NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: ACA and Government Shutdown

Interview

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DAVID GREGORY:
I mean the question, too, is, "When is a law legitimate ever?"

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
That's a good question. But if you're going to uphold the law, then you're not going to be delaying it. The president has already delayed it for Big Businesses. They have delayed it for all his friends. And the question is: "Is the law ready at this time? Is it ready for primetime?"

It's not ready for primetime at this moment. I would repeal the law. I would get rid, completely, of the law. But all we're asking for in the House of Representatives is for a one-year delay. Just like the unions are asking for a one-year delay, like he has given to Big Businesses. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing for us to be asking for. And I think the American people--

DAVID GREGORY:
Right. And, you know, I don't mean to interrupt you on that. And we've talked plenty about the arguments and about the substance. But I want to steer us to the endgame piece of it, too. So Dee Dee, pick up on that, and we'll come back around to this. How does this end?

DEE DEE MYERS:
You know, the House has voted now almost 40 times to repeal Obamacare. And every single time it's failed. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Actually, eight times we had the president (CHUCKLE) sign legislation that has repealed certain parts of Obamacare.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Well, but he's not going to repeal his signature, a domestic accomplishment, something he believes deeply. And you guys have tried 40 times, and 40 times, it's failed. Now you've attached it to a two-month interim measure to fund the government.

70% of Americans do not think that, even if they don't like Obamacare, do not think that's a reasonable avenue to shut down the government to try to make that happen. You know, there are checks and balances, as you like to see. But you have no ability to stop Obamacare. It's not going to happen. So what's the endgame?

(OVERTALK)

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
I think the end game, partially is we don't see a government shutdown. I mean you saw 25 senators who basically broke on the Clocher vote. You basically see guys like Coburn and Corker, who I think are going to go down as heroes in this whole saga, who have been able to stand up and talk sanity.

So I think we basically keep government funded, and it moves forward. But here's where I think it's going to get interesting. I mean it will be important to see how this is executed throughout the states. You have 17 exchanges that are going to be up and running on Tuesday. We created the first one in the state of Utah. It has about 240 individual policies that can be accessed. 300 small businesses are already-- ready to buy into it. I think it will be a very important experiment this year. I mean politics aside, we now move into the real world of economics, jobs, and competitiveness.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Right.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
And that is: Does it work or not?

DAVID GREGORY:
But see, we're not-- but you can't say, "Politics aside." You can't just have a debate on the substance of the matter, Chris, or the policy implementation, because this is about politics. And some may see it as petty politics, but I think the Congressman would say, "Look, we want to keep this alive to 2014, to 2016."

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Sure.

DAVID GREGORY:
There are political means to overturn this, they just haven't achieved them yet.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Yeah, I think we're in an explosive situation in terms of the constitution. I think it's going to continue. I'm not as sublime as you are. I think the difference is, it's like in a kidnapping, you grab the baby and ask for the money. In this case, they grabbed the money and asked for the baby. Obama's not going to give them his baby. You can't negotiate this.

This is the thing Dee Dee pointed out. This is his claim to history. This is what he did after 40 or 50 years of Democrat Party claimed, "We're going to do health care." The Clintons tried, almost got it. Everybody said, "We're going to do it," since Roosevelt. To say, "I'm going to give it away, or I'm going to delay it," I think delaying it, everybody knows, the people who want delay do not want it to come back in a year. You want it to die in a year.

DEE DEE MYERS:
And--

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
And that's the difference between the president having problems with some of the features of the bill but trying to make it work, and those who want to kill it. That's a big difference, killing the baby here.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
But Chris, we're--

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
And I don't think he's going to agree to it.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
We're going to be beyond politics real soon. And then the real world does take over. And we're going--

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Well, what happens if the government doesn't go back to work on Tuesday?

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
Well, if there's a shutdown, it's going to be a 24 hour shutdown.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Implementation (UNINTEL).

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
All right?

DEE DEE MYERS:
Yeah.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
You have Republicans know this is a loser for them. So Republicans are going to have to learn the lessons of this whole episode. And that will be you can't have an all-or-nothing approach.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
But the reality here--

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
You're going to have to problem-solve every step of the way and find areas that don't work and fix them as we proceed.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
But the reality is the Democrats think that this is a loser for us. I think everybody agrees that this is a loser for us if the government shuts down. And that's why I think the president of the Democrats want to shut down the government.

If you look last night at Twitter, there wasn't a single Republican on Twitter who was saying, "Let's shut down the government." But every single Democrat was saying, "The Republicans want to shut down the government." The politics are coming from the other side, as well. So let's be really honest about this.

And the other side would like to see Republicans in trouble in 2014. The other side wants to make sure that they're not even willing to meet us halfway. They're not even willing-- Harry Reed will not negotiate with John Boehner. The president will not meet with John Boehner. And John Boehner's actually trying to be responsible here. And he's willing to meet with--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
John Boehner does not agree with you. John Boehner does not want to shut down. John Boehner does not--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
But he--
DAVID GREGORY:
--want to take this stand.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
So you're saying that I want to shut down the government.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Yeah.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
I don't want to shut down the government.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Will you vote for--

DAVID GREGORY:
Well, I'm not (UNINTEL PHRASE).

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Yeah.

DAVID GREGORY:
He doesn't-- John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, is actually not interested in trying to filet up Obamacare right now, as you are.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
No, he wanted to--

DAVID GREGORY:
He just has a different view about it.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
--do it in the debt ceiling.

DAVID GREGORY:
Yeah.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
And I just disagree with him. I thought that this was the moment to do it--

DAVID GREGORY:
To have the fight.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
--not have the debt ceiling-- yeah.

DEE DEE MYERS:
So what's the endgame, though, Congressman? Are you willing to vote for-- a continued resolution that comes back that does not delay or de-fund Obamacare?

