Participants:
- Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
- Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
- Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN)
- Rep. Thad McCotter, Policy Chairman (R-MI)
- Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK)
- Governor Mike Rounds (R-SD)
- Governor Jim Douglas (R-VT)

Multimedia:

Audio  |  Video  |  Photos

Transcript:
 
Republican Leader Boehner:
 
We’re joined today by Governor Jim Douglas from Vermont and Governor Mike Rounds from South Dakota. They, like the American people, know that if the government gets involved in our health care we’re going to see nothing but rationed care, higher taxes and less quality in our health care delivery. So, it’s really important that we allow governors to have the flexibility to deal with this issue in their home states, and I think the governors will talk about that.
 
But at 852 pages, the Democrat health care plan will do just the opposite. It is a complete government takeover of our health care system, which is going to lead to higher taxes, rationing and a lower quality in our health care system. House Republicans have a proposal we’ve put on the table that will provide affordable access to high quality health insurance for every American. I believe that the Democrats ought to be working with us to do our best to help deliver health insurance to more Americans. Yet, at this point they’ve not reached out to us. We continue to reach our hands out and say “Listen, work with us.” If we’re going to have true health care reform, it needs to be bipartisan and it needs to keep the interests of Americans at the beginning of this process.

Governor Jim Douglas:
 
Well thank you; I’m Jim Douglas from Vermont.

I want to echo the Leader’s sentiments about the importance of a bipartisan approach to health care reform. This is an increasingly large percentage of our gross domestic product. It’s an increasingly large percentage of state budgets all across the nation. We need to get these costs under control. We need to change the way we deliver health care. To pay for quality rather quantity. To focus on prevention and chronic disease management, on ensuring that the American taxpayer and ratepayer gets the best bang for his or her buck. So, Governor Rounds and I are here for some meetings with Democrat leaders, as well as the Republican Caucus. I want to make sure that all the good ideas from the Republicans are considered in this process. The American people need a bipartisan solution.

We’ve done it in Vermont. We have a program called Green Mountain Care that is based on prevention and chronic disease management. We’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars through the flexibility that we’ve received through our Medicaid waivers. So the message that the Leader articulated is an important one. No unfunded mandates to the states, flexibility so that states can experiment and do it their own way and a focus on quality and outcome so that we can control costs for the American people.
 
Governor Mike Rounds:
 
Mike Rounds from South Dakota.

Ninety-one percent of our people have a plan for taking care of their health care. Nine percent don’t. We can do better. The reason that we’re here today is to participate and we’d love to see it be a bipartisan effort - one in which we can improve health care. But at the same time, we have to be able to pay for it. Concerns that we’re expressing are that as states, we know that we share part of that burden. Today, we’re really struggling. We know the federal government is struggling. Anything that we do in health care, we have to have a long-term plan to pay the bills. If we don’t have that, it would not be sustainable and it would not be an improvement.

In South Dakota, we think that there are more reforms that could be done. In 2003, we had three insurance companies left offering individual health care products. Today we have 18, because we’ve opened up the market. We’ve made it competitive. We’ve laid the ground rules out but we did it in such a fashion that it worked for South Dakota. We don’t want to have the states lose the ability to be that laboratory where we can make things better. That’s the reason why we’re here today. We look forward to a very good discussion and coming up with a good plan that Republicans and Democrats alike can look at and say “we did something good for the rest of America.”
 
Republican Whip Cantor:
 
Good morning.
 
As we now are in the week of cap and trade in the House. I think it is becoming ever more apparent of how the Democratic agenda for the people of this country is disconnected with the reality that American families face every day. Plain and simple it’s about jobs and it’s about this failing economy. And the cap and trade bill is at best counterproductive toward trying to address those challenges.
 
When we look at the impact of this bill on American families, what we see is a job killer. There are studies out there that have indicated - on the one hand the MIT study says it’s $3,000 cost to a family of four as a result of this cap and trade bill. There are others, the CBO study that was out as recently as last week, which said that there is a $1,600 plus impact cost on a family of four.  Today, now we are reading the reports that have come out this week that CBO has now reduced its cost estimate to say that it is only $160 that families will be impacted by the cap and trade bill.  I think that now CBO has now entered the realm of losing its credibility. There is no question that the cap and trade bill will cost millions of jobs and it is pretty evident, I think now, given the word that we are hearing that the other side has 190 votes at this point, far short of that which are needed to pass this bill. And I think it reflects wariness on the part of the American people of the cost and consequences of the Democratic agenda. And that’s why Republicans will stay focused on jobs, the economy and on families’ financial security.
 
