Media Stakeout With Senators Mitch McConnell And Lamar Alexander Following The Republican Senate Policy Committee Luncheon

Press Conference

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SEN. MCCONNELL: Boy, the light is really bright today.

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Obviously, the biggest item on the domestic agenda at the moment is the issue of health care. It remains the view of virtually all Republican senators that a government plan is the wrong way to go, that if we end up with a government plan we will end up with no other insurance companies, which then puts us very close to a single-payer system, which inevitably, in European countries and in Canada, has left -- has led to delays, denial of care, the kind of rationing that Americans, I think, would have a very difficult time dealing with.

In addition to that, there is the very large question of how we're going to pay for it. We had two scores coming out of the Congressional Budget Office last week, one indicating that a partial bill in the Health Committee, apparently with -- still with three missing sections, would cost a trillion 300 billion (dollars) over 10 years; and another score on a variety of proposals that may come out of the Finance Committee at 1.6 trillion (dollars).

How will we pay for it? Will we pay for it by cutting doctors and hospitals? Will we pay for it by forcing businesses to either pay the government -- pay the government if they don't provide health care? Will we pay for it by dealing with overseas corporate tax profits in a different way? I think the American people are going to want to know, how are we going to pay for this?

Summing it all up, the strategy of the other side, which we saw on full display during the stimulus debate, was to rush and spend. And you get the impression that they're trying to jam something through Congress before even the members of the Senate fully understand it, much less the American people, from whom we would like to hear before we do something this significant that affects 16 percent of our economy.

With that, let me turn it over.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Thank you. We've now had a week to consider the Kennedy bill in the Health and Education Committee, and it is so flawed that it can't be fixed and we need to start over. And that's what happens when you have a partisan bill. I mean, we know how to have a bipartisan bill on health care or any other area, and that's a group of us sit down together, share ideas and put something together. That's not what happened here. They just presented it to us and said, "See if you can amendment -- amend it." And, of course, we can't.

Republicans want health reform this year. We have four major proposals on the table. All of them in one way or another would give dollars to low-income Americans so they could buy more of the same kind of health insurance the rest of us have. What we don't want is more debt, and we don't want another Washington takeover.

I have suggested that every senator who votes for a 150-percent increase in the Medicaid eligibility requirements, such as those proposed in the Kennedy bill, be sentenced to go home and serve as governor of their home state for eight years to try to pay for it or to manage it.

I've looked at the figures in Tennessee, and if we increase Medicaid -- we expanded Medicaid the way the Kennedy bill wants to, and if we increased physician reimbursements in the way being discussed, it would cost our state a hundred -- 1.2 billion more dollars, which equals the amount of money that a 10 percent new state income tax would pick up.

So this is an air of unreality here. We should go back to the drawing boards, start over in a bipartisan way and give low-income people the same kind of opportunities to buy health care the rest of us have.

SEN. MCCONNELL: I would just add that I think that what the American people are tuning into is what this plan is going to cost. And I thought it was really interesting, if you look at some of the polling data that's come out recently, last week's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll -- question was asked, which is more important to you, reducing the debt or stimulating the economy. By a 58-to-35 margin, people said reducing the debt.

The public is becoming very aware of what's happening here in Washington in the amount of spending, the amount of borrowing and the amount of taxing that's occurring. And that bears on the debate about health care, because people are now realizing that all these promises about covering more people and lowering costs are going to come at a great cost to the American taxpayer.

And we saw last week what some of those costs are going to be, whether it's 1.3 trillion (dollars) or 1.6 trillion (dollars). I think it's going to be a lot more than that when you start projecting into the out years. But this is going to be a very costly plan. The American people, I think, are starting to realize that. And they're starting to weigh into this debate. And when they do, I think that the numbers around here are going to start changing in terms of support for this bill. And hopefully, that will bring to the table some of the Democrats who so far have insisted on doing this in a very partisan way.

Now, we'd love to be a part of that debate. But they insist on passing it their way. I think the American people in the end are going to have something to say about that.

