Sunday
Sep202009
The Obama Sunday Media Blitz: The CBS Video/Transcript
Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 21:39
Obama’s Sunday Media Blitz: The CNN Transcript
Obama’s Sunday Media Blitz: The Meet the Press Video/Transcript
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Bob Schieffer: Mr. President, thank you very much.
Obama: Thank you.
Schieffer: You have made speeches, you've addressed the joint session of Congress, you've done interviews, but the polling continues to show that people are still skeptical about your health reform plans.
Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senator from Utah, has done a lot of work on health care over the years, summed it up this way - these are his words: "If anyone believes that Washington can do a plan that will cost close to a trillion dollars, cover all Americans, not raise taxes on anyone, not increase the deficit, not reduce benefits or choices for our families and seniors, then I have a bridge to sell you."
Have you promised too much, Mr. President?
Obama: No I don't think I've promised too much at all. Look - first of all, everybody acknowledges this is a problem. Everybody acknowledges that the current path we're on is unsustainable. Not just for people who don't have health insurance, but for those who do.
We just had a study come out this week showing that premiums for families went up 130 percent over the last decade. Those costs probably went up even higher for the average employer and that's part of the reason why you're seeing each successive year fewer Americans having health insurance from their employers than they previously did.
Health care inflation went up 5.5 percent this past year when inflation was actually negative because of this extraordinary recession. So we know that standing still is not an option.
Now what I've said is we can make sure that people who don't have health insurance can buy into an insurance pool that gives them better bargaining power. For people who have health insurance we can provide health insurance reforms that make the insurance they have more secure. And we can do that mostly by using money that every expert agrees is being wasted and is currently in the existing health care system. So -- in fact what we've got right now is about 80 percent consensus on how we would accomplish that.
Now let me be honest: With a piece of legislation this complicated and a sector of the economy that's about one-sixth of our economy there's a reason why for the last 40 years people have been talking about this and it hasn't gotten done; it's hard. And there are a lot of moving parts. And so I appreciate fact that the American people are really cautious about this because it's important to them and the majority of people still have health insurance. What I'm trying to do is to explain the facts, which are if we don't do anything a lot of Americans are gonna be much worse off and over time the federal budget just can't sustain it.
Schieffer: Let me just ask you - the main concern that people seem to have is that this plan is somehow going to mean a tax on middle class Americans. Now you promised during the campaign -
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: … that that was not gonna happen.
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: No tax increase on people who made under 250,000 dollars.
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: No payroll tax, no capital gains …
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: … no tax of any kind on Americans. Can you still make that promise to people today?
Obama: I can still keep that promise because, as I've said, about two-thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.
You know, you always hear about waste and abuse in Washington and usually it doesn't mean much because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is. This is money that has been directly identified that the Congressional Budget Office, that Republican and Democratic experts agree is there, that is not improving the quality of our health. So the lion's share of money to pay for this will come from money that's already in system.
Now, we are going to have to find some additional sources of revenue for the other third or so of the health care plan. And I've provided a long list of approaches that would not have an impact on middle class Americans. They're not going to be forced to pay for this. Insurance companies, drug companies are gonna have to be ponying up, partly because right now they're receiving huge subsidies from folks.
Schieffer: But aren't they going to then pass it on to consumers? I mean that's what you know the Chamber of Commerce is saying. They're starting a big ad campaign right -
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: - now, they're saying you're gonna put these taxes on these insurance companies on people that make things like X-rays and lab tests and all of that and they're just going to turn right around and pass it right on to the consumer.
Obama: Here's the problem, they're passing on those costs to the consumer anyway. The only difference is …
Schieffer: But this would be more
Obama: No, the difference is that they're making huge profits on it, Bob. I mean, let's take the Medicare HMO programs that are being run by insurance companies. It's estimated by everybody that they're overcharging by about 14 percent. This amounts to about $177 billion over 10 years. About $17 billion a year, $18 billion a year. That's just going to pad their profits, hasn't been shown to make Medicare recipients any healthier. And in fact because those huge subsidies are going to insurance companies, Medicare recipients are not getting a good deal. Now if we are enforcing what should be the rules around Medicare and making sure the people are getting a bang for the buck, it's not going to be possible for insurance companies to simply pass on those costs to Medicare recipients because ultimately it's Uncle Sam that's paying for those services anyway.
