PETER SLEN, C-SPAN HOST: This week on the news makers, Majority Whip James Clyburn is our guest, here to question him, Ed Epstein of cqpolitics.com, and Mike Soraghan of “The Hill” newspaper. Gentlemen, thank you all for being here. Majority Whip Clyburn, it’s – we’re taping this on Friday afternoon, the healthcare legislation is a moving target. Can you tell us where we stand in the house right now?

JAMES CLYBURN, UNITED STATES CONGRESSMAN, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Well in the house, I think we’re getting much closer to consensus. We’re not there yet, we had great meetings all day yesterday, Thursday, late into the night – Thursday night. And this morning, Friday morning, we worked on it, and around 10 o’clock, we had consensus on a very critical part of this, which has to do with regional disparities, as you know. One of the big problems happened to be the fact that some states have reimbursement rates that are much lower than they should be, and we have members that have real concerns with that.

And so we’re trying in this legislation to make sure that we don’t lock people into a disadvantage with these disparities, and we’re trying to work it out to make sure that we put in a process that will allow us to focus on the value of healthcare rather than the volume of healthcare, because so much of these reimbursement rates have to do with volume rather than value, and that’s part of what we’ve been hearing from people around the country. Some of you may have read the New York papers, New Yorkers magazine, the cost conundrum comparing the gal in Texas with El Paso, Texas. One dealer did value, the other dealer had volume, and these tremendous disparities have existed because of it.

So that’s the kind of thing we’re trying to work through, and we’re get closer to consensus.

SLEN: Given the fact that there’s been so much hullabaloo over the last couple of weeks on healthcare, and it seems to have stalled, was it a mistake for the house leadership and the committee chairs to lay down their mark prior to dealing with the republicans or the blue dogs?

CLYBURN: I don’t think we did that. You know it’s kind of interesting, I'm a big fan of Harry Truman, my favorite president so far. I went out to his library a little over a year ago, and one of the things that I took note of was that when he left the presidency 57 years ago, the one thing that he said he regretted not having gotten done was healthcare for all Americans. The speech he made to congress calling on congress to do this was 61 years ago. We just had a presidential campaign, all of the major candidates laid down healthcare plans so we spent for two years talking about healthcare plans in the presidential election. When we took over the congress, we’ve had 79 hearings on healthcare, we have had over 45 hours of markup in three different committees. Now why would anybody call us rushing when you have this kind of a backdrop, and you have all of this activity going on, I don’t understand that.

The fact of the matter is, we have been very slow and deliberate in trying to pull this legislation together, and I'm very pleased with the process that we had, now what we have is a caucus that’s very diverse, and you’ve got 51 blue dogs, you got 42 African Americans, you got 23 Latinas in the Hispanic caucus, you got new democrats, you got progressive democrats, and you’ve got Asian Pacific islanders, you have all these caucuses that we have to deal with. And that is what this country’s all about, that is diversity of this country reflected in our caucus.

So I expect for us to go through a process that’s a little bit different from what the republicans go through, because they don’t have the diversity that we have.

ED EPSTEIN, CQPOLITICS: To follow up on that, there’s some talk today, given this protracted negotiation that’s been going on for weeks among democrats to bypass the rest of the energy and commerce committee markup and bring the builder equity to the floor next week. As a long-time advocate of regular order in the house, what do you think of that idea?

CLYBURN: Well I'm still an advocate of regular order, as I think you may recall, last week I said that even if we can get this vote done today without consensus, I would much rather wait another week if it meant getting to consensus. So I'm all for trying to do this with consensus among our membership.

Now one of the things that will probably be determined is whether or not there is more consensus in the larger caucus than within the committee. Now it’s that kind of determination is made, I suspect the speaker and other members of the leadership will sit down and make that determination. But I would personally rather see us go through regular order and do this, and have all members feeling that the atmosphere was one of positiveness rather than negativity.

EPSTEIN: So in other words, you might not be willing to allow a small group – a subset of the blue dogs, let’s say, to hold up this bill any further than they have?

CLYBURN: Well that’s not me, that’s what I hear has been discussed. I understand that the chair of the committee, I guess he knows this committee pretty well, and if he feels that, and he says to the speaker, that’s what he thinks ought to be done, I think the speaker would then have to make some determinations. And I would sit with her, as the rest of the leadership will, and I'll let my feelings about this be known at that time.