SEN. ALEXANDER: On the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the United States Supreme Court, our side of the aisle's made it very clear that we intend to treat Judge Sotomayor with the respect and the dignity that every nominee to the high court deserves. Of course, that stands in stark contrast to the way that Miguel Estrada, who, had he been given the opportunity for an up-or-down vote when he was nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals, could well have been the first Hispanic on the United States Supreme Court.

Instead, he was filibustered seven times and, as I've said, denied that opportunity for an up-or-down vote.

But we intend to do our job under the Constitution, which is to, after studying Judge Sotomayor's record, to ask questions, allowing her to clarify her position or correct her statements or explain her statements with regard to equal protection of the laws, whether she's truly committed to color-blind justice, whether she believes that judges ought to be neutral umpires, calling balls and strikes, or whether she believes that judges ought to carry a predisposition on issues and perhaps a bias against litigants before they even hear the facts of the case.

So we have a job to do. We're going to do it. We're going to do it respectfully and treating the nominee, as I say, with the dignity that she and all the nominees deserves. And we look forward to the hearing where we're going to ask her those questions starting July the 13th.

SEN. MCCONNELL: We'll take a couple of questions if there are any.

Q Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that 72 percent of Americans support a government option for health care. How do you square that against the lockstep Republican opposition to that?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, with all due respect to whatever New York Times employees may be in the audience, I'm going to ask Senator Alexander to give his take on the New York Times poll in juxtaposition to some -- all of the other polls that have been coming out the last couple of days.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Well, the problem. with the poll was that the questions were one-sided. It was the same poll that showed that President Obama would defeat President McCain by -- I mean John McCain by 23 points instead of seven. And it oversampled Democrats. Other than that, it was a pretty good poll.

The Wall Street Journal reported the week before a completely contradictory decision, and Whit Ayers and others have put out their own surveys in the last couple of days that show that people, when asked the question properly and given the option, prefer private insurance to a government-run plan by two to one.

So we have dueling polls here. And I would -- all respect to New York Times for its survey, but it's historically often wrong, and it's different than the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

We believe that most Americans don't want more government takeovers. We've seen takeovers of banks, of insurance companies, of car companies, of student loans, even in -- more legislation, even your farm pond is being taken over, and now health care.

We think Americans want to make more of their own decisions with their own doctors, and we'll see who's right about that.

(Cross talk.)

Q Senator, can you tell us what Senator Ensign just told the caucus and how he was received? Do you know --

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, Senator Ensign obviously can speak for himself, but he spoke to our conference, apologized and indicated that he was going to do his job.

Q And Senator McConnell, do you believe that his -- this has resolved the issue for now on behalf of the conference, or do the unanswered questions need to be pursued, perhaps in a Senate ethics investigation?

SEN. MCCONNELL: No, I think the -- Senator Ensign will address whatever needs to be said from here on.

Q Senator McConnell, the meeting at the White House -- (off mike) -- meeting at the White House later this week is going to deal with immigration reform. Can you say what the prospects for such a major overhaul, a comprehensive immigration reform, would be this year?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, I've -- I'll see if anybody else behind me wants to address that issue. We've got a pretty full plate already. There's been very little discussion in our conference about the way forward on immigration reform. So really I haven't given much thought to that issue lately. We've dealt with that issue over the last Congresses. We know it's not going away. Significant progress is being made on border security, which I think is a linchpin to any discussion of the various other issues that go beyond border security.

I don't know if anybody wants to add anything -- John, you want to --

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): As the ranking member on the Immigration Subcommittee on Judiciary, Senator Schumer, who's the chairman of that subcommittee, has been hosting a number of hearings at which we've been discussing the prospects for immigration reform this year.

I think what we need is a plan from the president of the United States. So far we seem to get a sliding schedule where first he said he's going to do it in the first year and now of course his spokesman says it's unlikely they'll be able to get it done this year.

But we know what the options are. There are various plans out there. Senator Kyl and I introduced one in 2005, a comprehensive bill. Senator McCain, Kennedy, others have offered legislation. But what we need now is not another photo op at the White House. What we need is a plan from the president of the United States, if he believes it's possible for us to get this problem solved, and we'll work with him.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Okay. Thanks.

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