CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: CBO Affordable Care Act Report

Interview

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URNETT: Both things are right. All right, joining me now, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. You just saw him there. Congressman, great to see you as always. I'm so excited you came on because I know you know so much about this. So obviously --

VAN HOLLEN: Great to see you and welcome back.

BURNETT: Thank you. It's great to be back. Great to talk about stuff like this. So, all right, you obviously heard, you know, Paul Ryan there asking the CBO director about lowering economic growth. He said it would lower economic growth. In that report, as you know, the CBO says the amount of work done would drop 2 percent.

Now that's not the same thing as saying economic output would drop 2 percent. It might a little bit less than that. Just to make the point how significant that is, if you took 2 percent of the economic output of the United States, that's $325 billion a year. That is a lot of money.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, of course, Erin, as Dr. Almendor pointed out, he wasn't putting a dollar value on the ability of somebody to spend a little bit more time at home with the kids or ability of somebody to leave the job of the large employer and take the risk of starting up an entrepreneurial business of their own, number one.

Number two, if you look at the affordable care act in its full context, Dr. Almendor also said that because it reduces the deficit over the 10-year and 20-year window, that actually will help economic growth because if you lower the deficits in the out years on net, that actually spurs economic growth. So what was -- what was clear was the first thing you said, which is that right now if you were to repeal the affordable care act, you get less demand for labor in the economy and that means higher unemployment today.

BURNETT: It's interesting though because if you're going to lower the deficit with fewer equivalent people working, you're lowering the deficit without raising taxes, right?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, what the affordable care act does is reduce expenditures because we got rid of the some of the overpayments in the Medicare program so we reduced the deficit by spending less on Medicare while providing the same services because we're just ending those overpayments. And, number two, there are some revenues that come in through the affordable care act. On net because of the revenues and the reduction in expenditures, that outweighs the additional expenditures from the tax credit. It reduces the long-term deficit and that actually helps long term economic growth.

BURNETT: Look, I hear the point you're making. I have to admit. My personal view on this is I don't trust any number from the CBO when you're looking out that many years because nobody really know what the situation is going to be. It's not a dig at the CBO. It's just economic projections ten years out are kind of superfluous, but to the content of what you're saying, the overall point I understand.

But obviously the effect here, the people who are likely to choose not to work according to the CBO, Almendorf today when he answered Paul Ryan, he says this is the labor supply of lower wage workers. My question to you is if lower wage workers stop working because of Obamacare, then, you know, they're going to be getting government subsidies in the form of health care, right? Where are they getting the money that they're to spend on everything else in their lives?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, first of all, Dr. Elmendorf was clear. He said that the number was a compilation of reduced hours.

And so he made the point that there's some people who would continue to work, but they may take a little less time at work because they have now the ability to spend a little bit more time at home.

So I want to make that point clear. He didn't say that people are just going to stop working. In fact, this sort of underlying notion in some of the questions from our Republican colleagues that Americans are looking for ways to not work, I think, does not properly reflect the attitudes of the American people.

So I think when you're talking about these kind of questions, you're talking about the economic incentives. And, as you know, under our current system, people can access that tax benefit only if they go to work for an employer, because we provide a tax benefit there.

BURNETT: Yes.

VAN HOLLEN: What the Affordable Care Act does is now allows people to take that tax benefit and go into the exchanges.

BURNETT: Right. I'm just making the point some people who aren't working could theoretically need to be on other government programs to get other money. Right? They are getting the health care benefit, but they may need other money.

But I wanted to ask from what you just said is something I think is interesting. And maybe this is just semantics. But, you know, as a new mother, I notice this. It's interesting to hear Democrats like yourself talking about sort of the social value of women being able to stay home, which is a wonderful choice that everybody should have, if they can, but it's something, especially with this whole war on women thing, it's a social value thing point I actually would expect to hear from the other side of the aisle.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, we would love to have them join us.

In fact, I'm glad you raised that, because, when Senator McCain offered a similar -- a health care plan that also had tax credits that the individual could take with them to purchase health insurance, the Heritage Foundation and conservative groups heralded that as the ability to end job lock and allow people to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams or spend more times with their families.

So, when Senator McCain proposed a similar idea, Republicans and conservatives thought it was great. Now that it's in the Affordable Care Act or what they like to call Obamacare, somehow, the idea that was good in 2008 is somehow now bad.

BURNETT: All right. Well, thank you very much, Congressman. I always enjoy talking to you about these issues.

VAN HOLLEN: Thanks for having me. Good to be with you, Erin.

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