Interview with Sen. Chris Van Hollen
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The outcry against United Airlines continues to grow. You saw the video, that passenger screaming like they were trying to kill him as he was dragged off a full flight. Lawmakers now taking action to try and keep this from happening again. One of them joins us. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Culpability, blame, wrongdoing, all pretty clear here. What would make it better?</s>SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: Well, Chris, the underlying issue here is something many people don't realize, and I didn't realize it either, which is that airlines, even after you've boarded and got on your seat and you're ready to go have the legal right to forcibly take you off the airplane if they've overbooked or something else. I mean, obviously, they can do it for public safety reasons if you pose a threat, but I don't think many people realized that they can do it if they've overbooked or they just want the seats for someone else. And, you know, my view is, once you're on the airplane, they don't have a -- any kind of legal right to forcibly take you off. What they've got to do is what they try to do before you board, which is offer passengers an inducement to deplane.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>VAN HOLLEN: And there is a price at which you're going to get the volunteers to get off that airplane. And that's what they should do rather than have this kind of situation.</s>CUOMO: Agreed, but they didn't. So what is the Customers Not Cargo Act and how will it fix this?</s>VAN HOLLEN: Well, the Customers Not Cargo Act is a pretty straightforward approach, which says exactly what I just talked about, which is, if you have a situation like this in the future, the airline does not have the right to come up to a passenger and say to you, hey, you're going to have to get off this airplane. What they've got to do is say to the passengers on board, we're going to offer you $1,000, or if that's not enough, $1,500 or whatever price is necessary in order to get someone to volunteer to deplane. And there will be a point where, you know, passengers do that on a voluntary basis. If you look at this, under the regulations right now, if they actually eject you and force you off the airplane, the maximum that they can compensate you for is $1,350. $1,350. So at some point it's actually in their financial interest to throw you off the airplane rather than offer you an incentive. That makes no sense.</s>CUOMO: Well, it will be interesting to see how that tracks and how the airline industry pushes back on that. Let me ask you about a couple other news items of the day while I have you. The president says he's going to slow down payments to providers of health care to force Democrats to deal. He says he doesn't want to hurt people, but that will be on you guys, not him. Will that get you to the table?</s>VAN HOLLEN: You know what, this is so reckless and irresponsible. I mean the president tries to say with a straight face, it's not going to hurt people, but it will simply throw a monkey wrench into the system instead of trying to mess up the system. We should be looking for ways to improve it. Chris, we've always said that we're willing to work with anybody to improve the Affordable Care Act. What we will not do is be complicit in trying to blow it up and destroy it, which is what President Trump and the Republicans tried to do, and there was a huge public outcry that helped stop it. So, fix it, yes, but not be party to an effort to undermine the whole process and whole system.</s>CUOMO: Do you think he has the ability to not pay? These are existing contrast that he'd have that he would therefore be violating. And, also, do you think you could get enough Democrats to work with him to obviate the need for the Freedom Caucus, because that's what you'd have to do. They want repeal. They don't care about the Medicaid replacement part. You have the opposite set of interests. Do you think you could get enough Democrats on board to work with the president on fixing the ACA to remove the need for those Freedom Caucus votes?</s>VAN HOLLEN: Well, Chris, we've put a lot of ideas on the table. And if President Trump will join with us on those ideas, we can move forward. So, for example, one of the big issues in the exchanges is making sure we have enough carriers that can offer health insurance plans and that can create enough competition to keep down the price of premiums and other costs. One obvious way to do that is to create a public option within the Affordable Care Act.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>VAN HOLLEN: That would both create more competition and also guarantee that in every place in the country, you've got a provider.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>VAN HOLLEN: I certainly welcome the chance to work with President Trump on that kind of fix.</s>CUOMO: So you think you can get enough votes --</s>VAN HOLLEN: But this idea that --</s>CUOMO: Go ahead, please, senator.</s>VAN HOLLEN: I mean if he were to come out today -- if he were to come out today and say, look, I want to work with Democrats and propose the public option, which is a common sense solution, I think we could move forward. But I'm not hearing anything like that.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>VAN HOLLEN: Chris, he seems to be trying to get the Freedom Caucus on board. And to do that, he has to blow it up more and more and more, which is going to be unacceptable. So, I'll give you another example. Very early on in this presidency, Democrats in the Senate put forward a plan to modernize our national infrastructure. Something that candidate Trump talked about a lot on the campaign trail. We've not heard anything about how they want to move forward on modernizing our infrastructure. We've put forward a plan. Join us, rather than engage in these kind of threats to not pay providers and blow up the system and hurt millions of people.</s>CUOMO: All right, senator, thank you very much. The good news is that they say they have to get health care done first before they can get to their other priorities. You have leverage there. The bad news is, you guys are nowhere close to coming to a deal. But thank you for being on NEW DAY. We'll be following this very closely.</s>VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you. Thanks, Chris.</s>CUOMO: Alisyn.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Chris, there were two high-profile apologies this week. The CEO of United Airlines and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Which one was more effective? Jeanne Moos will let you rate it for yourself.