Who's Inspirational In Washington?; Can Washington Modernize?
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on CROSSFIRE, the torch of inspiration passed across generations, from president to president.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hope we carry away from this a reminder of what JFK understood to be the essence of the American spirit. ANNOUNCER; Who that is that spirit now? On the left, Van Jones. On the right, Newt Gingrich. In the CROSSFIRE, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland; and Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina. In today's Washington, whose example is inspiring? Whose should be avoided? Tonight on CROSSFIRE.</s>VAN JONES, CO-HOST: Welcome to CROSSFIRE. I'm Van Jones on the left.</s>NEWT GINGRICH, CO-HOST: I'm Newt Gingrich on the right. In the CROSSFIRE tonight, two members of a vastly different U.S. Senate compared to the one of the Kennedy era. Here in Washington today, we watched a wonderful tribute to a martyred president, whose killing influenced an entire generation, but here's what really strikes me. The notable thing about John F. Kennedy's Washington is that it worked. The Obama-era Washington doesn't. President Kennedy was able to talk with Republicans, even with Barry Goldwater. When he said "We'll get to the moon in a decade," he didn't mean "We'll settle for a rocket sitting at Cape Canaveral." While he was cautious on civil rights, he made the effort to unify the country, not divide it. It's too bad that, for President Obama, honoring Kennedy seems to just be a symbolic moment, rather than a chance to learn from him, and maybe to change something.</s>JONES: I loved it all right until the last sentence. Well, look, I...</s>GINGRICH: Don't you think he should learn?</s>JONES: I do think he -- I think he should learn and he is learning. Everybody likes to beat up on President Obama right now. But even JFK, he had his Bay of Pigs moment. Don't count this president out. I think these senators know better than to count him out. In the CROSSFIRE tonight, we've got Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and Republican Senator Tim Scott. Welcome to you. Senator Scott, it's your first time on CROSSFIRE, first time, I think, on</s>CNN. SEN. TIM SCOTT (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I've been waiting a long time.</s>JONES: We're lucky to have you. Now, listen, I am concerned, because I've been watching all this footage from the Kennedy era. And it seems like there was a time when you had people -- the parties cooperating, working together, and now it looks like a big mess, even on something as simple as getting judges approved through the Senate. We're going to have to have a nuclear option to get judges approved? What is going on in the Senate and what are you going to do about it?</s>SCOTT: I'll tell you that having a nuclear option would be like having Obama care 2.0. The fact of the matter is that, over the last 15 years, we've seen 215 judges approved, only two defeated. Two hundred fifteen approved, only two defeated. So the fact of the matter that, as it relates to getting judges approved, it's happening. The question we really should look at is why can't we find a legislative common ground: lower taxes, put people back to work, and get back to the primary question, which is Americans, they want jobs.</s>JONES: They want jobs, and we will get to that. But I don't want to let you off the hook that easy.</s>SCOTT: It's my first time on the show.</s>JONES: We've got to put the heat on you. But do -- I do have this concern, this one sticking issue. We can argue about the numbers of judges, but this one issue around the D.C. court, we are not hearing from Republicans saying that the three judges the president wants are terrible people; they're shoplifters; they're doing cocaine; they're bad; they're out in the mainstream. They just don't want to approve any judges. Is that a good idea for Republicans? I hear no argument. They just don't want the president, who's got constitutional authority to appoint a judge, to appoint a judge?</s>SCOTT: I think you make a very good point. 2006, the Democrats said something that's very important. What is the workload of the D.C. courts? What is the workload? And today, we're asking the same question. It seems like the D.C. court load is not sufficient to add any judges. There's no question that the work load is lower than most courts, most circuits. And so it's very important for us to use what we have and use it responsibly. One of the ways that we use the resources that we have responsibly is to make sure that the workload is taken care of and not new judges.</s>JONES: Do you agree with your colleague here?</s>SEN. BEN CARDIN (D), MARYLAND: Senator Scott is right, the Republicans aren't voting against the president's nominees. They're not allowing us to have a vote for the president's nominees. They're blocking, through procedural ways, so that we're not getting votes of not only the circuit court for the district. We have plenty of the presidential appointments that have not been filled for over months, and that they are using the, basically, the filibuster to prevent an up or down vote on judges, on cabinet-level positions, to a level that has never before been seen in American politics. That's wrong.</s>GINGRICH: Well, Senator, let me build on that exact point, which is you've now had eight Democratic senators come out for fixing Obama care, at least as it relates to the people who are currently not going to be able to get any insurance. Yet Senator Reid has not indicated he'd be willing to bring a bill to the floor, which will now clearly have, counting the Republicans, a clear majority of the Senate favoring it. I mean, shouldn't that -- if we're going to go back to regular order...</s>CARDIN: Oh, I agree.</s>GINGRICH: ... shouldn't we also have votes on things like Obama care?