Look, bringing about change in this town is always hard. When you've got special interests that are making billions of dollars, absolutely they're gonna want to keep as much of that, the profits that they're making, as possible. And by the way, those insurance companies even during these down years have been making terrific profits. We don't mind them making profits, we just want them to be accountable to their customers.
Schieffer: Let me ask you a little bit about the tenor of this debate. It seems to me that there is a sort of meanness that has settled over our political dialogue. It started this summer at these town hall meetings …
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: We saw this outbreak when you spoke to the joint session. Some people clearly just don't agree with your policy.
Obama: Absolutely.
Schieffer: But there seem to be others that are just, just mad, angry. President Carter is now saying that he thinks it's racial. Nancy Pelosi says it could be dangerous. What do you think it's all about?
Obama: Well look, what I think we have to remember is that at various periods in American history people get pretty rambunctious when it comes to our democratic debate. That's not new. And every president who's tried to bring about big changes I think elicits the most passionate responses. Maybe you hear what people had to say about Abraham Lincoln or what they had to say about FDR, or what they had to say about Ronald Reagan when he first came in and was trying to change our approach to government. That elicited huge responses.
Now I think that what's driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy, particularly coming off a huge economic crisis. And the only thing that I've been trying to say is - number one, I have no interest in increasing the size of government. I just want to make sure we've got a smart government that is regulating for example the financial institutions smartly so I don't have to engage in any kind of bank bailouts. That's point number one. And point number two, even though we're having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other. And we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we're all patriots, we're all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people's motives.
And I have to, one last point I've got to make, Bob, and that is I do think part of what's different today is that the twenty-four-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides. They can't get enough of conflict, it's catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve.
Schieffer: Mr. President, seven former directors of the CIA have sent you a letter today asking you to reverse the decision of the Attorney General to reopen the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place after the attacks on September 11th. Would you consider that?
Obama: Well first of all, I have utmost respect for the CIA. I have said consistently that I want to look forward and not backward when it comes to some of the problems that occurred under the previous administration, or when it came to interrogations. I don't want witch hunts taking place. I've also said though that the Attorney General has a job to uphold the law…
Schieffer: So you intend to let him go forward?
Obama: He's got to make judgment in terms of what has occurred. My understanding is it's not a criminal investigation at this point. They are simply investigating what took place. And I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look after an institution that they helped to build. But I continue to believe that nobody's above the law. And I want to make sure that as President of the United States that I'm not asserting in some way that my decisions over rule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.
Schieffer: Afghanistan.
Obama: Yeah.
Schieffer: We keep hearing that General McChrystal is about to ask you for tens of thousands of new American troops to go to Afghanistan, our David Martin has reported that. Are you considering something of that nature? Sending that large a force to Afghanistan?
Obama: I'm not considering it at that point because I haven't received the request. But I just want to remind people how we got here. When I came in Afghanistan was adrift because we frankly hadn't focused on it. I immediately ordered a top-to-bottom review. Part of that review was when General McChrystal got to Afghanistan for him to do his own assessment. In the meantime I sent 21,000 troops to make sure that we could secure election that was going to take place in the early fall.
The election is now complete. General McChrystal has completed his assessment. But my job is to make sure that we get a strategy that focuses on my core goal, which is to dismantle, defeat, destroy al Qaeda and its allies that killed Americans and are still plotting to kill Americans…
Schieffer: Well if he asked you for that many troops, you're going to have a hard time saying no, are you not?
Obama: Let's be clear, my central focus is, what are we doing to protect the American people and the American homeland? Afghanistan and Pakistan are critical elements in that process but the only reason I send a single young man or woman in uniform anywhere in the world is because I think it's necessary to keep us safe. And so whatever decisions I make are going to be based first on a strategy to keep us safe, then we'll figure out how to resource it. We're not gonna put the cart before the horse and just think by sending more troops we're automatically going to make Americans safe.
