MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

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O‘DONNELL: Back to HARDBALL.

Tonight, President Obama lays out of his framework for health care reform. The big question remains, will he have the votes in Congress?

Joining us now, Senate Majority leader Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Senator Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, a week after that election in November, did you sit down with your then junior colleague Barack Obama and explain to him that the politics of governing are 1,000 times more complicated than the politics campaigning?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Well, we did sit down and talk.

And, believe me, his experience in the Illinois State Senate prepared him for the rough-and-tumble of Congress and Capitol Hill. But I think he has done a great job. We have achieved a lot of things this year. We have a lot more to do. Certainly, health care leads the agenda. And, tonight, the president will address it.

O‘DONNELL: You‘re the Senate whip. How many votes do you have today for the public option in the United States Senate?

DURBIN: You know, that is a hard vote to—to really measure at this moment, because we don‘t know what it looks like and we don‘t know the context.

I would tell you, I think the majority of people in the Senate want to make sure the health insurance companies are kept honest here, that we could have some competition, that people can have a chance to get affordable health insurance premiums. That really is the bottom line.

I‘m for the public option. Don‘t get me wrong. But if there is a better way to do it or another way to do it, I am going to keep an open mind on it.

O‘DONNELL: Now, let‘s get a little procedural here.

In 1994, the Senate looked so weak compared to the House on health care reform, that, as you remember—you were a member of the House at the time—the House asked the Senate to go first, to prove that the Senate could actually pass something, because the House didn‘t want to waste its energy making difficult votes on something that was never going to get to conference.

Is that the way it‘s going to play out this time? Have you been asked by Nancy Pelosi to go first in the Senate?

DURBIN: No.

At this point we, believe the House is preparing to move forward and may precede us. But we‘re going to keep on our own schedule. I believe that we are going to see a bill laid down next week for public scrutiny for a full week before it is taken up by the Senate Finance Committee.

And, then, of course, if we are successful bringing a bill out of that committee, blend it from the earlier bill from the House Education and Labor Committee, and then move it to the floor. So, we hope to, by the early part of October, we will have this measure on the floor. I don‘t know if the House‘s scheduled is any sooner.

O‘DONNELL: Now, again, procedural—and this is something people have been talking about a lot lately—reconciliation, do you think this bill can pass—or any reasonable version of this bill can pass—in a reconciliation process?

DURBIN: No.

I think what you could pass in a reconciliation process are some important elements. But a comprehensive health care reform bill requires the regular procedure and the regular business of the Senate. If we can‘t get 60 votes, which is the threshold vote for the regular procedure, then of course we have to consider reconciliation.

O‘DONNELL: So, this speech tonight is many things. It is a speech to the nation where the president‘s poll numbers are down. Fifty-two percent are opposed to this president‘s handling of—of health care reform.

It is a speech to that body, both the House, the Blue Dogs, the liberals in the House. It‘s a speech, as you know, to your—your colleagues in the Senate. But if there is an isolated camera to hold on one senator all night, it would be Olympia Snowe.

In many ways, this is unlike any speech we have seen before. It is a speech to an audience of one, to Olympia Snowe. Have you been working with her directly yourself, or have you all left that just to Max Baucus, the chairman of her Finance Committee.

DURBIN: I can tell you that Max Baucus and—as well as the others, Conrad and Senator Bingaman, have been working with her and other Republicans for a long time. For weeks, they continue to.

She has shown extraordinary courage and leadership. She has told us what the bottom line is. And they are working with her. No commitments have been made, understand. But, keep in mind, we think, at the end of the day we, there will be more than one Republican senator joining us. We certainly hope so.

This should be a bipartisan effort. We have given the Republicans every effort for months to work with us on crafting this bill. We want to get it done on a bipartisan basis.

O‘DONNELL: Now, Senator, one thing that has happened this year, with all the focus on Republican opposition to the public option and other elements, is, it has masked, in effect, how difficult your job as whip is in getting over 50 Democrats to vote for any version of this thing.

I mean, the truth of it is, you have got some Democrats in your caucus who are not ready to go to the public option and are probably not ready to go to the employer mandate, probably not ready to go to some of these new taxation elements that were invented by the Ways and Means Committee and now the Finance Committee.

When the focus becomes how is Dick Durbin doing on whipping up a majority of Democratic votes, what are you going to have to show us?

DURBIN: Well, listen, 59 Democratic senators—of course, with the death of Ted Kennedy, we are down to 59 -- all happen to be taken—have to be taken seriously. We have to sit down with them and go through the bill, because, for each and every one of us, this is a critically important bill back in our home states.

Most of the focus has been on a gang of six, six senators in the Senate Finance Committee, but this is going to be moving to the floor. And, as it moves to the floor, each and every senator is going to have to have that moment when they take into consideration things that are critically important at home. We don‘t assume a vote, but we‘re going to work to win every vote.

O‘DONNELL: Well, after this speech, your job is just going to get more difficult by the day.

DURBIN: It will.

O‘DONNELL: Thank you, Senator Dick Durbin...

DURBIN: All right.

O‘DONNELL: ... Senate whip, for joining us today.

DURBIN: Thanks. Good to be with you.

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