MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript
Interview
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We start with killing Medicare versus raising taxes. What a choice. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur"s a Democrat from Ohio and Congressman Tom Cole"s a Republican from Oklahoma. They both are on the Budget Committee, which wouldn"t be more important these days.
Congressman Cole, since you"re here, I"m going to ask you the first question. What--it seems to me that Paul Ryan is talking about replacing Medicare as it was created back in the "60s with some kind of a subsidy program. And the criticism of this idea is nobody in the private sector"s going to create a health care plan for somebody in their 70s and 80s. The government has to provide health care under Medicare, or they won"t get it, the seniors.
REP. TOM COLE (R-OK), BUDGET COMMITTEE: Well, it"ll be a premium support program. It"ll be similar to, frankly, what every member of Congress has and what federal workers have. Frankly, we think it actually puts Medicare on a sustainable path. Right now, it"s simply not supportable. We"re not going to be able to finance it, so we"re going to have to make some pretty dramatic changes. Paul at least has had the courage to put some out there and start the discussion.
MATTHEWS: Would you back it right now as it is?
COLE: I certainly would.
MATTHEWS: So you"d take the heat.
COLE: Oh, absolutely.
MATTHEWS: OK.
COLE: I think you got--
MATTHEWS: Here"s Mary Kaptur. Congresswoman, what do you--how did you--did I describe it right? Aren"t they getting rid of Medicare as we know it, where the government writes the check for your health care, including medicine, and give you a check that may not cover the cost of your health insurance, if you can find a company to sell it to you?
REP. MARCY KAPTUR (D-OH), BUDGET COMMITTEE: That is exactly right. They make seniors pay more, and in regions like mine--in fact, the whole country--the amount seniors would have to pay per month will nearly double. It will be unaffordable, and it"s going to throw seniors into the insurance marketplace. And most of them--I mean, gosh, over 65, over 70, 75 years old, they"re not going to be able to negotiate.
So they want to voucher out the Medicare program while at the same time giving over a trillion dollars of tax breaks over the next 10 years to the wealthiest people in our country, corporations like General Electric, ExxonMobil paying no taxes, Wall Street paying an 11 percent tax. And they say the seniors of America, You have to pay more. I as a Democrat say not on my watch.
MATTHEWS: Well, is that fair? There you just saw the tradeoff.
COLE: No, it"s not remotely fair.
MATTHEWS: It"s the taxes for the rich versus cutting Medicare.
COLE: Nobody on Medicare right now would be affected at all. Nobody within 10 years of being on Medicare would be affected under Paul"s plan. So talking about what"s going to happen to seniors is they"ll continue to get exactly the same program they have. What we"re doing is adjusting for people living a lot longer and giving them plenty of time to change directions.
But what we know can"t happen is we can"t keep the plan going as it is. The numbers don"t work. The math doesn"t work.
KAPTUR: May I say this? If people go back to work, which should be the key focus of this economy, we will repair what"s wrong. We will be getting revenues that we need to support all programs. And we don"t have to voucher out Medicare.
Tom, you can"t be correct about what you"re saying because what you"re going to do is, you"re going to force seniors to pay more for their premiums and throw them at the mercy of the insurance marketplace. The reason we have Medicare is because it was not insuring those citizens.
COLE: Marcy--
KAPTUR: So I don"t really understand what you"re talking about.
COLE: Again, no current seniors are going to be affected. Nobody close--
KAPTUR: Oh, that"s a very important adjective.
COLE: -- to retirement"s going to be affected.
KAPTUR: At what point will they become, then? You know, what you"re doing is--
COLE: They won"t be.
KAPTUR: -- you"re going to transform--
COLE: They won"t be. If you"re on the program now--
KAPTUR: -- the program--
COLE: No, if you"re on the program now, you"ll be fine all the way through. But you can"t--
KAPTUR: What about people who are 55?
COLE: -- sustain it.
KAPTUR: What about people--
(CROSSTALK)
KAPTUR: -- senior citizens, 55?
COLE: Well, I think--
KAPTUR: Or 54?