What I would do, though, is continue as I have been doing, having these listening sessions with the by – with all of our caucuses, I had six of them two weeks ago, to make sure that what we’re doing finds favor with the broader caucus.

MIKE SORAGHAN, THE HILL: Mr. Clyburn, so the president held a press conference the other day, and it – after that, it – the bill didn’t seem to gain any more momentum. Does the president need to do more, or be doing something different to move this process along?

CLYBURN: Well this is hard, this is not anything that’s easy to do. I think everybody knows that this is the president’s priority, this is his top priority, I believe. Now when you look at how we got to this point, we had a campaign that lasted almost two years, in that campaign at one point, everybody said healthcare was number one, then they got to another point everybody said that energy problems are number one, then another time everybody said education. Then we get into here just before the elections we had this big collapse on Wall Street, then just after the elections, we saw numbers falling in employment, the unemployment numbers going up, and then we had to do this recovery package.

And so we had to do things in order to get things arrested and stabilized, and so I think that the president had to do first things first. And, of course, he is now focusing on things that are a broader range, remember this bill will not go into full fruition until 2013. I think he did the right thing in saying to congress, you work your will, here is a placeholder, I think around $634 billion a placeholder, you all flesh this out. That is recognizing the role of the congress.

Now a lot of people said he could do more, maybe he could. I'm very pleased with what he has done, and I think that so much of what the problem is has got to do with the regional differences that we had within our caucus. You’ve got a caucus that – where the southeast and the northwest are pretty much on the same page when it comes to these reimbursement rates, and you’ve got other people who are doing pretty good, and they aren’t too sure that they want to have any changes because they feel that you may bring our rates down rather than bringing the other rates up. The question is, how do you determine what the rates are?

So you have all of these, I don’t think you can get that kind of result from the president, that’s got to be done by those people elected out there in these congressional districts, we’re the ones that have got to flush that out, that’s why I've said over and over, going home to listen to people will not get us to where we need to be, because the differences will only get reinforced when you go home. You’ve got to bring all of those people here, that’s why people send us to Washington to sit down together, reason together, work these things out, and then try to come up with legislation that will respect the needs of all the regions of the country, you can’t do that in your own congressional district, you got to do that up here in this body that we all make up.

EPSTEIN: You’ve said that you don’t want the House to leave this August recess without taking up this bill. It obviously is a great question whether that can be done next week.

CLYBURN: Yes.

EPSTEIN: What do you think would be the repercussions, not just for healthcare, but for the President Obama and your broader legislative agenda if you do leave here without a Senate vote or a House vote?

CLYBURN: Well it all depends on how we leave town, and it all depends upon how you guys interpret our leaving. Now if you say to your listeners and your readers that they went on vacation without doing this, then it’s going to be tough for us. Now if you were to say they went home to listen to their constituents, and they will be coming back in September to deal with this, then we’ll be all right. Now which one of those headlines you guys are going to write? I think it know which one you’ll write. So it’s going to be tough for us to go home without taking definitive action on this legislation.

SLEN: Representative Clyburn, you’ve talked about going home and talking to your constituents, but you’ve been around the political process quite awhile. Does a month delay in passing a bill lead to political trouble maybe, people have time to mobilize and argue against any legislation?

CLYBURN: Oh that’s true, it all depends on what the headlines are out there. You know we know that this legislation must be passed by both houses of congress, we know that whatever either house passes will not be the final product. And so I have concern to the members of the House of Representatives, let’s get 80, 85%, let’s get as much consensus as we possibly can, let’s vote this bill out. And hopefully the Senate will do the same thing. And then we’ll go to conference, and at that point, we’ll be joined by the White House, and we will work out all of these differences so that both Houses and the White House will have a consensus.

Now if we keep waiting for all three of these bodies to get together before we take the first step, that to me is a little bit less than what makes sense to me. Let’s do this thing as we know it should be done, as we do with plenty of the other pieces of legislation. But if you think that we are going to rot over here until such time as all three groups get together, that’s the problem that I don’t think we’re having rational thoughts about.

SLEN: This is CSPANs newsmakers program, our guest is the Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, James Clyburn. Our reporters, Ed Epstein of CQ Politics, and Mike Soraghan of “The Hill”. Mr. Soraghan?

