This is a rush transcript from “Sunday Morning Futures,” June 28, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARIA BARTIROMO, HOST: Good morning, Fox News alert, now the deadline for the Iran nuclear talks possibly extended a few more days. Breaking right now, U.S. officials are planning to stay in Vienna past the June 30th deadline.
Good morning, everyone.
I’m Maria Bartiromo.
Welcome to “Sunday Morning Futures.”
It comes after Secretary Kerry announced very tough issues still remaining on the table ahead of the Tuesday deadline. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, will join me next.
Plus, Republicans slamming the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision upholding federal subsidies.
Is there a better plan in the works?
Senator James Lankford is with me.
And then hackers got their hands on the most intimate personal details of government employees.
Just how safe are we online?
The former CEO of Apple is with me on that.
Plus, how Taylor Swift went toe-to-toe with the technology giant and won.
We’re looking ahead this morning on a big week ahead on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
First, the breaking news at this hour right now on the Iran nuclear talks. U.S. officials planning to stay in Vienna past the end of the month deadline. They say this is not a long-term extension, just a, quote, “few extra days.”
This coming as Iran’s foreign minister heads back to Tehran to talk things over with his government. He is expected to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry again tomorrow.
Could a deal still happen by Tuesday or this upcoming week?
Joining me right now is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, California Congressman Ed Royce.
Congressman, good to have you on the program.
Thanks so much for joining us.
REP. ED ROYCE, R-CALIF., CHAIRMAN, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Good to be with you.
BARTIROMO: Tell us what the thinking is behind this extending the deadline past Tuesday for a few more days.
ROYCE: Well, the difficulty is that so far, Iran has turned down all of the four key objectives that the United States had in this agreement, including having inspectors on military bases and the ability to go anywhere, any time for those international inspectors. That has flatly been turned down by the ayatollah. And so the consultation, obviously, will be with the supreme leader.
But at the same time, every other key objective has been turned down. The agreement now would apparently lift sanctions at the front end instead of at the back end of the agreement, thus giving Iran an enormous amount of money and the IAEA will not get their 12 questions answered about Iran’s ongoing nuclear program, the tests they’ve already done.
So this has been quite a blunder so far in terms of our handling of the negotiation on the U.S. side.
BARTIROMO: So — so we are loosening up the early on sanctions at the top of it, you said, and yet we’re not getting any clarity in terms of U.S. inspectors checking on what they are doing with regard to nuclear capabilities?
ROYCE: The international inspectors apparently will not have the ability to go onto military bases. And this is the same problem we had with the North Korean agreement. In the North Korean agreement, the inability to actually access sites led to North Korea getting a nuclear weapon.
And the last element of this is one that really even created angst among Obama’s inner circles of former Iran advisers. If you saw this open letter that they wrote last week to try to push back.
They said this agreement will not prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons capability. And that’s the concern of many of the experts and the former inspectors, current inspectors who are looking at this, is that this agreement is not really going to be able to constrain Iran in the least.
As a matter of fact, the ayatollah continues to say “Death To America!” you know, in his speeches. He begins them that way in the morning and then launches a French — a fresh assault about how they’re not going to be constrained in terms of the agreement.
BARTIROMO: Yes, I mean I just don’t understand what a few more days is going to do given that one of the most important, you know, rules to follow are the exten — are those inspections and we’re not actually getting that agreement.
So stay with us, Congressman. We’ve got to talk about that.
Ed Royce with us this morning.
The nuclear negotiations with Iran heading into the home stretch right now with the deadline expected this Tuesday, although now we know that it is being extended for a few more days.
Will world leaders be able to beat this ticking clock and overcome these major obstacles to reach any deal?
Fox News’ senior correspondent, Eric Shawn, with that angle right now — Eric, good morning to you.
ERIC SHAWN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Maria.
And good morning, everyone.
What will the supreme leader say?
You know, after repeated delays and the continued uncertainty, the talks will now stretch into the next week, still with no guarantee they will actually be successful.
In Vienna, they speak of hope despite the major gaps that remain on a variety of issues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: We have a lot of hard work to do. There are some very tough issues and I think we all look forward to getting down to the final effort here and see whether or not a deal is possible.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I agree. We — maybe not on the issues, but on the fact that we need to work really hard in order to be able to make progress and move forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SHAWN: Well, despite their protestations of optimism, more potential deal breakers come from Iran’s defiant supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali- Khamenei. No inspections of military sites, no interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists, no 10 year nuclear restrictions, which, by the way, has already been agreed to. And the lifting of all sanctions immediately when that deal is signed.
