Just checked in by phone with Sen. Bob Corker, the impressive Republican freshman from Tennessee, to see what he’s making of the latest on health care and cap-and-trade.
Corker says President Obama recently met with him, something he appreciates. But Corker doesn’t think Obama “has his feet on the ground with regard to what appropriate health reform is.” He adds, “And he personalizes everything, it’s all, ‘I, I, I.’” Corker suspects that for Obama “doing this with some massive bill is about politics . . . To him, it’s about a political victory, not about doing what’s in the long-term interest of citizens.”
He’s also not a fan of where AARP is on Obamacare. He recalled that he told a representative of the AARP the other day that the organization’s position on the bill shows it’s a “shill for the Democrats,” as it “throws its constituents under the bus” to give cover for a plan that “has nothing to do with seniors” and “hurts seniors.”
Corker is stunned that the Finance Committee would consider taking hundreds of billions out of Medicare and not apply it to Medicare’s own shortfalls. They’re “taking Medicare savings and using it to leverage a whole new entitlement . . . It’s like a Ponzi scheme.” He thinks Obama’s advocacy of a MedPac on steroids is really an argument for the folly of government-run health care, since it shows Congress can only ever add new benefits. “He’s really saying that neither the legislative branch, nor he, have the ability to do things that need to be done in Medicare.” Corker says what we really need is some “adult supervision” at HHS and CMS, which administers Medicare, to try out pilot projects and see what works. In the meantime, there’s no need for Obamacare when there are incremental steps — things we “have 80% agreement on” — that can be taken to help the uninsured and reform insurance practices. Corker says he told Obama, “There are ways to do some things . . . without re-arranging the whole world.”
On cap-and-trade, he thinks the “bloom is coming off,” with less intensity around global warming than last summer and with the ugly, special interest-laden product coming out of the House. “If you had a government relations person working for you and you didn’t make money off the deal, you didn’t have a very good government relations person.” He favors a vision where America grows — say, by building 100 new nuclear plants — rather than limits itself with a system prone to abuse. “It’s a great way for traders to make a lot of money,” he says of cap-and-trade. “What we’ve seen with cap-and-trade in Europe is that it’s become an end in and of itself.” He’s optimistic about stopping it in the Senate.