Transcript: 'Face The Nation' (11-8-09)

Senators Lindsey Graham and Jack Reed appeared on Face The Nation. Read the complete transcript. Excerpt below:

REED: I believe we’re going to pass health care reform. I believe we must do this because it’s essential to not just the quality of life, here, but our economic success in the future.

Senator Reid, Harry Reid , has introduced a public option. There’s strong support there. But we are far from the end of the debate in the Senate. It will take time. It will be careful, thorough and deliberate. I hope that a public option is part of the final bill.

SCHIEFFER: But, candidly, right now, you don’t have the votes in the Senate for that. Am I not correct in saying that?

REED: I think there’s a discussion about, as Senator Snowe suggested, a trigger to the public option. Senator Reid has suggested an opt-out by the states. There is a debate, or an active debate, about how the public option might come about.

But, overwhelming, 60 percent of the American public want a public option. And I think we should be listening to them as much as listening to ourselves.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let’s get the take from Senator Graham. Senator Graham, your friend the independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, on this broadcast last Sunday, said no health care reform legislation is better than health care reform with the public option.

Where do you think this is going in the Senate?

GRAHAM: Well, let’s start with the House bill. The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Just look at how it passed. It passed 220-215. It passed by two votes. You had 40 -- 39 Democrats vote against the bill. They come from red states, moderate Democrats from swing districts.

They bailed out on this bill. It was a bill written by liberals for liberals. And people like Joe Lieberman are not going to get anywhere near the House bill. It cuts Medicare about $500 billion. It’s over $1 trillion in new spending. It does have the public option. So the House bill is a non-starter in the Senate.

SCHIEFFER: Senator Lieberman also said, on that, that, if it came to filibustering to keep that bill from passing in the Senate, he’d join in that. Would you also be planning to do that if it looks like the public option thing’s going to pass? GRAHAM: And let me tell you why Joe feels that way and I do. I think the public option will destroy private health care. Nobody in this country in the insurance business can compete with a government- sponsored plan, where the government writes the benefits and politicians will never raise the premiums. It will be a death blow to private choice.

And all of these bills depend on reducing Medicare $400 to $500 billion over 10 years. Seniors are not going to like that. That’s unnecessary. So I just think the construct out of the House and what exists in the Senate is not going to pass. And I hope and pray it doesn’t because it would be a disaster for the economy and health care.