Critics predict that would help Iran further fund terrorism and say the White House needs to heed the warnings of the Iranian opposition, like the group, The National Council of Resistance of Iran, instead of relying on Teheran’s claims it does not want to develop a nuclear bomb.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: The fact that the administration doesn’t embrace them, I believe, comes from the fact that they are willing to do this agreement with Iran at any cost to anybody so long as they can have some kind of an agreement with Iran and paint it as a victory. And they — they are putting the livers of these people in jeopardy, they are putting the lives of every single person in Israel in jeopardy, and ultimately, I think they’re putting our lives in jeopardy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SHAWN: Well, the key deadline now slipping further up against a July 9 date. That’s when the agreement has to be submitted for Congressional review.
So as of now, what will be in it still remains anyone’s guess — Maria.
BARTIROMO: All right, Eric, thanks very much.
And we are talking this morning with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce about this.
Congressman, what about the extra few days?
If we cannot get them to agree to these regular inspections of their nuclear activity today, why is extending this deadline going into July a good idea?
Why do we think we’ll have a different outcome?
ROYCE: You know, I think this is all the zeal for the deal. We saw the same attitudes in dealing with the North Korean regime at the time, one of the same negotiators, chief negotiators, is working on this project that worked on that one.
The warnings were there. The warning signs were there. Without verification, without the ability to have international inspectors go onto those military sites and be able to get the questions answered, without the ability to talk to those Iranian scientists, this deal wouldn’t be worth the paper it is written on and the result would be the same as the North Korean agreement.
So I think now is the time for the United States to push back. The administration has had a warning. I sent a letter with 367 co-authors on that letter to the president’s desk. That’s the vast majority of the — of the House saying the four things that need to be in this agreement and I detailed them, they’re not in that agreement.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
ROYCE: We need to push back now with the international community and — and get verification.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
ROYCE: Because at this point, we don’t have it.
BARTIROMO: We’re still waiting on any response to that letter.
Let me ask you, let me — let me switch gears and ask you about another deadline, and that is this Tuesday, as well. And that is Greece is expected to either default or pay the IMF $1.8 billion that it owes.
Now, what we’re hearing this morning, headlines crossing on this, as well, the finance minister of Greece is suggesting they won’t make the payment. They are not going to have the money to pay the IMF, the $1.8 billion. That would be the first time a developed country defaults to the IMF.
What are the implications of Greece missing that deadline and perhaps leaving the euro?
ROYCE: Well, as Margaret Thatcher said, sooner or later, the problem with socialism is that you run out of other people’s money. And in Greece, they’ve refused to cut, you know, the — the pensions. They refused to change their leftist ideology in terms of their spending.
And as a consequence, I think the consequences will be that — that Greece looks likely, at this point, to leave the euro. And I think the — the danger of that is that there are other left-wing governments in Europe that might follow suit in Southern Europe. And that would lead to a — a very consequential impact, you know, for the euro and for the — and frankly create more instability in the region.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
ROYCE: It is a pity that Greece does not get its act together.
BARTIROMO: We’ve got these pictures of people trying furiously to take their money out of the banks. The other headline that I want to read to you this morning, Congressman, is the European Central Bank says it refuses to increase the nine — the amount of loans that it is giving to Greece. It says it’s keeping the emergency loans to Greek banks unchanged and that’s at Friday’s level. It says it will work closely with the Greek Central Bank to maintain fiscal stability and is closely monitoring the situation and potential implications for monetary policy.
The ECB says I’m done, I’m not giving any more money here.
Are we going to have a real market disruption come Monday morning, given the fact that these headlines are breaking, with all these people in Greece trying to get their money out of the banks?
ROYCE: Well, what you have in Greece with that hard Left government are economic illiterates. Now they say they might put something on the ballot for the populace to vote for but they’ve strung this out so, so long without doing the responsible adjustments in terms of, you know, their legacy costs or their social spending that I don’t know that they can turn it around.
And certainly they haven’t shown the attitude with this — let’s call it hard, hard Left government to face up to the consequences. So it could be consequential for Europe.
BARTIROMO: Yes, and this will certainly be the market moving news tomorrow morning for business and markets.
Sir, good to have you on the show this morning. Thanks so much.
ROYCE: Good to be with you.
BARTIROMO: Congressman Ed Royce joining us this morning.
The Supreme Court ruling this week in favor of ObamaCare, another major headline we’re following.
What impact will that have for Americans who already have health care insurance through the Affordable Care Act?
