MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
But let"s start with the House"s new timetable to pass health care and the president"s decision to delay his trip to Indonesia. Democratic congressman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Republican congressman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan is a member of the Financial Services Committee and chair of the House Republican Policy Committee.
Thank you, gentlemen, for both being here. I want to start with something--Congressman Van Hollen, Congressman McCotter, with this from Speaker Pelosi today on news that the president had delayed his trip, leaving for Indonesia, by three days. Here"s what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I"m delighted that the president will be here for the passage of the bill. It"s going to be historic. And it would not be possible without his tremendous, tremendous leadership, his persistence, his concern for the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TODD: OK. Congressman Van Hollen, she set the timetable. "I"m delighted the president will be here for the passage of this bill." Last night on Rachel Maddow, she said, When you have the votes, you have the vote. The vote"s not today, so she doesn"t have the votes. But she believes she can have the votes by Sunday. Obviously, this is your leader. You believe this is true?
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: Sure. I think we could have the votes by Sunday, but we don"t know exactly when this bill will come up. We"re still waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to provide the numbers. We"re confident that they will show this will reduce the deficit, as both the House and Senate bills did. But until our members have a chance to take a look at that, it"s not going to be fair to ask some of those final votes to make a final decision.
TODD: Congressman McCotter, you"re from Michigan. One of the leaders of the sort of undecided coalition of Democrats is another Michigan congressman, Bart Stupak. You know, from what you hear on the ground, from what you may hear in your own state delegation meetings, where"s Congressman Stupak on this?
REP. THADDEUS MCCOTTER ®, MICHIGAN: Well, I think one of the reasons I respect Bart so much is he can express for himself where he"s at. One of the things that we"re seeing in this debate, which you touched upon, Chuck, is the president staying here. I do not begrudge him travel at this point in time, as the head of state, as someone who"s the commander-in-chief in a time of war. And if he wishes to stay, that"s fine.
But it does point out that the difficulty in passing the bill is the Democratic centrists that do not support the bill at the present time, such as Bart Stupak, or the American people. So I think that whether he stays or not, it shows that under a dominated (ph) Democratic congress with a Democratic administration, the inherent flaws in this bill and the public revulsion to it is leading Democrats to oppose the bill.
TODD: I want to go back to Congressman Van Hollen a minute. One of the things that"s going to be taken up in the reconciliation portion of this--you guys--the House on Monday has to start the fixes. You guys will do it in the House, and then you send it over to the Senate. One of the items, potentially, in this fix has nothing to do with health care, it"s a student loan bill that the president is very supportive of. A lot of Democrats are. Why put the student loan bill in this reconciliation fix?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, this actually relates to the Senate procedure, and the Senate parliamentarian has said that the two subcommittees have to make sure that independently, the bill is resolved under the budget--in other words, that there"s a resolution. And this is a provision that has been part of the reconciliation package from the very beginning under the budget rule.
Long story short, I think we should look at each of these things on the merits. And on the merits, what we"re doing under the education bill is saying we"re no longer going to provide a lot of money to the banks to essentially be the middleman...
TODD: Sure.
VAN HOLLEN: ... in terms of student loans. We need to make sure that the students get that money.
TODD: I understand the bill, but this is not about health care.
VAN HOLLEN: No, this is...
TODD: I mean, do you wish it were not coming to this, that you didn"t need to do this in order to fulfill what the Senate parliamentarian (INAUDIBLE)
VAN HOLLEN: This is as a result of the budget resolution that the House and the Senate both adopted last year. That budget resolution made provisions for both health care reform, as well as trying to make reform in student loans, so that we could, you know, try and get more money to students and away from banks.
If I could just point out on the health care reform bill, though...
TODD: Go ahead.
VAN HOLLEN: ... what we"re seeing in recent weeks, in the recent polls that are coming out, is the American people are actually--the closer the vote gets, the more support there is for the bill. People are evenly divided, even after a lot of misinformation"s been out there. That"s what the latest polling is showing.
TODD: In fact, Congressman McCotter, I was going to point that out, as well. It does seem as if the poling--if we"re--if we"re all going to point to polling--and a lot of times, politicians say, Hey, I don"t look at polls, unless, of course, people look at polls when they feel like it supports what they believe. But what do you say to the fact that it does seem these numbers are moving a little bit? And also, what a lot of Democrats point out is some of the individual things in the bill are popular, even if the idea of the whole brand of the bill is not.
MCCOTTER: Well, I think that you"re right about that. I think that maybe their numbers are moving. People do tend to pick different numbers that they want. One of the things we can look at, Chuck, are the actions. And today we kept the House Democrats--we stayed here today to vote on algae. Now, I voted for the bill. I"m happy. I"m from a Great Lakes state.
