take for granted because you’re born with them.

VALLAS: You noted that you know lots of people who are impacted by this uncertainty. What does it feel like on a day to day basis not to be able to plan more than even a few weeks or months ahead?

FLORES: It’s very stressful. It’s stressful it’s more stressful to know that your entire life and future seems to be dependant on a gridlocked congress. The thing with this issue is I have friends, I have siblings I have so many people that have committed to this program. The promise that we received was that we would register with the government, we would provide all our personal information and we would also go through background checks and I think that’s the scary part, that this administration has made every single undocumented person in America a target for deportation. So we have seen cases of, you probably heard of the border case of a young disabled child that was caught into an enforcement action when she was by a checkpoint. We have seen cases of massive raids happening in workplaces, we just saw in the news that a hundred 7–11s were raided in what they call workplace operations which are essentially massive raids. So what guarantees do I have as a DREAMer that they’re not going to come after me when it would be so easy given that the government has all my personal identifiable information.

VALLAS: It looked for a moment that there might be a bipartisan deal to protect DREAMers like yourself in this moment while congress tries to move forward longer-term legislation. This all got wrapped up in end of year funding debates at the end of last year when we talked about this on the show, the most recent time. Now we’re in a moment where it doesn’t look like there is a deal and everything has been thrown back into flux and one name keeps coming up as somebody who is potentially the person blocking there actually being a deal on this and that name is Stephen Miller. One of Trump’s closest aides. How is he involved in all this and are some of the speculations that have been raised in the media that he’s actually the one driving immigration policy in the White House. Are those speculations founded?

FLORES: Stephen Miller is the guy that, it was widely reported that he was behind the muscle in Bannon. He’s an advisor to the president, someone that came from former Senator Jeff Sessions’ staff and he is someone that is also heavily praised by nativist groups such as Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies. For a long time he has opposed any efforts for immigration reform. In 2013 as a staffer, former communications director for Jeff Sessions he would send memos and email reporters pretty much on a daily basis with a list of crimes that were supposed to be committed by undocumented immigrants. So he’s someone that is very dangerous and is unfortunately now in a capacity of advising a president of the United States. So he is a barrier but I do think that right now senators are negotiating. There are bipartisan efforts, there are some Republicans that want to get this done. There is a group of 34 who sent a letter last year asking the president and congress to get this done in 2017. Now we’re in 2018 and guys like Scott Taylor and other Republicans have said that this is something that we can get done. So there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to come up with a deal. There is a very malicious effort to delay bipartisan negotiations. Yesterday Goodlatte put out a bill in which he would be slashing 25% of the legal immigration. Here’s the thing — for nativist groups and for some of those who are behind this white nationalist agenda, their ultimate goal is to reform our entire legal immigration system. And that is what President Trump actually made clear in that sort of oddly televised meeting that we wouldn’t be doing comprehensive immigration reform. We would just be tackling the problem that we have in front of our hands which is DACA.

VALLAS: So if you had to look into your crystal ball and I hate to ask you that question but there are a lot of folks listening who are wondering how is this going to turn out. They’ve got friends, they’ve got neighbors, they’ve got community members, people in their lives who are very much wondering every single day what’s going to happen here. Do you think that congress is at least going to find a bipartisan short term fix that they can agree on and if so, where then do the negotiations go?

FLORES: I think they can, I think they must and I think the only way we can get this done is if people to continue to make calls, continue to pressure both Democrats and Republicans to work together and get the solution. One thing that I also want to stress is that the spending bill and the reason why this is tied to a spending bill is because the spending bill in itself would automatically fund more ICE and border agents, including 50,000 detention beds. So if both Democrats and Republicans agree on a final spending bill which is why we’re looking at this January 19th deadline, they would be in face funding the deportation of DREAMers. So we need folks to get on the phone, we have a real easy tool here at CAP Action which is Dreamacttoolkit.org. You can call, you can tweet, use your lunch break, use your coffee break, two to three minutes can go a long way to ensure that young people are not ripped away from the country they call home.