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
I am not. But I think there's enough people in the Republican Party who are willing to do that. And I think that's what you're going to see.

DEE DEE MYERS:
But would you--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Our first request was to completely def-- de-fund the program. And we knew we were going to lose on that. Now we're asking for a delay, which, again, I don't think is an unreasonable thing to do. You know, your boss, Tip O'Neil, shut down the government 12 different times. And you didn't call him a terrorist.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
No, it wasn't--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
You did not call him--

(OVERTALK)

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
These were always issues of a couple of days. And they were always resolved, and they were over numbers. And it was both sides, though. Let's be fair. Both sides were doing it.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
But it happened.

(OVERTALK)

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
But you said once--

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Where'd you get your number from?

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
It's from The Washington Post.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
No, it was seven times, though. You were--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
No. So--

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
--counting all the times--

REP RAUL LABRADOR:
No.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
--since the '70s. Look, they were always taking--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
No, there were 17 times since the '70s, and 12 under your boss.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Okay, let me--

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
So (UNINTEL).

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, Chris.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Let me tell you this. They were issues of a day or two. They were issues of funding. Now, what I said before is you can argue over numbers, and then you can-- if it's seven or nine, make it eight. But when you say we're going to get rid of the number one program that you put into law and put in the history books, and your party's been fighting for, for half a century, you can't say, "Give me that." That's a non-negotiable stand.

OVERTALK)

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
That's the problem.

DAVID GREGORY:
And so here's the question. And I want to raise it again. When is a law legitimate? And would it be appropriate for the president or Democrats controlling the Senate to say, "Let's go back and let's overturn a Reagan-era law?"

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
They do it all the time.

DAVID GREGORY:
Should they do that?

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
One of the shutdowns was based on the Fairness Doctrine. One of the shutdowns under Tip O'Neil was because The Fairness Doctrine had actually been done away with.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Right.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
And they wanted the Fairness Doctrine back.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Right.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
So it has been done before. The Democrats spent the entire decade of the Bush administration trying to repeal the Bush Tax Cuts. It's not like Republicans and Democrats don't fight about their policies. That's what politics is all about. So for somebody to go on national T.V. and to say that, "We cannot fight about our policy differences-- "

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Yeah. What you do in politics is fight. The question is do you play by the rules and eventually move forward? Or do you keep going back of the old terrain, making non-negotiable demands? I think there was a really good debate about health care for 50 years in this country, whether to do it or not. And finally, the country, through the Congress and through the president, and through the electorate, decided to do it.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
And not (UNINTEL).

CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Now you seize upon this opportunity--

(OVERTALK)

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Not a single Republican voted for that law, because you guys, the Democrats, decided to cram it down. You decided to do--

(OVERTALK)

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
--procedural issues. There-- there was not a single Republican--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
Go ahead, John.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
This is an example of how divisive this debate has become. You've got to remember, when some of us were governors a decade ago, Republicans were trying to figure out how to crack the code on health care reform. The Heritage Foundation was advocating a mandate as part of overall health care reform.

DEE DEE MYERS:
And you supported that, and you saw--

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
So you've got those parties--

(OVERTALK)

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
Well, we looked at expanding the marketplace.

DEE DEE MYERS:
Right.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
And so exactly what the exchange is going to do. And so I say we have a law. All right, let's recognize that. Now we've got the real world, people who are going to be waiting this week--

DAVID GREGORY:
Right.

FMR. GOV. JOHN HUNTSMAN:
--to find a health care policy that fits their circumstance. That's the real world. And the question from here, and I think the game, some of it politics, some of it implementation, will be how do you make it work for real people across this country?

DAVID GREGORY:
Right. And ultimately, I mean this is what part of the political fight is about. Because once that does happen, we have the experience of other entitlements in this country that, warts and all, these programs move forward, but they become part of the firmament of our entitlement stays (?).

DEE DEE MYERS:
Right.

DAVID GREGORY:
And then you really can't take them away as a practical matter.

DEE DEE MYERS:
And I think that's part of the fear here, right? I mean the exchanges open on Tuesday. People, as you said, will be able to go online, go to a meeting, go by mail, and find if there's a policy that fits their needs that they can afford. And the answer for most people will be yes. So hopefully for everybody who's uninsured will be yes.

Once that becomes evident, once people have a positive experience going online finding a policy, being insured for the first time, perhaps, or having a better coverage, it's going to be very hard to take that away from people. They've been waiting a long time, as Chris said, to get to this point.

There are, you know, 50 million people in this country who are uninsured. This is an opportunity to change what has been sort of a black mark on our country and our society that we can allow that to go forward.

DAVID GREGORY:
But one last kind of, you know, bottom line point, and Congressman, since you'll have a vote on this, at some point there'll be a resolution of a government shutdown, if that happens, either before or after the shutdown. We do have this credit limit fight. Even given your views about how horrible you think Obamacare is, do you think it's worth-- not voting to increase the debt limit over this fight?

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Not over Obamacare. I have always told my leadership that I want the fight on the debt ceiling about debt, about spending, not about Obamacare. I have always believed that the fight should be at the CR, on the spending levels, and the debt limit should be about debt, not about Obamacare.

DAVID GREGORY:
Okay.

REP. RAUL LABRADOR:
Some people disagree with me.

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, we're going to leave it here. You know, you were talking about Tip O'Neil. And I was just thinking, "If only there were a book that somehow (LAUGHTER) gave us insight into the Tip O'Neil, Ronald Reagan years." And there is. And Chris Matthews has written it. And we're going to come back after the break and talk about his new book: Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. And the big question that Chris asked, "Why don't today's leaders cooperate in the country's best interest?" That's the question in his book. First, a major league Sunday inspiration when we come back in just a moment.

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