We’ll talk next to Oklahoma senator James Lankford. Hope you’ll follow us on Twitter, what would you like to hear from Senator Lankford? go to @MariaBartiromo or @SundayFutures. Let us know what you’d like to hear. Stay with us as we look ahead to a busy week ahead on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back. The Supreme Court ruling in a 6-3 decision this past week to uphold federal subsidies on ObamaCare, the backbone of the law.
Joining me right now is Oklahoma senator James Lankford to talk more about it.
Senator, good to have you on the program. Thanks so much for joining us.
You bet. Thank you.
BARTIROMO: You released a video statement reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision on King vs. Burwell land you were disappointed.
SEN. JAMES LANKFORD, R-OKLA.: Extremely disappointed. It’s one of those clear cases where the law actually says that it has to be an exchange established by the states. Seven different times they used the term “established by the states” and then the court just said that was inartful drafting, that they couldn’t have meant that because if they had written it that way, the way that it is actually to be interpreted, then it would mean it doesn’t work.
What they actually negate is states actually said they don’t want this law and so for the 34 states that said they don’t want it, that ability has now been taken away from them by the Supreme Court. That is the problem.
States should have the opportunity to be able to decide on this law just like it was actually written into the law itself.
BARTIROMO: Right. They certainly interpreted the language different than what the language actually states. There’s a question there, why the difference in interpretation, but then on the other side of it, could it be that they interpreted this way, Senator, because they felt if you had the adverse ruling, then millions of people would be in disarray and not have health care coverage?
LANKFORD: So the same thing falls on the other side though. That’s correct. There would be more than 6 million people that would lose the subsidies that go along with their health care, but instead there are millions upon millions of people that will have higher premiums next year, have higher deductibles where they can’t use it. Physician owned hospitals are being bled out of the system. The Independent Payment Advisory Board steps in next year and starts to determine what parts of health care will be allowed and what parts will not be allowed.
So there are millions of other people that are hurt by keeping the law as is. Those 34 states said we want to be able to manage our own health care decisions. They’re not being allowed to do that when the law clearly allows them to do it.
BARTIROMO: Can you talk a little bit about the burdens that you see created as a result of the Affordable Care Act?
I mean, we’ve already seen the costs of health care skyrocket. Many people complain that their costs have doubled, even tripled in terms of their own premiums.
LANKFORD: Right. And there’s some key things that are still coming. Next year, for instance, in my state, in Oklahoma, the request for the increase for premiums are between 11 percent and 45 percent depending on the county for next year. That’s a dramatic increase on last year’s increase as well.
Now the deductibles are so high many people say, I have insurance, I can’t afford to use it. They used to have co-pays and go with a $2,000 deductible. Now it may be $6,000. They don’t have the money to do that. People don’t understand the increase in taxes coming next year and then what happens, for instance, to union members, that their actual premiums go up because their taxes increase because their health care is too good according to the administration. A lot of things are coming.
(CROSSTALK)
BARTIROMO: Is there an alternative? Everyone’s saying the Republicans don’t have an alternative.
LANKFORD: That’s a good talking point from the Left. Quite frankly, the Democrats really wanted this to be knocked out from the Supreme Court as well because there are so many problems and issues there. There are multiple plans, both in the House and in the Senate. The problem is with an Obama in the White House you’re not going to get rid of ObamaCare.
We don’t have 67 votes. There are a lot of plans, a lot of conversations out there to give more rights to individuals to be able to choose whatever policy they choose to have, buy across state lines, all those things are all out there but we’re going to have to have a different president to be able to push that through.
This was a good moment to protect people from the harmful effects that are coming next year. Now those effects are going to come. Democrats have to continue to pay for that at the ballot box. Americans are going to suffer.
BARTIROMO: Senator, we’ll be watching this really continuing to develop story. Good to talk to you. Thanks so much, Senator.
LANKFORD: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Senator Lankford joining us there.
That massive hack meanwhile, on the Office of Personnel Management potentially even more damaging than we originally thought?
How strong are our country’s cyber systems? We’re going to talk with the former CEO of Apple, John Scully is with us to talk about that and a lot more. We’re looking ahead this morning on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(UNKNOWN): T plus one minute. Altitude; speed, 290 meters per second; downrange distance, 1.1 kilometers. Vehicle supersonic.
BARTIROMO (voice over): A new docking system for the ISS and SpaceX, as well as Microsoft’s hollow-lens glasses. The crew reportedly used them to communicate with ground control and fix the space station. SpaceX will also make its third attempt to land the craft vertically on a platform that will be reused.
BARTIROMO (on camera): Really interesting there.