SORAGHAN: Mr. Clyburn, you were talking about the three bodies, and what the Senate might do now. I know that you’ve said that you – many of your members are – really want to see what the senate finance committee will do or see some sort of Senate product before they – before they’ll feel comfortable voting in the House. Are you at all frustrated with the process, the progress in the Senate and the Senate Finance Committee?

CLYBURN: Oh no, I'm not frustrated at all. I respect the legislative process, I know how tough it is sometimes to get consensus. And you know I've been up here for 17 years, before I came here, I spent about 18 years working in state government, and my job was to seek out, hopefully find and implement consensus, that’s what I did for 18 years at the state level. And I've done a pretty good job of doing that up here, and I think that’s one reason I got elected Whip, because the people in my caucus recognize that I am a great believer in consensus.

So if you’re going to get frustrated trying to get people to consensus, you ought not be in this business. So it doesn’t frustrate me at all. Now there are times when inter-nations make yet a little bit – a little bit different, but I'm always trying to get there. I always see the glass as being half full rather than half empty.

EPSTEIN: Whole show, and the president acknowledged last night that as this process moves along, and people hear more about it, anxiety levels are growing in the public, and people have questions about it, such a sweeping piece of legislation and such a big change for many people. What is the democratic caucus going to do when you come up with this, your version of the bill to try to go out and sell it in August to the American people? And you know the republicans are going to be out there beating the drum against it.

CLYBURN: Yes.

EPSTEIN: So what is going to – what will change when you come back in September, how is the momentum going to keep going?

CLYBURN: Well I would hope that our members would go out and talk honestly with the American people about what we are trying to do here. I don’t know of a single family that has not been hit with things like preexisting conditions, being denied insurance because of a preexisting condition. I said to my folks in South Carolina, the fastest growing disease in this country is diabetes, and South Carolina leads the nation in amputation because of the late detection of diabetes. That is the ultimate preexisting condition, and I can tell you that family after family finding themselves being denied the coverage, or being dropped because of such. This plan we have put together, get rid of that, diabetes is preventable, so we are saying that for prevention programs, we are no longer going to have these deductibles and these copayments for prevention programs.

And so we’re saying to people, if you take the pills you were supposed to take to prevent the onslaught of diabetes, if you took – do the examination, do the office visits, do all of that, we’re getting rid of that, because a lot of people are not doing that today simply because they don’t have the deductibles, or they don’t have the money to pay for the deductible, or they don’t have the money to pay for copayments. We are trying to put in place a healthcare system that rewards the wellness and health rather than sickness and death, and that’s a choice that people are making.

How many people are making choices about their professions today because they can’t afford to lose their insurance? You’ve got insurance now, you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, or you have some other illness, you’ve got this great opportunity to go to a new job which you know that you could be denied insurance in that new job because of preexisting conditions. So that is the kind of thing we’re trying to get people to understand that we’re trying to do here. And to businesses, especially small businesses, we’re saying that we know that this exchange that we’re putting together, that you can get into this exchange, you can benefit from this big pool the same way that big businesses are benefiting from it.

And so the problem we’ve got now is everybody is looking at the cost of putting this in place, nobody’s looking at what it costs us for not doing it. Each family, $1,200 more on your premiums every year because you’ve got to pay for uncompensated care, my own wife had heart surgery, five-vessel bypass surgery, when I saw the bill at what we were paying for aspirin because we got to pay for those people who don’t have insurance, that’s happening to every family that I know.

And so I think that people begin to focus on the costs that we have now, premiums doubled in the last nine years. And so nobody’s focusing on that, everybody wants to focus on the other big problems. And I know I've been told not to get – not to bring this up, but I've got to, the fact of the matter is, in this health insurance plan, we have gotten it scored because of savings, we know we can get to big savings as not being scored, and as a result, they – what people see as a cost is not a real cost, simply because we believe that you can get the kind of savings out of these wellness programs on the other end that the congressional budget office is not able to score because they can’t quantify.

So we don’t think this plan will cost the American people any – as much additional funds, and some of us don’t think it will cost anything additional from what we are paying already.

EPSTEIN: Are you still going to try to do this this year? I – the president’s been talking about October 15th, is that – is that doable?