I think calling congress is important because you’re moving the needle and you’re letting folks that represent you that this is important. i also think it’s very critical for people to listen to some of these stories and understand that these are your neighbors, that these are people that you’ve gone to school but it is so critical right now to call, to make a visit to your senator, to your representative. Because at the end of the day what we are really fighting against is time. Everyday, 122 DREAMers become at risk of detention and deportation. You calling and you sending a message to congress and letting your representative know that you are part of the majority of Americans, in fact more than 80% of American voters support a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers. So you letting Congress know that you’re part of that majority that wants to see this done adds the needed pressure to get this by the end of, in this case we want to get this by January 19th and immediately. So we need you to call. And we also need you to work even with your state if you feel like you’re in a state that is progressive or maybe your call will make a difference. That’s not true. You can call for folks in California, Senator Feinstein, Senator Harris, key people in these negotiations, thank them. Remind them that it’s important to keep working in a bipartisan way and keep holding those promises because at the end of the day if we don’t get this done we’re going to see a massive deportation of unfortunately people that have grown up like myself in the country that they call home.

VALLAS: Now DACA is not the only piece of immigration news this week or in this moment that people need to be paying attention to. There are a lot of other groups of immigrants whose ability to stay in this country and to remain with their families is very much at risk right now. I’m thinking about TPS holders, Temporary Protected Status and others. What else do we need to be following right now and who else is facing tremendous uncertainty in the weeks ahead?

FLORES: A few days ago the Trump administration had ended the temporary protected status for nearly 200,000 Salvadorian nationals who like in this country, living in the DC area we know that there are more than 30,000 alone that are contributing that are working here and who have families here. This is another aspect when we’re looking at a fix for DACA beneficiaries but also understanding that this is part of a bigger nationalist agenda that is really trying to do massive expulsion of communities of color, of people that have been in this country working for many years. When we look at the TPS decision, Salvadorians have been in this country for an average of 21 years. In fact 17 years living under the protection of TPS and these are folks that would be returned to countries that have been hit by not just economic disasters but natural disasters in the case of Haitians as well. We saw 50,000 folks that would be impacted here. These are people that have spent more than a decade in this country and are now being forced to go back to the conditions from which they escaped. The message that we’re sending to the work is that you are not welcome in America and that is a message that resonates with a very extremist base. That is a message that I’m not for and that is a message that a lot of Americans, I know we’ve thrown a lot of words in the media but TPS really means protection and refuge for some of the most vulnerable people in our global communities so that is what we’re talking about and that is what we’re facing in the next months. It’s battle after battle but ultimately very malicious effort to drastically alter our immigration system as we know it.

VALLAS: I’ll ask you to repeat the tool that folks can use on DACA which we’ll also feature on our syllabus.

FLORES: You can visit dreamacttooolkit.org to call your member and ask them to pass the DREAM act by January 19th.

VALLAS: Wonderful, thank you so much Claudia Flores is the Immigration Campaign Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. She also herself is a DACA beneficiary following this debate on a lot of different fronts, personal and professional. Claudia, thank you so much for joining the show and we’ll have to have you back soon as this debate continues.

FLORES: Thanks for having me.

VALLAS: Don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[MUSIC]

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. With questions about President Donald Trump’s mental health continuing to percolate and Trump himself responding to assure us that he’s a very stable genius, I spent some time on the show last week talking to my friend and colleague Rebecca Cokley, CAP’s Senior Fellow for Disability Policy about the implication of armchair diagnosis and the use of mental health language in such critics when it comes to how our society views mental illness. To continue this important conversation I’m incredibly pleased to speak this week with Reyma McCoy McDeid, she’s the executive director of Central Iowa Center for Independent Living. She’s an autistic woman running for the Iowa State Legislature and has some thoughts about that conversation going on right now about Trump. Reyma, thanks so much for joining the show.

