{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=19B67675-5E46-4B83-804B-607BCCB599C8", "Thune Joins Hannity, America\u2019s Newsroom", "2025-12-11", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhere to watch Hannity andhere to watch America\u2019s Newsroom.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) joined Hannity and America\u2019s Newsroom on Fox News.\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 health care crisis:\n\n\u201cPeople [who] make $500,000, $600,000 a year are having their health insurance subsidized by people who are making $40,000 or $50,000 a year \u2013 that\u2019s what the Democrat proposal does. And there are zero-dollar premiums; a lot of people have no idea they\u2019re even covered, so the insurance companies auto-enroll them because they\u2019re incentivized to do that. And so the costs keep going up, insurance premiums keep going up in the individual marketplace on the Obama exchanges \u2013 that\u2019s got to stop.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cThere are lots of flaws in Obamacare, but all the promises, none of them came to fruition. It was all a big lie, and I think the American people are onto it \u2026 [Democrats] made these promises [that] it was going to drive health care costs down \u2026 In the exchanges, from the inception of Obamacare to today, 221 percent increase in premiums. The CPI over that same time period was about 39 percent and in the individual market it was about \u2026 68 percent \u2026 It\u2019s a failure.\u201d\n\nOn Republicans\u2019 plan to lower health care costs:\n\n\u201c[Republicans] are for putting more money in the pockets of the American people so they can make their decisions about their health care coverage, instead of giving it to the insurance companies paid for by the taxpayers with no income limits.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWhat [Republicans are] going to do today, Dana, is put a proposal on the floor that the Congressional Budget Office actually has determined reduces, by double digits, insurance premiums. That\u2019s what this ought to be about. If it\u2019s really about affordability, let\u2019s focus on affordability and driving down insurance premiums. What the Democrats are doing is continuing to drive them up and giving the money to the insurance companies.\u201d\n\nOn confirming President Trump\u2019s nominees at a record pace:\n\n\u201c[T]his is something that applies just to district court judges and U.S. attorneys, and it allows individuals, the senators from those states, to be able to sign off on the people who are nominated to those positions. That doesn\u2019t apply to circuit court judges, obviously doesn\u2019t apply to Supreme Court judges, and we have moved his nominees through the process at a record rate.\n\n\u201cWe will, by the end of this year, have a record number of [President Trump\u2019s] nominees approved to the executive branch. Got his cabinet confirmed at the fastest rate possible. We\u2019ll continue to work on the judiciary, Dana, but this is a procedure that\u2019s been in place for a long time, that both Republicans and Democrats support, because it gives them some input, and particularly in those judges, the judicial appointments that are made in their individual states, some input into that decision-making process.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=19B67675-5E46-4B83-804B-607BCCB599C8"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7503079250454903, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}