November 7, 2010 11:38 PM
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Transcript: President Barack Obama, Part 1
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Spain's David Silva controls the ball past Ireland's Stephen Ward and Keith Andrews, right, during the Euro 2012 soccer championship Group C match between Spain and Ireland in Gdansk, Poland, Thursday, June 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) (Peter Morrison)
KROFT: You talked about soul searching. The example you gave me was the one about the earmarks. Is that the only thing you . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I think that's an example of the kinds of things that you're thinking about all the time. I was thinking about it at the time. And I continue to think about it. I mean, I think that one of the areas that a lot of folks have focused on, obviously, is the health care bill.
KROFT: Right.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Because after we took a whole series of these emergency measures, to save the economy, the stimulus, the steps to shore up the banking system, the auto bailout. I think there were some that argued, "Well, you should just stop and let people digest all these changes. And so, you shouldn't take on something as big as health care." And I'll be honest with you, Steve, at the time, we knew that it probably wasn't great politics.
KROFT: You were told that by your aides.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. There's a reason why our health care system hasn't been reformed over the last several decades. Why every president talks about it and it never happens. Because it's hard. It's a huge, big complicated system. Even as unhappy as people are with the system, the majority of people have health insurance. And so, they're more worried about what they might lose than what they might gain from any reforms.
So, we understood that this was bad politics, but I'll tell you, I had spent the previous two years traveling around the country. And in every town hall meeting, in every conversation that I had with a group of voters, there was somebody who'd come in and say, "You know, my kid is sick. And I couldn't get insurance for 'em, because they got a preexisting condition. Or I had to mortgage my house to pay the premiums."
Or a small business came and said, "You know, I'd love to provide health insurance for my employees, but I just can't afford -- I can barely afford health insurance for myself." And then I started looking at the budget and it turned out that if we continued on the same trajectory in terms of Medicare costs going up, that there was no possibility of ever balancing this budget without massive tax hikes. Because the population's getting older. We use more and more medical services. And we were gonna have to control those costs.
So, ultimately, I had to make a decision: do I put all that aside, because it's gonna be bad politics? Or do I go ahead and try to do it because it will ultimately benefit the country? I made the decision to go ahead and do it. And it proved as costly politically as we expected. Probably actually a little more costly than we expected, politically.
KROFT: In what ways?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, partly because I couldn't get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I had hoped for. We thought that if we shaped a bill that wasn't that different from bills that had previously been introduced by Republicans -- including a Republican governor in Massachusetts who's now running for President -- that, you know, we would be able to find some common ground there. And we just couldn't.
And that was costly partly because it created the kind of partisanship and bickering that really turn people off. Partly because the economy was still on the mend. And the entire focus on health care for so many months meant that people thought we were distracted and weren't paying attention to, you know, the key thing that was on their minds. And partly because the process itself ended up reinforcing this feeling of insider deals. And, you know, individual members of Congress trying to carve things out for themselves.
It just gave people, you know, sort of an overall a message that business hadn't changed in Washington. So there is no doubt. And I think that a lot of this is the lens through which a lot of people view the health care debate. There's no doubt that it hurt us politically.
KROFT: Would you do it again the same way? Or would you try something else?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know I think what I would have done is to be more scrupulous about sticking to some of the commitments I had made in how to get it done. For example, I made a commitment that I was gonna make sure that the key negotiations around health care were on C-SPAN. And the truth of the matter is that, you know, you have five different committees over there that are working on it.
KROFT: You did it behind closed doors.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Trying to coordinate an ongoing conversation on television was, you know, something that we ultimately said, you know, "This is just too cumbersome, we can't pull it off." But there's a price to that, because I think people then felt like, "Well, if you're having conversations with Members of Congress or these various interest groups and we don't know what's going on, you know, then it's easier for them to believe that maybe, you know, what's going on isn't so good for us." And that, I think really hurt us politically. And I'm not sure that we couldn't have gotten it done if we had taken more care on that end of it.
Copyright 2010 CBS. All rights reserved. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I think that's an example of the kinds of things that you're thinking about all the time. I was thinking about it at the time. And I continue to think about it. I mean, I think that one of the areas that a lot of folks have focused on, obviously, is the health care bill.
KROFT: Right.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Because after we took a whole series of these emergency measures, to save the economy, the stimulus, the steps to shore up the banking system, the auto bailout. I think there were some that argued, "Well, you should just stop and let people digest all these changes. And so, you shouldn't take on something as big as health care." And I'll be honest with you, Steve, at the time, we knew that it probably wasn't great politics.
KROFT: You were told that by your aides.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. There's a reason why our health care system hasn't been reformed over the last several decades. Why every president talks about it and it never happens. Because it's hard. It's a huge, big complicated system. Even as unhappy as people are with the system, the majority of people have health insurance. And so, they're more worried about what they might lose than what they might gain from any reforms.
So, we understood that this was bad politics, but I'll tell you, I had spent the previous two years traveling around the country. And in every town hall meeting, in every conversation that I had with a group of voters, there was somebody who'd come in and say, "You know, my kid is sick. And I couldn't get insurance for 'em, because they got a preexisting condition. Or I had to mortgage my house to pay the premiums."
Or a small business came and said, "You know, I'd love to provide health insurance for my employees, but I just can't afford -- I can barely afford health insurance for myself." And then I started looking at the budget and it turned out that if we continued on the same trajectory in terms of Medicare costs going up, that there was no possibility of ever balancing this budget without massive tax hikes. Because the population's getting older. We use more and more medical services. And we were gonna have to control those costs.
So, ultimately, I had to make a decision: do I put all that aside, because it's gonna be bad politics? Or do I go ahead and try to do it because it will ultimately benefit the country? I made the decision to go ahead and do it. And it proved as costly politically as we expected. Probably actually a little more costly than we expected, politically.
KROFT: In what ways?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, partly because I couldn't get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I had hoped for. We thought that if we shaped a bill that wasn't that different from bills that had previously been introduced by Republicans -- including a Republican governor in Massachusetts who's now running for President -- that, you know, we would be able to find some common ground there. And we just couldn't.
And that was costly partly because it created the kind of partisanship and bickering that really turn people off. Partly because the economy was still on the mend. And the entire focus on health care for so many months meant that people thought we were distracted and weren't paying attention to, you know, the key thing that was on their minds. And partly because the process itself ended up reinforcing this feeling of insider deals. And, you know, individual members of Congress trying to carve things out for themselves.
It just gave people, you know, sort of an overall a message that business hadn't changed in Washington. So there is no doubt. And I think that a lot of this is the lens through which a lot of people view the health care debate. There's no doubt that it hurt us politically.
KROFT: Would you do it again the same way? Or would you try something else?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know I think what I would have done is to be more scrupulous about sticking to some of the commitments I had made in how to get it done. For example, I made a commitment that I was gonna make sure that the key negotiations around health care were on C-SPAN. And the truth of the matter is that, you know, you have five different committees over there that are working on it.
KROFT: You did it behind closed doors.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Trying to coordinate an ongoing conversation on television was, you know, something that we ultimately said, you know, "This is just too cumbersome, we can't pull it off." But there's a price to that, because I think people then felt like, "Well, if you're having conversations with Members of Congress or these various interest groups and we don't know what's going on, you know, then it's easier for them to believe that maybe, you know, what's going on isn't so good for us." And that, I think really hurt us politically. And I'm not sure that we couldn't have gotten it done if we had taken more care on that end of it.
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