Schieffer: Didn't you say on March 27th that you had announced a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan? I thought you already had a strategy.
Obama: Well we did. But what I also said was that we were gonna review that every six months because this is a very complicated terrain. We had just started getting our troops in. In fact the 21,000 that I already ordered in are just now getting in place. And what I did not want is a situation in which we are just continually sending more and more troops or putting more and more resources without having looked at how the whole thing fits together, making sure that our efforts in terms of building Afghan capacity is in place, that our civilian and diplomatic efforts are in place. So what we're going to do is to continue to reassess, review what's taking place and make sure that our strategy and resources fit together for the aim of making sure that al Qaeda is not able to attack the United States.
Schieffer: You announced yesterday a major change in American strategic strategy when you said that we would not go forward with the missile defense system that would be there on the border of Russia. The Russians saw that as a poke in the eye from the very beginning. But even people who agree that that missile system is out of place are asking questions. Shouldn't you have tried to get something from the Russians in exchange for doing that?
Obama: Well keep in mind that when George Bush announced his strategy for putting missile defense in place, in the Czech Republic and in Poland, I said at the time I think we need missile defense but I want to make sure it works, that it's cost effective, that the technologies are operable, that it's our best possible strategy. And that hadn't been shown. So when I came in I asked the same people who had signed on first one - Bob Gates, my Secretary of Defense, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff - tell me given the intelligence you have now and the technology we possess and what we know about the Iranian threat, which always been our main concern, not Russia, tell me if the system that we've designed is the best possible system. And they came back to me and said, you know what, given what we know now we actually think that this is a better way of doing it. So we're not eliminating missile defense - in fact what we're doing is putting a system in that's more timely, more cost effective, and that meets the actual threats that we perceive coming from Iran.
Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them. And this program will not be a threat to them. So my task here was not to negotiate with the Russians. The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is. We have made a decision about what will be best to protect the American people as well as our troops in Europe and our allies. If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iiran, you know, then that's a bonus.
Schieffer: Mr. President our time is up. Thank you so much.
Obama: Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Bob.
Obama’s Sunday Media Blitz: The Meet the Press Video/Transcript
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Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
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Bob Schieffer: Mr. President, thank you very much.
Obama: Thank you.
Schieffer: You have made speeches, you've addressed the joint session of Congress, you've done interviews, but the polling continues to show that people are still skeptical about your health reform plans.
Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senator from Utah, has done a lot of work on health care over the years, summed it up this way - these are his words: "If anyone believes that Washington can do a plan that will cost close to a trillion dollars, cover all Americans, not raise taxes on anyone, not increase the deficit, not reduce benefits or choices for our families and seniors, then I have a bridge to sell you."
Have you promised too much, Mr. President?
Obama: No I don't think I've promised too much at all. Look - first of all, everybody acknowledges this is a problem. Everybody acknowledges that the current path we're on is unsustainable. Not just for people who don't have health insurance, but for those who do.
We just had a study come out this week showing that premiums for families went up 130 percent over the last decade. Those costs probably went up even higher for the average employer and that's part of the reason why you're seeing each successive year fewer Americans having health insurance from their employers than they previously did.
Health care inflation went up 5.5 percent this past year when inflation was actually negative because of this extraordinary recession. So we know that standing still is not an option.
Now what I've said is we can make sure that people who don't have health insurance can buy into an insurance pool that gives them better bargaining power. For people who have health insurance we can provide health insurance reforms that make the insurance they have more secure. And we can do that mostly by using money that every expert agrees is being wasted and is currently in the existing health care system. So -- in fact what we've got right now is about 80 percent consensus on how we would accomplish that.
Now let me be honest: With a piece of legislation this complicated and a sector of the economy that's about one-sixth of our economy there's a reason why for the last 40 years people have been talking about this and it hasn't gotten done; it's hard. And there are a lot of moving parts. And so I appreciate fact that the American people are really cautious about this because it's important to them and the majority of people still have health insurance. What I'm trying to do is to explain the facts, which are if we don't do anything a lot of Americans are gonna be much worse off and over time the federal budget just can't sustain it.
