MSNBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. GREGORY: Let me turn now to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Leader, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): Glad to be with you, David.

MR. GREGORY: Is there one Republican who will support any Democratic healthcare initiative?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, what we really need to do is start over. I mean, I--the message in Massachusetts was absolutely clear. The exit polls that I looked at said 48 percent of the people in Massachusetts said they voted for the new senator over health care. Only 5 percent mentioned any other issue. The American people had a victory in Massachusetts, and they were sending us the message "stop and start over."

The first thing we ought to do is go back to what the president said in 2007, let's have the C-SPAN cameras in the room. Number two, let's concentrate on cost, which is what the American people would like us to address. And a good place to start there is with junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, which were not even a part of the proposal. Absolutely, it's time to start over and go step-by-step to address the issue that the American people thought we...

MR. GREGORY: So let me just be clear. There is not one Republican that would vote for any Democratic healthcare reform initiative that's out there now?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, this comprehensive bill? Of course not. You know, the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to it.

MR. GREGORY: So it sounds like...

SEN. McCONNELL: What we need to do...

MR. GREGORY: ...the party of no charge is well deserved.

SEN. McCONNELL: No, no. What I said we need to do--I just said it. We need to, we need to stop and start over and go step-by-step...

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. McCONNELL: ...to fix the cost problem.

MR. GREGORY: So what elements of the president's reform plan would you keep as part of comprehensive healthcare reform?

SEN. McCONNELL: We'd have to sit down and discuss that. But it's...

MR. GREGORY: Well, we've been discussing it for months now.

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, the problem is we haven't been a part of the discussion. We've had a number of different ideas, none of which are in the bill.

MR. GREGORY: How many Republicans were negotiating on the Finance Committee?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, several.

MR. GREGORY: Right. So weren't they part of the process from the start?

SEN. McCONNELL: Yeah. But it's not just about talking, it's about what you end up with.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEN. McCONNELL: And from a policy...

MR. GREGORY: What did they say yes to in the course of that negotiation?

SEN. McCONNELL: From a policy, from a policy point of view, what this ended up being was a $2.5 trillion bill that cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars, raised taxes by half a trillion dollars, would drive up insurance premiums for most Americans. That's not reform. And that didn't have much appeal to Republican senators.

MR. GREGORY: So tick off the top three points of the Republican plan for, for healthcare reform.

SEN. McCONNELL: First, you do have to do it on a bipartisan basis. You put the C-SPAN cameras in the room, as the president said. You start with junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, interstate competition among insurance companies, and many of my members would be looking--would be willing to look at equalizing the tax code. Right no w if you're a corporation and you provide insurance for your employees, you get to deduct it on your corporate tax return. But if you're an individual on the individual market, you don't. Step-by-step to work on the cost problem. That's what Republicans are willing to do.

MR. GREGORY: Is universal coverage a priority?

SEN. McCONNELL: Expanding coverage is a good idea. But even under this $2.5 trillion monstrosity, they still didn't end up covering everybody. That is easier said than done. But if you equalize the tax code, you make it more possible for more people who are currently uninsured to, to purchase insurance. Right now they have no tax incentive to do it. And a lot of young people look at the situation, say, "Gee, I'm going to live forever, why should I buy it?"

MR. GREGORY: Is healthcare reform dead?

SEN. McCONNELL: This particular bill deserves to be stopped. What we need to do is start over and get it right.

MR. GREGORY: But my question was, you're looking at the votes, you're looking at the landscape; is healthcare reform dead?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, the Democrats are in the majority. They have the White House, they have the House, they have the Senate. They have to decide whether they want to listen to the voices of the American people. All the surveys all across the country--and even in the most liberal state in America, arguably, Massachusetts--the people are telling us, "Please don't pass this bill." Now, if they get past this arrogant phase that they've been stuck in for about a year that, "We know best. We don't want to listen to public opinion here, we want to `make history,'" if they can work their way past that and concentrate on the real problem, which is the cost, we're willing to look at it. But I think we need to be concentrating on the economy.

Look, we passed a stimulus bill. The, the goal there was to keep unemployment at 8 percent. It's now 10 percent, in my state 10.6 percent. Let's concentrate on what the American--you showed the survey earlier in your program of what people would like for us to be working on, and that's job creation.