REYMA MCCOY MCDEID: Thank you Rebecca, I’m honored to be here.

VALLAS: So just to kick off, tell my listeners a little bit about who you are and why you’re running for office and how your living as an autistic person plays into all of that.

MCDEID: Sure, sure so like you said I am the executive director of a center for independent living here in Iowa and one of the big things that I do both in my professional and personal life is mobilize people to participate in the political process who have been left out. And that most certainly includes people with disabilities. For instance, in Iowa there are 315,000 people who experience a disability and are eligible to vote and unfortunately only between 6 and 10% of that population actually votes. And so that’s, the ramification of that are pronounced and pretty monumental as far as I’m concerned. You basically have an entire segment of the population that is not participating in the political process. And the result of that can be seen in the legislation that is passed in Iowa and at the federal level when that voice is not being heard by our elected officials. So I’ve been very passionate about changing that paradigm for a long time now. And with the election of Trump in 2016 I think that my passion kind of pulled me into the direction of wanting to run for office and take the conversation that I have been reaching with people to the next level.

Now only do we need people with disabilities to vote, we also need people with disabilities to run and be elected to office and be able to participate in legislative conversations, have a seat at the table if you will. So that has brought me to running for office today and it’s, I’m in the early part of that particular adventure but it’s been really interesting and I’ve been touched by the number of people with disabilities, both locally and nationwide who have reached out to the campaign and shared their stories with me and also shared their own personal dreams to affect change at the legislative level. My message to everyone is do it, get involved, do what you feel moved to do to affect change and if that means running for office as well please do that we need you.

VALLAS: Now I think without question people agree and this is a statement that is true in 2018 that was not true decades ago but I’ll say it agree that people with disabilities should be holding elected office in much higher numbers. The piece that maybe is not clear to everyone and where there is some level of not just disagree but open questioning that’s happening right now in this conversation about Trump and his mental health and is is living with mental illness or a mental health disability or other kind of diagnosis something that makes one unfit to serve in elected office, something that a lot of folks are effectively saying about Trump. What do you say when you hear people start to get into that kind of a conversation?

MCDEID: You know I’m deeply distressed by that conversation. One, I think that Trump’s approach as president doesn’t differ that dramatically from the approach that he has used for decades and when I hear conversations about his mental fitness for office I hear a lot about well perhaps he has dementia or some kind of mental illness that has a late onset. And his track record indicates otherwise as far as I’m concerned. His decision-making processes have not differed that much in his life. So I really bristle at those types of conversations but the even bigger issue of whether or not people who experience mental illness or any kind of neuro-diversity, whether or not they are fit to hold office, that, my goodness, I think that’s, let’s have that conversation because it’s being had obviously. But we have to keep in mind that we are a representative democracy and mental illness is an experience that impacts millions of Americans. Millions of Americans who lead full, fulfilling lives experience mental illness and do really wonderful things. And in the midst of all of that they are proactive in seeking out the supports and treatments that they need in order to effectively live with a mental illness.

And I think to say that a person who has a mental illness is not fit for office, we’re basically saying that tens of millions of Americans who live in a representative democracy are not fit to represent themselves or others. And I really think that that is not true obviously. But when we start saying, talking about the fact that a person that represents tens of millions of people in this country should not represent this country, that’s not a healthy statement. I think that anybody who is of legal age and has a passion to represent the people should be able to do so. And I think that if a person used a wheelchair to navigate their day to day life and we were to say that that person should not be elected to office because they have a visible disability I think almost everybody would say that that is a ridiculous notion and so I think that that also is relevant with regards to people who have a mental illness or some other type of invisible disability. That should not discount them and what they would have to bring to elected office.