New reports, meanwhile, revealing the devastating hack attack on the Office of Personnel Management is even more damaging to national security than officials have previously said. A senior U.S. official saying that the foreign hackers compromised intimate details of government workers, including personal relationship information, drug abuse and criminal activity.
This new revelation giving foreign intelligence agencies leverage for finding people with access to our government’s most highly classified secrets.
My next guest is John Sculley. He is the former CEO of Apple and now investor in a number of innovative companies. He’s the author of “Moonshot!: Game-Changing Strategies to Build Billion-Dollar Businesses.”
And, John, it is wonderful to have you on the program.
SCULLEY: Thank you, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for joining us. Particularly after the SpaceX launch, we’ve got innovation all over the place in this great country of ours.
You are also an adviser to Cisco on the Internet of things. Is that why we’re becoming so vulnerable?
I mean, you look at what happened with the Office of Personnel Management and you look at the vulnerabilities in terms of hacking. What are your observations here?
SCULLEY: Well, the real story is the Internet of things. The Internet of things is the generation of sensors. We expect that there will be 50 billion wireless connected devices by the early 2020s. Well, there are only 7 billion of us on the planet. And that means that most of these devices are machine-to-machine and they’re going over the Internet.
And the Internet, Maria, was designed originally for access, not security. And so the real question is, will the Internet be able to handle the security requirements of 50 billion devices which are going to be on the electrical grid? They’re going to be in smart cities. They’re going to be in health care. They’re going to be in transportation, manufacturing.
And the answer is, I don’t think we’re prepared yet.
BARTIROMO: No, that’s the point. I mean, you know, you’ve got so- called a “smart TV,” a “smart washing machine,” “smart car,” everything talking to one another, and it’s only making us more vulnerable. All that data is out there.
SCULLEY: Absolutely. And I think we’re pretty well covered for our personal computers. It’s more like seat belts. You know, if you put them on, you’re safe, but most people don’t put their security on their personal computer. But the technology is there. Symantec and McAfee have offered it for years.
The really interesting thing is smart phones. Because smart phones are now a bigger industry than television and PCs combined. And smart phones have texting and they have blue tooth, and they’re connecting to the homes, to cars and things like that. And that part of smart phones is not protected by the same precautions that are taken on personal computers, if people do it.
BARTIROMO: Is there anything anyone can do about it? I mean, we know the horse has left the stable in terms of all of this data and making us vulnerable, but how do you protect yourself?
SCULLEY: Well, you definitely can protect yourself with the smart phones. There are new companies with advanced new technologies like FireEye and Lookout and OpenPeak that are bringing entirely new approaches to the smart phone security. But what people haven’t done yet is to figure out, do we need a second Internet…
BARTIROMO: Right.
SCULLEY: … one designed around security for Internet of things?
BARTIROMO: John, I’ve got to interrupt you here. We’ve got breaking news right now on the SpaceX. It has exploded.
We want to take you back to Cape Canaveral right here. Because the — look at this video. We just saw the launch. The SpaceX actually exploded. Listen to this.
BARTIROMO: All right. We want to take you back to Cape Canaveral right now, with Phil Keating, live on the ground, to tell us what just happened.
Good morning to you.
PHIL KEATING, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Everything looked crystal-clear until about two minutes into this launch, as the SpaceX rocket with the dragon castle fully loaded with 4,000 pounds of experiments and food and water and resupplies for the astronauts on the space station – – suddenly, after the smoke had disappeared and the — you can see the flair of the rocket as it was continuing upwards and eastwards. Suddenly, there was a second burst of smoke you could see, even with our own eyes from the ground here, and then, shortly thereafter — that was about two minutes into the launch — shortly thereafter the public announcement came on and said, yes, in fact, we do have a failure.
There was a lot of wonder whether that was simply we were seeing the first stage separate from the second stage of the rocket. But it does appear that the entire pay load has now headed down towards the Atlantic Ocean and will be an entire loss. This is hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain. There were dozens of experiments, including 30 student experiments on board. People spent years and years to get these experiments into a pay load. So a devastating loss for everybody involved with this launch.
And, of course, for Elon Musk, the founder and president of SpaceX, the third attempt to try to get reusable rockets, which will save the company 100 times the cost of sending cargo and humans eventually up into space, they could not obviously make that third attempt to see if they could properly upright-land that first-stage rocket on that floating drone ship 200 miles east of Jacksonville.
So we are still awaiting better details from SpaceX as to what exactly might have happened, whether it was during the separation between the first and second stages of the rocket and somehow an explosion happened there. But we can tell you with absolute authority this mission is a total failure and a big setback right now. As we learn more information, we’ll get back to you.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, obviously a big setback for the program and for Elon Musk, of course, who led that program.