But what you"re seeing is that the public is truly coming around to this entire--the bill in its entirety, the Democratic majority should be more than happy to let their members of Congress go home and hear how much this bill is loved by their constituents.
What I"m worried about is the fact that the American people are saying there are parts of the bill they like. If we can come to a principled basis for an agreement that empowers patients as consumers of health care, allows the market supply of health care to increase, the costs come down and access increases, something can be done. And I think why, consistently, you see the people want us to start from scratch, find a good basis to go forward and have common-sense, affordable, helpful reforms, rather than a sweeping overhaul they reject.
TODD: Are you going to campaign on repealing this if this passes? Do you believe you have to just--is that how you will campaign in November, that, If you reelect me, Congressman McCotter, I"m going to vote to repeal health care, anything that"s passed this year in health care?
MCCOTTER: Well, I think if it"s this bill, yes, I will. But if it"s anything that"s passed, if we come together and do something that"s sane and sensible to the American people, then we"ll look at that. But if it"s this bill, yes, because, again, my position has always been patient-center, wellness, try to increase the supply of health care through free market forces. So that position will not change, and this bill is not in accordance with that principled proposition.
TODD: Congressman Van Hollen, what are you telling these nervous--because the wavering Democrats are the ones that are calling you privately and saying, Hey, I"m going to need a lot of help from the DCCC this year. What are you telling them that say, Hey, this bill"s unpopular in my district, why should I vote for this and potentially vote myself out of office?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, first of all, every member"s going to independently look at this bill, talk to their constituents and make a decision. That"s why you have--the majority of Democrats supported the House bill. But obviously, we had some that didn"t. They will look at the Senate bill. They"ll look at the merger.
But what we"re finding is they"re going--they are going home and talking to their constituents, and their constituents are getting these envelopes that they"re opening in the mail from their insurance companies showing 20, sometimes 50 percent increases in premiums. They"re hearing that from small businesses. They"re hearing it from big businesses.
The current system is unsustainable. Our colleagues for eight years had an opportunity to do something about this. They did nothing. Premiums more than doubled over those eight years, as insurance company profits quadrupled.
Now, look, I don"t know what my colleague is referring to with respect to government-run health care. What we"re talking about is giving individuals, our constituents, the same kind of choices we have under the federal employees health benefit plan that he and I and other federal employees have, where you allow the free market to work, but you have a referee to look out for the consumers" interests, rather than throwing everybody to the--over to the insurance industry.
TODD: Congressman McCotter, is this Senate bill a better bill than the first one the House passed?
MCCOTTER: No, because it does work from the premise that Chris denies, which is that it is an attempt by the government to increase its control over your own personal health care decisions. And if it...
TODD: How does it do that? Explain...
MCCOTTER: Mandates, taxes. You"re cutting half a trillion dollars from senior citizens" Medicare. You"re taking and taxing employer-provided benefits to working men and women that are unionized and elsewhere. These are things you do not campaign on. And now to say that a massive 2,000-page bill with mandates, with higher taxes, with more government control over what constitutes wasteful (ph), with reductions in entitlement spending for people like senior citizens isn"t an expansion of the power of a big, broken, bloated federal government over average men and women...
TODD: Well, this seems to be...
MCCOTTER: ... that are trying to (INAUDIBLE) is absolutely counter to reality.
TODD: I"ll say this. I mean, this does seem to be the basic split, though, between Democrats and Republicans, is a belief in government doing this, and a belief in not.
VAN HOLLEN: Well, look...
TODD: I mean, this is an ideological, philosophical difference.
VAN HOLLEN: Yes, but let"s ask the Congressional Budget Office, which is a non-partisan referee, that looked at the plans to weigh in here. And they have. There are 31 million Americans right now who can"t afford health insurance, who are going to get covered. The plan they put on the table, at best, covers 3 million. The plan they put on the table does not prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people who have preexisting conditions. Ours does.
You know, I--look, the fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, I think our constituents should have the same kind of choices as members of Congress.
TODD: We"re going to--I"m guessing we"re going to find out in November, this November, possibly the following two Novembers, who"s right on this one. Congressman McCotter, thank you for joining us tonight, Congressman Van Hollen. We"ll see you guys on the campaign trail and elsewhere.
Coming up: What will Senate Republicans do to try to derail the Democrats" plans to use reconciliation to pass those House Democratic fixes to health care reform? I"ll ask Florida Republican senator George Lemieux next.
You"re watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source