VALLAS: Embedded in a lot of that mindset is the myths about what living with mental illness or a mental health disability really looks like. For folks who maybe are wondering what is it that makes you qualified for office and the fact that you are autistic person as you’ve described does not make you someone who is unfit. You’re arguing that case strongly. What are the myths that we still need to bust at this point in the 21st century when it comes to mental illness and mental health disabilities?

MCDEID: Well that’s a great question. I think that the reality is that there are not enough people who experience a mental illness or other form of neurodiversity that are visible in society and so it’s still a bit of a boogeyman so to speak. And when we don’t have access to factual information it’s human nature to speculate. And so because we’re not hearing from people who are in elected office who experience mental illness and are able to with that mental illness do effect powerful change in their elected position, we’re left to speculate especially now that we have Trump in office and lots and lots of conversations are being had with regard to his own mental health status. At this time unfortunately the only reality is that he is the only person that we’re talking about with regards to elected officials and mental illness because no one has stepped forward who is a legislator and acknowledged that they too have a mental illness. And are able to operate the duties of their position and not necessarily in spite of but with that experience. And so yeah, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question but I think that in order to blow through the myths about people with mental illness we’ve got to elect more people who are neurodiverse into office but we also need people who are already elected and experience neurodiversity to bravely step forward and say I too have a mental illness, I too have a developmental disability and I am able to do this job and serve the people in an effective manner.

VALLAS: Reyma McCoy McDeid is the executive director of the central Iowa Center for Independent Living. She is an autistic candidate for the Iowa state legislature who is very public about her being autistic for all of the reasons described and why that makes her not just fit for office but a fantastic candidate for office. Reyma, where can folks find out more about your campaign?

MCDEID: Thank you Rebecca, you can find out more about my campaign by visiting my website and that is runreymarun.com, my name is spelled R-EY-M-A so runreymarun.com. You can also find me on Facebook by my name which is Reyma McCoy McDeid.

VALLAS: Reyma thank you so much for taking the time to join the show and best of luck. Run, Reyma, run indeed.

MCDEID: Thank you so much Rebecca, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

VALLAS: Take care.

MCDEID: Alright, bye.

VALLAS: Don’t go away more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[MUSIC]

Welcome back to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. When you think of the face of poverty in America is it a veteran’s face that you see? For my next segment I’m thrilled to be joined by Will Fischer, the director of Government Relations at Vote Vets, a nation organization fighting for progressive policies to help our nation’s veterans. Will thanks so much for joining the show.

WILL FISCHER: Thanks so much for having me on today.

VALLAS: So just to kick off people often picture the homeless veteran sitting on the subway grate when they think about whether there are veterans in this country who are facing poverty. But rarely do people think about veterans when they think about poverty and economic insecurity in this country. A big piece of that may be that veterans face poverty rates that are lower overall than the national average. What is it that we know about the intersection between economic hardship and veteran status?

FISCHER: Talking about the veteran over the sewer grate, I think it brings up an issue that really is part of a larger conversation dealing with the working class in America where people are aware of unemployment and people are aware of deep levels of poverty that unemployed people are living in. But what occasionally does get lost in the conversation is the world of underemployment and the working poor and people who are working extremely hard, extremely long hours and still aren’t making ends meet. And that is an issue that we certainly see affecting the entire working class and that absolutely includes veterans. I like to tell people that there is a veteran class in the United States and it’s fundamentally part of the working class. I did not go to Iraq or serve in the marines with any millionaires. I didn’t serve with anybody named Trump or Koch. I served with people who came from the working class and after their service they came home and they returned to the working class and today they are electricians, they’re letter carriers, they are working on construction sites. They are also in huge numbers continuing their service as federal employees, as state employees working as firefighters, working as VA employees. And I say all that to really lift up the fact that there is not an issue affecting the working class that is not also affecting the veteran community.

VALLAS: Part of what you raised is actually the bidirectionality of this conversation. It’s not just that veterans face economic insecurity in large swaths, it’s also that actually being a person who comes from a working class background makes you more likely to be a veteran because of who ends up in our military today in a post draft world.