Let me just point out that this was unmanned. That’s very important.
I’m with John Sculley this morning, a former CEO of Apple. You know, Elon Musk made a lot of hype and a big deal about this. Then, you know, Virgin followed, in terms of this space program. It was unmanned, John, but what are your thoughts on this explosion here?
SCULLEY: Well, my first thought is that, when the Challenger rocket (sic) went down decades ago, and it took a long time to figure out if it was an O ring problem. Today, this is a perfect example of Internet of things. That rocket, SpaceX, is filled with hundreds of sensors. They’ll know very quickly exactly what went wrong because of the Internet of things.
BARTIROMO: They are investigating it right now and obviously we will have more information in the coming hours, but, you know, there was a lot of money and a lot of energy put into this. Do you think this kills any expectations of — of space exploration?
SCULLEY: Absolutely not. I mean, these things happen. Elon Musk is not someone who gives up. He’s in for the long game, and they’ll learn from this. They’ll have a lot of information that we couldn’t have gotten decades ago. And I’m sure he’ll be back, and not that far away.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, it’s interesting that, you know, it goes right back to what we were talking about, and that is the Internet of things.
You invest in private companies that — where you find that there are growth stories that are answering big problems that the world is facing. Like what?
SCULLEY: Well, I’m very interested in health care, because the big problems are how do we solve the health care problem, which ObamaCare clearly doesn’t solve.
But look, the — the real opportunity is ObamaCare has aggravated the problems that things cost more. Deductibles are up.
So how do we solve that?
Virtual care. And virtual care means that we’re at the early days of an explosive unicorn industry, which is going to mean that digital health is going to solve a lot of the problems which the physicians in Washington haven’t been able to do.
BARTIROMO: And there’s really a consumerism revolution going on, where people are trying to monitor everything in their body, speak to doctors online live, even if they’re not in the same region…
SCULLEY: Yes.
BARTIROMO: — as the living doctor…
(CROSSTALK)
SCULLEY: Well, a company I’m involved with, which is called MDLIVE. This isn’t like putting a fitness app onto an app store, this is about building a whole infrastructure, tying together hospitals, insurance payers, benefit managers, you know, doctors, all of these things in a — in a way that creates an — an alternative which is cheaper, faster, better than what’s out there today.
BARTIROMO: All right, we will leave it there.
Great to have you today, John.
SCULLEY: Thank you, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Particularly weighing in on the SpaceX, as we told you there, the unmam — unmanned SpaceX exploded in air.
John Sculley, please come back soon.
We’ll see you soon.
John Sculley joining us.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting, the Confederate flag once again at the forefront of the national conversation. Now, the nation’s largest retailer pulling all merchandise with those stars and bars on it.
We’ll talk with the CEO of Walmart about that decision and how he plans to expand the company.
We’re looking ahead today on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Back in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
Walmart says rifles will remain part of its sporting goods department, despite calls to remove the rifles in the wake of the mass shooting at a South Carolina church.
Handguns have been off of the shelves there since 1993.
Walmart did, however, push back on the controversy surrounding the Confederate flag, removing all items bearing what many see as a racist symbol from its merchandise.
I spoke with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon about that last week on my new morning program on the Fox Business Network, “Mornings With Maria.”
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOUG MCMILLON, PRESIDENT & CEO, WALMART STORES: Well, first of all, as it relates to what happened in Charleston, our hearts and our prayers go out to the victims’ families and to the whole city.
As it relates to the decision, we’ve got more than seven million items that we sell online today, either through first party inventory or through marketplace. And we’ve just decided to go through the process of removing those items, because we don’t want any of the merchandise that we sell to be offensive.
BARTIROMO: And so that — that was the decision, you don’t want anything to be offensive, so err on the side of caution?
MCMILLON: We want everybody to shop at Walmart. We want everybody to be comfortable coming into our stores. And we want our own associates to feel good about where they work.
BARTIROMO: You at Walmart took a stand in this whole wage debate and you raised the salaries of so many employees.
I want to ask you what was behind that decision?
MCMILLON: Well, it’s a business decision. We want to make sure that we’ve got strong talent for the future and that we’re retaining and developing people to become store managers and do great things within the company.
I’ve been there, you know, since I got out of graduate school. And Walmart presents opportunity for people. It’s a lot — it’s a ladder. So they want to think about it is we want to make sure that our starting wage rate is positioned in a place where people are attracted to the company because they want to have an opportunity to do more.
A store manager makes a nice salary. Maybe someday one of them can do my job.
