Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA 3rd) returns to the show to discuss his time spent as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, his work on the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act helping to protect worker pensions and reduce drug costs, as well as investments in historically Black colleges and school meal plans.

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope 

I’m Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman 

I'm Thomas Bowman.

Michael Pope 

And this is Pod Virginia. A podcast that is pleased to welcome back to the show the senior member of the Virginia congressional delegation, Congressman Bobby Scott; thanks for joining us.

Bobby Scott 

Thank you, Michael; it's good to be with you.

Michael Pope 

So, Mr. Chairman, you lead this very important committee in Congress. And I want to go through some of the highlights of your time as chairman. Starting with the American rescue plan, this landmark piece of legislation, basically saved the American economy. It's a bill that you spent a lot of time on, and I want to focus on one part of that, which is pensions. For a lot of people, their retirement security was at risk because when the economy was in danger there, you had a lot of people that might not have gotten the pensions that they worked for, for many, many years. And you put together a Special Financial Assistance Program. Some of our listeners might be familiar with the SFA program. Tell us a little bit about this SFA program and how that saved people's pensions. I saw your committee has a running tally here. And I think currently, this legislation has already saved like 200,000 pensions, and 1,000 businesses have been protected. How does this system work?

Bobby Scott 

Well, first of all, what we're talking about is a multi-employer pension fund, that a lot of workers that work for very short periods of time with an employer in construction, for example, when the project is finished, they go on to another job, probably another employer, and under the multi-employer pension fund, participating employers will pay into the pension fund, pay into the account of the various employees. And then, when the two retirements come, the employee will have one full retirement account. The problem occurred with bankruptcies and the '08 financial crisis and lacked oversight by the federal government. A lot of these plans were in trouble. We've calculated if we didn't do anything, about a million people would lose their pensions. And also because all of the employers involved are jointly and separately obligated to pay into the plans until the business went broke. That a lot of businesses 10s of 1000s of businesses were at financial risk. We calculated that if we didn't do anything, the people who lose their pensions would pay less income tax, and they'll be more likely to use SNAP benefits and Medicaid to the tune of about $170 billion in the next ten years. And a lot more after that. We were able to come up with a solution for about half that cost. So we save money. We saved a million people's pensions, and we saved 10s of 1000s of businesses by taking proactive initiatives in the American rescue plan. And we're able to provide financial security during retirement for about a million people and saved about 10s of 1000s of businesses at risk of collapsing because of their obligation to these funds.

Thomas Bowman 

Well, I, for one, as a former labor union lobbyist, very much appreciate the work that you did on that front, Congressman Scott. But another part of the American rescue plan was delivering the single largest investment in K-12 schools in American history, $123 billion. Much of that was aimed at poor children and 20% of the funding was set aside specifically to handle learning loss associated with the pandemic. Congressman, has this approach been successful?

Bobby Scott 

We think we think so and it's still in the process of being successful. I think we need to take credit, where credit is due to the largest investment in K-12 education in the history of the United States. And we use the Title 1 formula. As you pointed out, where poverty is the biggest factor in that formula, he saw the money where it was most needed. But just a few weeks ago, we had achievement test scores released that showed that students all over the country and in Virginia had not done very well on those achievement tests. That was not a surprise. They were not in school for the better part of two years. So, of course, they're gonna have problems with test scores, questioning whether or not they did poorly on the test. The question is, what are you gonna do about it? We saw that coming and put the money there so that when they were able to reopen, they would be able to make up for the loss of learning. A lot of the school systems are making investments in extra tutorials and extra mentoring, and enhanced summer programs to make sure that they can catch up. If they don't catch up quickly, particularly the juniors and seniors in high school, if they graduate behind, they will be permanently inflicted with less learning for the rest of their life. We need to make sure they catch up and catch up quickly. And that's what that investment did. We saw the problem coming. And the money in the money is certainly there. If you look around Hampton Roads, you'll see school districts doing a lot of innovative things to make sure the students can catch up.

Thomas Bowman 

So recently, you visited Sedgefield Elementary in Newport News to see the impact firsthand. So what impact does this have on the average family in schools in your congressional district?

Bobby Scott 

Well, it means that the students and the school system have the resources necessary to catch up. Of first things, even before the pandemic, a study came out that showed that there were significant problems in ventilation systems all over the country. You can't open a school during an airborne pandemic if you haven't fixed the ventilation system. That was one of the first investments that had to be made. One thing is that to operate safely, you have to have more bus drivers and more buses because you can't load as many children on a bus during a pandemic. You have to have school nurses, and you can't open yet until you have two school nurses. A lot of schools didn't have nurses. You have to have school counselors who are coming out of isolation and coming to school with a lot of different issues. PPE wasn't part of the budget before the pandemic, you need that as part of the budget. And you also need to make up for the loss of learning, extra teacher assistance, and school programs. And Hampton had makeup sessions not only on Saturday but also have makeup sessions on Sunday to make sure that students were catching up. And all of the school systems in the area have enhanced summer programs. So it's working. Regrettably, the test scores that came out were not good. But that was expected because schools make a difference. And if you're not in school, you're gonna see that in the test scores, and those resources will be going to making sure that the students are catching up.

