Back in February, The Show reported that a number of Arizona Head Start providers weren’t able to access their federally-approved funding. The disruption coincided with a brief period during which the Trump administration had halted nearly all payouts of government funds.
At the time, we were told that many of those Head Start providers did eventually have their access to the government’s payment portal restored. But over the last several months, Head Start programs around the state and the country have continued to see disruptions in their payouts, prompting a group of senators — including Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego — to write letters to the Department of Health and Human Services demanding an end to these incidents.
All of this comes as the long-term future of Head Start has been thrown into uncertainty. Sen. Gallego joined The Show to discuss, as well as some other points of tension between congress and the administration, starting with how the most recent Head Start funding interruption was resolved.
Full conversation
RUBEN GALLEGO: We quickly got together with Democrats and Republicans to write a letter to HHS, asking them to, you know, unfreeze these, these projects. These are things that, you know, Head Start was allocated by an act of Congress. The executive doesn't have a right to just deny them their money. And even that did not have a quick enough response.
There was one Head Start agency area that actually had to go and borrow money in order for them to make payroll. Luckily, what we've seen now, after a lot of lobbying by us in the Senate, is that all of the funding has returned, at least now, Arizona Head Start has a certainty that they're going to be able to pay their way.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, I wanted to ask you a lot of this has taken the form of letters that you have co-signed with a number of other Democratic senators. I wonder if you could tell us what the interactions were like with HHS after you sent those letters?
GALLEGO: This is why communication between you know, the branches really does matter. The executive, when they're conducting themselves and actually executing on something that we have directed, should have direct communication with us with what their intent is, instead of us having to discover it through constituents and then having to go hunt down and then beg for them to overturn it.
DINGMAN: I see. So the way it's unfolding now, if I'm hearing you right, is that these changes are made. Your office hears about them from the regional Head Start offices, and then you have to send this series of letters to HHS and then wait for them to respond, right?
GALLEGO: Correct. And this has occurred, by the way, in other departments and other administrations, whether it was the first Trump administration, Obama, when I first got here, and Biden last four years, if there was some change, they would at least try to talk to us first to see, you know, how we felt, and I say we, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, whether it was still part of the legislative intent of what we were trying to do, and if it didn't work, you know, maybe there would be a compromise of how that would look, or we would just decide to stop it. They're more of the opinion that they get to make these decisions, and that's just not how the constitution was set up.
DINGMAN: So this most recent round of funding has been released, but there is a leaked budget document for the 2026 budget for the federal government that proposes to cut the Head Start Program entirely, and the administration says that doing that would serve their goal of, quote, "returning education to the states and increasing parental choice." What is your response to that?
GALLEGO: It's a very naive point of view. The reason Head Start was started was because the states weren't providing this service. And they're not saying they're going to transfer the money in terms of grants in the states for them to do anything. They're not saying that this is going to be, you know, supplemented by something else. They're just saying that they're cutting it.
DINGMAN: In this vein, one of the questions that you and your fellow senators asked of HHS about head start funding was, how is Health and Human Services evaluating Head Start programs, expenditures and grant awards for DEI initiatives? Was that one of the questions that you got an answer to?
GALLEGO: We did not get an answer to that.
DINGMAN: OK.
GALLEGO: But you know, some of these Head Start programs are found in, you know, high minority districts, in terms of how they do recruitment, making sure that people know that this service is available, they will target minority communities, which is important, because a lot of them will not know that they're even available, and we want to make sure that that's not their excuse to go and cut this program.
DINGMAN: Ok, well, if I could, senator, could we shift gears and talk about Medicaid for a moment?
GALLEGO: Love to talk about Medicaid.
DINGMAN: OK. Well, there was, as I know, you know, a budget resolution passed by the House that calls for $880 billion in cuts from the Energy and Commerce Committee, and it is widely expected that those cuts would have to come from Medicaid.
You've been doing a series of town halls around the state, and as I understand it, you've been hearing a lot about this. What can you tell us?
GALLEGO: Well look, the most important thing that we're doing from these town halls is we want people to understand that, you know, rural parts of the country, especially Arizona, are the ones who can be most affected by these types of cuts. And it's not just the Medicaid recipient that's going to be hurt by Medicaid. It's a whole health care system because, you know, you know, I was visiting Cochise County, and one of the health care networks there, 50% of their revenue stream comes from Medicaid.
So if Medicaid is diminished, that means that not only are those Medicaid, you know, patients covered, patients in trouble, it's the other ones that are also dependent on, you know, having an affordable MRI machine, having affordable doctors. You know, some of these places are going to have to shut down. They're going to have to shift some of their services. They're gonna have to consolidate and rural Arizona means they're going to drive a lot further than they've had before. Some places are just going to shut down their emergency rooms and make people go to the big cities.
DINGMAN: So we had Rep. Juan Ciscomani on the show recently, and he told us that he is confident that there is potentially something like $100 billion being wasted on Medicaid fraud, people receiving Medicaid who shouldn't be receiving it. Obviously, 100 billion is a lot less than 880 billion. But do you agree that that's an issue?
GALLEGO: I think any system can be reformed. I think you could always go and look for fraud, waste and abuse. I think you could do that in a, you know, constructive way. I think there's a lot of ways that you can reform Medicaid. I think there's a lot of ways that you could create better health care outcomes, to lower the overall cost of Medicaid going into the future.
And I think we can investigate, you know, the fraud and prosecute it, but, you know, do it in a manner that is for the sake of preserving the system, not just finding more excuses to cut taxes.
DINGMAN: Would you be willing to share any of those ideas you have about more efficient ways for Medicaid to be run?
GALLEGO: Well, for example, allowing Medicaid to negotiate for drug prices, I think, is extremely one of the quickest way for us to bring down the costs, making sure that we're investing in kind of preventative medicines and procedures, for example, making sure that we have kind of health coaches, wellness coaches, food management, you know, insulin pumps, things of that nature that would help us, you know, really bring down the cost curve of diabetes.
Let's look at even cardiovascular problems that are also a big drag on the cost of Medicaid, you know, making sure that we're making people available to have affordable weight loss drugs so they'll end up having the strokes, and end up costing us a lot of money in the future.
DINGMAN: Well, if I'm hearing you, right senator, I mean, solutions like that are somewhat more longitudinal, right? They're the kind of things that improve?
GALLEGO: But, yeah, 10-year cuts to Medicaid are also fairly longitudinal.
DINGMAN: Sure. OK, well, I know we just have a minute left here. So if I could ask you one more question, senator, as you know, there are a lot of questions about leadership in the Democratic Party right now. We had Sen. Kelly on the program back in February, and when my co-host Lauren Gilger asked if the Democratic Party is unified, he said, “we're working on it.”
So I know those are his words and not yours, but I am curious to get your take on, on where things stand.
GALLEGO: Well I think we're unified in working on it. Does that make sense? No, just kidding.
DINGMAN: Sort of.
GALLEGO: Look, I think, I think there've been a lot of lessons learned by the leadership of the Democratic Party. And I think you're, you're seeing, you know, Democratic leadership that is excited about the future, knows how to fight and and you know, if you see what these president polls numbers are, they're effectively doing it.