So it’s not just about where we start, but it’s also about how we train and develop people, the opportunities that we give them to take on more responsibility. We’re also changing how our scheduling system works to create an environment such that that opportunity comes to life.
BARTIROMO: So were you unable to — to find the talented people that you were looking for?
I mean I know you had jobs available, but you couldn’t find the people with the right skill sets, so you figured let me raise wages so that maybe we attract a different employee?
MCMILLON: First of all, we wanted our existing associates to know that we care about them and appreciate the jobs they’re doing.
BARTIROMO: And its upward mobility.
MCMILLON: And we’ve created a larger applicant pool. And we’re also creating some more department manager jobs which pay at higher levels, where you might be responsible for the toy department or the lawn and garden department. And we need to groom talent to be able to take on those roles.
BARTIROMO: Do you think that Walmart setting a tone for wages will spark an overall change in the way businesses look at wages and, in fact, will spark a wage increase?
MCMILLON: We’re — we’re just one voice in this…
BARTIROMO: But you’re an important big voice.
MCMILLON: I mean I think it’s some — some people stopped and looked at their wages when we made our announcement, which was great. It’s just one more competitive dimension. You know, we’re all competing for great talent. And that’s how it should be.
BARTIROMO: And you have been obviously competing with lots of people. But Amazon has really tried to come in and — and take real market share there.
But you’re sticking to your knitting. While Amazon, it’s getting it – – it’s gotten into publishing, it’s in drones.
Do you plan exp — to expand some of the asset classes or the class out there the way Amazon has?
MCMILLON: We’re merchants and we’re going to stay focused on that. We will run great stores. We will sell product online. We’ll find ways to do it together.
We do want a culture, though, that is forward-looking. We have some core values as a business. But our behaviors and our culture need to change in ways that create more speed. A company our size can sometimes become bureaucratic.
So one of the things we’re focused on is reviving that entrepreneurial spirit that Walmart was built on. And we want to reignite that.
BARTIROMO: You’re a Walmart guy. I mean you’ve been there your entire career?
MCMILLON: A long time, yes.
BARTIROMO: You started there at 17 years old?
MCMILLON: Right.
BARTIROMO: And worked your way up?
That, in and of itself, is a great story for your managers, who think, wow, there is upward mobility here.
MCMILLON: Yes.
BARTIROMO: The CEO started on the ground level.
MCMILLON: Yes, and I’m not the only one. I mean in — in Walmart, there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of stories of people who’ve gotten to do things they never would have dreamed. And in our case, what we need to do is respect our past, but not be married to it. You know, understand the few principles that really made the company special, continue nurturing those, but be open to changing everything else.
That’s what’s so fun about business. You know, the customer is moving, technology is moving, competition is moving. And I like that. I mean, I’m a — I’m a competitive person by nature and I think our team’s mindset is in a good place.
BARTIROMO: So where does the growth come from at Walmart in the next five years?
MCMILLON: The serious growth…
BARTIROMO: Characterize…
MCMILLON: — and we’re a — we still have a great opportunity to grow in those developed markets where we exist, including the United States, Canada. We’ve been in Mexico for a long time. Great opportunity to grow there, with e-commerce and with stores and clubs.
Longer term, China still presents a great opportunity. I’m there frequently and was there not long ago. And we have an e-commerce business based in Shanghai. We’ve got a lot of stores coming in the southern part of the country. And we just have such a great opportunity to continue to build a relationship with customers there. And we’ve been investing in our supply chain, opening more distribution centers, and I believe China will be an important part of our future.
BARTIROMO: Doug, it’s good to have you on the show today.
MCMILLON: Thanks, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for joining us. Doug McMillon, president, CEO, Wal-Mart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BARTIROMO: And then for my new morning show, “Mornings With Maria,” 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern on the Fox Business Network. Take a look at where you can find Fox Business Network on your cable network or your satellite provider. Or you can click on “Channel Finder” at foxbusiness.com.
Now, with a look at what’s coming up, top of the hour, “Media Buzz,” Howard Kurtz standing by. Howie, good morning to you.
KURTZ: Good morning, Maria. And congratulations on the new show.
BARTIROMO: Thank you very much.
KURTZ: We — we are going to look at the media’s upbeat, sometimes celebratory coverage of the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage. We’ll also look at the press’s role in the whole confederate flag debate. But I’ve got a special sit-down with Ted Cruz, who has some pretty tough things to say about the press; for example, the presidential candidate telling me that no one is more ready for Hillary than the mainstream media.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, I also want to hear what his take is on the same-sex marriage Supreme Court decision, as well. We’ll be there. We’ll see you in about 20 minutes, Howie. Thanks.