Michael Pope 

Well, those students can't catch up if they're hungry. And another focus of your time as chairman has been your focus on making sure children have access to healthy meals. And because of your work with the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act, school meals have been expanded, and summer meals have been expanded, and SNAP and WIC, and we're now seeing kind of record low levels of child poverty. Explain why this was so important to you and what has happened as a result of specifically this new law, the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act.

Bobby Scott 

Well, one of the things that the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act was to help make sure that children were properly nourished. It was part of an overall effort that included the Child Tax Credit, which has resulted in child poverty dropping 40%. Now we lost the child tax credit, so child poverty has gone back up. But we saw how we could effectively reduce child poverty and we did a lot of things with children, not in school. It was a challenge to make sure they were getting nutritious meals. The school lunch program was actually a National Defense Initiative during World War Two, and it was noticed that a lot of students were not eligible for military service because they were malnourished. Or they came into the service malnourished. And so the summer, the school lunch program was designed as much as a National Defense initiative as an education initiative. Obviously, there'll be people who are not as concerned about education when they're hungry. And so you need the meals, and we expanded it. And even though they weren't in school, we made arrangements for the distribution of meals outside of school; when they came in, we eliminated a lot of the paperwork so that more students could get good could be served during the summer; we eliminated a lot of the paperwork so that students could take advantage of the summer feeding programs. And all of those have gone a long way in reducing hunger among children. And it's something that we're trying to continue as many of those initiatives as we can.

Thomas Bowman 

Let's pivot to health insurance because your work with the Education and Labor Committee means Americans without health insurance are now at the lowest level ever. So how did you do that? How did that happen?

Bobby Scott 

Well, basically, through the effective improvements in the Affordable Care Act. In the American Rescue plan, we reduced the premiums, and we expanded the number of people that would get assistance; there was a thing called the cliff; after four times poverty, you got no assistance at all. We eliminated that cliff and said that you would go up to eight, eight, and a half percent of your income. And at some point and then come scale, eight and a half percent will cover the sticker price. But for a family policy that could cost $15,000, if you're making $100,000,  $101,000, right at the threshold is about a little over $100,000. If you made $1 more, you'd get no help. Well, if you were limited to eight and a half percent, that'd be you'd go from $8,500 to $15,000. And reduce your premium to eight and a half percent could save thousands of dollars. So a lot of people that are on the cliff, for families that income cliff was happening at a little over $100,000. For individuals, it was happening at about $50,000. So a lot of people were not getting any help at all. And by virtue of the expansion elimination of the cliff, a lot of people were getting help significant help in buying their health insurance. We also made significant improvements over the last two years in the Inflation Reduction Act on pharmaceutical prices, limiting insulin to $35 out of pocket altogether to $2,000. A lot of people are paying a lot more than $200 a month for pharmaceuticals. And if you're one of those who has very high-priced drugs, that $2,000 limit will be a godsend. So and we were also able to negotiate drug prices; it may occur to people why we would have to pass legislation to allow drugs prices to be renegotiated, and that's because when Medicare was created several years ago, there was a provision put in there by the Republicans, no Democrat voted for it that prohibited the negotiation of drug prices. When the company says, this is what we want. It is before the inflation Reduction Act illegal for the Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary to say well, how about charging us only three times more than you charge everybody else in the world? That's illegal. So they can charge anything they want until the Inflation Reduction Act. So the reduction in drug prices was a significant benefit of healthcare.

Michael Pope 

Well, I also want to make sure I ask you about Historically Black Colleges and Universities. During your time as Chairman of Education and Labor, there was a huge uptick, and I think you probably ended up with more funding for HBCUs in your time as chairman than in the last decade. So how did you make that happen? And what's the future for HBCUs?

Bobby Scott 

Well, we were able to make the case. And as chairman, I made it a priority. I think you have to look at how you qualify as an HBCU. And you had to be established prior to 1965 when there was legal segregation; most of them are over 100 years old. And they were struggling through all the years through legal segregation and had serious deficiencies in terms of infrastructure. And the assistance we're able to give them enables them to make significant improvements in their academic offerings and their infrastructure, housing, and things like that. We didn't cure the problem, so more needs to be done. But we're able to make, I believe, a significant improvement in funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Thomas Bowman 

Congressman Bobby Scott, thank you so much for all you've done for Virginia's working families. Thank you so much for what you've done for all Americans. And thank you for joining us today.

Bobby Scott 

Thank you, Thomas. Thank You, Michael.

Thomas Bowman 

And thank you for listening.