FISCHER: Certainly, I mean look it really does run the full spectrum of society except in the area that the military is almost exclusive working class. It has every race you can imagine, it has immigrant and native born, it has every sexual orientation that is out there it extremely diverse except with economic status. Now, there are a lot of people who grew up like I did in a middle class environment but yet my rack mate at boot camp the very first pair of new shoes he had ever had in his life where issued to him at Paris Island, South Carolina. So yeah, that is somebody who joined the service, who enlisted in the Marines as a way to find a foothold to try to lift themselves into a higher economic bracket. At that same time, as we have seen a continued outsourcing in huge numbers of those jobs that so many people would have gotten when they got out of the service at GM, at a steel mill or in the building construction trades. As those jobs are being outsourced or they’re just not being invested in at the rate that they should be like the building and construction trade, you’re seeing people make a decision to stay in the military rather than go back to their communities where jobs don’t exist and now you’re talking about a situation where it’s almost like military indentured servitude. Get out of the military or stay in the military and you can eat.

VALLAS: So you mentioned that there is not an issue confronting the working class that is not an issue that’s a veterans issue. And it’s hard to have this conversation in this week where we’ve now had news, as we discussed earlier in the show coming out of the Trump administration about their move to really end Medicaid as we know it by allowing states to take health insurance away from people who can’t find jobs or get enough hours at work. This is going to fundamentally be devastating for veterans.

FISCHER: Absolutely, there are 1.75 million veterans right now who rely on Medicaid. And when you start talking about military family members, that’s another 600,000 on top of that. A lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people they say veterans and health care, don’t y’all all just go to the VA? I do, I’m very happy with my VA health care. I’m receiving world class health care through the VA and so are about 9 million veterans. But there are another about 11 million veterans who aren’t enrolled in the VA, either they’re not eligible, they’re not enrolled because they live too far away, so on and so forth. And with the Medicaid expansion that came through the passage of the Affordable Care Act we saw veterans living without health insurance, those numbers drop dramatically. Now we’re going to see the gutting of Medicaid, the destroying of Medicaid, which they tried to do legislatively with trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now being done with this permission slip being written by the Trump administration and veterans will lose health insurance as a result of this and veterans will die as a result of this.

VALLAS: You mentioned a little bit before about what it’s like to come home for the folks who have the luxury of doing that and are not trapped in that cycle of as you put it military indentured servitude and health insurance is a big part of being able to reenter into your community and particularly for people coming home with mental health impairments like PTSD can be absolutely core to whether someone is able to reenter successfully and return to their life in a meaningful way versus having their life take an incredibly sharp turn in a direction that is much less stable, much less healthy and often can include poverty and all of the trappings of it. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about the role that health insurance itself plays in breaking the link between veteran status and economic insecurity.

FISCHER: Look health insurance has been shown time and time again to make people not only healthier but let’s look at what a healthier individual is. A healthier individual is also going to be a better worker. You talk about these work requirements that they’re saying now for Medicaid well how in the world are people supposed to go out and get jobs if jobs even exist. If they’re not even able to have their basic health needs met in the first place and then let’s say this person gets hurt on the job and they have now with a national labor relations board that Donald Trump has assembled that isn’t going to allow people to file for grievances or isn’t going to have those workplace protections that they need. So this person may find themselves again unemployed, again in a place where they’re going to need some health needs met and they’re not going to be able to do so because Medicaid is being destroyed as you mentioned, as we know it.

VALLAS: So obviously Medicaid is not the only program that’s at risk at this point. We’ve talked a lot on this show in the past several weeks about the risks that could be coming to Social Security, disability benefits including Supplemental Security Income as well as Social Security Disability Insurance. Meals on Wheels, nutrition assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, housing and more. These are programs that matter for veterans even if that’s not something that is widely understood. What do we know about how many veterans are returning to these kinds of programs?

