MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

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Time to call, once again, in, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who co-wrote the public option that is in the health care bill.

Senator, thanks again for your time tonight.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D), RHODE ISLAND: Thank you, Keith. Good to be with you.

OLBERMANN: Is it as blunt as this: don't tamper further with the public option or you lose-if you don't tamper further with the public option, you lose the four conservative Democrats; and if you do tamper further with the public option, you lose Sanders and Burris and maybe others?

WHITEHOUSE: I think there's a little bit more room to maneuver than that. I think, first of all, once everyone has got a chance to say their say on the Senate floor, to call for their votes, to make their arguments, when the dust is settled, they're in a slightly different position than at the very beginning. And I think if people go through that whole process and then want to take their ball and go home, that's a very different thing than having never been heard.

I also think that there's some room around the details of the public option between opt-in and opt-out and trigger. I, for one, am not particularly concerned about the names. I would like to see the public option as available as possible. And there may be room for a compromise, for instance, with Senator Snowe about a trigger that actually does better in terms of reach for the public option.

So, I'm supporting the Leader Reid's bill. I think it's a good one. I think we should stick with it. But I don't think that it's beyond the pale to think about ways that we can implement the public option in alternative ways.

OLBERMANN: Based on something you just said and something that Senator Ben Nelson said in a clip we played earlier, and something now that Senator Lincoln has spoken at a jobs event in Arkansas, I'm wondering-is there some measure of this in which people want to be able to say, "I spoke my piece," and then supported an only slightly watered-down bill?

Because what Senator Lincoln has said tonight-and I know I'm catching you cold on this, but here's a summary from the speech. When asked what she'd like to see in the bill, she would protect Medicare and Medicaid, also look at their inefficiencies, cut out extra spending. Small businesses should be represented in the final legislation. She also wants the Senate to look hard at what a public option would bring for future taxpayers. On the underlying bill, she said, should also include strong insurance reforms that would address customer rating based on gender or location as well as preexisting conditions.

She says, in essence, here, she wants these positions raised, not necessarily the bill altered to match her position exactly.

Is there some undercurrent of that in some of the tepid support for this bill?

WHITEHOUSE: Yes. And I also think that all of the points that she's raised are very easy to negotiate and discuss. There's nothing that's highly controversial. They're all very logical kernels for somebody to have, and particularly on the public option. If what she's really focused in on is its effect on future taxpayers, well, the Senate HELP bill solves that, because it requires each public option state-by-state to stay solvent and to have no recourse back to taxpayers.

So, you know, I think as we talk through this, we may find that there's more room than it presently seems.

OLBERMANN: Then, can you address Governor Dean's pessimism, which is heretofore not been expressed and was seemingly expressed pretty profoundly today? He's sort of viewing this-I think to summarize what he said-a kind of lose/lose situation at the moment.

WHITEHOUSE: I think this may be one of those moments when it's more discouraging from the outside looking in than it looks when you're there in the middle of the discussions, when you've seen all the senators in caucus together.

When you've heard from President Clinton and others coming in and reminding us how important this is to get through, and when you see that, you know, elements like the public option remain extremely popular with the American public-I just feel a lot more confident than Howard Dean does. And I think it may be because I have a slightly different perspective and I'm a little bit more-getting the inside view.

OLBERMANN: One of the few advantages being in the belly of the beast right at the particular moment, I hope you're entirely correct.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island-thanks for the encouragement. Thanks for your time and happy Thanksgiving.

WHITEHOUSE: Happy Thanksgiving, Keith.

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