MSNBC "Economic Stimulus Package" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Economic Stimulus Package" - Transcript

MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD)
SUBJECT: ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE INTERVIEWER: NORAH O'DONNELL

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MS. O'DONNELL: President Obama is going to speak before Congress and a national audience tonight as he tries to sell his domestic agenda on the economy, energy, education, he's also going to talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the president some say faces a daunting task of inspiring Americans who are caught in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and also trying to convince Republicans to support his agenda.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (From videotape.): I'm just a glutton for punishment and I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Someday sooner or later, he's going to say, boy, Obama had a good idea. It's going to happen. You watch.

MS. O'DONNELL: Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

Congressman, good to see you.

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you.

MS. O'DONNELL: You heard the president there joking about Eric Cantor, of course, who is a member of the Republican leadership and trying to get him to work with him. What's the likelihood that's ever going to happen in the future?

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Well, I hope the president doesn't have to wait too long to get some positive and constructive responses from Eric Cantor and the other Republicans. The president has been reaching out; the American people know it. He's had the Republicans down to the White House. He's been down to Capitol Hill. He's talked to them on the telephone; he's talked to them face to face. He is doing his best and we're trying to work with him to bring Republicans on board because as you know and as your listeners know, this country faces some daunting challenges, particularly on the economy.

We've got to work together; that's what the president has said. He's held out his hand and we're hoping that the Republicans will shake it from time to time.

MS. O'DONNELL: And yet we've got this new New York Times/CBS poll that shows that 75 percent of Americans believe the president is trying to work with congressional Republicans and then when asked is the GOP working with President Obama, look, only 31 percent believe that Republicans are returning the favor.

Congressman, if you talk to Republicans, they say they haven't been included in the process. Next week, there's going to be a healthcare summit. Are Republicans going to be allowed into the process when crafting a change to healthcare in this country?

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Yes, they are, and just as they were at the White House yesterday for the economic summit, you had Democrats and Republicans coming together with the president. Republicans are going to be invited to the table. We cannot solve these problems unless we try and work together here, whether it's on healthcare, whether it's on Social Security, whatever it may be, whether it's on trying to make sure that we get all cylinders clicking on the economic package and that's one of the things the president is going to talk about tonight is how these things all have to work together in order to get us moving again.

You can't just do one piece by itself. The economic recovery plan we were able to get through the Congress with limited support from the Republicans. We're hoping that on these other big pieces, we'll get more support.

MS. O'DONNELL: You talked about that that there is a multifaceted response and that is definitely what the president believes, what I've heard in talking to people at the White House; it's not just a big stimulus package, it's not just new responsibility and oversight and cutting the fat and waste out of government. It also includes healthcare reform, of course, because of the ballooning costs of healthcare to this country, to our government, to our people.

Do you, however, support if this White House pushes off entitlement reform, Social Security and Medicare reform to deal with just getting uninsured Americans' healthcare coverage first?

REP. VAN HOLLEN: I think they're going to try and do this at once because in order to get the resources you need to cover more people, you at the same time need to have some long-term savings, that's what the president was saying yesterday at the fiscal summit along with Peter Orszag, the head of OMB, that we've got to get healthcare costs throughout the economy down, it's not just in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, it's in all the private and health insurance markets too that medical inflation in this country is running so much higher than inflation in all the other areas that it will bankrupt us unless we deal with that issue.

And so I'm confident that we're going to be working on that this year to try and come up with a plan, both to provide greater coverage to more Americans, but also coverage that is more efficient, to try and make sure that we spend our dollars in a smart way. Right now, if you compare how monies are spent on healthcare in different states for the same kind of illness, you get very different amounts of money being spent for the same kind of procedure. That doesn't make sense.

And so those are the kind of things we're going to look at going forward, but the president said, look, you need the economic recovery plan, you need the housing plan, you need to unfreeze the credit markets and you need to put this economy on a financially stable footing going forward and medical costs, getting those under control are a big part of that.

MS. O'DONNELL: All right. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Democratic leadership, Congressman, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Thank you, Norah. Good to be with you.

END.

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