FISCHER: Absolutely look right off the top of my head you mentioned Meals on Wheels. Last year 500,000 veterans were served by Meals on Wheels in this country. And who are these veterans? Look, a lot of them are 95, 96 year old World War II veterans who aren’t able to just drive to the grocery store anymore so they’re getting served by Meals on Wheels and what’s that program? It’s under attack. You talk about Social Security, Social Security absolutely is a veterans issue. 9 million veterans who are seniors, they’re receiving their Social Security benefits. The next step on that conversation as it affects veterans are the more than 700,000 veterans who are receiving their disability benefits through Social Security and the 4,000 plus children who have had a parent killed in a combat zone in the last 17 years who are receiving survivors benefits. And where does that come from? Social Security, so is Social Security a veterans and military families issue? Absolutely. Is Meals on Wheels and the attacks it is under a veterans issue?

Absolutely and going back to veterans health care for a second, we mentioned the VA and one of the things that I always try to lift up is the fact that the VA it is a world class health care provider. It’s the largest integrated health care system in this country and it’s under attack and under threat of being destroyed and privatized. And there is a real campaign being led by Donald Trump and the Koch brothers and others to destroy and privatize the VA? And why do they want to do this? Answer one, simple, profits. More veterans that you have in the private sector the more money is to be made by private health care CEOs and the more veterans you have, the more money you’re going to be able to make and as we’ve seen Donald Trump seems hell bent on creating more veterans every single day whether it’s by going and speaking capriciously about nuclear war with North Korea or threatening to destabilize the Middle East even further through pulling out and destroying the Iran deal you name it. But the more surreptitious reasoning behind this campaign to destroy and privatize the VA is the fact that the VA is popular among the people who use it, the VA works and the VA is also a government run single provider health care system and those who are the opponents of single payer health care or Medicare for All, they know that if they can kill the VA they can dash the hopes of there ever being universal health care realized in this country. Because right now look, I carry around a VA card in my wallet. And with this card —

VALLAS: Folks can’t see you doing it, pulling out of your wallet right now.

FISCHER: With this card right now I have the ability to walk into any of those thousand plus VA facilities around this country and those people have access to my records and they will take a look at me, the whole veteran. If I am in there for an appointment for my shoulder, well hey doc my knee hurts. They’re going to look at my knee and they also have the institutional knowledge to open up my record book and say hey Fischer, it says here you were a Marine you served in Fallujah in 2004. Something else we’ve noticed among Marines who served in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 is x, so let’s do a little blood work, so now you’re talking about preventative care as well which we know brings down health care costs immensely by focusing on that preventative care and at the end of the day we can talk this, we can talk that. The simple reality is and what we’re working for everyday is to bring about make the truth the reality that health care is a right for all people.

VALLAS: Going deeper into what the consequences of privatizing the VA would be, what would that mean for the people who currently have health coverage through that system?

FISCHER: Privatized care would absolutely mean worse care. People don’t really ever talk about some of the issues that exist in the private health care world, I mean you have a lot of people who die from medical malpractice in private hospitals every single year and that doesn’t really make the news because it’s not an integrated system. If somebody at Sibly hospital has their right leg chopped off when they were supposed to have their left leg chopped off it doesn’t make the newspaper in San Diego. If that happens at a VA hospital in San Diego it makes the news in every newspaper around the country because it’s an integrated system that a lot of people are a part of. But the VA, the R and D that has gone on at the VA since its inception, whether you’re talking about the first pacemaker, you’re talking about the nicotine patch, you’re talking about being world class leaders in mental health, in spinal cord and traumatic brain injury. In those types of issues, people who are dealing with prosthetics, the VA really is a leader and a destroyed VA and a privatized VA would mean an end to all of that.

