CNN "American Morning" - Transcript

Interview

COSTELLO: I don't think they're doing a good job.

On to health care now. After weeks of closed-door meetings, three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee known as the "Gang of Six" are breaking off talks on health care reform. The reason -- two of the Republican senators say there's no way they can cut a deal before the summer break starts next Friday.

One of the two is Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. He joins us live from Capitol Hill. Good morning, senator.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: Good morning. It would be better for me to say that instead of saying there's no way we can cut a deal, there's no way we can get all the compromising that needs to be done by an artificial deadline of Friday of this week. So we're going to continue to work together this week and next week. But we're getting close.

COSTELLO: What's the major sticking point?

GRASSLEY: Oh, there's several. If you looked at all of the things we have to deal with, it's a small subset of everything we have to do. But it's probably 50 percent of all of the controversy that's involved in it.

But the point is to answer your questions there's several things on the revenue that has to be raised yet. I think we have got most of that figured out. But there's a lot of detail within those issues that have to be compromised yet.

And then there's some places where we have policy yet that has to be figured out. I think we have got some of the big things that were contentious, compromised. There's not going to be any government-run insurance company set up.

And we're going to increase the competition for the present (INAUDIBLE) through cooperatives as we've known them for 150 years.

And then another very important one is whether or not to mandate that every employer has to have health insurance for his employees. We're not going to have an employer mandate. We're not going to have the big payroll taxes on employers that the House bill and the Kennedy bill does.

Those are some things that we really have compromised that has been very tough things and wide differences between Republicans and Democrats.

COSTELLO: You know what a lot of people are worried about like if this thing like -- the recess happens and then lawmakers bring their ideas of health care reform back to their constituents. And it's sort of like it's even more complicated.

And all of the compromises that you've reached so far might go by the wayside because individual lawmaker's constituencies might say we don't like that.

GRASSLEY: Well, Carol, isn't our country a Democratic government? Doesn't it rule -- or isn't it supposed to rule from the grassroots up? And if what we're trying to do here can't meet the test of public opinion, should we be doing it?

I mean, after all, this is a democracy and these are complicated issues. If they can't be understood by the public, you know that we're passing a law affecting every citizen. Do you know health is a life or death situation?

COSTELLO: Absolutely Senator. But I will there are ads on television now put out by both the DNC and the RNC that certainly complicate the issue and say things that aren't quite true for political purposes.

I think many people are confused by them.

GRASSLEY: Well, when they get a chance to talk to their Senators and Congressmen; that is right out grassroots democracy. And they have an opportunity to talk to us uninfluenced by outside sources and they can express our views to us and we ought to be able to explain this. If you can't explain something, it -- you know, you're in a bad situation in our country.

COSTELLO: That's true.

Ok, so if you were a betting man, when do you think health care reform will become a reality in America?

GRASSLEY: Just think how far we've come since February and March on this whole issue. There are two committees that reported their bill -- we're working on a bipartisan approach here in the Senate. It will probably be the only bipartisan approach before the Congress and probably it takes bipartisanship to get anything done.

And it ought to be bipartisan when you're restructuring 1/6 of the economy and also when you're affecting a life or death situation of every citizen in our country. So I expect this progress we've made is pretty good indication that we'll get a bill to the president this fall.

COSTELLO: Senator Grassley thanks for joining us this morning. We appreciate it.

GRASSLEY: Glad to be with you.

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