CNN "Campbell Brown" - Transcript

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CNN "Campbell Brown" - Transcript

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BROWN: It is make or break month for health care, and President Obama now under fire from members of his own party, Democrats forming their own angry chorus, furious at the White House for dialing back its commitment to the so-called public option.

They are crying betrayal and vowing to fight back. So, our big question tonight, is it all or nothing when it comes to health care reform?

And one of those who wants to keep the public option is Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She's joining us tonight from Los Angeles, in Washington, Ezra Klein, who is staff reporter for "The Washington Post." And he's keeping a blog that focuses largely on health care policy. And here with me in New York, our senior political analyst Jeffrey Toobin joining us as well.

Welcome to everybody.

Congresswoman, let me start with you on this.

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Yes.

BROWN: You have said that you won't vote for a bill without the public option. Why is this a deal-breaker for you?

WATERS: It's a deal-breaker because the whole idea behind health care reform is to bring down the costs. We cannot bring down the costs unless there's a public option that will create competition.

We cannot turn this over to the same people who have been, you know, making the costs of health care just go off the scale. The premiums continue to go up. They continue to make more money. And the CEOs continue to make big salaries. We have got to stop that. The only way to stop it is with a public option.

BROWN: Well, Congresswoman, President Clinton, who knows quite a lot about what it's like to fight for health care and fail, has been warning liberals, you know, not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here.

And let me just play you a little bit of what he said. This is to a group of liberal bloggers this weekend. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is politically imperative for the Democrats to pass a health care bill now, because one thing we know...

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: One thing we know and that I have lived through is that if you get out there and then you don't prevail, the victors get to rewrite history. And I want us to be mindful that sometimes we may have to take less than a full loaf.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, what do you think about that, sometimes we may have to take less than a full loaf? Are you not prepared to make any compromise?

WATERS: Well, I -- listen, no, let me tell you, you know I'm one who supported a single-payer plan. Most of us progressives did support a single-payer plan.

They asked us not to push on that, that that was going to be impossible to do. This would cost a lot of confrontation. We backed up on single-payer and decided that we would go with public option that was supported by the president of the United States. And we considered that we have made a huge compromise.

And, so, it's not that we want the perfect. We want what is credible. You cannot have credible health care reform if you don't address the issue of the rising costs. And this is not just about the uninsured. This is about working people who every day go to work and increasingly they're paying a larger percentage of their income for health care than in recent years.

BROWN: Right.

Let me have Jeff back it up a little bit and just explain to people what we're talking about when we talk about the public option. What does that mean for people at home?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Right. People sometimes talk about these things in shorthand, in code.

In simple terms, a public option is, we all know what insurance companies are. Most of us have our insurance through Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Oxford, whatever. The idea behind this plan is that there would be a different plan, Uncle Sam's plan, run by the government, where you could get insurance through the government.

And conservatives say, well, that's unfair to the existing companies, because they would undercut, drive them out of business. Like Congresswoman Waters say, supporters of the plan say, look, it's just good competition and there's no reason why it would be unfair. Look how well UPS and FedEx do competing against the post office. That's the plan.

BROWN: And that's the point that the president has made time and time again.

TOOBIN: The president made that...

(CROSSTALK)

TOOBIN: Many times. BROWN: Ezra, let me go to this. You heard Congresswoman Waters there. Give us a sense for how intense the anger is on the left over this. And are they willing to really put muscle behind it?

EZRA KLEIN, STAFF REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": It's very significant, right?

I think that for the left and for that matter for the right the public option has become the single symbolic measure of success on this, right? It's a big bill. The parts are hard to follow. And it's hard to say whether you're winning or you're losing. But this has become the way people decide that.

Now, as for the muscle piece of things, it's going to be a tricky fight. The congresswoman and the Progressive Caucus have made an argument that if you try to sacrifice the public option for a couple votes in the Senate, you're going to lose so many in the House you can't pass the bill.

At the end of the day, they're having troubling prosecuting that because people think that they're not really going to kill health care reform. But I have spoken with the chairwoman of the caucus, and they seem very serious about it to me.

BROWN: But address that argument, if you would, Congresswoman, that I guess bottom line is that they think you're bluffing.

WATERS: Well, let me just say that this is a dynamic process. And for those of us who feel strongly about having a public option, having a credible health care reform bill, not caving in so much that what you get won't amount to real reform, we're serious.

I'm told that someone said, oh, you don't have to worry about the progressives. We will eventually get them. I don't think that is the case this time. I think that we have a lot of people who feel very strongly about this. We're going to hold firm, and we're going to demand that we have a credible health care bill.

No one can say that we're not willing to compromise at any time, anyplace, anywhere. We did that on single-payer. We showed that we were willing to work with the Blue Dogs and the opposite side of the aisle and anybody else who didn't like single-payer. So, we backed up. And now we are insisting on having a public option. And I think that's where we're going to stick.

BLITZER: All right. Congresswoman Waters, Maxine Waters, joining us tonight, Ezra Klein and Jeff Toobin, who is going to be sticking around to talk to us again a little later in the show, thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it.

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