MSNBC "Interview With Senator Robert Bennett And Senator Ron Wyden" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. TODD: In just 11 hours, President Obama heads to Capitol Hill to address a joint session of Congress for the first time as president. The focus of his speech, of course, will be the economy. The president will lay out his plans to cut the annual deficit in half and urge Americans that more needs to be done to turn this economy around.

Welcome to MSNBC's special daylong coverage leading up to President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress, I'm Chuck Todd anchoring this hour live from the White House. The president behind closed doors right now, he's preparing for a meeting this hour with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso. The global financial crisis that has hit both Japan and the United States, of course, topping that agenda.

Also this hour not far from here on Capitol Hill, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is preparing to testify before the Senate Banking and Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. This is his semi- annual report to Congress on the state of the economy and it will be watched very closely on Wall Street and we'll also be monitoring his remarks as well.

Nothing will be more closely watched though than the president's address to Congress tonight. In addition to a lot about the economy, we'll be getting more details on other key parts of the president's domestic agenda, including the areas of education, energy and health care. Just yesterday, the president talked about the importance of health care.

PRESIDENT OBAMA (From video.): Over the longer run, putting America on a sustainable fiscal course will require addressing health care. That seemed to be an issue that there was a lot of consensus around. Many of you said what I believe that the biggest source of our deficits is the rising cost of health care.

MR. TODD: President Obama also announced that on Monday, he's scheduling a health care summit, very similar to the summit he held yesterday which will be held at the White House next week. During the health care breakout session at yesterday's White House fiscal summit, the group was urged to take a close look at the Wyden-Bennett health care bill.

So with me now, the cosponsors of the Healthy Americans Act, Ron Wyden, Democratic Senator from Oregon and Robert Bennett, Republican Senator from Utah.

Senators, gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

So let's talk about your plan. It was described to me as if you follow the health care debate during the campaign, a little bit of Obama, a little bit of Clinton, a little bit of McCain, I know that's a little superficial, so Senator Wyden, explain a little bit about your bill.

SEN. WYDEN: Chuck, I think that's sums it up. We feel the Democrats have been right on the coverage issue. You've got to cover everybody to stop the cost shifting, but the Republicans have been right on the question of making sure you don't freeze innovation, that you have private choices. That's what we do in our legislation. We make sure that people can keep exactly the coverage they have today if they want it, but we create a lot more choices and we use marketplace forces to make sure that all Americans can get good quality, affordable care.

MR. TODD: Now, Senator Bennett, you know there's a lot of stakeholders when it comes to the issue of health care, a lot of people make money based on the decisions that government makes when it comes to certain parameters involving the issue of health care. The one criticism I've heard of your bill is that you don't have enough of the power players on board, the key members of the Finance Committee for instance.

What are you guys doing behind the scenes to rectify that?

SEN. BENNETT: We are turning to the people who are actually involved in the field on health care, the people who are there everyday on the firing line and they tell us that the best way to get cost control of health care is to increase quality and the best way to increase quality is to change the tax laws and change the incentives.

So the main tool that we have, I believe, is a score from the Congressional Budget Office and from outside groups that say, you can increase coverage as Senator Wyden has talked about, you can increase quality and if you do it in the way the Wyden-Bennett bill calls, you end up saving money. That's the magic key around here with bailouts and stimulus packages and the rest of it dominating the news, anything that can save money is a good deal.

SEN. WYDEN: Chuck, we also have five members of the Finance Committee. We've got leadership on both sides of the aisle.

SEN. BENNETT: Right.

SEN. WYDEN: And obviously, the president, Senator Kennedy, Senator Baucus, are going to be key, but at some point you're going to have to have a bipartisan coalition to get this done and in the history of the United States Senate, you have never before had a significant group of Democrats and Republicans come together, that's what the country wants and that's what it's going to take with such a major issue.

MR. TODD: All right. Question for both of you. I know that no politician wants to make this choice, which is coverage or cost when it comes to a priority for a good health care bill, but let me ask you, is it more important to get cost down if it means you're not necessarily going to cover those 40 million, all of the 40 million Americans that don't have health care? Or does coverage -- does 100 percent coverage have to come before cost issues? Senator Bennett, let me start with you.

SEN. BENNETT: Yeah, that's a false dichotomy and it shows the way the debate has been framed in the past. The assumption is that if you get coverage that's going to cost more and the way this bill has been scored and the way people have looked at it is that if you do it right, you can lower costs, and at the same time, get coverage and you don't have to make that choice.

If you stay in the present paradigm with respect to health care, you do and we're trying to break the paradigm and go into new directions.

SEN. WYDEN: Right now people, Chuck, with coverage, are picking up the hospital emergency room bills that people who don't. What we're doing now is trying to make sure that we squeeze more value out of the health care dollars and the amount of money we spend in America today; you could actually go out and hire a doctor for every seven families, pay the doctor over $200,000 and say, take care of these seven families.

So we spend enough money on health care in order to get everybody good quality, affordable coverage, but we've got to start spending it in the right places. We've got a bipartisan coalition that does that.

MR. TODD: Let me talk about sort of the reality of the politics of Capitol Hill. If a health care bill doesn't get through Congress before the 4th of July, are you pessimistic that anything can get done before the 2010 elections, before the campaign season gets in the way? Senator Bennett, let me start with you.

SEN. BENNETT: I'm always interested that the people in the press are fascinated with deadlines, I guess, that's because you deal with deadlines --

MR. TODD: Every hour, my friend.

SEN. BENNETT: Yeah, and setting an artificial deadline, quite frankly, is not a good idea. Obviously, we want to get it done as quickly as we can. We want to get it on the agenda before electioneering completely takes over, but at the same time, if we say, okay, if we don't get it done by 4th of July, it's dead, that's crazy. There's always a little more time, and particularly, the economic pressures say if you don't get it done by July, keep working on it through August and September and October.

MR. TODD: How important is it though that you don't let campaign politics get in the way of this?

SEN. BENNETT: We want to get this done this year, and the president has a steely determination about him on this issue. He understands that to fix the economy, you have to fix health care. The fact of the matter is the reason that peoples' take home pay doesn't go up is because health care is gobbling up everything in sight.

So fixing health care and fixing the economy are two sides of the same coin and we're going to get it done this year.

MR. TODD: Senator Wyden, Senator Bennett, it's going to be an interesting debate, what we hear tonight on health care and I know you guys are going to be big players on this. We'll be watching and probably having you on a lot.

SEN. WYDEN: Thank you, Chuck.

MR. TODD: Thanks for being here.

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