COLE: -- those people--people have plenty of time to adjust, and we can make some changes. But what"s the cruelest joke of all--
KAPTUR: How can they adjust when--
COLE: -- is to offer people a program--
KAPTUR: -- the market won"t offer them an affordable plan?
COLE: -- that simply will not be allowed to continue financially.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Congressman Cole, if it"s a good program, why not introduce it? Why say, We"re not going to inflict this pain on older people, we"re going to save it for the younger people? If it"s a fair program, why not just inform (ph) it and bring it into effect right now?
COLE: Well, because, frankly, people have spent a whole lifetime planning to operate under a certain system--
MATTHEWS: Right.
COLE: -- and they ought to have that opportunity. It shouldn"t change.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: So is there somebody today who"s 55 years old that"s looking forward to Medicare?
COLE: Well, 55 --
MATTHEWS: I bet there"s a lot of people looking forward to--
COLE: At 55, they"ll be fine. You know--
MATTHEWS: All right, 54-and-a-half. They"re looking forward to Medicare.
COLE: Well, we"ve got a master plan--
MATTHEWS: They"re going to get a check that says, Go out and try to find some insurance company when you"re 75 years old that"s--
COLE: No.
MATTHEWS: -- going to give you health insurance.
COLE: What"s not going to work is what we have now, and I"d like to -
-
MATTHEWS: Well, that"s fair enough. Fair enough.
COLE: And I"d love to see the Democrats--
MATTHEWS: The system is--
COLE: -- finally--
MATTHEWS: OK--
COLE: -- propose something.
MATTHEWS: Well, let"s see what the president says tomorrow. Here"s Obama"s senior adviser, David Plouffe, who"s really a political guy, not a policy guy, talking about the Ryan plan on "MEET THE PRESS" the other day. Let"s watch Plouffe, and you can respond, Congressman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this plan, Congressman Ryan"s plan, dead on arrival?
DAVID PLOUFFE, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: Well, listen, certainly,
the president is not going to support a lot of what"s in that plan. Again
--
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any chance that this gets passed?
PLOUFFE: It may pass the House. It"s not going to become law. And I don"t think the American people are going to sign up for something that puts most of the burden on the middle class, people trying to go to college, on senior citizens, while not just asking nothing of the wealthy, giving them at least a $200,000 tax--so that"s a choice you"re making.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEWS: Well, that"s the point of view from the White House. Fair enough, a political assessment from his political guy. But watch Newt Gingrich say the same thing. Here"s "The New York Times" the other day being quoted, "I think it is a dangerous political exercise." He"s talking about the Ryan plan. "This is not something the Republicans can afford to handle lightly."
There you have your sharpshooter there, Newt Gingrich, who"s pure politician, agreeing with David Plouffe of the White House this is bad politics for you guys.
COLE: It"s not. First of all, this is Medicare part D.
MATTHEWS: So Newt"s wrong.
COLE: It"s the same--
MATTHEWS: The former Speaker"s wrong.
COLE: You know, in fact, this is Medicare part D, which has been enormously popular. It"s not a new concept. That"s exactly what we do on prescription drug coverage for seniors right now. Came in 40 percent less than anybody estimated it would cost. It"s affordable. It"s been cheaper than the CBO estimated it would be. We think you can do--
MATTHEWS: OK.
COLE: -- the same thing with the entire Medicare program.
MATTHEWS: Let"s take a look at our poll, Congressman. I"m sorry to interrupt. Here"s the poll now. This is our NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll. I think the public"s very divided. When independent voters out there polled--Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, were polled about Medicare in our latest NBC poll, which just came out a few days ago, 20 percent say it needs a complete overhaul, 26 percent say it needs major changes--sounds like the same thing -- 35 percent say it needs minor modifications, 16 percent say leave it alone.
Congresswoman Kaptur, what do seniors want changed? I thought they liked Medicare. If you"re a consumer of Medicare, you have a health cost, you take it to the government, they pay for it. What"s better than that? I thought seniors liked Medicare the way it is.