CLYBURN: Well it’s our goal, and I do believe that the American people want this done, I know that our economy need for this to be done. Because even if we turn things around, and there are signs now that things are going to – are about to turn around, or even turning around, but we’re not going to be able to sustain new growth in the economy if you don’t fix the healthcare costs in this country. I do believe that the biggest contributor to the failures of the big three automobile industry has been healthcare costs. I think we’ve got to fix this healthcare thing, or we are not going to be able to get our economy on a sustaining growth pattern going forward.

SORAGHAN: Mr. Clyburn, if I could jump back to something Ed asked about earlier in terms of voting on this next week, Mr. Waxman has said that if you can’t reach agreement with this group of blue dogs, that he will skip past his committee, and that skips past regular order. The speaker has said that she thinks she has the votes, but I mean members have told me this week you know they’re 100 short on a good day. We probably picked up a few more with the regional disparity agreement today. Can you pass it if you go through – if you – if you skip over the committee? And are you – are you essentially daring members to vote against the president’s top priority?

CLYBURN: Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what Waxman had said in event (ph) to me, I don’t know exactly what Waxman’s got in mind. I don’t know what the speaker is thinking about along those lines. I do know this, I do believe that there’s much, much more of a consensus in the bigger you know our caucus than you’ve got in the committee. Now do we have enough consensus to get to 218? I have not started counting yet, and so I don’t know. But I do know this, that there is probably much more support in the bigger body of our caucus than there seems to be inside the committee of the industry commerce.

SORAGHAN: That could be an argument for going ahead and bypassing the committee, I guess.

CLYBURN: Well it could be, but I've already said where my position is, let’s follow the regular order, let’s try to get consensus inside this committee, let’s role something out to the floor, and let’s maintain the collegiality within the industry commerce committee that we’ve already gotten with these regional meetings. Those regional meetings have worked extremely well, and they started out with the listening sessions we had two years – two weeks ago, and now they seem to have produced a tremendous document on these regional disparities.

SLEN: Gentlemen, we only have about three, four minutes left. Other topics, Ed Epstein?

EPSTEIN: I’d like to ask one more question about this if I could. What do you tell – there’s a lot of members, democrats and younger members elected from swing districts in the last two election who are very, very nervous about this vote. They say you know this is just going to be used to club them over the head, along with the energy vote they had to take before July 4th. What do you say to them about why they should vote for this bill? They fear it’s going to cost them their seats.

CLYBURN: Well I would say this, I'll never forget I came here in 1992, we had the same kind of watershed election in 1994, you remember we lost about 56, 57 seats. We had a president that beat an incumbent in 1992. Now I would say to them so much of what you will face at the polls next year will have to do with the public’s perception of how well the democrats are doing responding to their needs, responding to their dreams, responding to their own security and stability in their lives.

So be careful as you look at this, because so much of this is not just how you’ve voted on any one issue, but how people feel about democrats as a party, and that will determine a lot about their attitude going to the polls. So look at this and be sure that you’re not separating yourself from the overall issue regarding healthcare, because I don’t know of a single person that wanted to see their child getting denied coverage because of a preexisting condition, I don’t know of a single business that want to have to go into bankruptcy. I had a gentleman with me at the press conference the other day who say that his business is being – is researching titles (ph), and he has been – was having to deny loans to people because they got behind in healthcare payments, that should not be. And so I would say to people, be careful that you aren’t reading more into this reaction of some people than is there.

SORAGHAN: Real quickly, as the – as the highest ranking African American in congress, there’s this issue that’s come up with this arrest of Professor Gates. I wondered primarily if though that the president over stepped when he said the police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts acted stupidly, and what your take is on the incident.

CLYBURN: That’s not what he said, he said a particular act on the part of one police person. Look, I spent 18 years in South Carolina, of all places, places where there is a person that has a history of these kinds of experiences. And I know that Dr. Gates reacted based upon his experiences, I know that the president who went to school in that community reacted according to his experiences. I would hope that all of us will take all of this into account, and remember that we can be no more, no less than what our experiences allow us to be. If I haven’t said that, I would say that I think that the police officer in this was responding to a call, the question to me was if this was a neighbor calling, was the – what was the neighbor’s role in all of this? Did the police officer take into account that the neighbor may have over reacted?

So there are so many variables in all of this that I think that nobody is indicting the police department in Cambridge, and certainly the police officer has a record for seeming to be admirable, and I've certainly watched him on the TV, and he seemed to me to be a good guy. I think I'm a pretty good guy, but there have been times when I've overreacted, and that’s just a human nature.