</s>CARDIN: As you know, when we passed Medicare Part D, a lot of us were opposed to that, but after it became law, we said let's sit down and let's make it work. Let's make it work the best that it can. The Affordable Care Act, Obama care, is the law of the land. It can be made better. We should be taking up legislation in regular order. The question is -- I could ask my colleague -- will the Republicans want to consider this in regular order and not just try to repeal, but to try to make it work better?</s>SCOTT: We certainly would be happy to talk about making Obama care a more effective piece of legislation. The best way to do it, in my opinion, is to repeal it. If we could do that, we could get on common ground. You've even had some criticism recently about the roll-out of the exchange. HealthCare.gov is now synonymous with failure. The challenge with Obama care is simply this. In my state, we had 400,000 South Carolinians without insurance. Today we've had less than 600 sign up for Obama care, but we've had 150,000 additional people losing their insurance because of Obama care. So the real challenge that we see today is that we need to come back to a free market solution, to make sure that people have greater access to health care. One of the ways that we do that is look at alternatives that will reduce the price of health insurance. I've got a couple that I'd like to talk about. I'd love to have this debate about providing the American people with a free market solution to lower the prices, create greater access, and see what can happen.</s>CARDIN: We tried that before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. People lost their insurance, and getting less and less. The basic principles of Obama care are sound. I don't think you want to repeal the fact that you can -- that parents can keep their adult children on their policies until age 26. Or do you want to take away from our seniors the additional benefits we've given them in filling this coverage cap, the prescription drugs so-called doughnut hole? Or do we want to go back to the days where insurance companies can put preexisting condition restrictions or caps on insurance plans? The fundamentals of the exchanges are there. We have more companies that have signed up under the exchanges offering more plans at lower rates than we had anticipated. Is it working right? No. We've got to get the online services working right.</s>SCOTT: Seven hundred and fourteen billion dollars taken out of Medicare to fund Obama care. So there's no question that what we've seen is we've made -- we've made Medicare more fragile because of Obama care, No. 1. No. 2, let's say that what we did in 2011 in the House, was we passed HR-1, I believes it was, that provided about $6 billion for health- care pools in the states, providing a state-by-state competition, which would then allow for those folks with preexisting conditions to find the coverage. If we would allow for competition across the states.</s>JONES: Wait, wait, wait.</s>SCOTT: Let me finish the sentence.</s>JONES: There's a...</s>SCOTT: I know you guys are courteous to newbies, but one of the challenges -- got to use what you got, right?</s>JONES: Right.</s>SCOTT: One of the challenges that we see here is that, if we allow for free market solutions to come to the table, things like Texas -- Texas dealt effectively -- I know you're going to turn it, but Texas dealt effectively with medical tort reform. That lowers the cost of health insurance. Defensive medicine costs about 25 percent of the overall.</s>JONES: Let me just -- because I've got to get in one question. I don't want -- I don't want you to filibuster.</s>SCOTT: I didn't know we had nuclear options.</s>JONES: Right here on the show.</s>SCOTT: Two point oh, two point oh. Obama care 2.0. All right.</s>JONES: Here, honestly, I am curious to know -- and you're a resident of South Carolina.</s>SCOTT: Absolutely.</s>JONES: I know you've got politics to deal with. But are you trying to fix Obama care? Or are you trying to repeal Obama care? If you're trying to fix Obama care, all these ideas might go somewhere. But if you are saying you want to destroy Obama case, I don't think you've got any basis to work with with your colleague here. Am I wrong?</s>SCOTT: Here's what I can tell you. I think there's a way for us to come together and find a solution to provide a more health insurance opportunities and creating greater access to health insurance in the private sector. One of the things I'm thinking about is next year -- think about this. I was a small business owner. Owned my own business for 15 years. Small business owners today are being incentived to drop their health insurance coverage for their employees. Next year, according to a report that came out today, 100 million more Americans may lose their health insurance because of the small business exchanges.</s>CARDIN: We have to wait to see the numbers.</s>SCOTT: The numbers are coming out pretty clear. Forty percent increase.</s>JONES: Let him take that before we go to break. Last shot.</s>CARDIN: Every year before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, more and more people were losing their insurance. And as far as Medicare is concerned, Medicare is more solvent today than it was before the passage.</s>JONES: I keep hearing that.</s>CARDIN: It is.</s>SCOTT: How, you take $700 billion out of something, it becomes more solvent?</s>CARDIN: First of all, we brought down some of the costs of Medicare.</s>SCOTT: Write that down for me, because I don't understand this.</s>JONES: I thought you guys liked it. Got rid of waste and abuse and that type of stuff. That's what we did. But here's the deal.</s>GINGRICH: We'll come back. We'll come back after the break.</s>JONES: We'll come back to all this stuff.</s>SCOTT: We're going to disagree on that topic.</s>JONES: Well, we've got to talk about it when we get back from the break. Now, clearly we're bogged down. We need a break out of this bogged-down discussion. And it looks like President Obama himself has been reading Newt Gingrich's new book called "Breakout." Next, I want you both of you guys to respond to this comment from the president.</s>OBAMA: In a lot of ways America is poised for a breakout. We are in a good position to compete around the world in the 21st century.