CNN "State Of The Union With John King" - Transcript

Interview

CNN "State Of The Union With John King" - Transcript

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KING: He says any health care plan must have a public option and he's not afraid to the let the president know it. Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison gets "The Last Word," next.

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KING: Nineteen news makers, analysts and reporters were out on the Sunday morning talk shows, but only one gets "The Last Word." And that honor this Sunday goes to the Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, here with us at the state fair.

Big speech from the president Wednesday night, a divide in the Democratic Party about whether you have the votes for the public option, whether it's time for the president to say, sorry, we don't have the votes, let's move on. What do you want the president to say?

ELLISON: Or the opposite, John. He could say, you know what, the public option is essential to reform. He could say that a public option is the only thing that's going to hold insurance premiums down as we've seen them double over the last ten years. He could say that a public option with a large provider network is going to help promote better medical practices based on evidence.

So I'm hoping that he understands the essentiality of the public option. A number of us were with on a conference call with him earlier in the week telling him we really do need that public option. And he said he preferred a public option. So we're trying to give him the political backing he needs to get what he prefers, which I think is the right thing.

KING: He prefers it. The question is can he get the votes out of the Senate? I want you to listen to Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a more moderate conservative Democrat who says he could support a public option if it were a backup plan, if it were part of a trigger. Let's listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NELSON: I think he has to say that if there's going to be a public option, it has to be subject to a trigger. In other words, if somehow the private market doesn't respond the way that it's supposed to, then it would trigger a public option or a govern-run option but only as a failsafe backstop to the process.

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KING: Could you support that, give the insurance companies a chance but have hanging over them the prospect of two, three, four years down the road the public option would then kick in with a trigger? Or is that a copout?

ELLISON: They had 60 years of a chance and we've seen doubling premiums for the 85 percent of Americans who already have employer- based health care. Now it's time for a public option that can really help. Here's the thing. We have monopolized and oligopolized markets in nearly every major metropolitan area with regard to insurance.

How are we going to drive them down? Why do you charge us more? Because they can. How are we going to get them down? By introducing three things, competition, choice, and a competitive price. I don't know how any conservative can be against those three things. KING: Who about the co-op approach? You have them here in Minnesota. We visited one in Wisconsin. Some people say that deals with access and affordability, put some competition in the marketplace, but with less government. Is that a public option?

ELLISON: Well, government is a good thing. I mean, government got me to the fair today. I drove on a government road. I went to University of Minnesota, which is a public school. I mean, you know, come on, government does good for us. Let's stop this ideological commitment to bashing government. The fact is look, a co-op will not give us the strength of a large provider network that we need from the very beginning. If we have a weak little provider network, it is not going to work out.

Minnesota has been building on its co-op for literally decades and so if we're going to have something that is going to be competitive from the beginning, we need a public option and I'd like to see the president fight for it. We can get it through the House and remember, budget reconciliation requires that the Senate only needs 51 percent. So I'm hope that the president will look at that as a viable option too.

KING: What happens if it's not there, if you can't get the votes for a public option in the Senate and the compromise before you in the fall does not have a public option, should progressives say, all right, we tried and vote for that or should progressives say, no, that's not real reform and walk way?

ELLISON: Progressives should say it's not real reform.

KING: And walk away? You'd rather not pass...

ELLISON: Well, it wouldn't be the progressives not doing the right thing. It would be the insurance industry and people in Congress who are beholden to them stopping reform because at the end of the day, how are we going to give the insurance industry 49 brand new customers, give them this enormous pool and yet no ability to control costs and to promote good evidence-based medicine? I think that folks, we've said --

KING: What if the president said, I need this? I know you don't like it. I know it's not enough but I need this. Politically I cannot afford to pass a health care bill, don't walk away?

ELLISON: I would say he needs to go talk to those people who won't compromise with him and insist there be no public option. He can talk to them as well as he can talk to us. I think that why should the progressives, why should the liberals always cave? The fact is those folks who are getting all kinds of campaign donations, and getting lobbied to the tune of $1.4 million a day by the insurance industry, why don't they compromise a little bit?

KING: Let me ask you the last thing about Afghanistan. The president will face a recommendation to his commanding general to send even more troops to Afghanistan. Can the progressive wing of the Democratic Party support more troops in Afghanistan? Or does the president have to do something to win you over?

ELLISON: The president has to win me over with a civilian surge which he promised. Look, we're only about a quarter of the way toward that civilian surge that we talked about last spring. We need to have a civilian surge because we need to help Afghanistan build institutions that Afghanis are willing to defend. Right now we've got to cut the civilian casualties, we've got to put a premium on protecting civilians, and that way we can start really to get some local community.

KING: You're not sold on the military mission. You agree with George Will, troops should come out, use drones, use other?

ELLISON: I don't like the drones. They're not very smart because they shoot at large numbers of people without distinguishing. And then you get these civilian casualties. But I think that we need a civilian surge just like was promised. We haven't seen that yet. We're already talking about more guns and bombs but where are the people that are going to get some wells and some schools and some roads and some farmers to get their product to market over than poppy? The fact is this is where we're at. The people need some institution building and we haven't done enough of that yet.

KING: Congressman Keith Ellison, he has "The Last Word" on this Sunday. Sir, we thank you for joining us at the state fair.

And up next, we go east to a dairy farm in neighboring Wisconsin for an up-close look at a subject we were just talking about, it's an old practice when it comes to buying and selling crops: co-ops. Now some say co-ops would be just a new wrinkle for the stalled health care debate. Stay with us.

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