MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript
Interview
MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript
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Senator Chuck Schumer joining us tonight here on THE ED SHOW on MSNBC.
Good to have you with us.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Nice to be here.
SCHULTZ: You are proposing total airspace control. Is that correct?
SCHUMER: That"s correct.
SCHULTZ: Right from the ground all the way through?
SCHUMER: Right now, from zero to 1,000 feet, there"s no regulation. No one has to file flight plans. That may work in rural Idaho. It doesn"t work in New York City, particularly over the Hudson River, which lots of planes like to go over.
SCHULTZ: You want flight plans mandatory?
SCHUMER: Flight plans mandatory. Helicopters should be part of the FAA regulation scheme. They"re not right now. And you need to do a lot of things. I mean, under President Bush, the FAA was cut to smithereens. The head of the FAA was a political appointee, basically a hack. OMB ran the show.
So we don"t have enough controllers in the Teterboro tower. There are many things that should be done. And most of all, if you got this modern GPS system, which uses satellites, it would be much easier to monitor everything. It was developed in 2001 and France bought it, Italy bought it, Germany bought it, China, Japan, Tibet. We didn"t because OMB said it was too expensive. It"s absurd and we"ve got to buy it.
SCHULTZ: I"ve done a lot of work with the air traffic controllers. They talk about their antiquated equipment. But they also talk about, senator, the attack on labor the last eight years, how they have run a lot of experienced controllers out of jobs. Work rules have changed. This obviously is too much--
SCHUMER: The woman who ran the show was just crazy. I said to the business groups--business groups I said, you would never run a business like this. You wouldn"t so alienate your workers that nothing was functioning, and you couldn"t sell your product.
SCHULTZ: What"s going to happen? I mean, how long would it take to implement new standards? The ones that--man power.
SCHUMER: That"s easy. They could actually require the filling of flight plans and stuff like that within six months. The GPS system and the new equipment they need takes a little longer. Every day waited is a day that we"re not as safe as we should be.
SCHULTZ: Senator, let"s switch gears to health care.
SCHUMER: You"ve got it.
SCHULTZ: Who is going to lead the charge for the Democrats? Who"s going to stand up and hold the Republican obstructionists accountable on the Senate floor? How much determination is there from the Democratic side?
SCHUMER: Oh, I think there"s real determination from the Democratic side, Ed, in this sense: I think most Democrats, liberal, moderate, even conservative, realize to go home with no bill is the worst thing of all. Now there"s a growing realization. You saw today what Mr. Gibbs said about Enzi. Chuck Grassley"s letter to all of his fund-raisers, just attacking the Democrats--that the idea of having Grassley and Enzi negotiate in good faith is pretty much gone.
SCHULTZ: Have you given up on a bipartisan effort?
SCHUMER: Well, I was one who said we ought to look seriously at reconciliation. I prefer a bipartisan effort, all things being equal. So would everybody. I don"t think it"s likely to happen now. Olympia Snowe is a different--you know, a different type of actor in this than Enzi and Grassley.
SCHULTZ: You might get some Republican votes?
SCHUMER: Very few. Maybe on different issues you"ll get different ones. We basically, in my view--the way we"re going to get health care reform is by relying on our Democratic caucus to carry the ball, because the Republican leadership for sure, both McConnell in the Senate, Boehner in the House, and most--and the Republican base says to every Republican, no bill or we"re going to get really upset with you.
SCHULTZ: Some of the lives--
SCHUMER: They listen.
SCHULTZ: And some of the lies--let"s go to this sound cut of Senator Enzi, what he said in his Republican weekly response. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MIKE ENZI ®, WYOMING: These bills also raid Medicare. This will result in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the elderly to create new government programs. This intrusion of a Washington bureaucrat in the relationship between a doctor and patient is not the kind of reform Americans are seeking.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHULTZ: Cutting hundreds of billions of dollars. Is that the truth?
SCHUMER: No, it"s not at all. We"re going to keep the Medicare system. In fact, when the fellow party members of Senator Enzi attack a government plan, the answer is, oh, you don"t like Medicare? You really talk to the Republican base, a lot of them don"t like Medicare. They"d like to get rid of it. They think it was a mistake.
So Mike Enzi there is defending Medicare. Most of his party says anything the government does is a bad thing, including Medicare.
SCHULTZ: OK. But he says that the Democrats are going to cut billions of dollars out of the Medicare program, which senior citizens are hearing the reimbursement isn"t going to be there; I"m not going to get the kind of coverage I have normally gotten. Is that going to happen?
SCHUMER: No, it is not going to happen.
SCHULTZ: What about this constant pounding of how there"s going to be a government agent between you and your doctor? What"s your best play against some rhetoric that obviously some Americans are believing?
SCHUMER: I think the problem with our sort of messaging is twofold. One, the negatives should have been hit back much harder. For about a month, this idea of the death panel--
SCHULTZ: The death panel.
SCHUMER: -- of the illegal immigrants getting Medicare.
SCHULTZ: That"s all false.
SCHUMER: All that, all false. Of abortion--a doctor being forced to do an abortion, all false. You have to hit those back. But then you have to explain to people why they"re doing it. Here"s what I do: I say, look, in seven years, Medicare is going to run out of money. If you"re a senior citizen, you won"t have Medicare. We have to certainly make sure that Medicare continues to exist. And you can"t do that by the status quo.
Then I say, if you have a job and you like the health insurance your employer provides you, there"s all too good a chance he"s going to call you in and say, Ed, you"ve been a great worker. I love you here. I want you to stay here. But I can no longer cover your health insurance because the cost doubles over every seven years.
We have to show people that the reason we are doing reform is not just to cover new people. That"s an admirable goal.
SCHULTZ: To save what we have. Does the co-op have any merit at all?
Would you sign on--
SCHUMER: No. The co-op--look, the co-op, as conceived by Chuck Grassley, is 100 farmers getting together and forming a co-op, and then we solve the problem. I"ve always said I think the co-op is dead. But I"ve always said, even when it had a little life, it needs to do--anything that comes in needs to do three things, cover everybody--not cover everybody, but Have everybody available for it, that they can purchase it. Start on day one. And be big enough, strong enough, tough enough to go against both the big insurance companies and the big suppliers.
The co-op, as envisioned by Chuck Grassley, doesn"t come close to that, so it is dead.
SCHULTZ: You"re all about a public plan.
SCHUMER: Yes.
SCHULTZ: You"re all about pre-existing conditions being gone.
SCHUMER: Yes.
SCHULTZ: Which the insurance industry is going to--
SCHUMER: By the way, on the public plan, here"s what I say to my constituents in New York, and I commend it to my colleagues. I say, we have private colleges and public colleges in New York. You"re not forced to send your kids to either one. You have a choice. We"re better off that we have both. Each is stronger because we have the other. And it gives you a choice. Same thing with public option.
SCHULTZ: Senator, great to have you on tonight. I appreciate your work. Keep up the fight. Thank you so much.
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