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MR. GREGORY: I just--before we get to, to jobs, I just want to ask you quickly, it sounds like you're saying there still may be some, some reason for hope here, that the president can cobble together and agreement to actually get healthcare reform through. Is that your view?

SEN. McCONNELL: What I, what I hope is that this current bill that we've had on the table is finished, over.

MR. GREGORY: Right. But you're not pronouncing it finished.

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, the majority ought to make that--reach that decision. It ought to be over. The American people are telling us, "Please stop trying to pass this."

MR. GREGORY: You talk about jobs. Before we get to that, a key issue coming up, as I mentioned, is Ben Bernanke's renomination. Will you vote for him as head of the Fed?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, he's going to have bipartisan support in the Senate, and I would anticipate he'd be confirmed.

MR. GREGORY: Will you vote for him?

SEN. McCONNELL: He's going to have bipartisan support...

MR. GREGORY: But you won't say how you'll vote?

SEN. McCONNELL: ...in the Senate. I'll let you know in the next day or so.

MR. GREGORY: Do you have concerns about his renomination?

SEN. McCONNELL: He's--I think he's going to be confirmed.

MR. GREGORY: But do you have concerns about his renomination?

SEN. McCONNELL: Some of my members do, but I think he's going to be confirmed.

MR. GREGORY: All right. Let me ask you about jobs. What is the GOP plan to create jobs?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, the first thing you do is you stop this job killing healthcare bill, and you don't pass the energy tax that passed the House earlier this year. Their prescription for new jobs is obviously higher taxes. Don't do that. You've got tax relief that was passed a number of years ago expiring next year. Don't raise taxes in the middle of a recession. Look, if I'm running a small business, David, and I'm trying to figure out what to do next year, I'd like to expand employment, but I'm looking at the potential for healthcare taxes, I'm looking at the potential of income taxes going up, dividend taxes going up, capital gains taxes going up. The cost of adding employees is bothering me. And then I see the administration rattling the markets on top of it. You know, if you sum up the first year, what this administration has done best is rattle the markets, advocate tax increases and run up deficits. That's not a very comforting message to business people looking at trying to expand employment.

MR. GREGORY: The president's also looking at the long-term fiscal health of the United States. He wants to put together a bipartisan commission that will look at the possibility of either tax increases or budget cuts or both, but long-term budget health. Will you support that?

SEN. McCONNELL: I think a spending commission is a good idea. I've been advocating it all year. We're going to have votes on several different forms of that in the, in this very next week in the Senate. Spending is the problem. I do worry that if we construct this commission in the wrong way, it will be kind of an indirect way to raise taxes. I've already indicated what I've said earlier today, that raising taxes in the middle of a recession's not a good idea. We don't want this to end up doing that. What we need is a spending reduction commission. Get spending down.

MR. GREGORY: You said that the Republicans would always choose bipartisan solutions when they were available. And yet the one statement from a Republican this year, Senator DeMint, that health care would be Obama's Waterloo, to many people signals the approach that Republicans have taken, which is oppose the president at all costs, just stand in the way of his agenda. Is that constructive?

SEN. McCONNELL: Look, we have a hundred members of the Senate. All of them have different points of view about every issue. My view is that this is not about the president, this is about the country. And if you look at the first year of this administration, we haven't made much progress. You know, we passed a deficit--a budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in 10, tried to pass energy taxes, tried to pass healthcare taxes. I--what I hope we're going to hear from the president next Wednesday night is an indication that he'd like to go in a, in a different direction. And as I've said all year, if he wants to meet us in the middle of the political spectrum, we'll be there to help him.

MR. GREGORY: Well, this is how you're characterizing President Obama's first year. How would you characterize the performance of Republicans?

SEN. McCONNELL: What we did is--this year is try to operate on principle. The president made a decision to go hard left. That's why he doesn't have many of my members. If he chooses to govern in the middle, I think he'll have much broader cooperation from Republicans.

