CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO, (R) WYOMING: I am, Rick. Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Always good to see you. Let's talk first about these ads. Because we are going to devote about a half hour to this entire conversation, so we have plenty of time. This ad that continues to suggest, erroneously, mind you, that this proposal is essentially going to let old people die off or kill them, that's not fair, is it?

BARRASSO: Well, what you want to see - or really what the next bill comes out, the Health bill, the bill from the Health Committee, two weeks ago they passed it. Today, all the Republicans wrote to Senator Dodd and said, "Where is the bill? And what's the cost of it?" SANCHEZ: OK, but Senator, hold on.

(CROSS TALK)

But hold on. Senator, hold on. Going back to my question. You can't say that just because we don't know what the details are, we are going to make up some details and put them in a commercial scaring old people into thinking they are all going to die if they do this bill? That's not right, is it?

BARRASSO: That's not right at all, but it's the Health Committee bill where Barbara Mikulski's amendment, which has government and taxpayers paying for abortions. It is in that bill. It is there in black and white, the amendment passed but yet the bill hasn't been finalized in the sense of being printed. So, there are a number of different bills with different things in each of them.

SANCHEZ: Senator Brown, let me bring you into this. Senator Brown of Ohio, you there, sir?

SEN. SHERROD BROWN, (D) OHIO: You want me address the same question?

SANCHEZ: No, no, I got a different question for you. I have a different bone to pick with you, as they say.

Why does the president continue to say that this proposal is going to pay for itself when you and I both know this thing is not going to pay for itself? This thing is going to cost us. Of course, it is.

BROWN: Well, I don't think the president is quite saying it pays for itself. The president says over time, there -well, let me start with this.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

BROWN: Back about three weeks ago, former Treasury Secretary O'Neill, secretary of the Treasury under Bush said that there is $1 trillion in our health care system, our of some $5 trillion, that we are wasting, that we are overspending. Most of it is not fraud. Most of it is just overspending, services that aren't necessary, over- testing, all of that. And over time, we are going to be able to - because of this bill - in part, we are going to be able to wring a lot of that cost out of the system.

Of course, it is going to cost more money initially. That is what we are budgeting for. When the president says, paying for itself, he also included $600 billion in the budget. He is not saying the entire bill pays for itself.

SANCHEZ: Just to be fair, now, and so the American people know, this will affect the deficit. It will affect the deficit, right?

BROWN: Well, it affects the deficit except for that first $600 million, which we built into the budget that we passed. SANCHEZ: OK.

BROWN: The rest, we will find a way to pay for it. You know, I hear this talk of the deficit. These are the same people who are complaining about the deficit voted almost unanimously for a tax cut that put is $100s of billions in debt, and voted for a war in 2002 that put us trillions of dollars into debt. They didn't care so much about the budget deficit.

But now, when it comes time to ensure people who aren't insured, to help those people who are underinsured, and to provide consumer protections for people who have insurance, now they are talking about deficits.

SANCHEZ: How about that, Senator Barrasso, I mean, he is - Senator Brown just laid out the charge, essentially, that Republican side wasn't real interested in deficits when George Bush was in office, but now all of a sudden, they are all deficit hawks when Obama is in office.

BARRASSO: A couple of things. One, I wasn't in the Senate when those votes were cast. But if you take a look at the total debt buildup from George Washington to the end of George W. Bush, add it all up, Obama has now exceeded all of those numbers. His budget is doubles the national debt ...

SANCHEZ: Is that true?

(CROSS TALK)

BARRASSO: ...in five years. It triples it in 10 years. It is unsustainable.

SANCHEZ: Is that true, Senator Brown?

BARRASSO: It is the number one thing on American's minds, it's the economy, it's the debt, it is jobs, it is the deficit.

SANCHEZ: Is that true, Senator Brown?

BROWN: It is only true if you ignore the fact that - it was eight years of - I don't want to talk about George Bush, but if it was eight years of George Bush that got us into this financial crisis where, yes, the Treasury Secretary Paulson, George Bush's Treasury secretary, and Treasury Secretary Geithner had to do all this bailout for the banks, that we had no choice, if you want to count that, yeah, he has run up the deficit. That is not really quite fair.

SANCHEZ: I want to leave it at that.

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