© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Oct. 5, 2007

National Journal's Linda Douglass sat down with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy for the second edition of "National Journal On Air." This is a transcript of their conversation.

Kennedy: I'm delighted to be on your program, Linda.

Kennedy: No, he's wrong. He actually supported this program when he was governor of Texas. All you have to do is look on the Bush Web site and you'll see where he has supported the program. In the presidential campaign, the last time he ran, he indicated that he was going to expand this program when he was reelected.

This program is really built upon the private sector. These are run by the private sector. And secondly, it's got no effective taxpayer money in it. It is funded with the cigarette tax, an increase in the cigarette tax. And of course that has benefits because that will reduce the amount of smoking among children, so it's a win-win situation.

This program is targeted. The Congressional Budget Office, basically an arm of the administration, said that this, what we call the SCHIP program is the best program to reach uninsured children. The CBO agency has said that. And it is the best way, and 90 percent of the resources are going to go for families that are 200 percent of poverty to maybe 250 percent of poverty. We're talking about families of three or four at $30,000, and we know that they cannot afford health care.

Let me just finally say this is in the interest of these children. Children that can't see a blackboard in their school cannot learn. If they can't hear the teacher they cannot learn. And if we invest in our children we're going to save resources. We're not only going to have healthier children, but we're going to save resources over the long run.

If a child goes to an emergency room today, it's $475. So parents are thinking tonight, is my child $475 sick? And they're listening to their child cry through the evening. We have a program that will do this that has broad support from all of not only the church groups but the religious groups and the president just doesn't understand it. If he is against any kind of government health program, what we're going to find now is that he'll be after the Medicare program or the Medicaid program. What about the veterans program?

And the irony is the president of the United States uses a government-run program when he goes out to the Bethesda Naval Hospital or the Walter Reed Hospital. Who do we think runs those programs? Those are run by the Navy and run by the Army. Those are government agencies. He doesn't mind, but he won't permit it for children. He's got the wrong priorities.

A final point: I think it's more important to invest in children than to continue to pour billions and billions and billions into the hot sands of Iraq. That's what we're doing. This is a choice. We can invest in children, or spend billions and billions of more money in Iraq.

Kennedy: Well, we have every, we think we have the votes in the United States Senate. I think they're somewhat shy now in the House of Representatives. But there's no question the American public, all the various surveys indicate Republican voters, independent voters and Democrats support this. This is going to be voted on on the 18th of October. That's ten days effectively from now. The American people will have a chance to speak to their representatives over these next weekends and I'm very hopeful that we'll get more Republican support. We have got Republican support in the Senate of the United States, Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch.

When Orrin Hatch and I introduced this bill ten years ago, we had broad Republican support. We had broad Republican support from the Republican governors. The Republican governors have been very supportive of this program. This is an investment in children. This is a choice: Do we want to spend the money in Iraq or for children? A one-month battle in Iraq would effectively pay for all of the children for over a year, the 10 million children. That gives you some idea about the choices. I think most Americans say we ought to invest in the United States, invest in children, put children first. That's what the Democrats want to do.

Kennedy: Well, not with regards to our particular Iraqi refugee program that will permit 5,000 Iraqi refugees who have worked with our military, who have worked with American servicemen and women, and who have the bullseye target on their back. We're talking about individuals who are translators for American servicemen and women that have been embedded with companies and with divisions of American men and servicemen and in many instances have saved American soldiers' lives, where the commander of that unit has certified that this Iraqi translator worked with them for over a year, risked their life, they have saved Americans' lives, and now because they have done that he or she and their family are targeted for assassination. Now we have some moral obligation.

And what's happened is, the administration has just been enormously bureaucratic in clearing these individuals. If they have been cleared once by the intelligence agencies in the Department of Defense to be able to work with the American servicemen and women, have served for over a year with those men in these units, and then they are certified by the captain or the colonel that has witnessed their service, why we should let them remain in Iraq and get shot, when their names are printed on the mosques over there and their children are brutally murdered, I think is unacceptable. We're not talking about accepting all the refugees. We're talking about taking those refugees that have had a direct relationship with the American fighting units and American support systems, and there are thousands of those individuals. We have some moral obligation. They're being shot every single day, and we have some moral obligation. Those individuals who would put their life on the line for the Americans, now their lives are on the line because they supported us. We can't slam the door on those individuals. That's what my amendment -- it had the support of Senator [Sam] Brownback and a number of senators, [Richard] Lugar, Republicans, and it's had good support from the conservative as well as from the liberal side of the aisle -- and it was accepted, finally, in the Defense Authorization Bill and I'm very hopeful that the administration will move on it.

Kennedy: Well, I'm elected to get things done here. I mean there are senators who come down and they make speeches and they put bills in and that's about the limit of their service. There are others that come down and want to work to try and really legislate. We have had some success in some of these areas this year. We, for example, have worked with Senator [Pete] Domenici on getting mental health parity passed in the Senate of the United States. That'll affect 113 million Americans that have health insurance but don't have the mental health coverage. We know that those with mental illness are discriminated against in many instances in the country, but they're discriminated against in the health area as well.

We worked very closely with Senator [Michael] Enzi, who is a Republican, in reforming the Food and Drug Administration. We want to make sure that the prescription drugs -- Vioxx comes to mind now -- we want to make sure the prescription drugs we take are going to be safe and secure. The other, is we want to make sure that food safety is safe and secure. An important part of that bill was the food safety parts. We have heard all about the importation of various foods and the dangers that it provides for the American family. We have to insist that we are going to make sure that the food safety... now, I think that isn't a left or a right issue, I think those are conservative issues. We're talking about conserving people's health and their well-being and their children's health -- seems to me those are matters where there should be common ground. It's easy to politicize them, it's more difficult to get the coalitions, but we have been making some progress. We still have a long ways to go.

Kennedy: Well, I think it's the focusing on the challenges of working families in the middle class. I think the middle class has never felt so threatened. Their incomes have been basically stabilized over the last five years. And yet they find out that the tuition which their children have to pay has gone up dramatically -- 50 to 75 percent. They find out they are increasingly threatened because they can't afford the health care that they can afford. They find out their retirement income, the defined benefit programs, their other retirement income is drifting away. They can't afford that. And for the first time, they are beginning to wonder whether they or their children are going to have better lives in the future than they had. And they have a lot of restlessness and a great deal of insecurity. They feel their jobs may very well be outsourced to other countries.

And they have been -- the middle income, middle class -- have been the backbone of this country. They're the ones that brought us out of the Depression and fought the wars -- World War II -- the ones that have built the great economy. And now they are threatened. And the candidate that is able to inspire confidence from the middle income families and working families of this country, that he will give focus and attention to their challenges and lead this nation and restore it as the beacon of hope and opportunity around the world, is going to win both the nomination and the election.

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