KURTZ: Thanks.
BARTIROMO: Howie Kurtz there.
The Supreme Court rescuing President Obama’s health care law for the second time in three years. Opponents say “insisting it is broken.” Our panel is going to begin right there on “Sunday Morning Futures.” Back in a moment with our panel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back. President Obama praising the Supreme Court’s decision this week upholding a major element of the Affordable Care Act. The president hailed the decision, declaring, “ObamaCare is here to stay.”
The president first signed his signature legislation into law back in 2010, saying “It highlights the principle that everybody should have security when it comes to their health care.”
We bring in our panel right now. Ed Rollins is former principal White House adviser to President Reagan. He has been a longtime strategist to business and political leaders. He’s a Fox News political analyst.
Steve Sigmund is the senior vice president of Global Strategy Group and a Democratic strategist.
Senator Alfonse D’Amato is a former New York senator and a Fox News contributor.
Good to see everybody. Thanks so much for being here.
Ed, your reaction to the Supreme Court ruling?
ROLLINS: I was a little shocked by it. Usually, the court interprets their legislation as unconstitutional. In this particular case, they attempted to interpret what they thought the Congress wanted, and I think, to a certain extent, it’s now the law of the land. It’s going to be very hard to undo. And obviously, Republicans shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about repealing ObamaCare at this point in time. They ought to talk about other issues that matter…
(CROSSTALK)
BARTIROMO: It’s going to be hard to undo now, or even later, when there’s new…
ROLLINS: You’re going to have to have a Republican president, and obviously it’s going to be a big part of the — the debate here. It certainly gives a benefit to — to Hillary, from the perspective that she’s going to argue to those 10 million, 12 million people, the only way you’re going to keep your health care is to vote for me. So that’s — that’s a pretty good trail for her to go down.
BARTIROMO: That’s true. Senator?
D’AMATO: I think the Republicans are very fortunate because, if they had ruled it is unconstitutional, what you do with those people who don’t get this bailout from the federal government?
BARTIROMO: Right.
D’AMATO: And Republicans are in charge of the Congress. They’d have to come up with the plan. I think it was a bad interpretation. I agree with Judge Scalia. The court has engaged in politics, but the courts have always done that, to some extent.
So I think they’re fortunate. I think we can concentrate now on the other things, foreign policy, the economy, and the duplicity, because the real impact to working middle-class families — this Obamacare takes place in 2016, when people who have the so-called golden program, insurance program, are going to get hit with taxes that they’ve never conceived before. That’s what’s going to happen.
BARTIROMO: Yeah. And that’s what we’ve seen, Steve. We’ve seen an anticipation of higher costs impacting business unwilling to spend any money.
SIGMUND: But we haven’t actually seen higher costs.
Look, I think — I think Ed and the senator would be right that it would be fortunate for Republicans if they weren’t so obsessed with this law. They continue to introduce bills to try to repeal it and to try to get rid of the administration of it. They continue to introduce court — introduce lawsuits to try to get rid of it. And the fact is that the law is working.
This is a very good week for the president in the Supreme Court, but it was a better week for Americans who have seen better health care, lower — lowered rates of the uninsured. And all the things the Republicans have said would happen, skyrocketing deficits, losing jobs, have not happened. In fact, the opposite has happened.
BARTIROMO: But what has happened is premiums have gone up.
SIGMUND: Very little.
BARTIROMO: The cost has gone way up.
SIGMUND: Very little. Premiums have gone up an average of 2 percent. I mean, the things that Republicans are claiming would happen to — in response to the law have not happened.
BARTIROMO: I don’t know that that’s true, though, because I’ve seen premiums go up a lot for people who weren’t really clear on how much it would cost them, and then they got their bills and it looked like it was much higher than…
SIGMUND: There are some individual cases of that, but the average was 2 percent for last year, 4 percent for this year.
D’AMATO: I think our company went up about 20 percent, and I think you’re seeing most companies are getting hit with huge premium increases, well beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
ROLLINS: I think you have to wait and see. Now that it is the law and it’s not going to be undone in the next couple years, we’ll really see what the benefits are and what the costs are. And the costs — this bill did nothing to reduce costs overall. And so my sense is health care is still an enormous cost to Americans. More are covered. But, at the end of the day, it’s — it’s not improving hospital care. It’s not improving doctors. It’s not improving all the things that…
SIGMUND: Except that you have seen costs be contained for the first time since the 1960s. Whether that’s — whether that’s causal from the health care law or correlational, you don’t know. You do have to wait and see, as Ed said. But that — that is the fact.
