Press Conference With J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, Thursday, Nov. 6

11/6/2003

From: Office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, 202-225-2800

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 -- Following is a transcript of Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert's press conference on Thursday, Nov. 6:

Mr. Hastert. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Well, we are trying to wind down slowly and I hope surely in this process.

You know, we had good news last week that the economy is coming back. We had the best quarter that we have had since I think, what is it, 1984? I think that is the result of our sustained belief that if we put more money into the economy the economy is going to come back.

We were all real shocked by the economy in 2000. The bubble started to burst. It started to go down. We passed our bill in 2001. We did a stimulus package in 2002 and passed a tax cut this year. I think those results are starting to make a difference, and I think you will see this economy continue to grow, and I think you will see the job growth continue to grow.

We are trying to work on the energy bill. We are very, very close to having a conclusion; and we are very close to some type of a settlement on Medicare and pharmaceutical drugs, although that is very difficult.

I will open it up to any questions you have.

Q Mr. Speaker, do you agree with Chairman Thomas who said we might have to agree to disagree on Medicare prescription drugs?

Mr. Hastert. Well, agree to disagree means with whom?

Q Well, it sounds like then you just don't get a bill.

Mr. Hastert. Well, it depends on who we disagree with. If we disagree with ourselves, then we don't get a bill. If we disagree with someone in the party, there is still a possibility to get a bill. But what we are trying to do with the Medicare bill is I think we are at a place that we haven't been in decades, and we may never get to for decades to come, that we have $400 billion set aside to change Medicare, to sustain it into the future.

The fact is, when you are working, many of you will be working 20 years from now, 30 percent of your income would go just to sustain Medicare, to pay for Medicare if we don't do something now. We need to change that paradigm. We need to make it competitive. So if that is going to happen, you can't sustain it. So we need Medicare to reach into the future.

We also want to make sure that there is a pharmaceutical drug aspect to it. Because, quite frankly, as I have said before, when I got involved in health care 25 years ago, half the cost of health care was doctors for seniors and half the cost was hospitals. You know, if you were sick, you took a couple of aspirin and you saw the doctor the next morning.

Today, clearly 40 percent of the cost of health care for seniors is pharmaceuticals. We need to make those things affordable for seniors who can't afford them, because it is very important for them to stay viable, stay productive.

One of the biggest things that I have worked on since I have been here is the removal of the earnings test on Social Security, so seniors can continue to work after they are 65. Now, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that wasn't a big deal. But today people are viable. They can work. They are going to live longer. So we have got to have the ability for them to enjoy that and to take advantage of good health. So that is what we are about.

What we are trying to do right now is to find that narrow way between what we can pass in the House and what can pass in the Senate. We have never been -- we have passed pharmaceuticals in the House and Medicare reform twice in the House of Representatives. It has never even passed in the Senate. We have passed it in the House; we haven't passed it in the Senate. We are so close to getting it done. It would be a tragedy not to get this done. For somebody or some people to posture and say it is going to be our way or no way, we need come and find those compromises.

Q Mr. Speaker, what is your view on the mental health parity legislation? As you know, there is a compromise in the Senate that has been promoted. They want to make the copays the same for a broken leg and a mental health condition.

Mr. Hastert. What mental health condition is at parity with a broken leg?

Q The insurance company can choose which ones they want to cover under the compromise.

Mr. Hastert. I am just being facetious. In 1996, we passed mental health parity. I wrote the bill that was passed in 1996, and there was a provision at the insistence of Senator Domenici, and we put it in. Now they want to build on that.

I think one of the things we need to do is to make sure that people can afford insurance in the future. I have always said, and I have said it to you, that our biggest goal is to be able to create an insurance policy on a Federal level that people can afford, so those people that are, you know, the 40 or 43 or 44 million people that don't have insurance, so they can afford it. If you start putting mandates on top of those insurance policies, you may make it almost impossible for people to afford or us to build some type of an insurance policy that is affordable for people.

So, you know, I want to see that coverage extended. I also want to make sure it is fair. But I want to make sure it is affordable. Those are the things that we have to take into consideration.

Q Sir, you talk about finding a narrow way to pass this in the House or the Senate, the Medicare bill. Can you talk about what provisions can fit into that narrow window? Competition? Health savings accounts? Cost containment? Is there room for that stuff in there?

Mr. Hastert. Well, you know, my personal view is that medical savings accounts is probably one of the most important pieces in this bill, and that is just not exclusive to seniors but to everybody. It is a way that we can start to control the cost of health care across this country. I think it is a very, very important piece of legislation.

I got it passed again in 1996, the first provisions of it. Kennedy limited it severely. We are just trying to take some of the constraints off. I think it is the right thing to do.

But that is a debate. The Democrats -- some of the liberal Democrats don't want to see that changed because they think that is one of the solutions to health care, and they can't move their big national agenda if that passes.

Q Mr. Speaker, can the Congress pass international tax reform this year to avoid the trade sanctions?

Mr. Hastert. Well, you know, we are working on it. We have a bill in the House, as you well know. The House has been very active on it. I am not sure if the Senate is planning to pick it up or not. But I can't vouch for the Senate.

But, you know, we are counting the votes. Mr. Blunt and Tom DeLay are meeting with Members, talking about this, trying to get people on board; and we are trying to grow the vote on it. We have the numbers that we need to pass it, we will pass it.

Q How close are you to getting the numbers, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Hastert. We are working on it. There is a lot of people that have some questions.

Q Back to the Medicare question from before, are you talking about scaling back or producing a bill that scales back some of the reforms you originally wanted?

