MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to this special edition of HARDBALL.

U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa of California is the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Governor Reform Committee.

Congressman, thank you for coming back tonight and sticking around.

We heard Jim Clyburn...

REP. DARRELL ISSA ®, CALIFORNIA: No problem.

MATTHEWS: ... the ranking--the--the Democratic whip, who basically confirmed the fact that the bottom--the plan for the Democrats now to get health care through is the House to pass the Senate bill, and the Senate to reconcile, through the reconciliation measure, the problems the House has with the Senate bill, and the public, quite frankly, has with it, and to fix the bill in a two-step.

What will your side do?

ISSA: Well, Chris, I"m from a state where it takes two-thirds majority in order to do budgets or tax increases.

So, I will go back home, and I think most Republicans will go back home, and say, the democratic tradition of the Senate has been violated in this process.

But, even if you get past that--and I don"t have a Frank Luntz moment here--I think what we have is, we have a failure to see that the compromise that they"re proposing is no compromise, except among themselves. And the compromise that maybe Massachusetts told us, or certainly the American people told me last summer, is the one that"s not there.

And it"s a shame. Today was a lost opportunity. And I think Republicans came prepared to hope for a compromise that they didn"t see happen.

MATTHEWS: Well, that sounds like a strategy of--of basically complaint. Is that it? Do you recognize that they have the numbers? Do you recognize they have the numbers to do what I described it looks like they intend to do?

ISSA: Chris, you know, I ran for the Senate, and lost, but I have always respected the fact that the Senate was a democratic process. It was a process in which everyone felt that the--they didn"t have a vote when people didn"t understand things. They didn"t have a rush to judgment.

And, in fact, I think that that"s--there are a lot of good things there. Serving in the House, sometimes--and both sides have been guilty of it over the years--sometimes, basically, they throw something in at the last minute, and you report on it weeks or months later all the things that we wouldn"t have voted for if we had known were in there.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

ISSA: In this case, it"s very clear that there are lots of easy gains, easy things we can do.

We passed something out of the House, overwhelmingly bipartisan, last

yesterday that stripped away the limited antitrust exemption for health care insurance providers. You know, that was a--that was a good idea of something that, although not universally liked, could be voted by two-thirds-plus.

I have a bill, HR-3438. All it says is, let"s open up the system, if you will, the public option of letting people into the system that members of Congress and members of the federal work force are in, easy enough to do. Put it on the floor, it will pass in the House and the Senate.

MATTHEWS: I like that.

ISSA: There are dozens of things like that...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

ISSA: ... that would be confidence-builders.

And, you know, you have followed more than just politics. You have followed the Middle East peace process. You"ve followed a lot of places in which you look and say there"s so little trust or so little ability to trust that the outcome will be good that what you have to do is prove a few things.

I think the president should take--I really believe he should take a good chunk of this that can be passed with at least some Republican support and put it out there, get the confidence of the American people that incrementalism to the left or the right is probably in the American people"s best interests.

You know, the health care system is not so broken that you must do all at once, even though the American people know--and Republicans had better start saying this in what we do--it is broken enough that it needs to be fixed, but it doesn"t necessarily need to be fixed all at once.

Let"s do what we can agree to do. That"s what we didn"t hear today from either side.

MATTHEWS: But the president said it in concluding the session today -

and I heard what you said, and it has great validity--but the president said today, in ending it, there"s a fundamental difference between him, his party and your party.

That is to cover the 30 million people that are not insured right now.

Does your party have a plan to do that?

ISSA: Well, I don"t speak for my party. I do speak for the 49th Congressional District. I can tell you that, if we had a bill before us that said we would augment in all 50 states people who could not afford insurance through a means testing, we would come up with a scheme to augment them, like we do with SCHIP and some other areas, that that concept would fly through my district as it--look, as long as they really can"t afford it, we"re willing to help.

And those who can afford it should be told they better buy it, and stop going to emergency rooms and saying they have no insurance.

MATTHEWS: Have you run that by John Boehner?

ISSA: I have. And John Boehner is supportive that the poor need to be taken care of.

Now, in fairness, unless we come together on a bipartisan basis, we"re not going to work out the nuances of what can work. Unless we get doctors and hospital executives in and insurance companies...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

ISSA: ... we"re not going to come up with the most cost-effective way to do it.

But, at the same time...

MATTHEWS: OK.

ISSA: ... you know, both sides should admit that we need to deal with the fact that our health care cost, insured or uninsured, is escalating and making--and being less affordable...

MATTHEWS: OK.

ISSA: ... while other countries are coming to grips with it. We have to do that, too.

MATTHEWS: You know, it"s just the problem is that I have watched for this. As you said, for 30, 40 years, I have been watching politics. And I have never seen the Republicans, with the exception of Richard Nixon back in "70s, really come out for a plan to provide health care for all the people that don"t have it.

But I accept the fact that you would do it. So, Congressman, thank you very much, Darrell Issa from California.

ISSA: Thank you, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Thanks for joining us and staying around tonight.

We will be right back with much more on the strategy of today"s health care summit.

This is a special edition of HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

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