BARTIROMO: Well, certainly, we’ve an enormous…
D’AMATO: That’s true. That is true.
ROLLINS: The — one other thing of this. This was a good week for the president. It was a terrible week for John Roberts. John Roberts is now going to lose his mandate. He is not going to be the conservative leader either of the court — those other conservatives are not going to follow his lead anymore…
BARTIROMO: Yeah. Has the court gotten political?
SIGMUND: I think, to some degree, the court’s always been political. Republicans don’t like it when the political decisions go against them. When Citizens Union (sic) happens or the Gore v. Bush case happens, they’re perfectly happy for it to be — for it to be political.
But the court this week was on the right side of history.
BARTIROMO: All right. We’ve got to get your take on the Iran deadline coming up on Tuesday. That’s been extended a few days. Stay with us. To our panel, we’re looking ahead this morning on “Sunday Morning Futures.” We’ll be right back. Stay with us.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: We are with our panel, Ed Rollins, Steve Sigmund (ph) and Senator Alfonse D’Amato today.
Chris Christie, New Jersey governor, is expected to throw his hat into the ring on Tuesday.
What does that do for the race for 2016 — Ed?
ROLLINS: A couple years ago he was the hottest thing in the party and today he will be one of the first one to drop out. I don’t think he has any chance whatsoever of being the nominee of our party.
BARTIROMO: Senator?
D’AMATO: Just shows you how delusional people who seek higher office can become. This is an example. Total delusion on his part. Means nothing.
BARTIROMO: Steve?
(LAUGHTER)
BARTIROMO: Wow.
(CROSSTALK)
STEVE: I know, exactly.
BARTIROMO: — here.
STEVE: I think you run the table when my Republican colleagues agree with me on this. But Chris Christie’s brand as a truth teller which made him so popular particularly in 2012 has been washed away with Bridgegate and with the problems that New Jersey has. I don’t think he’ll end up being a serious candidate.
ROLLINS: The state’s a miss. He can’t talk about his accomplishments there because he’s had more failures than he’s had accomplishments and I think with serious governors in this race they will all get measured on what they’ve done.
D’AMATO: One of the great things is truthfulness and are you believable?
Christie and Hillary both suffer from that. Hillary’s has yet to come with the sale of America as it relates to the uranium, $100 million given to her foundation by the rich guy who was behind this. Millions given to Bill and her changing her position and making it possible for the sale. I think it’s almost a treasonous sale of our assets to the Russians.
BARTIROMO: Do you want to respond to that, Steve?
I was going to ask you about the Iran deadline but —
(CROSSTALK)
STEVE: Yes, look, I think there will be Republican attacks on Hillary throughout the next 16 months.
BARTIROMO: Will she talk to any reporters?
STEVE: Yes, she’ll talk to reporters. She’ll continue to talk to reporters. She’ll have to over the next 16 months. There’s o question about it. I also think it’s good for the Democrats that there’s some competition in that race. Republicans on the other hand I think there’s almost too many people in the race at the moment.
You are repeating what happened in 2012. Looking for some kind of a savior so the front runner, Jeb Bush, who they recognize as a flawed candidate, doesn’t end up with a nomination.
BARTIROMO: This election is about truth telling and also about foreign policy. We just extended the deadline. It was Tuesday for a deal with Iran.
What’s going to be any different if we wait a few days?
ROLLINS: There’s nothing going to be different. I think John Kerry and the president want a deal so desperately — it’s just not going to happen and if it does happen, it will be a bad deal and Congress will throw it out. If you can’t inspect military bases, and their premise that they want the sanctions lifted immediately, but problem with this is they’ll get $50 billion in assets back and they’ll be spending that money doing chaos.
BARTIROMO: Real quick.
What are implications of no deal?
D’AMATO: No deal? It’s better than a bad deal. We give them billions of dollars. They continue to support bad guys and create mayhem.
STEVE: The problem is the implications are you end up with status quo. The status quo is obviously not sustainable when that threat of a nuclear weapon continues.
BARTIROMO: Real quick. We’ll be right back. More with our panel next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Thanks so much for joining us today. I want to thank our panel so much, ahead of a big week next week. That’ll be “Sunday Morning Futures” for today. I’m Maria Bartiromo. Join us tomorrow on “Mornings With Maria” from 6:00 to 9:00 am Eastern on the Fox Business network. Take a look at where to find Fox Business in your area. Have a great Sunday, everybody.
Content and Programming Copyright 2015 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2015 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
sunday-morning-future
Making sense of Washington, making America what it should be and making money on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo!”
