FOX News Your World with Neil Cavuto - Transcript

Fox News Network

SHOW: YOUR WORLD WITH NEIL CAVUTO (16:00)

HEADLINE: Interview with Charles Grassley

GUESTS: Charles Grassley

BYLINE: Neil Cavuto

BODY:
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Well, Republican Medicare conferees meeting today to resolve tension between House Ways & Means Committee Chairman William Thomas and Senate Finance Committee Charles Grassley. Now, in late August, you might recall, Senator Grassley withdrew his staff from negotiations to protest lack of time spent on rural health-care issues.

With us now from Washington, Senator Charles Grassley.

Senator, good to have you.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-IA), FINANCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Yes. I don't want you to overplay the word "tension" because Bill Thomas and I can talk any time, and we generally get along.

CAVUTO: Yes, but you didn't back then. Yes. Update me, Senator. Where—I mean do you guys get along now or what?

GRASSLEY: Well—well, of course we do. And here's where we are. We had a very good meeting today, and we—you know, early in these conferences, you don't resolve anything because there's a lot of understanding and a lot of talk you have about the various proposals.

The one that went through the House, is different than the one that went through the Senate, and you've got to kind of write a new bill, and so you have to understand where each House and members within each House on the conference stand.

And we're in the process of doing that, and we had a very productive meeting today.

CAVUTO: All right, Senator. The reason why I'm asking these kind of questions is we just...

GRASSLEY: Sure.

CAVUTO: ... had earlier in the show, sir, some conservative commentators and the like arguing over whether the president or the Republican Party is intrafighting, in other words eating and turning on itself.

Conservatives upset with the president's stewardship of the economy, that he spent too much seeing government getting bigger, deficits get bigger, that he doesn't have the Reagan resolve, that the chairman of the Republican Party is more or less saying the fight on big government in the Reagan years is gone.

What do you make of that? Is it a big deal?

GRASSLEY: It is not a big deal. I'll tell you we're united, first of all, in the war on terrorism.

And when it comes to war, you know, you don't worry about how much you're going to spend because you only go to war to win, and, once you win, you're going to make sure you win the peace, and we're in the process of doing that.

The president didn't have anything to do with September the 11th. He didn't have anything to do with Saddam Hussein being a danger to the world.

CAVUTO: So you don't think this is a long-term political drain on the president?

GRASSLEY: Absolutely not because I'll tell you...

CAVUTO: What about then, sir...

GRASSLEY: I'll tell you what the president...

CAVUTO: Go ahead.

GRASSLEY: What the president has is consistency in his approach. He has drive to see things through, and he's not like a previous president who would always act every night to what the polls said that night, and that was his program for the next day.

This president has had a sound resolve for over a long period of time, and it became even more resolute since the attack on the United States, and that's the kind of president this country needs, exactly like what Franklin Delano Roosevelt was during World War II, and that's what we have in President Bush.

CAVUTO: Very quickly. Are we going to get a Medicare prescription drug program?

GRASSLEY: Yes, without a doubt. We...

CAVUTO: How soon? How soon?

GRASSLEY: Well, by October the 15th.

CAVUTO: You still think doable? You do think doable by then?

GRASSLEY: Oh, of course.

CAVUTO: All right. And you and Thomas will sort it out?

GRASSLEY: Well, it's our jobs, and we get paid to do that, and we've successfully done it on three conference reports since he and I have been chair together.

CAVUTO: All right. Senator, thank you very much. Always good having you on.

GRASSLEY: Thank you.