Schieffer: Let me just ask you - the main concern that people seem to have is that this plan is somehow going to mean a tax on middle class Americans. Now you promised during the campaign -
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: … that that was not gonna happen.
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: No tax increase on people who made under 250,000 dollars.
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: No payroll tax, no capital gains …
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: … no tax of any kind on Americans. Can you still make that promise to people today?
Obama: I can still keep that promise because, as I've said, about two-thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.
You know, you always hear about waste and abuse in Washington and usually it doesn't mean much because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is. This is money that has been directly identified that the Congressional Budget Office, that Republican and Democratic experts agree is there, that is not improving the quality of our health. So the lion's share of money to pay for this will come from money that's already in system.
Now, we are going to have to find some additional sources of revenue for the other third or so of the health care plan. And I've provided a long list of approaches that would not have an impact on middle class Americans. They're not going to be forced to pay for this. Insurance companies, drug companies are gonna have to be ponying up, partly because right now they're receiving huge subsidies from folks.
Schieffer: But aren't they going to then pass it on to consumers? I mean that's what you know the Chamber of Commerce is saying. They're starting a big ad campaign right -
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: - now, they're saying you're gonna put these taxes on these insurance companies on people that make things like X-rays and lab tests and all of that and they're just going to turn right around and pass it right on to the consumer.
Obama: Here's the problem, they're passing on those costs to the consumer anyway. The only difference is …
Schieffer: But this would be more
Obama: No, the difference is that they're making huge profits on it, Bob. I mean, let's take the Medicare HMO programs that are being run by insurance companies. It's estimated by everybody that they're overcharging by about 14 percent. This amounts to about $177 billion over 10 years. About $17 billion a year, $18 billion a year. That's just going to pad their profits, hasn't been shown to make Medicare recipients any healthier. And in fact because those huge subsidies are going to insurance companies, Medicare recipients are not getting a good deal. Now if we are enforcing what should be the rules around Medicare and making sure the people are getting a bang for the buck, it's not going to be possible for insurance companies to simply pass on those costs to Medicare recipients because ultimately it's Uncle Sam that's paying for those services anyway.
Look, bringing about change in this town is always hard. When you've got special interests that are making billions of dollars, absolutely they're gonna want to keep as much of that, the profits that they're making, as possible. And by the way, those insurance companies even during these down years have been making terrific profits. We don't mind them making profits, we just want them to be accountable to their customers.
Schieffer: Let me ask you a little bit about the tenor of this debate. It seems to me that there is a sort of meanness that has settled over our political dialogue. It started this summer at these town hall meetings …
Obama: Right.
Schieffer: We saw this outbreak when you spoke to the joint session. Some people clearly just don't agree with your policy.
Obama: Absolutely.
Schieffer: But there seem to be others that are just, just mad, angry. President Carter is now saying that he thinks it's racial. Nancy Pelosi says it could be dangerous. What do you think it's all about?
Obama: Well look, what I think we have to remember is that at various periods in American history people get pretty rambunctious when it comes to our democratic debate. That's not new. And every president who's tried to bring about big changes I think elicits the most passionate responses. Maybe you hear what people had to say about Abraham Lincoln or what they had to say about FDR, or what they had to say about Ronald Reagan when he first came in and was trying to change our approach to government. That elicited huge responses.
Now I think that what's driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy, particularly coming off a huge economic crisis. And the only thing that I've been trying to say is - number one, I have no interest in increasing the size of government. I just want to make sure we've got a smart government that is regulating for example the financial institutions smartly so I don't have to engage in any kind of bank bailouts. That's point number one. And point number two, even though we're having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other. And we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we're all patriots, we're all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people's motives.
And I have to, one last point I've got to make, Bob, and that is I do think part of what's different today is that the twenty-four-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides. They can't get enough of conflict, it's catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve.
Schieffer: Mr. President, seven former directors of the CIA have sent you a letter today asking you to reverse the decision of the Attorney General to reopen the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place after the attacks on September 11th. Would you consider that?