SLEN: And that will have to end our discussion with the Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, James Clyburn.

CLYBURN: Thank you so much for having me.

SLEN: We’ll be right back with our reporters.

SLEN: Mike Soraghan and Ed Epstein, is this healthcare debate democrat versus democrat, or the republicans have a role also?

EPSTEIN: Go ahead.

SORAGHAN: I'd say the republicans’ role is kind of a spoiler, basically indicating that there – you know there are no republicans really to pick off in any considerable number, so that’s why these democratic differences are so great, and so meaningful toward why it’s so hard to pass this bill.

EPSTEIN: Well the republicans are out there as kind of a chorus, not of naysayers, but their view of this issue is completely different than the democrats, I don’t really – the republicans just keep saying they want a bipartisan approach, especially in the senate that you should get at least 60 votes, including some of the conservative democrats who might not vote for it. But I don’t know if that’s really practicable, because their views about the basic nature of government’s role in healthcare remains different than the democrats, so the democrats have to cobble this together on their own. And it’s their president’s number one priority, how can they let him fail? They have this new popular president, they did before under Bill Clinton, although Clinton wrote his own plan, as you recall, and it never even got to first base in congress. So this is the furthest along we’ve been in kind of a national health insurance system since Truman first proposed it.

SLEN: Well you both have observed the political scene for a while, what are the dangers, or is it possible that this bill will not come back in September after a month off?

SORAGHAN: I really think that something would have to come back, at least in September. Will they – you know predicting that they will meet this goal of October 15th of this year is harder to say. But I can not see giving up on this if they – if they do have to put it off until after the break.

EPSTEIN: I think Medicare took a few go a rounds to get it through the democratic congress under democratic president. So it’s possible that could happen, but Obama has made you know deadlines and pressure on them, and he’s out campaigning, and he is his own most effective spokesman. You know the congress has not done a good job I don’t think really maybe of explaining this to people, that’s why the anxiety level is so high, and it’s such a complicated thing. And as the republicans point out, it’s the one thing that you know everybody in the country has – have concern about when you say you’re going to change their healthcare.

SLEN: What are – the Medicare prescription drug plan a couple of years ago was the last major healthcare legislation …

EPSTEIN: Two thousand three.

SLEN: … that got passed. And it did not seem to have the drama that this is having. Is there any reason?

EPSTEIN: Oh, remember that three-hour vote – that pre-dawn three-hour vote, and …

SLEN: Good point …

EPSTEIN: … allegations of bribery. And the democrats were against that, because they said it was a give away to the drug industry. So this is kind of a mirror image of that, this is – that was the republicans forced that through, now the democrats are going to have – how they have to force this through with their president.

SORAGHAN: Well certainly there’s always discussion of that three-hour vote. I mean somebody was complaining to me the other day that the only thing people remember about that bill was the three-hour vote. You know certainly the drama you know it – I'm guilty as anybody about running around chasing it, and who’s upset about what. I think you know this amount of drama, especially up against this sort of deadline you know is entirely predictable going in, that’s going to be difficult to do something like this, especially you know on this kind of timeline in terms of yes, the healthcare debate has been going on for 60 years, but in terms of the time between you know having a draft bill and passing it.

SLEN: And finally, gentlemen, what was your take on Majority Whip Clyburn’s focus on the regional differences?

EPSTEIN: Well that’s what’s really tied them in knots in the democratic caucus. One of the things at the overall cost and a tax increase, but it is a regional issue, because different states, different areas got different levels of Medicare reimbursement. So – and that was being set by congress pretty much. So you’re going to take that away from the congress, are these states going to be locked into inferior payments? They don’t want to be, they want to equalize things. So it’s a – it’s a – you know it’s all north versus south, east versus west issue.

SORAGHAN: I think you – he focused on it because they do have this agreement. So he wants to focus on agreements that they have resolved. There’s still you know plenty of other disagreements out there, and it is still – it is still regional, because most of these blue dogs, especially these seven blue dogs that are you know that are banded together and are blocking kind of made themselves a choke point in the energy and commerce committee are generally southern. So it – that is a regional difference right there.

SLEN: Mike Soraghan of “The Hill” and Ed Epstein of CQ Politics.

SORAGHAN: Thanks for having me.

EPSTEIN: Thanks.

END