Transcript from Rick's List aired on March 23,2010
SANCHEZ: Welcome back. I'm Rick Sanchez.
Our political list takes us back now to Capitol Hill. You think the health care fight is over? Well, not quite. Roger, shall we show them a live picture of what's going on there in the Senate? You're looking at the Senate floor, folks. That's live.
They have just gone in to session, and they are trying to take up the changes that the House has made to the health care bill. These are the tweaks that we have been talking about. That's the House on the right, and that's the Senate on the left. Republicans are facing an uphill battle, though, if they're still trying to fight this plan.
We're joined now by CNN's congressional correspondent, Brianna Keilar, as well as CNN senior political analyst David Gergen.
My thanks to both of you for being with us.
Brianna, let me start with you.
Republicans say that they're not giving up. In fact, here's Congressman Mike Pence a little while ago. Let's listen to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: This fight is not over. And House Republicans are determined to take our case against this government takeover of health care to the floor of the Congress and to the American people for the balance of this Congress. And if we find ourselves in a new, renewed Republican majority in 2011, we will work in every way to repeal this legislation and start over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: You know, depending on which Republican you listen to, we're talking about protests, we're talking about blocks, we're talking about legal maneuvers, and we're talking about repeals.
Make this make sense to us, Brianna. What can they actually do?
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think this idea of repealing the law, which is something that, when I was out at the protests, the protests that a lot of Tea Party folks were at on Saturday and Sunday, this is what a lot of them said: We're going to get the law repealed.
I think it's seen, though, by experts as pretty unlikely. What it seems Republicans do have at their disposal at this point in time is to really gum up the works a little bit, slow things down. In the Senate, they're obviously going to be proposing changes in a couple different ways. They're going to put some votes out there that are tough for Democrat to take, votes on
And they're also going to rule that -- you know, they're also going to object to some of the stuff in this bill and say, you know what, it shouldn't even be going through this reconciliation processed. If they're successful in finding those changes, which Democrats admit they may be, then it kind of delays everything, because it has to go back to the House for another vote.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
KEILAR: But, right now, that's really it, Rick.
SANCHEZ: David, you have been watching these kinds battles for a long time. It seems like the Republicans are now in a situation where before they were trying to block this from happening. Now it has happened and they have to go to the American people and say we're going to get rid of it. It seems that's like a tougher political row to hoe, isn't it?
There are actually three different roads they are trying to go down, Rick. The first, as Brianna just said, is the legislative route to try to block this. It's very, very unlikely to succeed.
SANCHEZ: Right.
GERGEN: The second is the legal route. And 13 state attorney generals have filed suit today to declare this unconstitutional, the mandate upon individuals, for example, to be forced to -- by the federal government to do something. They say that is unprecedented.
Most legal scholars say that they have got an outside shot at this, but they don't have a heavy -- it's not a heavily -- it doesn't way heavily in their favor. And the third, and perhaps what we are really going to see is they will take their fight back to the American people, because they -- of course, they do have -- as a CNN poll showed just yesterday, this bill does not have majority support.
There are a lot of people that don't like it because it's too much of a government takeover. There's some people who don't like it because it didn't go far enough.
(CROSSTALK)
SANCHEZ: But let me stop you real quick, David. Let's be correct about this.
GERGEN: Sure.
SANCHEZ: The CNN poll was taken before this thing passed, so that's, like, old news, isn't it? That's not fair to even talk about that poll yet.
(CROSSTALK)
GERGEN: Well, it's my understanding of that poll, it was taken Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.
SANCHEZ: Before the passing of that bill.
(CROSSTALK)
GERGEN: No, no, no. The vote passed Sunday.
SANCHEZ: Right.
GERGEN: It passed. We knew Sunday afternoon it was definitely going to pass, and it looked very likely to pass beforehand.
Should we be looking for new polls? Absolutely.
SANCHEZ: Right. GERGEN: Will there be fresh things coming up? I think we should be looking for it. Bill Clinton had predicted, for example, that
And we will have to wait and see. I think he will get a bounce. I don't think it will be 10, but I think he will get a bounce. And a lot of those people -- you remember the 59 percent in the CNN poll who said they didn't like this bill, this one taken over the weekend, you know, there was a chunk of them who said they didn't like it because it wasn't liberal enough. It didn't have enough of a public option in it.
SANCHEZ: Right, right.
GERGEN: So, those people are likely to sway -- they're likely to swing behind this now and say, well, on balance, it's better than what we had.
So, I would think that the numbers are going to go up, but it's going to be extremely interesting where they settle out.
SANCHEZ: The pragmatics of this is, though,
They still are going to have a Democratic president who will veto whatever repeal they try to enact, right? Or do I not get this?
KEILAR: Well, and I don't know the exact process of this, but also you would have to say would they have a filibuster-proof majority if they were going to take that route obviously, right? Would they have 60 votes? To go right now from 41 to 60, I don't think there's really any prognosticator out there who is saying that they are think are going to do that in the Senate.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
KEILAR: So, I actually was reading a column today in Politico by one of my colleagues, Mike Allen, and I just have to repeat what he said. He called it a talk radio pipe dream, where he said people were saying this, and so it's really seen as sort of very unlikely.
SANCHEZ: Even when you ask them -- I had
He says to me, well, no, there are parts of this we like, and we won't take those parts out, only the parts that we don't like. So it's an interesting situation for these guys. Politically, though, how do they play this now, though, David? Can you win by telling people you might possibly want to take something away from them once they have experienced the breadth of it?
GERGEN: Look, I think, Rick, you have got a very good point. Once the 23-year-old gets a chance to stay on parents' insurance, as they will under this bill, and they will do that quickly, you're not going to take that away from them.
What you can do is run out of this a campaign in the fall to say, we want to do the following four things to replace major elements of this bill, and, in effect, do what
We still had a Democratic president, but they got a lot of that mandate done. Now, how do they do it with Barack Obama? If the Republicans were to win the House, and that's a big,
So, what do you do? You do have in the
But there are a lot of things in here about new taxes, about Medicare cuts, and mandates that you could stop if you -- with the power of the purse and with other kind of -- you know, there's a lot of mischief you can do if you have control of the House and the Senate.
So, I don't think they can repeal it unless they have a president and a majority. And they are a long, long way from there, of course.
(CROSSTALK)
GERGEN: But they could gum it up.
SANCHEZ: We're down to about 10 seconds, but close us out, Brianna, if you would.
KEILAR: I was going to say, and to that point, some of these protesters I spoke with, one of their rallying cries was, we will remember in November.
So, now it's a question of, is there vocal enough opposition from them and fervor from them and how much do Democrats gain from this in the short term, even if this is considered a legislative victory for them?
(CROSSTALK)
SANCHEZ: You guys are great. Thanks so much,
GERGEN: Thank you.