VALLAS: So we’ve been dancing around this a little bit by talking about specifically, the specific policy threats that would be harmful for vets, for all the reasons that you’ve just laid out. We haven’t named any people yet who are responsible for these policies and I think it’s important to call them out. Obviously President Trump is the one driving a lot of the policy agenda that we’ve been describing as well as his colleagues in Congress and it’s notable to me that it’s almost a requirement if you’re going to be an elected official that you have to drape yourself in the flag and tell everyone how much you love the country’s veterans. That’s something that you absolutely have to do throughout your campaign, throughout your time actually serving in elected office. And yet, so many people who do that and go to great lengths to do it and in some cases who are even veterans themselves I’m thinking about Senator John McCain here end up not following through with policies that would help veterans and even worse, end up supporting policies that would be devastating for veterans like many of the ones that we’ve been talking about how do we get to a point where there are actually consequences for elected officials who run and maintain their time in office on protecting our nation’s veterans and standing up for our troops but who betray them through their policy agenda?

FISCHER: Look, we saw something very similar in the wake of September 11th when every congressional office on the hill had a 9/11 never forget poster, never forget, never forget. And then along comes the Zagroda Act where we’re going to try to fund benefits for first responders then all of the sudden people start forgetting. And all of a sudden then Republicans didn’t want to fund health care benefits and we see the exact same thing here. People who put a yellow ribbon on the back of their car, put a veteran in a TV commercial, put a veteran on stage, put their arm around that young woman, young man talking about how much they love veterans, have the backs of veterans until that veteran is looking for an opportunity to, for economic emancipation for not only themselves but their sisters and brothers in the working class. Everybody loves a veteran until a veteran wants to have a voice on the job through a union, and then they are like nah, nah not interested in that veteran anymore. Everybody loves a veteran until they’re a federal employee and then they’re called the swamp. And these are people who have elected to continue their service. Continue their service as a federal employee after getting out of the service. Everybody loves a veteran until a veteran goes before municipal board and talks about why they support an increase in the minimum wage and people aren’t interested in hearing from that veteran anymore. And the list goes on and on and on and I would say that’s one of the real things that we try to do at Vote Vets constantly is to lift up the voice of our members and because it’s their voice in congressional districts and towns and states all over this country that matters and these are people who really are facing these issues and it is through their voice that we’re able to communicate to people of all political stripes that again there is a veteran class and that issues are effecting the working class are affecting veterans and if one is supporting policies that are detrimental to the working class they are supporting policies that are categorically ant-veteran and it’s on us to let people know that. So if you want to go out here and you want to gut Medicaid, good to go because we’re going to make sure that your constituents know that you worked to take health care away from veterans. If you are supporting policies that are exist to drive down wages and drive down workplace protections for workers that is categorically bad for veterans and we’re going to make sure your constituents know that you’re doing everything you can to keep more veterans on the street and more veterans in line at food pantries and we’re going to do what we can to make sure that those veterans are also in line at the polling station next election.

VALLAS: I mentioned John McCain and it’s hard not to stay there for just a minute because I’m curious your thoughts. What do you make of elected officials who are veterans and ones with storied records like Senator McCain whom nonetheless betray their veteran sisters and brothers through policy decisions left and right?

FISCHER: Look, Vote Vets is an organization, we work to help get progressive veterans elected to congress but it takes a lot more than just being a veteran to have our support. It’s being a veteran and supporting policies that are beneficial to veterans and the working class. John McCain, this is somebody who of course has been in the news recently for his opposition to, his support of the GOP Tax Scam or some of his back and forth on health care and some of those issues. He certainly supports destroying and privatizing the VA. But you know this is also someone who opposed the G.I. Bill, the 21st century G.I. Bill when it was being debated and opposed it because he said it was going to be too good and would encourage too many people to get out of the military. Kind of going back to what we were saying before of being, people saying how can you make society in such a way that people don’t want to get out of the military? Come on, man that’s not what this is all about.

VALLAS: That’s all the time we have you can find my full conversation with Will Fischer as a bonus episode on iTunes.

And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.