MSNBC "The Ed Show" -Transcript

Interview

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Joining me now is one of those folks who met with the Speaker today, Congressman George Miller, who"s the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Congressman, great to have you on tonight.

REP. GEORGE MILLER (D), CALIFORNIA: Thanks, Ed.

SCHULTZ: You bet.

C-SPAN executive director Brian Lamb has made a request that these negotiations be carried on C-SPAN, televised. And this is something President Obama talked about on the campaign trail.

How much of a PR black eye would this be if this does not happen?

Because a lot of people want to see it. What do you think?

MILLER: Well, we"re going to do this in the most open and transparent manner that we can. When we were writing the bill in the House of Representatives, we had over 100 hours of hearings that were completely public, some which were televised.

The bill that we"re considering now is the House vehicle. Essentially, it"s been on the Internet since July. It was--the bill and amendments to the bill were on the Internet for 72 hours before we took it up. The Senate"s gone through their process.

What we"re not going to give in to is that the Senate, from the

Republicans in the Senate, in an effort to kill this bill, from

Thanksgiving until Christmas, made every effort--or actually before then

every effort that they could to delay this bill because they know that time in Washington, D.C., is the enemy of getting things passed. And they"ve tried every effort.

Now what they want do is have a motion to go to conference so that they can vote a cloture vote, they take up more days, more weeks of time. And we"re not going to give into that.

We"re going to do this is in an open fashion, it"s going to be on the Internet. We"re going to discuss it with the press. We"re going to discuss it at home. We had over 3,000 town hall meetings and events in our district throughout August.

SCHULTZ: So why not have it on C-SPAN?

MILLER: Well, because I"m not sure what form yet these meetings are going to take yet. That"s part of what the meetings at the White House are about.

How are we going to handle this legislation? Because we know that the goal of the Republicans still is not to make this legislation better, but to kill this legislation so that Obama will have a defeat and they will say that that"s a failed administration.

We"re not going to let them do that. Time and again, when the Republicans were here, you were watching this process for six years. And in those six years, very often the first time we heard a bill was coming to the floor when they announced it was coming to the floor.

SCHULTZ: They don"t bring anything to the table. You got that right.

I mean, if this is to shut them out because they"ve got no ideas and all they"re going to be is disruptive and obstructionists on this, I get that. But I do think that a lot of Democrats in this country are wondering, all right, what"s going on behind closed doors here? What kind of arm-twisting"s happening here?

MILLER: It"s not behind closed doors. We started 10 days ago talking to our caucus.

We asked our caucus to meet with their constituencies to give us the feedback. The Speaker set up an e-mail address where they could talk to the chairs, and back and forth, to try to make this--to try to make this as open as we possibly can. But we have got to get this legislation done.

Do not believe that the people who wanted to defeat this bill are now giving up because the House and the Senate have passed a bill. They"re looking for another opportunity to kill the entire bill.

SCHULTZ: How involved is the president going to be down the stretch here?

MILLER: I"ll be a lot smarter about that probably tomorrow morning.

SCHULTZ: You"re going to meet with him?

MILLER: No, no. I think we"re meeting perhaps tomorrow afternoon. I don"t know if that"s it. But that"s what Leader Reid and Senator Durbin, Steny Hoyer and Speaker Pelosi are talking to the president about, how this process--what shape it will take, the involvement of the administration, and how we work it out.

SCHULTZ: Is the public--finally, is the public option dead?

MILLER: I don"t know. I don"t know whether it is or not.

There"s a lot of different options on the table. The Senate created a basketful of different kinds of options. But what is not dead is the idea that we need a mechanism to inspire competition within the insurance industry and to have accountability and a downward pressure on prices.

The original public option saved $150 billion over 10 years. That"s because of downward pressure on prices for taxpayers and for rate prayers.

We"re not giving up on that process. If the Senate has a different kind of option that works, we"ll take a look at that.

SCHULTZ: Congressman, good to have you on. Thanks.

MILLER: Thank you.

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