MR. GREGORY: We talked about Scott Brown's surprising victory in Massachusetts. The celebration went forth from Massachusetts throughout the political world. It was an indication that perhaps a Time magazine cover from earlier in the year might have been wrong. This was Time magazine in May. It had the GOP as an endangered species. Maybe the party's gotten a big shot in the arm here. But look at this in terms of confidence in Republican leadership, from our recent poll. To make the right decisions, confidence in congressional Republicans, 75 percent, three quarters say they have some or none. Are the American people ready to return to Republican leadership?

SEN. McCONNELL: I think the most significant question is what's call a party generic ballot question. If the election were held today, would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican candidate for Congress? On the day the president was sworn in, my party was down 15. A couple of weeks ago we were up 4. I, I think the American people are never permanently in the camp of either party, never permanent. They're looking at performance. They want to know what we're going to do for them. And I think the reason that you had the victories in Virginia and New Jersey and most improbably in Massachusetts, of all places, was the American people are saying, "We want to go in a different direction." I hope the president will get the message and change direction, and we'll begin to see that next Wednesday night.

MR. GREGORY: Does the Republican Party, in this election year, need what the Republicans had in 1994, which is a contract with America, as they did in '94, to get 300 Republicans to sign up for no new taxes and a balanced budget? Do you see that as being a necessity this year?

SEN. McCONNELL: Yeah, I think we will have a plan. We've had a plan, an alternate plan, on everything this year, and I think we'll have an alternate plan for the voters in, in November.

MR. GREGORY: So you will have a contract with America for 2010?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, I don't know what it, what it'll be called. And of course, every race is different. You know, running in New England is different from running in the West. Senate races are typically, to some extent, custom crafted to the, to the people that, that will be voting.

MR. GREGORY: The Supreme Court decision this week to allow corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns is getting a lot of criticism. Who do you think it benefits most, Republicans or Democrats?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, I don't know who it benefits, but it's an important victory for the First Amendment. Right now if you're General Electric and you own NBC, you can say anything you want to about any candidate right up to the day of the election. But if you're a corporation or a union that doesn't own a media outlet, you haven't been able to. So you've had this big gap in the First Amendment applying one standard to media-owned corporations, another standard to unions and corporations that don't own media outlets. Now the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment is for everyone. I think that's a step in the right direction.

MR. GREGORY: Final point here. The president's about to give his State of the Union address. You know, a lot people look at Washington and they say Washington doesn't work. So beyond the partisanship, how about some constructive engagement? What would you advise the president to do to help Washington work better in his second year?

SEN. McCONNELL: Look, it's about policy, not personality. I like the president. I like him a lot. I think he's a terrific person. We've had a number of meetings. I enjoy being around him. I like what he's doing in Afghanistan. It's about policy, David. And if the president wants to govern in the middle, there'll be Republicans there to meet him.

MR. GREGORY: What are Republicans prepared to do to be more constructive this year?

SEN. McCONNELL: We have to see what he--you know, he's the president. He has a right to govern. Governing is hard work, as he has discovered. But he, he makes the initiatives and we react to them. And if he will move to the political center, I think he'll find a lot more Republican support than he's had in the first year.

MR. GREGORY: But he has to move before Republicans will do anything?

SEN. McCONNELL: He's the president of the United States. We're waiting for him to make his initiatives. He was chosen to make the tough decisions. He chose to go hard left the first year. We'll see, beginning Wednesday night, where he plans to be the second year.

MR. GREGORY: Given the, the state of the political mood right now, are there incumbent Republicans who need to worry this election year?

SEN. McCONNELL: I think that--as I said earlier, I don't think the voters are ever permanently in the camp of either party, and we've seen that on full display over the last couple of years. Our candidates will be arguing for lower taxes, lower deficits and a vibrant economy, and we'll see what the American people decide in November. If the election were held today, obviously, we'd have a very good election.

MR. GREGORY: Leader McConnell, thank you very much.

SEN. McCONNELL: Thank you.

MR. GREGORY: And coming up next, our roundtable sorts through it all. Weighing in on the 2010 political landscape and the Obama agenda: E.J. Dionne, Katty Kay, Peggy Noonan and Chuck Todd. Plus, our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE from 1976: Advice from a senator to a president as he prepares to deliver his State of the Union address. Only here on MEET THE PRESS.

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