Mr. Hastert. Look, if we don't get some reforms, then we can't reach our goal of really making Medicare sustaining into the future. So we have to do some things that really make a difference, and we also have to have some things in there or we can't pass it in the House.

Q But how about -- you say you wanted it to pass in the Senate, too. In order to do that, you have to have some things out of there. Are you prepared to get some of them out of there?

Mr. Hastert. We are going to have to see what we can do.

Q Mr. Speaker, on the energy bill, Tom DeLay said yesterday that it was really Vice President Cheney whose shuttle diplomacy, in Tom Delay's words, made the deal possible. Are you happy with that and how much were you involved in the negotiations?

Mr. Hastert. Well, both Senator Frist and I had talked to Vice President Cheney several times, and he offered his good office to do that. He has done it. I think it has been helpful.

Q Are you happy with the deal that has come out?

Mr. Hastert. Do you know what? When you look at the energy bill, what we are trying to do on this is to try to do three or four things, basically. First of all, try to use the maximum or make the maximum use of resources that we have -- soybeans, corn. Of course, I am prejudiced. That is my district. But, you know, those are good things, I think.

We are also trying to build the infrastructure, the grid and the pipelines. We are also trying to maximum more use of the oil and gas reserves that we already have. You know, getting oil is hard to get out of wells; and, you know, I am not a technician on that. Finding new ways to research and make sure that we have cleaner and better ways of discovering and extracting these products, all of this is part of it. Also, a better use of another resource we have, and that is coal.

All of those things come together, and there is a lot of interest and a lot of strategies.

Right now, we are hung up over a pork project in Iowa to get this thing done; and, you know, it is just time that we get it done.

Q Mr. Speaker, is there any chance you will bring the mental health parity bill up again this year?

Mr. Hastert. I think I talked about that already.

Q Mr. Speaker, back to Medicare again. Given the tricky calculus that you have talked about with the House, keeping your own Members on board and not scaring away Senators -- that is my translation -- in the reality of the congressional calendar, could you see a scenario where the Congress goes away and the conferees continue and then you bring Congress back?

Mr. Hastert. My personal opinion, and you know I have been proven wrong before, but if we don't get this thing done now, we don't get it done. Because you move into a very tight presidential race and period of time. You will see everything that we do in this Congress clouded by, you know, the -- I always call them the prancing ponies of politics on the other side of the Rotunda that want to be President. I think that will drive the show. I think it will be almost impossible for us to get anything major done after we adjourn this fall.

Q Mr. Speaker, earlier you said there are a lot of unanswered questions about the international tax reform bill. Do you think that speaks to a lack of education among Members, or do you think that speaks to a dissension in the ranks?

Mr. Hastert. No. What I think is they are asking questions because it is complicated and they really don't understand all of the issues, and we need to clarify that.

But what I perceive on that, it is a complicated piece. Members are frustrated. Don Manzullo and folks like that are frustrated because they have seen a lot of jobs disappear from their district and have gone to other places.

Part of it is because of salaries, and part of it is because of the high liability costs in this country. Part of it is because of high health care costs in this country. But we are trying to find a way, at least on the trade issue, to make sure that people who manufacture here aren't punished in this process; and I think we trying to find a balance.

When Congressman Thomas -- Chairman Thomas put his bill together, he had a lot of things in it. His final iteration of that bill had some things out of it because it was contained in the Senate bill. So I think that people are just trying to figure out how it affects them and need to be reassured and walked through it. That is what we are doing.

Q Do you think as the economy improves that you will have an easier time getting that bill through?

Mr. Hastert. I think this is something that the World Trade Organization has a sword over our head. We need to get it done. So that is probably -- my gut feeling about this is we fought a revolution 230 years ago to stop Europeans from telling us how we have to tax in this country, and it puts the hair up on the back of my neck that we have to do this at all. But we have to do it.

Q Mr. Speaker, presently Democrat Leader Pelosi has talked about the AG jobs proposal under which at least 500,000 I think undocumented migrant workers or farm workers could be regularized. She mentioned the fact that you were on board on this proposal. My question is, basically, how far are we to having a vote on this proposal and what are the chances to have it approved?

Mr. Hastert. Well, what we are looking for right now is -- the fact is we have a lot of undocumented workers in this country. The majority of them are in agriculture. Two jeopardies.

First of all, those people come here to find work to try to help themselves and their families. Most of them are back in Mexico. We need to have a way that those workers can come here on a temporary basis and then be able to send money or go back home, wherever their home may be, without being breaking the law; and there are a lot of complications about that.

First of all, our border security, it makes it tougher to do that. It is very difficult. If you are in, say, Mexico, for example, to come up and get -- from Southern Mexico and get a pass to do this and then go back home and wait for your number or interview to come back, it is a very difficult thing to do. So we need to be able to expedite this.

Also, our employers who employ farm workers basically really don't have any checks and balance. They take people at their word. If they have a document, they accept that document. But they are in jeopardy, too, if they have the Feds sweep in on them and clean house and take those penalties. I think most of them operate in pretty good faith that those people are legitimate, but it is a problem. The fact is, we have work in this country that a lot of people aren't willing to do, but these people are willing to do it, and we need to find some accommodation for it.

Q Mr. Speaker, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade are seeking legislation blocking Eurex from entering the U.S. market. I was wondering if you been in contacted about that.

Mr. Hastert. I think there is a balance that we have to find. If Eurex -- is that the name of it? How do you move those transactions in European banks? How do we make sure that the controls that we have in this country are extended to Europe? We have a very difficult time, because there is -- with the European Union, there is a favoritism that they play to European banks; and so, if we are going to do this, we need some equity on the other side of the equation.

Thank you.