Rep. Mary Fallin:
 
I’m Mary Fallin, I come from Oklahoma and in my state, of course, we have a rich energy industry, and oil and gas and alternative energy with wind and solar, and people in Oklahoma are very concerned about the discussions here about energy.  We do want in Oklahoma to have a cleaner environment.  We do want cleaner air, cleaner water and cleaner land, but we don’t want it at the expense of losing jobs. 
 
And in a state that has an abundance of oil and gas jobs in our economy, we are already seeing jobs that are being cut in our state just because of the discussion here in Washington, D.C.  We have a plan here in our Republican caucus to develop all forms of energy whether it is wind, solar, nuclear, alternative fuels, biodiesel fuels, clean natural gas, clean coal technology, there are other alternatives besides the national energy tax which is said to increase our utility costs anywhere from 30-50 percent, and when you have families that are back home in our states that are suffering from a recession, that are worried about their jobs, worrying about making their mortgage payments.
 
To talk about increasing utility rates by 30-50 percent would be a huge burden upon our families not even to mention our businesses and manufacturing and how it could affect our job markets.  We’re already seeing gasoline prices rise because we’re in the summertime.  It’s estimated it will increase gasoline costs too.
 
So we need to sit back and be careful and thoughtful about what we’re doing to produce American-made energy to encourage innovation, research and development into American-made products while also working on the clean energy.  And let me just say something about the health care debate.  I appreciate the governors coming in today to visit with us about what they’re doing in innovation in their states.
 
In Oklahoma, we’ve created our own plan called Insure Oklahoma to take care of those who are uninsured, to work with the private sector and the government to where they can partner together to find reasonable cost supported health care that allows patient-doctor choice and that allows access to care.  So I appreciate the governors coming today to help us here on health care because there are some great innovative ways that we can cover the uninsured, that we can lower our costs and create better access in preventative care.
 
Rep. Thad McCotter:
 
Earlier this year we saw the administration set an arbitrary deadline for a trillion dollar stimulus bill. One of the promises it made was that unemployment would not go beyond 8 percent in the United States if the bill was passed. Painfully, those promises and predictions have been disproven.
 
Just yesterday in Michigan, we saw within our manufacturing base General Motors announcing 4,000 white-collar layoffs by the end of the year. The response of this Democratic Congress is what? To pass cap-and-tax legislation that will adversely affect not only all American jobs, all American working families, but manufacturing in particular. The very same arbitrary deadline which we saw in the past has been repeated, and I believe that the promises and predictions they made will also be disproven.
 
One of the things we are supposed to do representing our constituents in Washington is to step back from the insanity and try to inject reality into the legislative process. I want you to think about what this bill means. The fundamental rationale behind this cap and tax legislation is this: Government will control the weather by raising your taxes, taking your job and dictating your life. That sounds very unappealing to those of us in the Republican Party and we think it’s unappealing to the Americans who right now are suffering under a recession. We think the president should get this economy moving and stop taking steps that will further hinder it and further harm working families. Thank you.

Conference Chairman Pence:

Thank you all for being here. Mike Pence, Conference Chairman.  I was home in Indiana earlier this week.  At town hall meetings in places like Connersville and Richmond, Indiana I saw confirmation, not only in the statistics of those communities but in the faces of the citizens, that this economy is hurting.  The American people are struggling.  People of Indiana are struggling under the weight of extraordinary unemployment.  Remarkably, House Democrats are planning this Friday to bring a national energy tax to the floor of the House of Representatives at precisely the time when Americans and American businesses in the city and on the farm can least afford it.
 
As Mr. Cantor suggested there are competing estimates about the cost of this national energy tax.  But interestingly there is no debate that the energy cost to average American households and businesses will rise.  And this national energy tax will cost millions of American jobs.  A recent study by the Charles River Associates suggested that, even including the green jobs that would be created under the cap and trade legislation, that our GDP could be reduced by as much as two millions lost jobs per year.  The President himself said that utility rates would “necessarily skyrocket.”  Even though the President said yesterday that the cost of his legislation would be “paid for by polluters,” in January of 2008 then-candidate Obama said that as utility rates rose that those would be passed along to consumers, and I believe he was right a year ago.
 
Well, Republicans have a better solution.  Republicans have developed an “all of the above” strategy that sends us decisively in the direction of energy independence, more jobs and a cleaner environment.  It is called the American Energy Act and it has gotten a great reception across the country and in districts of our members.  We believe that the choice between energy independence and more jobs and a cleaner environment of the Republican alternative and the national energy tax, we know which one the American people will choose in a free and open debate.