KAPTUR: Seniors love Medicare and their families love Medicare. And I would disagree with my colleague in saying that if you"re 54 years old and you"re an ironworker in Toledo, Ohio, the chances are by age 65, you"re going to be ready to retire. Some even have to retire at age 62.
So I think that Social Security and Medicare are compacts of trust between generations. I would not want the next generation to have any less than our generation has had. So I would disagree with your proposal because the system works because we all pull together. We"re not all in separate boats.
MATTHEWS: OK, let me--
KAPTUR: And we"ve raised a whole generation of seniors out of poverty because of Social Security and Medicare.
MATTHEWS: OK, let me play hardball with you, Congresswoman Kaptur. Here"s a question for you. Of all the domestic programs we have in our government--and we do have a $1.6 trillion deficit right now. Of all the domestic programs we have right now, name some big-ticket items you"d like to cut.
KAPTUR: All right. In terms of the discretionary programs and the mandatory programs, I would look at agricultural subsidies as an area that"s very rich for change. I would also look at our defense bases around the world. Defense is not on the table, in fact.
MATTHEWS: No, domestic.
KAPTUR: Mr. Cole"s party"s actually raising--oh, we have a lot of bases in this country, as well. Finally, the president"s bipartisan commission talks about both spending cuts, as well as revenues. I would look at the Americans who have done extraordinarily well.
MATTHEWS: So raise taxes.
KAPTUR: I would go after oil royalties.
MATTHEWS: OK.
KAPTUR: I would also go after--
MATTHEWS: OK, so the only--
KAPTUR: -- those individuals who haven"t paid their taxes.
MATTHEWS: The only--do you represent a farm district?
KAPTUR: Parts of my district are, but we don"t sort of load up in our district, like people in other parts--
MATTHEWS: OK.
KAPTUR: -- of the country who are farmers. The average farmer in our district maybe that farms--
MATTHEWS: OK--
KAPTUR: -- gets $11,000 from the program.
MATTHEWS: OK--
KAPTUR: Out in Iowa, they get $140,000.
MATTHEWS: OK, here"s the problem the Democrats have, to be fair to you because you came in tonight. The fact is, the Democrats have a hard time identifying programs they"d be willing to cut.
COLE: Well, they have no plan. Look, the Democratic Congress last year--
MATTHEWS: So what"s the president going to do--
COLE: -- never presented a budget.
MATTHEWS: -- tomorrow night?
COLE: Who knows because he"s just showing up to the debate. He didn"t say anything at the State of the Union about his own--
MATTHEWS: Well, he"s apparently--let me just ask you both.
(CROSSTALK)
COLE: -- budget with no--
MATTHEWS: Go right down the middle in this. The president is apparently going to get out behind the bipartisan commission--
COLE: Well, we"ll--
MATTHEWS: Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson--he was here last night, Alan Simpson, on our show last night. Are you for the bipartisan commission report?
COLE: Well, I think it"s worth looking at, but I think the president has got to lead in this case. Right now, the only guy leading is Paul Ryan.
MATTHEWS: OK.
COLE: We"ve got a 41-year-old congressman who leads. We"ve got a president of the United States--
MATTHEWS: Are you going to get 218 votes in the House for his position?
COLE: -- who"s absent without--we absolutely will.
MATTHEWS: OK. That"s very important. Congresswoman, are you going to back the president tomorrow if he backs the commission?
KAPTUR: I think that there are many worthy proposals in that commission report. I think we ought to take them up one at a time. The most important thing to me is to get people back to work because then you have revenues move up inside--
MATTHEWS: OK--
KAPTUR: -- the system and you can help balance all the accounts. But you can"t balance the budget when you"ve spent $1.4 trillion on wars and you"re going to give away another trillion dollars in tax breaks to the very wealthiest in our country, many of whom aren"t paying taxes and try to balance the budget.
MATTHEWS: I"m with you on the wars. I"m with you on the wars. We cannot afford to be the world"s arsenal and policemen and expect to have a quiet little country that has low taxes. Anyway, thank you very much, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur from Ohio and U.S. Congressman John Cole of Oklahoma, sir. Thanks for joining us.
COLE: Thank you.
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