MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

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Thanks very much for your time tonight, Congresswoman.

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: You"re welcome. Delighted to be here.

O"DONNELL: Senator Ben Nelson got some very high priced concessions on the way to that final vote locking things up for Harry Reid. He also said that he will not allow any changes in this bill when it goes to the House, when it goes to conference for the House. If it comes back with any changes it will lose Senator Nelson"s vote and thereby not be able to pass the Senate.

So, if you are from the conference, if you are in effect presented with the Senate bill, will you vote for it?

WATERS: I have to know what"s in that bill. As you know, there have been a lot of changes from what we set from the House. Aside from the Louisiana Purchase and the Nelson bill that--where he got, I guess, Medicaid in perpetuity, I don"t know what"s in the bill.

I"m hopeful that I can vote for the bill, but you know I"m one of those who was strong on public option and we had given up on single-payer compromise on public option, and then they said they wanted to move to expansion of Medicare. And we thought, well, perhaps we"ll have to go along with that. But now that that"s stripped out of the bill, I really have to se this bill to know what"s in it.

O"DONNELL: The bill that you voted for is paid for with a tax on millionaires, a tax on individual incomes above $500,000, and joint filers, couples over $1 million dollars. The Senate bill is paid for primarily with a tax on union health care plans.

Can you vote for the tax on union health care plans?

WATERS: I don"t know if I can or not. Again, I want to see what"s in this bill. I want to understand what they were trying to do. It does not sound like it"s something I"m going to be very happy with, but we"ll see.

O"DONNELL: Well, that sounds like you can vote for a tax on union health care plans. What about Medicaid?

WATERS: Well, I"m not sure.

O"DONNELL: OK.

WATERS: What about what?

O"DONNELL: What about Medicaid? You saw the state of Nebraska was--got its Medicaid--you know there is an expansion of Medicaid in this bill as there is in the House bill, and the expansion of Medicaid now in the state of Nebraska will be paid for fully, 100 percent, by the United States government instead of shared by the federal government and by the state of Nebraska.

What about California? Should California demand now? Will you demand for California that 100 percent of its Medicaid expenditures are covered by the federal government?

WATERS: Well, when we se a senator like Senator Nelson hold up a bill and able to cut that kind of deal, it certainly makes us think that maybe we should be fighting harder, also, for our states. Of course, we would like not to have the states have to pay their share of Medicaid. Of course, we are in deficit here. Many states are.

Now, he"s got a special deal and some of us are not going to like that very much.

O"DONNELL: It turns out a lot of what Democratic senators and members of Congress have been saying all year has turned out not to be true. There have been many, many promises that there would be a public option in this bill. Nancy Pelosi promised a public option. Obviously, the Congress is moving away from that.

Are you prepared to say tonight that there will be a public option in the final bill if the House can, in any way, get a public option in there and then somehow get it past the Senate?

WATERS: Well, I"ll tell you--a lot of us will be fighting and encouraging our conferees to hold tight for a public option. We have not given up on that. That"s extremely important to a lot of people, not just Democrats, but I mean Americans throughout this country. They know that without public option there will be no competition.

We"re going to turn over 30 million people to the insurance industry to increase their premiums and co-pays and deductibles? I don"t think that we"re going to be too happy with that, and we"ll have to fight as hard as we possibly can to get that public option. Without it, some of us are going to have to not vote for the bill.

O"DONNELL: But--so that would mean, if the House held to their position on public option, that means this bill would die in the conference, correct?

WATERS: Oh, absolutely. If we held to our position, it would certainly die in conference.

O"DONNELL: All right. Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California--thanks very much for your time tonight.

WATERS: You"re welcome.

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