FOX "Interview With Senator Judd Gregg" - Transcript

Interview

Copyright ©2009 by Federal News Service, Inc., Ste. 500, 1000 Vermont Ave, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service at www.fednews.com, please email Carina Nyberg at cnyberg@fednews.com or call 1-202-216-2706.

MR. GALLAGHER: Well, the president's push to reform health care hitting some speed bumps on Capitol Hill over how to pay for the trillion dollar plus cost of the overhaul. As the Senate takes up a complex bill that won't get out of committee until sometime after July 4th, New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg is the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

Senator, welcome, sir.

I know you and your colleagues are crunching numbers today and a lot of the people on the GOP side of the aisle say the only answer to paying for this thing is a massive tax increase. True?

SEN. GREGG: Well, you don't have to spend all this money to begin with. That would be the best approach. The CBO has basically scored this and they're the fair umpire up here. They were only able to look at about a sixth of the bill that we're marking up. They couldn't see the whole bill and on that sixth they said it was going to score -- an added $1 trillion of spending.

So you can presume that we're looking at $2 (trillion), maybe $3 trillion here of new spending.

MR. GALLAGHER: Well, there is a whole bill, Senator --

SEN. GREGG: Well, we have a presentation that has been made to us by the Kennedy staff and the Democrats on the Health Committee. It's missing big components. It's got big blanks. But we're actually marking up from that even though there are blank sections and the reason CBO couldn't give us a definitive score was because of the blank sections, but the blank sections are the most contentious things. There are things like the government plan and the employer mandate.

So we are actually marking up a bill. It's really sort of strange we're marking up a bill that's incomplete and unscored, but we do know the bill has some very serious problems, one is the cost and the second is, CBO says that after this is all done, after you've spent all this money, there will still be 39 million people in this country that do not have insurance under the Kennedy staff plan. So that makes no sense.

MR. GALLAGHER: The CBO just as you said, the nonpartisan CBO says that large reductions and I'm reading here in spending will not actually be achieved without fundamental changes in the financing and delivery of health care. What they're saying is the system is broken, no matter how much you try to reform this thing, the system itself is broken, so you're not going to save any money on it.

SEN. GREGG: That's right. That was in response to a request that myself and Senator Conrad made at the CBO, tell us what really has to be done here instead of all this puffery and all this blue smoke that we're getting around health care reform that claims there's going to be savings. You, CBO, tell us how we get savings.

What they said was, well, you've got to get aggressive on benefits and you have to get aggressive on the incentive that the tax law basically creates now for people to overuse health care and neither of those issues are addressed by the plan that's being marked up in the health committee.

MS. MACCALLUM: Senator Gregg, Martha MacCallum here. I've had a lot of folks ask me this question lately, so I'm going to ask you, why can't the uninsured be offered a plan that is the same as the one that members of Congress enjoy, which seems to have a lot of choice in it and seems to work for federal employees?

SEN. GREGG: Well, that is actually a couple of ideas are floating around in that area and give the uninsured a voucher and let them go out and buy a plan that is competitive with the regular market. The debate here isn't over coverage. We all want coverage of everyone. I've got a plan that covers everybody, but the debate is whether you're going to have the federal government step in and essentially have a Washington bureaucrat between you and your doctor, have a situation which leads to rationing through a single payer system where you get delays and it basically becomes like Canada or England where certain procedures aren't allowed if you reach a certain age.

We believe that there are better ways to do that using the private sector to incentivize people to live healthier lifestyles, to promote prevention and to deliver quality health care and you do that with money. You basically incentivize people through their insurance policies to go out and live a healthier lifestyle. Again, the Kennedy plan that's been proposed to us disincentivizes that and basically makes that illegal. You will not be able to pay somebody if somebody is insured by you, an employer, you will not be able to pay them extra money if they stop smoking or they go and get tests to anticipate illness or they live a healthier lifestyle in the area of obesity, for example.

MS. MACCALLUM: I mean, would any members of Congress that are proponents of the Democratic plan, you know, get rid of the plan that they enjoy now in favor of this new plan that they're proposing?

SEN. GREGG: You'll have to ask them. I'm not in favor of the plan that's being proposed. It's got a lot of warts and the problem is -- there are three issues here that we need to address, one, let's get everybody covered, two, let's reduce the out year costs of health care because it's going to bankrupt our country and three, let's deliver quality care in an efficient way that promotes healthy and productive lifestyles. None of those three issues are effectively addressed by the plan that's before us, and in fact, CBO on the first two issues, as I said, has scored it as costing over $1 trillion and it will cost multiple trillions and has said there will still be 39 million people uninsured after you've spent all that money.

It makes no sense at all.

MR. GALLAGHER: New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. Senator, thank you, sir.

SEN. GREGG: Thank you.

Source