MSNBC Interview - Transcript
Interview
MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC)
SUBJECT: BUDGET INTERVIEWER: CHRIS JANSING
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MS. JANSING: Tomorrow, committees in both the House and the Senate will start debating the president's $3.5 trillion budget proposal. The budget makes a big push towards health care reform, a project the White House wants to pay for, in part, buy increasing taxes on wealthy Americans.
Joining us is House Majority Whip, South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn.
Congressman, thanks for being with us.
REP. CLYBURN: Well, thank you so much for having me.
MS. JANSING: Well, let me start the question I was asking our panel a little bit earlier, Governor Kathleen Sebelius just named as the HHS Secretary nominee. Is she the right person for this job? Specifically, does she have the Capitol Hill know how to shepherd this most important of initiatives of the president?
REP. CLYBURN: Well, I think so. I do believe that being a governor, especially a blue governor in a red state gives her quite a bit of insight into working across party lines, you know, to get things done. She has been an insurance commissioner and I have never heard anything, but outstanding and glowing reports of her abilities.
And so I do believe that she would be very successful in this job.
MS. JANSING: What do you think of the White House strategy of doing basically the opposite of what was done back in the early '90s when Hillary Clinton was trying to get health care reform done? They, instead of writing the bill and sending it up to the Hill are going to basically send principles up there and let Congress write the bill.
Is that a good strategy?
REP. CLYBURN: Absolutely, a great strategy.
MS. JANSING: I'm so surprised you said that.
REP. CLYBURN: Well, I think so because as you recall last week, along with Bernie Sanders, we pushed a community health centers part of this. The president has announced today, I think, $155 million for community health care centers. We've already done --
MS. JANSING: Okay. But you wanted $26 billion, right?
REP. CLYBURN: Yes. Remember, he announced that out of the recovery package.
MS. JANSING: Yeah.
REP. CLYBURN: Now, that's a different thing from the budget that's coming up. So the monies that we're talking about will fit into that $630 billion budget that we've got coming up.
So we're taking incremental steps. When I used that word three or four weeks ago, I got a lot of flack from a lot of people saying, oh, you don't want to do comprehensive, you want to do incremental. I want to do comprehensive, but these are incremental steps, SCHIP, now we've got the recovery package with its health care centers and then we'll move into the budget. And so to me, that's incrementalism.
MS. JANSING: Well, you've got a lot on your plate, don't forget, energy reform, education, the financial system. But we've got to leave it there. Congressman, thank you so much for your time today.
REP. CLYBURN: Well, thank you so much for having me.
END.
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