I joined Jonesboro’s KASU to answer listener questions and discuss the Senate business this week. The Senate is debating President Trump’s cabinet nominees, but the process is taking an unnecessarily long time. This is the slowest Cabinet confirmation process since the Eisenhower administration. Listen to the interview here. 

We ran out of time before answering all of the questions that listeners asked. Here are the questions we didn't get to:

“What are your thoughts about the government’s role in funding CPB and the arts and the humanities?” 

These are valuable tools to keep citizens informed and educated. I understand the importance of these investments to Arkansans and to listeners of KASU and other public radio stations in our state. I have been supportive of these programs during my service in the House and Senate. As a former school board member, I truly understand the importance for arts education funding throughout our Arkansas communities. 

"What are we doing to preserve equal meaningful coverage for ALL constituents, including those with low to moderate income, and including those with pre-existing conditions?”

Obamacare places a higher value on attaining coverage benchmarks than it places on providing access to truly affordable, quality care. As a result, millions of Americans have lost their private insurance they liked and the doctors with whom they had long-standing relationships. These have been replaced by Obamacare policies baring higher premiums and deductibles while offering fewer options to find care.

This will not be a quick process as these serious issues deserve thoughtful debate. There are certain policy provisions in Obamacare that I support—such as coverage for pre-existing conditions and flexibility for older children to remain on their parents’ health insurance—that my colleagues and I will make an effort to include in a replacement that provides flexibility, choice, portability and fairness for all. I am committed to working with my colleagues to establish a careful and orderly transition to a patient-centered health care system that truly is affordable, not just in name but in practice, and actually works for the American people.

I joined Jonesboro’s KASU to discuss the busy start to the 115^th Congress. As we get ready for a new administration the Senate is beginning confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees. I talked about this, the work to repeal Obamacare and more in this interview.

Yesterday CNN reported that President Obama released four Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) prisoners to Saudi Arabia.

With weeks left before the end of his presidency, he continues his irresponsible campaign promise to close Gitmo.

Here’s why this is a problem – former detainees have returned to the battlefield and are responsible for the deaths of Americans. This is a threat to our national security.

I’ve supported continued efforts to block the administration from closing this facility. It’s well-equipped to house these dangerous prisoners and we cannot trust that the countries to which these detainees are transferred will monitor them to ensure they don’t return to the battlefield.

I look forward to working with the next administration to ensure Gitmo continues to be a place where we detainee dangerous people who are intent on endangering our American way of life.

When I ask Arkansans what frustrates them about the direction of our country, the most common response I hear is that “Washington does not listen to us.”

Obamacare is a perfect example of how Congressional Democrats and officials in the White House, who claim they know better than hardworking Americans, refuse to listen to the concerns of the American people.

From the beginning, the President pushed Obamacare down the throats of Americans with no concerns about the negative effects it would have on them.

President Obama promised his approach would lower health care costs. The truth is, there is absolutely nothing in Obamacare that drives down costs. In fact, health care costs continue to rise since his signature initiative became law and Americans are set to see an even more dramatic hike in their premiums in the coming year.

The Obama administration has confirmed this week that health insurance premiums sold through Obamacare will see double-digit increases—an average of a twenty percent-plus surge—in 2017. This is not, as the President has billed it, “affordable care.”

Rather, this massive spike in premium costs is further evidence that Obamacare is failing. It’s collapsing under the weight of its own massive bureaucracy. Nothing in this law will contain healthcare costs, but that has not stopped the President and Senate Democrats from attempting to double down on failure by expanding Obamacare.

Competition is how you lower costs. We need to allow Americans to shop across state lines for their health insurance like they can for their automobile insurance, allow small business owners to pool together to purchase group insurance at a lower rate and introduce portability to the market to ensure that hardworking Americans don’t have disruptions in their coverage when they change jobs.

These free market approaches—along with an expansion of health savings accounts and tort reform to eliminate the practice of defensive medicine—are how you drive down the cost of care.

The President got his way over the vocal objections of millions of Americans. His way has made our health care crisis worse. Let’s turn to the free market to fix the mess Obamacare has created.