Obama: Well first of all, I have utmost respect for the CIA. I have said consistently that I want to look forward and not backward when it comes to some of the problems that occurred under the previous administration, or when it came to interrogations. I don't want witch hunts taking place. I've also said though that the Attorney General has a job to uphold the law…
Schieffer: So you intend to let him go forward?
Obama: He's got to make judgment in terms of what has occurred. My understanding is it's not a criminal investigation at this point. They are simply investigating what took place. And I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look after an institution that they helped to build. But I continue to believe that nobody's above the law. And I want to make sure that as President of the United States that I'm not asserting in some way that my decisions over rule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.
Schieffer: Afghanistan.
Obama: Yeah.
Schieffer: We keep hearing that General McChrystal is about to ask you for tens of thousands of new American troops to go to Afghanistan, our David Martin has reported that. Are you considering something of that nature? Sending that large a force to Afghanistan?
Obama: I'm not considering it at that point because I haven't received the request. But I just want to remind people how we got here. When I came in Afghanistan was adrift because we frankly hadn't focused on it. I immediately ordered a top-to-bottom review. Part of that review was when General McChrystal got to Afghanistan for him to do his own assessment. In the meantime I sent 21,000 troops to make sure that we could secure election that was going to take place in the early fall.
The election is now complete. General McChrystal has completed his assessment. But my job is to make sure that we get a strategy that focuses on my core goal, which is to dismantle, defeat, destroy al Qaeda and its allies that killed Americans and are still plotting to kill Americans…
Schieffer: Well if he asked you for that many troops, you're going to have a hard time saying no, are you not?
Obama: Let's be clear, my central focus is, what are we doing to protect the American people and the American homeland? Afghanistan and Pakistan are critical elements in that process but the only reason I send a single young man or woman in uniform anywhere in the world is because I think it's necessary to keep us safe. And so whatever decisions I make are going to be based first on a strategy to keep us safe, then we'll figure out how to resource it. We're not gonna put the cart before the horse and just think by sending more troops we're automatically going to make Americans safe.
Schieffer: Didn't you say on March 27th that you had announced a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan? I thought you already had a strategy.
Obama: Well we did. But what I also said was that we were gonna review that every six months because this is a very complicated terrain. We had just started getting our troops in. In fact the 21,000 that I already ordered in are just now getting in place. And what I did not want is a situation in which we are just continually sending more and more troops or putting more and more resources without having looked at how the whole thing fits together, making sure that our efforts in terms of building Afghan capacity is in place, that our civilian and diplomatic efforts are in place. So what we're going to do is to continue to reassess, review what's taking place and make sure that our strategy and resources fit together for the aim of making sure that al Qaeda is not able to attack the United States.
Schieffer: You announced yesterday a major change in American strategic strategy when you said that we would not go forward with the missile defense system that would be there on the border of Russia. The Russians saw that as a poke in the eye from the very beginning. But even people who agree that that missile system is out of place are asking questions. Shouldn't you have tried to get something from the Russians in exchange for doing that?
Obama: Well keep in mind that when George Bush announced his strategy for putting missile defense in place, in the Czech Republic and in Poland, I said at the time I think we need missile defense but I want to make sure it works, that it's cost effective, that the technologies are operable, that it's our best possible strategy. And that hadn't been shown. So when I came in I asked the same people who had signed on first one - Bob Gates, my Secretary of Defense, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff - tell me given the intelligence you have now and the technology we possess and what we know about the Iranian threat, which always been our main concern, not Russia, tell me if the system that we've designed is the best possible system. And they came back to me and said, you know what, given what we know now we actually think that this is a better way of doing it. So we're not eliminating missile defense - in fact what we're doing is putting a system in that's more timely, more cost effective, and that meets the actual threats that we perceive coming from Iran.
Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them. And this program will not be a threat to them. So my task here was not to negotiate with the Russians. The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is. We have made a decision about what will be best to protect the American people as well as our troops in Europe and our allies. If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iiran, you know, then that's a bonus.
Schieffer: Mr. President our time is up. Thank you so much.
Obama: Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Bob.